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HOFFMAN: Welcome everyone to 16.885.

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And I guess this is ESD.35 as well.

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I think.

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I cannot keep track of the number.

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Formally the title is Aircraft Systems Engineering.

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I never thought I would actually be teaching
a course with aircraft in the title of it

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since I am not an airplane person, I am a
space person.

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But, as you all know, we have decided to devote
the course this year to a study of the Space

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Shuttle.

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Very briefly, what the course has been historically,
it was taught for quite a few years by Professors

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Murman and Hansman in the Aero-Astro Department.

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It is a course in systems engineering devoted
to aircraft systems.

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And what they typically would do would be
to have a series of lectures about principles

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of systems engineering, and also about various
systems - general systems in aviation.

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And then, as a class assignment, the students
would work in teams and choose an aircraft

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and do a systems analysis study of that aircraft.

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Well, a couple of years ago we were just sort
of sitting down and chatting.

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And someone brought up the idea that well,
you know, the Space Shuttle kind of is like

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an airplane.

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Maybe it would be interesting to devote the
course one year to a special study of the

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Space Shuttle.

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And that was actually the origin of what we
are doing this year.

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Following that, Professor Aaron Cohen, who
is sitting over here, and I will introduce

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him in more detail in a minute, visited MIT,
I think it was early last year, and gave a

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few lectures on systems engineering and the
development of the Space Shuttle.

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And we started talking about putting together
a course on the shuttle.

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And we were very fortunate now that this fall
Professor Cohen is here as a visiting professor.

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And he will be here at MIT roughly about half
the time.

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And he and I have put this course together.

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And the way we are going to organize it is
that we're going to emphasize two main areas.

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First of all, to get to an understanding of
the Space Shuttle as a flying machine, as

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a spacecraft, and also to study systems engineering
as an engineering discipline.

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We have put together a list of speakers, and
I am going to pass out here copies of the

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syllabus.

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If you will pass these around.

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I have also established a stellar class website
and, once you are all enrolled in the course,

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you will all have access to the website.

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If any of you are here as listeners or for
some other reason don't get formally registered

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to get course access, contact me independently
and we can set you up for a special access

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so that you can look on the website.

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If you look through here you will see that
most of the class periods are devoted to guest

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lecturers.

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And, thanks in large part to Professor Cohen,
we have actually been able to invite people

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who played pivotal roles in the very early
stages of the design of the Space Shuttle.

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And also people who played pivotal roles in
the testing and eventual operation of the

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shuttle.
So we have people who are active in the design
and also some people who were critical in

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Mission Control and in the test flights of
the shuttle.

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It is, I think, a really unique collection
of speakers.

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And because I don't think there has ever been
a time where this sort of a collection of

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people has actually come together to share
their experiences on the shuttle.

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And because we thought that it would have
historical significance, and people would

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be interested in being able to look at that
in the future, we are having the lecture series

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taped for eventual inclusion on MIT's OpenCourseWare.

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So that is why you see the television camera
in the back.

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No need for all of you to dress up for it,
but just so that you know.

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The way we plan to run the course is as follows.

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The lectures will run roughly about an hour,
we will take a little break at the end of

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an hour, and then there will be an opportunity
basically for close interaction between you

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in the class and the lecturer.

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It is kind of free form because we have lots
of different lectures.

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Of course, there will be some variability
in the way lecturers go about presenting the

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material.

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Professor Cohen and I will attempt to make
sure that, in each case, we do emphasize some

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of the basic systems engineering aspects of
the presentation.

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We want you to understand the principles of
how some of the different subsystems were

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designed, basically how they were influenced
by external requirements to make sure that

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we understand what the requirements were,
how the systems were constructed and tested,

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and how they were operated.

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What we will be asking from you in terms of
your deliverables, first of all, we would

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like you to take notes on the lectures.

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We will post the lecture notes on the website.

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If you look through the schedule that I have
given you here, you will see that I list the

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deliverables, and I am going to have to adjust
the timing on that.

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Two times in the course we will ask to see
the lecture journals.

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What we are looking for is to make sure that
we are presenting and that you are getting

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out of this the basic systems engineering
principles for each of the subsystems that

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are presented.

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And we will talk a little bit about journal
notes in the future.

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The main deliverable from you will be a little
bit different from in the normal Aircraft

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Systems Engineering course where groups of
students basically chose and airplane and

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then looked at the design of that particular
airplane.

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We are only dealing with one vehicle, the
shuttle, so what we will be asking you to

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do is choose one of the subsystems on the
shuttle.

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And, as you look through the notes, you see
we will have information presented on a lot

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of the different subsystems.

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I have a lot of material available, and I
will go over that a little bit later, both

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in digital form and in books which we will
have on reserve at the library which go into

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great detail on all the different subsystems.

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So we have lots of information, as well as
experts that you can talk with.

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We will ask you to form up into teams, roughly
four people on a team, more or less.

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Choose a subsystem.

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And then, basically, write a paper on how
you would design that subsystem, if you were

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doing it today, using 21st century technology.

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It gives you an opportunity to understand
the subsystem, as it was designed for the

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shuttle, and then to take a look at current
technology in that subsystem.

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I know there are some people here from Engineering
Systems, as well as from Aero-Astro.

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People may have some other ideas.

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If you have some ideas about writing about
systems from a systems engineering and integration

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point of view or any other particular personal
ideas of what you would like to do as a project

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which is slightly different from specifically
working with a subsystem, come see me and

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we will talk about it.

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The main thing is to make sure that you have
a chance to explore some aspect of the systems

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engineering of the shuttle in greater depth.

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That is all I am going to say right now.

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Go to the website.

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I will be posting more information because
I want to give as much time as possible to

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our two speakers.

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I, by the way, will be posting bios of all
the speakers on the website so you will be

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able to look ahead of time and get an idea
of who it is who will be speaking to us and

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what their roles were in the development or
testing or operation of the shuttle.

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So I would like to present now Professor Aaron
Cohen who was born in Texas and has had a

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very distinguished career at NASA.

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Just very briefly, he was the project manager,
I guess first in Apollo, he was the Command

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and Service Module Project Manager.

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And then he was the Project Manager for the
Space Shuttle and eventually became the Center

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Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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When he retired in the early `90s he took
a teaching position at Texas A&M in the Mechanical

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Engineering Department where he is now Professor
Emeritus.

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And we are extremely fortunate to have him
here co-teaching the course with me.

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So, Aaron, I will turn it over.

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COHEN: Thank you very much.

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And it is a pleasure to be here with you.

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I have a few things I would like to talk to
you about very briefly and then I will turn

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it over to our guest speaker today.

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I would like to let you know what you can
expect for the next several lectures.

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I am going to provide you with the overall
shuttle, how the shuttle works, the requirements

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of the shuttle, the design and the development
of the subsystems to a certain extent to give

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you an overall view of the shuttle so you
will have a background of information when

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you later start to hear the detailed lectures
of the subsystems in some degree.

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As you listen to these various technical lectures,
you should be prepared to figure out what

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system you are really interested in and what
system you would like to move forward with

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in your future talks.

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And so you will see that.

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So that is what I will do in the next two
lectures, Tuesday and Thursday.

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In trying to figure out how we start the course,
I went back in my memory to figure out a man

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who was there at the very beginning in Washington.

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And this man, Mr.

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Dale Myers, who is going to talk today, is
what you might say is a true aerospace engineer.

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He had a very distinguished career in both
industry and government, in aircraft and space.

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Dale, or Mr.

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Myers, who was Deputy Administrator at NASA
from October 1986 to 1989, and that was when

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President Regan called Dale Myers back to
be Deputy Administrator after the Challenger

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accident.

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Mr.

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Myers was Corporate Vice President of Rockwell
International, President of the North American

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Aircraft Group, where he was responsible for
the B1 and various military and commercial

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aircraft.

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In 1970 he has been an Associate with Rockwell
International and Vice President and Manager

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for the Apollo Command and Service Module.

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So he was Apollo and Shuttle.

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The key thing that Mr.

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Myers is going to talk to you about today,
he was the NASA Associate Administrator for

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Manned Space Flight in 1970 when the Space
Shuttle began.

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And Mr.

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Myers is going to talk to you about the beginning
of the Space Shuttle and how the external

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environment helped create or generate requirements
that really forced, you might say, the configuration

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of the shuttle.

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And I think it is very important for you to
understand that, because many times, when

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you get out and start to work, go to work,
the requirements become generated by external

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environments.

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So, without further ado, let me turn the speaker
over to Dale Myers to give you his lecture.

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MYERS: Well, thanks for the opportunity to
talk to you guys about a very interesting

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historical element.

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I was asked to talk about the origin of the
shuttle.

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And I was there in 1970.

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And I think once we get this thing working
where I can run the slides -- The joy of electronics.

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When I first went to work for North American
Aviation we used Marchant Calculators where

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you put in your numbers and pull a lever and
actually move it to the next position.

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And we did a lot of dynamic analysis.

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And it took weeks to do a total dynamic flight
analysis of an aircraft with a Marchant calculator.

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Now we have the wonders of the computer.

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The first airplane I worked on was a P51 Mustang,
a fighter in World War II, and that had some

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interesting system engineering issues in it,
too.

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They used the inlet, it had a liquid cooled
engine, and we had a radiator that was in

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a duct.

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And the air came through the radiator, cooled
the liquid and heated up the air that was

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then properly adjusted with a flap at the
back of the radiator that gave it thrust out

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of the heat that was involved coming through
the radiator.

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That is the reason why the Mustang is about
15 miles an hour faster than the German's

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ME 109.

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That is one of the prettiest pictures I have
ever seen of the shuttle.

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That is a picture of the additional photography
that they brought into the system after the

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Columbia accident, and this was used on this
last flight.

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The first time I had ever seen the rearview
of all the connections for the transfer of

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fuel from the tank into the shuttle, the connections
to the tank, the forward bipod where the foam

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was that came off on the Columbia accident,
just a terrific picture of all the tiles up

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under the wing that Aaron was so involved
with.

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But what I want to talk about, oh, here is
another one that is really a first for me.

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This is the mach 1 shock on the shuttle about
20,000 feet altitude, mach 1.1.

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That big envelope of condensation, not as
pretty as it looks on an F-18 or some really

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slick airplane, but it is there.

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I am going to talk about what happened leading
up to the shuttle.

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And it is interesting because it involves
the specific interests and personalities of

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the people who were involved.

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Jim Webb was the administrator of NASA from
1961 to 1968, and he was a terrific interactor

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with the rest of the administration and with
the President directly.

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And did a great job of administrating NASA
through the Apollo program up through 1968.

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It turned out in 1968 things were kind of
going sour for President Johnson.

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Webb's big tie was with President Johnson,
and he ended up leaving in 1968 after he suggested

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to President Johnson that he might want to
leave some time soon.

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I think he was thinking he was going to stay
through the Lunar landing, but Johnson said

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why don't you leave now? And I don't really
understand the interaction that was involved

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there, but Webb did not want to make future
plans.

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He really never paid much attention to the
work that was being done inside the system

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on new ideas, new things beyond Apollo.

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Of course, the Apollo was an immense program,
400,000 people.

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Well, 300,000 on the Apollo, another 100,000
on other activities in NASA like the aeronautics

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program and the science programs.

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But Webb didn't want to talk about things
that were going to happen beyond that time

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period.

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In the meantime, in the back rooms a lot of
people were doing a lot of thinking about

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where does NASA go after the Apollo program?
Apollo at that time, that Webb was there,

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had planned to go through Apollo 20, I think.

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And so it was going to go on until 1973 or
so.

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And so I think Webb took the attitude that
we don't need to think about the future yet.

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Well, when he left in 1968, they brought in
a fellow named Tom Paine who had been at General

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Electric Company doing advanced planning for
General Electric, a very bright, very aggressively

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forward-thinking guy.

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00:21:01,230 --> 00:21:05,630
A guy that I always felt never saw a future
plan he didn't like.

220
00:21:05,630 --> 00:21:12,309
And NASA was doing a fantastic amount of future
planning at that time because in the 1968

221
00:21:12,309 --> 00:21:22,530
time period, we had just done the Apollo 7,
gotten it back into flight again.

222
00:21:22,530 --> 00:21:29,230
At the end of '68 we did the Apollo 8 which
went around the moon, and NASA could do no

223
00:21:29,230 --> 00:21:30,160
wrong at that time.

224
00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:32,940
They were just on a step.

225
00:21:32,940 --> 00:21:42,690
And with Tom coming in, in early '69, all
the work that was being done by NASA at that

226
00:21:42,690 --> 00:21:52,100
time, the idea was that the NASA programs
were going to continue to grow and that you

227
00:21:52,100 --> 00:21:56,520
could really begin to do some expansive thinking
about going out into space.

228
00:21:56,520 --> 00:22:07,110
There had been work going on since 1964 on
lifting bodies and on different configurations

229
00:22:07,110 --> 00:22:13,580
that people imagined could be used for traveling
in space and returning to the ground in a

230
00:22:13,580 --> 00:22:19,809
more sophisticated manner than coming down
on parachutes in the water.

231
00:22:19,809 --> 00:22:25,000
Water landings were extremely expensive, having
the whole Navy out there to support them,

232
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:28,610
and so people were beginning to think about
land landing.

233
00:22:28,610 --> 00:22:39,010
And by 1969, enough pressure came on the administration
that Nixon appointed his Vice President, Spiro

234
00:22:39,010 --> 00:22:46,110
Agnew, to run a program reviewing the future
of NASA.

235
00:22:46,110 --> 00:22:49,050
And he got a really good group of people together.

236
00:22:49,050 --> 00:22:55,720
He got Bob Seamans, I am sure you all know.

237
00:22:55,720 --> 00:23:03,530
Tom Paine, the Administrator of NASA, Lee
DuBridge had been head of Caltech and was

238
00:23:03,530 --> 00:23:07,100
the Science Advisor to the President.

239
00:23:07,100 --> 00:23:15,350
They had a guy that was the head of the Atomic
Energy Commission and the Head of the Bureau

240
00:23:15,350 --> 00:23:15,690
of the Budget.

241
00:23:15,690 --> 00:23:21,690
They did about a six month study supported
by NASA.

242
00:23:21,690 --> 00:23:32,760
And NASA's dreams were that there should be
a space transportation system that would include

243
00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:35,690
the moon and finally Mars.

244
00:23:35,690 --> 00:23:42,370
And it started with a 30 foot diameter, 12
man space station, two of them in earth orbit,

245
00:23:42,370 --> 00:23:47,860
possibly reaching 100 people in earth orbit.

246
00:23:47,860 --> 00:23:52,559
Another space station the same size around
the moon with 12 men.

247
00:23:52,559 --> 00:23:59,190
A lunar base.

248
00:23:59,190 --> 00:24:08,730
A nuclear stage to transfer resources from
earth orbit space stations to the lunar orbit

249
00:24:08,730 --> 00:24:13,460
space station.

250
00:24:13,460 --> 00:24:19,230
A two-stage fully recoverable shuttle with
100 to 150 flights a year because of this

251
00:24:19,230 --> 00:24:22,200
massive program that was being developed.

252
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:24,950
A SkyLab with five visits by the Command Module.

253
00:24:24,950 --> 00:24:27,050
This, by the way, was a second SkyLab.

254
00:24:27,050 --> 00:24:34,679
SkyLab was in our program, and a second SkyLab
was under construction at that time in this

255
00:24:34,679 --> 00:24:35,650
time period.

256
00:24:35,650 --> 00:24:41,610
And, of course, to do all this, we would continue
the Saturn 1b and the Saturn V production.

257
00:24:41,610 --> 00:24:47,270
Those were the big rockets involved in the
Apollo program.

258
00:24:47,270 --> 00:24:54,210
And space tug to go to higher than low earth
orbit - to geosynchronous.

259
00:24:54,210 --> 00:24:56,880
And, as I mentioned, the nuclear stage.

260
00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:00,480
And a mars program by 1983.

261
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:07,059
That was all presented to this group, and
they ended up setting up three different programs.

262
00:25:07,059 --> 00:25:11,850
One was this massive all-inclusive program.

263
00:25:11,850 --> 00:25:23,340
A second one was a program where the Space
Shuttle would be built and the plans to go

264
00:25:23,340 --> 00:25:25,390
to Mars.

265
00:25:25,390 --> 00:25:30,059
I never found the report so I don't know exactly
how to describe that.

266
00:25:30,059 --> 00:25:36,600
But, to go to mars, the NASA program said
you have to have a space station to first

267
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:42,790
develop medical information about man's long
duration in space, in other words, how long

268
00:25:42,790 --> 00:25:52,340
a guy could last in space to go out to mars,
and it became a fuel transfer operation, where

269
00:25:52,340 --> 00:25:58,910
low earth orbit rendezvous and docking and
transfer of fuel would be made for a device

270
00:25:58,910 --> 00:26:01,770
to go onto mars.

271
00:26:01,770 --> 00:26:12,380
So, that second case, the one of build the
shuttle and go to mars was the one that Agnew

272
00:26:12,380 --> 00:26:15,320
and Paine recommended.

273
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:18,690
Paine, in his mind, said there has got to
be a space station with that.

274
00:26:18,690 --> 00:26:27,200
And so he left in place the studies that NASA
had out with industry on building a space

275
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:28,980
station.

276
00:26:28,980 --> 00:26:35,950
And NASA then started a program on a fully
recoverable two-stage shuttle.

277
00:26:35,950 --> 00:26:40,800
There have been a lot of studies on how to
do that, and we are going to get into some

278
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:49,730
of the system dynamics that we were involved
in that program as we go along here.

279
00:26:49,730 --> 00:26:51,590
Meanwhile, the budget crashed.

280
00:26:51,590 --> 00:26:57,020
NASA had a budget of about $6 billion in 1968.

281
00:26:57,020 --> 00:27:02,080
And, by 1970, it was down to about $3.7 billion.

282
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:07,540
Actually, at the same time, the Manned Space
Flight budget had gone from about $3 billion

283
00:27:07,540 --> 00:27:09,200
down to $1.7 billion.

284
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:14,380
So it got hit even harder than the rest of
NASA during this time period.

285
00:27:14,380 --> 00:27:20,240
And the reasons, well, we were in the middle
of the Vietnam War, the budget deficit was

286
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:26,559
going up dramatically, President Johnson who
started The Great Society program for the

287
00:27:26,559 --> 00:27:30,809
poor in the country, and that was a big load
on the budget.

288
00:27:30,809 --> 00:27:37,410
And Nixon just wasn't a big supporter of the
space program, and so the budget was going

289
00:27:37,410 --> 00:27:44,390
down.

290
00:27:44,390 --> 00:27:48,830
The question was is there going to be a human
space flight program at all? And that was

291
00:27:48,830 --> 00:27:57,540
a really big question because in a time period
about a year after this period, one of the

292
00:27:57,540 --> 00:28:01,750
senators put a bill before the senate to cancel
the shuttle.

293
00:28:01,750 --> 00:28:06,600
The Shuttle Phase B program was underway by
that time.

294
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:08,270
We did studies.

295
00:28:08,270 --> 00:28:10,840
Phase A, a small amount of money to industry.

296
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:16,360
Phase B was enough to get a definition to
where you could decide that you were ready

297
00:28:16,360 --> 00:28:19,080
to go into detailed design.

298
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:26,130
And Phase CD was actually the design and development
and testing.

299
00:28:26,130 --> 00:28:30,850
So we were into Phase B on the shuttle at
that time.

300
00:28:30,850 --> 00:28:38,900
He brought forward to the senate let's cancel
the shuttle, and the vote was 50/50.

301
00:28:38,900 --> 00:28:42,510
So the Vice President had to go in and vote
to keep the Shuttle program going.

302
00:28:42,510 --> 00:28:46,670
That is how close to cancellation it was.

303
00:28:46,670 --> 00:28:53,820
Now, a really important guy in all this was
a guy named George Miller.

304
00:28:53,820 --> 00:28:58,120
He had been head of the Manned Space Flight
program.

305
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:04,760
He had been the stimulus within NASA for this
broad systems study of going out to lunar

306
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:09,380
bases and then to Mars.

307
00:29:09,380 --> 00:29:13,070
And he left in late 1969.

308
00:29:13,070 --> 00:29:15,080
He had done his job.

309
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:22,080
He got man to the moon and home safely, and
he saw this cut in budgets going on.

310
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:27,120
I don't know whether that really influenced
him to leave, but I think his general pattern

311
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:33,170
had been that whatever he wanted to do, he
wanted to complete it successfully and then

312
00:29:33,170 --> 00:29:33,950
he would move on.

313
00:29:33,950 --> 00:29:40,970
And he did that with the Apollo program so
he moved on.

314
00:29:40,970 --> 00:29:49,910
George was a guy that really supported this
tremendous set of future dreams for NASA.

315
00:29:49,910 --> 00:29:53,370
Tom Paine left in late 1970.

316
00:29:53,370 --> 00:29:57,870
And the reason he left was he kept pushing
for a space station.

317
00:29:57,870 --> 00:30:06,990
And the people in the administration had kind
of seen the studies that had been done by

318
00:30:06,990 --> 00:30:15,530
this Space Task Group, where Agnew had said
let's do the Shuttle and then let's go to

319
00:30:15,530 --> 00:30:16,390
Mars.

320
00:30:16,390 --> 00:30:21,410
Paine, knowing in his few that you had to
have a space station to be able to go to Mars,

321
00:30:21,410 --> 00:30:29,350
kept pushing the 12 man space station that
would require a Saturn V for a launch so it

322
00:30:29,350 --> 00:30:30,770
was a big expense.

323
00:30:30,770 --> 00:30:36,220
And it was a program that really called for
NASA's budget to go up instead of down.

324
00:30:36,220 --> 00:30:43,190
He accepted the idea that it had been pushed
down to the $3.7 billion level, but he expected

325
00:30:43,190 --> 00:30:46,860
it to be $6 billion or $8 billion by 1974.

326
00:30:46,860 --> 00:30:53,309
And nobody in the administration was buying
that so he left in 1970.

327
00:30:53,309 --> 00:30:55,580
And I think he was sort of asked to leave.

328
00:30:55,580 --> 00:31:00,540
I don't know that for a fact, but all the
evidence would seem to be that he wasn't really

329
00:31:00,540 --> 00:31:03,190
making it with the administration.

330
00:31:03,190 --> 00:31:09,840
And I think this, by the way, turns out to
be kind of an important part here because

331
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:17,530
when Tom Paine left there was kind of a bad
taste in the administration about NASA being

332
00:31:17,530 --> 00:31:24,140
too aggressive and wanting more and more big
programs.

333
00:31:24,140 --> 00:31:25,610
Paine left in 1970.

334
00:31:25,610 --> 00:31:30,929
George Low became the acting administrator,
and he became a very important part of the

335
00:31:30,929 --> 00:31:33,429
shuttle system background.

336
00:31:33,429 --> 00:31:37,500
His background, by the way, started way early
in NASA.

337
00:31:37,500 --> 00:31:44,549
And he had been the program manager for the
Command and Service Module for a period of

338
00:31:44,549 --> 00:31:47,340
time before he went up to NASA headquarters.

339
00:31:47,340 --> 00:31:51,970
And I guess, Aaron, you became the program
manager after George left.

340
00:31:51,970 --> 00:32:00,710
And
so I came in, in January of 1970.

341
00:32:00,710 --> 00:32:05,140
I had been in charge of the Command and Service
Module at Rockwell.

342
00:32:05,140 --> 00:32:07,679
And George Low asked me to come back.

343
00:32:07,679 --> 00:32:15,070
And I had worked so closely with George that
I felt kind of a commitment to help in that

344
00:32:15,070 --> 00:32:15,450
area.

345
00:32:15,450 --> 00:32:27,929
So I went back in 1970, Jim Fletcher came
in, in April of 1971, and we saw where we

346
00:32:27,929 --> 00:32:32,940
stood as far as the budget was concerned.

347
00:32:32,940 --> 00:32:42,690
So 1970, with this new cast of characters,
we kind of accepted the idea that we were

348
00:32:42,690 --> 00:32:46,980
in trouble to the place where we could lose
Manned Space Flight completely.

349
00:32:46,980 --> 00:32:57,860
And our real strategy had to be to get something
that would be important to the future of NASA

350
00:32:57,860 --> 00:32:59,929
with respect to the programs.

351
00:32:59,929 --> 00:33:07,090
And our view was the most important part of
the game was to build a shuttle that would

352
00:33:07,090 --> 00:33:11,030
reduce the cost of getting into orbit.

353
00:33:11,030 --> 00:33:16,480
And that was the whole idea of the shuttle.

354
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:22,780
There was a general consensus that if you
had a shuttle that would be recoverable and

355
00:33:22,780 --> 00:33:26,850
reusable it would reduce the cost of the operations.

356
00:33:26,850 --> 00:33:32,210
As they used to say in those days, I think
I have it on another chart, you wouldn't think

357
00:33:32,210 --> 00:33:37,530
of flying from San Diego to Boston on an airplane
and then throwing away the airplane.

358
00:33:37,530 --> 00:33:44,820
Which was, of course, what we were doing with
the Ballistic systems.

359
00:33:44,820 --> 00:33:50,380
But we thought if we could get a low-cost
transportation system to a low earth orbit

360
00:33:50,380 --> 00:33:56,730
the rest of the systems would then follow
naturally.

361
00:33:56,730 --> 00:34:00,650
But, because of the budget picture and because
of where we stood with the shuttle in Phase

362
00:34:00,650 --> 00:34:07,559
B recognizing it was going to be an expensive
program, things started to fall out of the

363
00:34:07,559 --> 00:34:07,990
program.

364
00:34:07,990 --> 00:34:10,679
They cancelled the Apollo 18 and 19.

365
00:34:10,679 --> 00:34:12,329
I guess 20 had already been cancelled.

366
00:34:12,329 --> 00:34:20,039
And they cancelled Saturn 1b and the Saturn
V which were our big heavy lift capabilities.

367
00:34:20,039 --> 00:34:23,869
Cancelled the second SkyLab that was already
essentially complete.

368
00:34:23,869 --> 00:34:28,929
That is the one that is in the Smithsonian
Museum in Washington.

369
00:34:28,929 --> 00:34:31,359
Cancelled the Command and Service Modules.

370
00:34:31,359 --> 00:34:33,969
Cancelled the 30 foot diameter space stations.

371
00:34:33,969 --> 00:34:41,389
And that was a big hit against the group because
we were in phase B there getting ready to

372
00:34:41,389 --> 00:34:45,529
go into detailed design on a 30 foot diameter
space station.

373
00:34:45,529 --> 00:34:49,869
We didn't start the space tug, we didn't start
the nuclear stage and we cancelled the Mars

374
00:34:49,869 --> 00:34:50,179
program.

375
00:34:50,179 --> 00:34:55,159
No, excuse me, we deferred the Mars program.

376
00:34:55,159 --> 00:35:02,049
Industry went down from 400,000 people working
for all the NASA programs down to about 150,000.

377
00:35:02,049 --> 00:35:07,359
I have seen numbers lower than that.

378
00:35:07,359 --> 00:35:14,839
Now, concept for the shuttle, reusability
equals low-cost.

379
00:35:14,839 --> 00:35:16,849
That was fundamental.

380
00:35:16,849 --> 00:35:18,989
Everybody believed that.

381
00:35:18,989 --> 00:35:25,279
We had studies done by all sorts of outside
groups.

382
00:35:25,279 --> 00:35:33,279
IDA, the Aerospace Corporation and others
did studies that essentially agreed with us

383
00:35:33,279 --> 00:35:38,589
that there would be a terrific reduction in
the cost of getting stuff into orbit if we

384
00:35:38,589 --> 00:35:42,289
would build a recoverable vehicle.

385
00:35:42,289 --> 00:35:50,519
Now, it was clear that since the R&D already
T&E costs are higher, but you need a whole

386
00:35:50,519 --> 00:35:51,200
bunch of flights.

387
00:35:51,200 --> 00:36:00,619
If you had a few flights, the extra R&D on
the shuttle wouldn't pay off because you could

388
00:36:00,619 --> 00:36:05,930
build cheap Ballistic launch vehicles that
would pay off before the shuttle.

389
00:36:05,930 --> 00:36:11,249
So you need a lot of flights for a recoverable
vehicle to be economical.

390
00:36:11,249 --> 00:36:16,759
The lower the R&D the less flights needed
to be better than the Ballistic launch vehicles.

391
00:36:16,759 --> 00:36:23,329
And, if you got a lot of flights because the
flight costs are so low, then a two-stage

392
00:36:23,329 --> 00:36:27,140
fully recoverable system would be the right
way to go.

393
00:36:27,140 --> 00:36:31,660
That was our concepts of what we were dealing
with on the shuttle.

394
00:36:31,660 --> 00:36:36,119
There has been a lot of technology.

395
00:36:36,119 --> 00:36:41,960
I don't know how many of you know that the
early lifting-body was done by a guy named

396
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:43,109
Burnelli.

397
00:36:43,109 --> 00:36:45,690
Not Bernoulli but Burnelli.

398
00:36:45,690 --> 00:36:57,069
Burnelli was in Long Island and he built the
first lifting-body.

399
00:36:57,069 --> 00:37:06,829
That is an airfoil section and that is a broad
piece of fuselage wide enough that the two

400
00:37:06,829 --> 00:37:09,660
engines could be involved in it.

401
00:37:09,660 --> 00:37:11,890
Big windows for transport.

402
00:37:11,890 --> 00:37:18,349
It was really quite an interesting beginning
of a cargo airplane in 1921.

403
00:37:18,349 --> 00:37:26,220
He built one of them and that was the end
of that, but there were a lot of other things

404
00:37:26,220 --> 00:37:27,440
going on.

405
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:35,729
After Sputnik, the United States just kind
of went wild with ideas for a while and then

406
00:37:35,729 --> 00:37:46,130
settled down on having NASA put in place,
deciding that the military dinosaurs and mold

407
00:37:46,130 --> 00:37:49,579
programs wouldn't be done, that NASA would
take over that kind of activity.

408
00:37:49,579 --> 00:37:53,509
But we got some really interesting stuff going.

409
00:37:53,509 --> 00:37:58,670
HL-10 lifting-body.

410
00:37:58,670 --> 00:38:02,390
X-24A lifting-body.

411
00:38:02,390 --> 00:38:10,900
X-15, although that was not considered a space
device, by the time they put external tanks

412
00:38:10,900 --> 00:38:17,720
on it, it got up to mach 6 and 300,000 feet.

413
00:38:17,720 --> 00:38:24,789
Really some terrific performance out of that
airplane.

414
00:38:24,789 --> 00:38:29,559
And then I added the Navaho, which I worked
on for many years, because it had a parallel

415
00:38:29,559 --> 00:38:32,069
tank separation at mach 3.

416
00:38:32,069 --> 00:38:34,950
The booster was under the vehicle.

417
00:38:34,950 --> 00:38:40,529
The vehicle was a ramjet vehicle and it separated
at mach 3 at about 40,000 feet.

418
00:38:40,529 --> 00:38:48,400
It was a high dynamic pressure separation,
but it showed us that parallel separation

419
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:48,839
would work.

420
00:38:48,839 --> 00:39:01,440
And that gets into this picture later.

421
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:13,859
Next step was in that '69 to '71 time period
this guy named Max Faget who is really important,

422
00:39:13,859 --> 00:39:22,940
almost a genius in my mind in design that
did the original Mercury and Gemini capsules,

423
00:39:22,940 --> 00:39:29,869
physically designed the shape of the Apollo
Command Module and then came up with this

424
00:39:29,869 --> 00:39:35,979
first sort of practical view of a two-stage
fully recoverable system.

425
00:39:35,979 --> 00:39:38,599
It had straight wings like an X-15.

426
00:39:38,599 --> 00:39:44,579
In fact, if you looked at the plan form, it
looked quite a lot like an X-15.

427
00:39:44,579 --> 00:39:46,519
But it had two of them.

428
00:39:46,519 --> 00:39:48,329
It had pilots in each of the two stages.

429
00:39:48,329 --> 00:39:52,029
It had internal fuel.

430
00:39:52,029 --> 00:39:59,630
It had metal shingles, what I used to call
unobtanium, but it was like molybdenum and

431
00:39:59,630 --> 00:40:09,380
Rene 41 and some really interesting materials
which were really difficult to handle.

432
00:40:09,380 --> 00:40:13,079
Stress, corrosion problems and all kinds of
things that were tough to handle.

433
00:40:13,079 --> 00:40:18,289
That is why I talked about unobtanium or some
ablative.

434
00:40:18,289 --> 00:40:22,930
And Max expected to have to use ablative on
the leading edge of the wings.

435
00:40:22,930 --> 00:40:27,999
And it had varying payloads.

436
00:40:27,999 --> 00:40:32,589
The highest one I saw in any of the history
was 20,000 pounds.

437
00:40:32,589 --> 00:40:36,799
But 14,000, 20,000, that kind of thing.

438
00:40:36,799 --> 00:40:43,950
A payload bay of about 12x40 and 400 miles
max crossrange.

439
00:40:43,950 --> 00:40:47,170
This gets important in requirements.

440
00:40:47,170 --> 00:40:50,630
And, at that time, because we were going to
have all these space stations and go to the

441
00:40:50,630 --> 00:40:56,049
moon and all that sort of stuff, we were going
to have 100 to 150 flights a year.

442
00:40:56,049 --> 00:41:04,329
And, if you have a lot of flights, it overcomes
the base cost of the RDT&E.

443
00:41:04,329 --> 00:41:13,460
And he was getting down into the $5 million
a flight in his estimates.

444
00:41:13,460 --> 00:41:21,499
But, meanwhile, because we had lost the space
station, we had lost the lunar base, all this

445
00:41:21,499 --> 00:41:26,150
grand plan had disappeared, we needed more
payloads.

446
00:41:26,150 --> 00:41:32,499
We needed to get up to the 40 to 50 payloads
a year to be able to make the shuttle look

447
00:41:32,499 --> 00:41:44,579
economic at the levels of cost-effectiveness
that the Office of Management and Budget was

448
00:41:44,579 --> 00:41:46,519
demanding of us.

449
00:41:46,519 --> 00:41:54,940
After this vote in the senate, George Low
decided that we had to be responsive to the

450
00:41:54,940 --> 00:41:58,430
OMB so we had to get some more flights.

451
00:41:58,430 --> 00:42:03,700
And this is where our requirements began to
come into the picture.

452
00:42:03,700 --> 00:42:09,200
We spent about a year working with the military
where they finally agreed they would put all

453
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:18,299
their payloads, and I mean all their payloads
on the shuttle if we could meet the cost estimates

454
00:42:18,299 --> 00:42:18,769
that we had.

455
00:42:18,769 --> 00:42:25,269
The commercial people were eager to get on
the shuttle if our costs would be this low

456
00:42:25,269 --> 00:42:32,339
because they were beginning to see launch
costs equal to or more than the cost of the

457
00:42:32,339 --> 00:42:34,329
satellites that we were putting up.

458
00:42:34,329 --> 00:42:38,979
And the science people bought into the idea
of space servicing.

459
00:42:38,979 --> 00:42:47,900
This really got important because they agreed
to design the Hubble Space Telescope so that

460
00:42:47,900 --> 00:42:49,279
it could be serviced in space.

461
00:42:49,279 --> 00:42:56,469
And that turned out to be, of course, the
key to the Hubble because of the mistake that

462
00:42:56,469 --> 00:42:58,849
was made in the mirror.

463
00:42:58,849 --> 00:43:05,609
The re-servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope,
is what - by bringing another optics in front

464
00:43:05,609 --> 00:43:12,569
of this distorted mirror - brought the Hubble
back to the fantastic performance that it

465
00:43:12,569 --> 00:43:14,150
has today.

466
00:43:14,150 --> 00:43:20,989
MAN: In your opinion, was the science community
really anxious to have this servicing or was

467
00:43:20,989 --> 00:43:26,039
it something that was really forced upon them
to increase the constituency? MYERS: I think

468
00:43:26,039 --> 00:43:28,640
originally they thought they were being forced.

469
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:34,779
But, as they thought it through, they could
see that they could later change sensors and

470
00:43:34,779 --> 00:43:36,239
add additional stuff.

471
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:45,710
At least I know that the head of the science
group, I cannot think of his name now, enthusiastically

472
00:43:45,710 --> 00:43:50,989
supported that and got the system out there
to support that idea.

473
00:43:50,989 --> 00:43:56,719
And they worked very closely with us on how
to design it so that you could get access

474
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:58,789
to the thing in space.

475
00:43:58,789 --> 00:44:03,729
With all the difficulty we had with gloves
and so on, they worked to help us understand

476
00:44:03,729 --> 00:44:05,969
how to remove and replace systems.

477
00:44:05,969 --> 00:44:14,489
MAN: Was there at that time, if you recall,
an opposition from the space science community

478
00:44:14,489 --> 00:44:22,150
to the size of the NASA budget that was being
spent on the shuttle in the Manned program?

479
00:44:22,150 --> 00:44:24,349
MYERS: Oh, absolutely.

480
00:44:24,349 --> 00:44:26,549
Yeah, there was.

481
00:44:26,549 --> 00:44:32,619
But, on the other hand, some of the committees
like the town committee supported the shuttle

482
00:44:32,619 --> 00:44:36,359
because they could see other science opportunities
that were involved.

483
00:44:36,359 --> 00:44:40,869
So they didn't gang on us.

484
00:44:40,869 --> 00:44:50,880
They were shooting arrows at us here and there.

485
00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:56,269
And let me go on with the requirements.

486
00:44:56,269 --> 00:45:05,259
Because of the military requirements, we had
to change our specifications.

487
00:45:05,259 --> 00:45:09,849
And this became another one of the elements
that drove the final design.

488
00:45:09,849 --> 00:45:16,789
The military wanted a 60 foot long payload
bay.

489
00:45:16,789 --> 00:45:21,410
It had been 40 in the designs that we had
been doing so far.

490
00:45:21,410 --> 00:45:30,339
They wanted 40,000 pounds Polar, and that
made our due east payload up to about 65,000.

491
00:45:30,339 --> 00:45:34,920
That was a big change from 20,000 to 65,000.

492
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:38,650
And they needed 1,500 crossrange.

493
00:45:38,650 --> 00:45:44,109
They wanted to be able to go around the earth,
while the earth turned, and land at the same

494
00:45:44,109 --> 00:45:45,819
spot.

495
00:45:45,819 --> 00:45:48,259
So they had to have 1,500 miles of crossrange.

496
00:45:48,259 --> 00:45:52,910
Now, you can do it a lot of different ways.

497
00:45:52,910 --> 00:45:58,809
You could carry turbojets when you came back
in and fly it back the 1,500 miles, or you

498
00:45:58,809 --> 00:46:04,819
could do it without turbojets which means
you have to have aerodynamic crossrange while

499
00:46:04,819 --> 00:46:10,160
you are coming in.

500
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:13,519
Payload bay increased to 15x60.

501
00:46:13,519 --> 00:46:19,289
15 was an increase by NASA because they saw
that they didn't have a Saturn V anymore to

502
00:46:19,289 --> 00:46:25,239
do space station, so the best they could do
was increase the diameter of the shuttle to

503
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:32,339
where they have a 15 foot diameter to where
they could carry the sections of the space

504
00:46:32,339 --> 00:46:35,140
station that we now have in the program.

505
00:46:35,140 --> 00:46:42,489
We thought anything less than that was just
too cramped for the guys.

506
00:46:42,489 --> 00:46:48,130
We decided that we would find a non-ablative
reusable thermal protection system.

507
00:46:48,130 --> 00:46:55,799
Technology had moved far enough by that time
that we were beginning to see these ceramic

508
00:46:55,799 --> 00:47:00,670
tiles develop to the place where they looked
feasible.

509
00:47:00,670 --> 00:47:06,930
They had been able to find a hardening for
the surface that made them less penetratable

510
00:47:06,930 --> 00:47:08,880
than they had been.

511
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:15,940
And carbon-carbon came in that we could use
for the leading edge, for 3,000 degree leading-edge

512
00:47:15,940 --> 00:47:17,229
temperatures.

513
00:47:17,229 --> 00:47:24,450
We followed the tradition that said if it
is fully recoverable it is going to be cheaper

514
00:47:24,450 --> 00:47:28,650
so let's go for a two-stage fully recoverable
system.

515
00:47:28,650 --> 00:47:33,489
And, of course, all the other things that
we were developing at that time to reduce

516
00:47:33,489 --> 00:47:40,469
the cost of operations with automatic checkout
and so on.

517
00:47:40,469 --> 00:47:42,390
Well, that's a bad picture.

518
00:47:42,390 --> 00:47:50,940
I am not an expert at this stuff so I wasn't
able to get that slide down far enough to

519
00:47:50,940 --> 00:48:00,609
show where the Saturn V was, but Saturn V
is only about 50% longer than that upper stage

520
00:48:00,609 --> 00:48:01,859
there.

521
00:48:01,859 --> 00:48:03,890
So this thing had gotten big.

522
00:48:03,890 --> 00:48:08,329
And the booster was larger than a 747.

523
00:48:08,329 --> 00:48:13,170
It had to operate up to about mach 6.

524
00:48:13,170 --> 00:48:23,660
The orbiter was about the size of an MD-80,
MD-90, twin engine small transport.

525
00:48:23,660 --> 00:48:25,690
And so they were big.

526
00:48:25,690 --> 00:48:34,170
And these things had 12 big high-pressure
engines in them.

527
00:48:34,170 --> 00:48:39,989
And we in management, and I think the guys
in design, were getting pretty worried about

528
00:48:39,989 --> 00:48:47,009
whether an airplane that large at that mach
number was going to be a practical thing in

529
00:48:47,009 --> 00:48:48,150
terms of a system.

530
00:48:48,150 --> 00:48:50,599
And that's not a system engineering approach.

531
00:48:50,599 --> 00:48:54,219
That's sort of a gut feeling that you get
after being in the airplane business for a

532
00:48:54,219 --> 00:48:59,190
lot of years and watching the development
problems that were involved on the X-15, for

533
00:48:59,190 --> 00:48:59,729
example.

534
00:48:59,729 --> 00:49:03,440
How long it took the X-15 to get to where
it could go to mach 6.

535
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:06,789
But that was the direction we were going in.

536
00:49:06,789 --> 00:49:15,979
By the way, one of the companies had the wings
on the orbiter turned up.

537
00:49:15,979 --> 00:49:21,930
I don't know why, but they had them turned
up.

538
00:49:21,930 --> 00:49:26,559
And by the way, the reason you see two different
configurations here is in our phase B studies

539
00:49:26,559 --> 00:49:33,099
to the industry we said design us one that
only has 400 miles crossrange and design us

540
00:49:33,099 --> 00:49:36,150
one that has 1,500 miles crossrange.

541
00:49:36,150 --> 00:49:38,219
The upper ones have 1,500 miles crossrange.

542
00:49:38,219 --> 00:49:42,999
And the delta wing will do that, the straight
wings won't.

543
00:49:42,999 --> 00:49:48,809
So, as we developed these requirements, it
became clear that we were not going to go

544
00:49:48,809 --> 00:49:50,339
with a straight wing system.

545
00:49:50,339 --> 00:50:01,599
These phase B studies that we had showed that
we were going to have a development cost of

546
00:50:01,599 --> 00:50:07,130
some place between $12 billion and $15 billion
for R&D.

547
00:50:07,130 --> 00:50:15,779
And about that time Nixon had a meeting with
Fletcher and said you can build any kind of

548
00:50:15,779 --> 00:50:19,209
shuttle you want, as long as it only costs
$5 billion.

549
00:50:19,209 --> 00:50:23,799
Well, that was a big shock to the system.

550
00:50:23,799 --> 00:50:27,489
And, having heard that, OMB said make it cost-effective.

551
00:50:27,489 --> 00:50:37,390
And that was a real tremendous driver in the
system because we had never been asked to

552
00:50:37,390 --> 00:50:37,930
do that before.

553
00:50:37,930 --> 00:50:45,769
And we had a whole new set of requirements
to try to deal with.

554
00:50:45,769 --> 00:50:50,829
So we had had this phase B program, it was
almost complete, we had all these big, beautiful

555
00:50:50,829 --> 00:50:59,400
configuration studies and we had to look again.

556
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:01,890
So we went out and said let's get imaginative,
guys.

557
00:51:01,890 --> 00:51:05,160
Let's see if there is any way that we can
reduce the cost.

558
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:10,599
There had been enough going on where one of
the companies had been looking at the possibility

559
00:51:10,599 --> 00:51:19,190
of putting external tanks like drop tanks
on the top of the wing on each side, two of

560
00:51:19,190 --> 00:51:22,009
them, one on each side of the orbiter.

561
00:51:22,009 --> 00:51:25,519
And it made the orbiter itself, of course,
much smaller.

562
00:51:25,519 --> 00:51:30,559
Remember, we were carrying hydrogen and oxygen,
and we were doing it inside the vehicles.

563
00:51:30,559 --> 00:51:34,569
It is in those studies you saw in phase B.

564
00:51:34,569 --> 00:51:39,150
And so it grew the outside dimensions tremendously.

565
00:51:39,150 --> 00:51:44,940
And by going externally with the fuels, it
really shrank down the system to where the

566
00:51:44,940 --> 00:51:49,910
diameter of a payload compartment was essentially
the diameter of the orbiter.

567
00:51:49,910 --> 00:51:56,160
And so people began to look at other ways
to do it.

568
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:59,109
We had guys coming in talking about single-staged
orbit.

569
00:51:59,109 --> 00:52:06,900
And that was one that I rejected without study
because I knew that the mass fractions required

570
00:52:06,900 --> 00:52:13,059
for that were just out of the world of reality.

571
00:52:13,059 --> 00:52:19,140
There was a thing called a "trinese" where
the theory was you had three vehicles.

572
00:52:19,140 --> 00:52:22,529
They were deltas and fit together in a nice
little teepee.

573
00:52:22,529 --> 00:52:27,609
And two of them would be used for boosters
going up and the third one would go on into

574
00:52:27,609 --> 00:52:28,729
orbit.

575
00:52:28,729 --> 00:52:30,299
And that was kind of a dumb idea.

576
00:52:30,299 --> 00:52:34,969
Because it turns out boosters and orbiters
have entirely different requirements.

577
00:52:34,969 --> 00:52:39,329
And so they might look the same on paper but
they would not be the same when you build

578
00:52:39,329 --> 00:52:41,979
them.

579
00:52:41,979 --> 00:52:49,700
Lockheed came in with an X-24b which had tanks
mounted up forward of the delta wing.

580
00:52:49,700 --> 00:52:58,630
And the idea would be that they would peel
off after fuel was fed to the main engines

581
00:52:58,630 --> 00:53:01,829
in the orbiter itself.

582
00:53:01,829 --> 00:53:05,709
And then we began to see these external orbiter
tank studies.

583
00:53:05,709 --> 00:53:14,839
And when the tanks began to look good externally
then the question is do you boost from under

584
00:53:14,839 --> 00:53:28,309
the tank or do you boost with two boosters
parallel to the tank itself? When the tanks

585
00:53:28,309 --> 00:53:35,239
went external, it finally ended up obvious
that it would want one tank instead of two.

586
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:40,249
So the one tank went underneath the orbiter.

587
00:53:40,249 --> 00:53:44,819
Then the question is do you boost through
the tank or do you boost in parallel to the

588
00:53:44,819 --> 00:53:57,839
tank with two attached boosters?

589
00:53:57,839 --> 00:53:59,509
So we had all these different studies.

590
00:53:59,509 --> 00:54:09,400
And what was happening in the administration
was they were kind of locked up with reducing

591
00:54:09,400 --> 00:54:15,229
Manned Space Flight budget down to like $1.5
to $1.7 billion.

592
00:54:15,229 --> 00:54:21,059
And we needed to do this cost-effectiveness
study for OMB.

593
00:54:21,059 --> 00:54:29,309
We hired an outfit called Mathematica which
had a senior well-known economist named Morgenstern

594
00:54:29,309 --> 00:54:39,019
and a bright young guy named Klaus Heiss who
did a study for us on the cost-effectiveness

595
00:54:39,019 --> 00:54:41,690
of the shuttle.

596
00:54:41,690 --> 00:54:49,029
And, to make a very long story short, the
results were that the present configuration

597
00:54:49,029 --> 00:54:53,059
that we have for the shuttle today is the
one that looked the best.

598
00:54:53,059 --> 00:55:00,630
Present configuration being an orbiter with
a tank under it with the hydrogen and oxygen

599
00:55:00,630 --> 00:55:08,519
in that tank fed separately into the orbiter
and to the main engines which were so expensive

600
00:55:08,519 --> 00:55:11,289
that we wanted to recover them.

601
00:55:11,289 --> 00:55:22,369
And boosters being solid rockets attached
to the tank so that the total vehicle was

602
00:55:22,369 --> 00:55:23,069
a little shorter.

603
00:55:23,069 --> 00:55:28,979
Oh, an important point.

604
00:55:28,979 --> 00:55:32,739
At that time the solids were recoverable.

605
00:55:32,739 --> 00:55:41,119
Their wall thickness was enough that you could
use the solid rockets, drop them off by parachute

606
00:55:41,119 --> 00:55:46,190
into the ocean, pick them up, bring them back,
clean them out and use them again.

607
00:55:46,190 --> 00:55:51,380
And that was going to be a cost saving in
the program.

608
00:55:51,380 --> 00:55:55,849
And, by doing all this, we had liftoff thrust
augmentation of the engines in the orbiter.

609
00:55:55,849 --> 00:56:04,400
These engines, by the way, were 12,000 pounds
per square inch internal pressure engines

610
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:05,789
stage combustion.

611
00:56:05,789 --> 00:56:08,599
The most advanced technology you could imagine.

612
00:56:08,599 --> 00:56:13,519
And they were started a year before the shuttle
was started to give them more time to develop.

613
00:56:13,519 --> 00:56:19,690
They almost became the long pole of the tent,
but I think maybe when it finally boiled down

614
00:56:19,690 --> 00:56:23,809
the thermal protection was the longest pole.

615
00:56:23,809 --> 00:56:25,339
He was down there trying to fix them.

616
00:56:25,339 --> 00:56:29,609
I think he was almost down there gluing them
on.

617
00:56:29,609 --> 00:56:33,099
Down at the Cape when we were getting ready
to launch, we were still having trouble getting

618
00:56:33,099 --> 00:56:39,069
the thermal protection system working right.

619
00:56:39,069 --> 00:56:43,539
Well, the result of all this, and there were
a lot of other things that happened at the

620
00:56:43,539 --> 00:56:52,119
time, in 1971, I don't remember when, the
Supersonic Transport was cancelled.

621
00:56:52,119 --> 00:56:55,449
And that was a big technology blow to this
country.

622
00:56:55,449 --> 00:57:02,579
In other words, there was a major program
that would have absorbed a lot of the high-tech

623
00:57:02,579 --> 00:57:07,829
engineers that were involved in the Apollo
program.

624
00:57:07,829 --> 00:57:11,940
And, I think, some of the administration thought
the Supersonic Transport is a better place

625
00:57:11,940 --> 00:57:15,699
to have our technology capability than would
be a shuttle.

626
00:57:15,699 --> 00:57:20,109
But Supersonic Transport was cancelled by
Boeing.

627
00:57:20,109 --> 00:57:26,420
And I think that probably helped the atmosphere
that was involved.

628
00:57:26,420 --> 00:57:30,930
But the other thing that happened is that
Congress and the administration finally got

629
00:57:30,930 --> 00:57:35,049
the idea that we really weren't going to build
a space station immediately.

630
00:57:35,049 --> 00:57:38,150
That we were just interested in getting the
shuttle started.

631
00:57:38,150 --> 00:57:45,779
And so we didn't have this massive budget
increase that Tom Paine kept wanting.

632
00:57:45,779 --> 00:57:51,869
And Fletcher kept working on trying to get
budgets spread so that it wouldn't be a major

633
00:57:51,869 --> 00:57:54,549
peak in budgets close in.

634
00:57:54,549 --> 00:58:01,699
And he did that by starting the main engine
early, starting the tanks late, starting with

635
00:58:01,699 --> 00:58:07,219
solids late and putting an obvious emphasis
on the orbiter itself.

636
00:58:07,219 --> 00:58:12,900
So that spread the budget out and helped a
lot in giving the administration the feeling

637
00:58:12,900 --> 00:58:17,430
that we weren't going to kill them with budget
requirements.

638
00:58:17,430 --> 00:58:21,719
So Nixon started the program January of 1972.

639
00:58:21,719 --> 00:58:25,749
George Low and Jim Fletcher went over and
had about a 40 minute talk with President

640
00:58:25,749 --> 00:58:31,019
Nixon, and he announced the same day we were
going to start building the shuttle.

641
00:58:31,019 --> 00:58:39,150
It was going to be a reusable orbiter, the
engines in the orbiter, reusable solid cases,

642
00:58:39,150 --> 00:58:47,079
an extendable fuel tank, 40 to 50 flights
a year, $10 million to $15 million a flight.

643
00:58:47,079 --> 00:58:53,660
Our internal calculations were more like $10
million but we wanted to have some pad in

644
00:58:53,660 --> 00:58:54,329
it.

645
00:58:54,329 --> 00:59:04,579
And $5.2 billion, plus a 20% reserve for the
administrator for what we call unk-unks, unknown

646
00:59:04,579 --> 00:59:09,289
unknowns, things you get into trouble during
a development program where you need some

647
00:59:09,289 --> 00:59:13,589
more money to do some more testing.

648
00:59:13,589 --> 00:59:17,809
And Nixon agreed to that.

649
00:59:17,809 --> 00:59:21,839
The Bureau of the Budget was in the meeting
with him.

650
00:59:21,839 --> 00:59:27,890
And, as soon as Nixon left office, the Office
of Management Budget forgot the 20%.

651
00:59:27,890 --> 00:59:32,670
So then it was now $5.2 billion of 1970 dollars.

652
00:59:32,670 --> 00:59:39,739
To make it worse, the NASA Comptroller pressed,
I'm sure by OMB, didn't agree that we would

653
00:59:39,739 --> 00:59:42,239
use 1970 as the base.

654
00:59:42,239 --> 00:59:45,809
He took the $5.2 billion in 1972.

655
00:59:45,809 --> 00:59:48,249
We lost two years of inflation.

656
00:59:48,249 --> 00:59:53,359
Well, it may not sound like a lot to you but,
boy, it sounded like a lot to the guys working

657
00:59:53,359 --> 00:59:58,170
on the program because it was clear that we
were going to have a tough time meeting that

658
00:59:58,170 --> 01:00:02,829
budget.

659
01:00:02,829 --> 01:00:12,039
Here I am explaining to the press, I think
it was about two days after Nixon's announcement,

660
01:00:12,039 --> 01:00:19,630
one of the studies was to use the first stage
of the Saturn V, the S1C.

661
01:00:19,630 --> 01:00:24,819
This one apparently, I think this is the winged
version, because all the engines at their

662
01:00:24,819 --> 01:00:28,029
back center gradually all the way back here
some place.

663
01:00:28,029 --> 01:00:35,569
And we were using, in this design, using the
first stage of Saturn V boosting directly

664
01:00:35,569 --> 01:00:40,359
into the tank which was attached to the orbiter.

665
01:00:40,359 --> 01:00:44,749
This one was parallel.

666
01:00:44,749 --> 01:00:46,209
I guess that was liquids.

667
01:00:46,209 --> 01:00:47,539
They look like they have bigger diameter.

668
01:00:47,539 --> 01:00:58,920
And I didn't talk about that, but a lot of
people were pushing a pressure-fed liquid

669
01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:04,059
engine so that you'd be sure you had the capability
to cut them off.

670
01:01:04,059 --> 01:01:08,449
And the idea was that because they were pressure-fed
that the thickness of the walls was enough

671
01:01:08,449 --> 01:01:12,839
that they, too, could be recovered in the
ocean and brought back.

672
01:01:12,839 --> 01:01:20,170
And the final decision by the people that
were in the propulsion business in NASA was

673
01:01:20,170 --> 01:01:24,719
that the technology looked tough.

674
01:01:24,719 --> 01:01:26,319
It was new.

675
01:01:26,319 --> 01:01:29,549
We didn't have a background of pressure-fed
boosters.

676
01:01:29,549 --> 01:01:37,849
And the solids, as we will get to later, looked
like they were a better deal.

677
01:01:37,849 --> 01:01:42,209
So the design issues, as I saw them as the
head of Manned Space Flight, were that the

678
01:01:42,209 --> 01:01:45,289
delta wing was required for crossrange.

679
01:01:45,289 --> 01:01:50,789
External tanks were much lighter, the system
got to be about half the weight because of

680
01:01:50,789 --> 01:01:56,119
all the reduction in external configuration
when you took all the fuel out and put it

681
01:01:56,119 --> 01:01:59,579
separately in the tank.

682
01:01:59,579 --> 01:02:04,499
Thermal insulation, we bought off on the ceramic
tile, the carbon-carbon and fiber blankets,

683
01:02:04,499 --> 01:02:10,680
the same as we have today, solid or liquid
boosters.

684
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:13,339
The solids looked more reliable at that time.

685
01:02:13,339 --> 01:02:21,969
There had been a history of solids on many
of the large military boosters, and they looked

686
01:02:21,969 --> 01:02:23,769
better.

687
01:02:23,769 --> 01:02:30,359
And, at that time, I thought we were going
to have a way to terminate the thrust of the

688
01:02:30,359 --> 01:02:33,449
solids.

689
01:02:33,449 --> 01:02:39,170
Engine location and type started on the ground
for safer, better performance and the stage

690
01:02:39,170 --> 01:02:42,829
combustion for better performance.

691
01:02:42,829 --> 01:02:45,880
We had, under our study, retractable turbojets.

692
01:02:45,880 --> 01:02:50,559
Once you got into the atmosphere, you would
pop these turbojets out and flew home.

693
01:02:50,559 --> 01:02:52,529
And we decided we couldn't handle it.

694
01:02:52,529 --> 01:02:58,689
Thank God we had had all this lifting body
experience where the guys that landed these

695
01:02:58,689 --> 01:03:00,839
very low elevatory devices.

696
01:03:00,839 --> 01:03:08,329
Actually, the orbiter had a little better
elevatory than some of the HL-10s and X-24s,

697
01:03:08,329 --> 01:03:11,288
so we dropped the turbojets out of the system.

698
01:03:11,288 --> 01:03:17,650
Series versus parallel boosters, series was
heavier and had less performance with a lot

699
01:03:17,650 --> 01:03:19,390
more bending loads in the system.

700
01:03:19,390 --> 01:03:23,529
When we go up, we go max Q.

701
01:03:23,529 --> 01:03:26,199
And with crosswinds we get big loads on that
wing.

702
01:03:26,199 --> 01:03:33,719
And so this turned out to be a heavier way
to do it.

703
01:03:33,719 --> 01:03:40,410
Well, a little more on solids versus liquids.

704
01:03:40,410 --> 01:03:47,699
I always like to tell this story about solids
could be shipped by rail.

705
01:03:47,699 --> 01:03:49,469
I can say it another way.

706
01:03:49,469 --> 01:03:56,579
The diameter of the solids was set by rail
shipment.

707
01:03:56,579 --> 01:04:05,479
And there is a story which I am sure some
of you have heard that the rails of the American

708
01:04:05,479 --> 01:04:11,249
rails were set first by the British who brought
the British rail system to the United States.

709
01:04:11,249 --> 01:04:16,479
The British rail system was set by the width
of the wheels on the carts that they used

710
01:04:16,479 --> 01:04:17,339
to have.

711
01:04:17,339 --> 01:04:26,499
And the cart's width was set by the Roman
chariots that used to be on the roads because

712
01:04:26,499 --> 01:04:31,239
they made grooves in the tiles.

713
01:04:31,239 --> 01:04:36,869
So that set the diameter of the shuttle.

714
01:04:36,869 --> 01:04:46,199
And the Roman chariot's wheel width was set
by two horses in front of them.

715
01:04:46,199 --> 01:04:55,170
So there are some who say that the diameter
of the shuttle rocket engines was designed

716
01:04:55,170 --> 01:04:57,279
by two horses' asses.

717
01:04:57,279 --> 01:05:01,069
Those were the guys that wanted to use liquid.

718
01:05:01,069 --> 01:05:07,430
They can be shipped by rail.

719
01:05:07,430 --> 01:05:09,799
They had a better reliability record at the
time.

720
01:05:09,799 --> 01:05:12,140
Solids could be recovered.

721
01:05:12,140 --> 01:05:15,479
Industry studied pressure fed to recover them,
too, but we didn't buy that.

722
01:05:15,479 --> 01:05:20,949
The designers thought they could turn off
the solids but later found out they couldn't

723
01:05:20,949 --> 01:05:26,959
turn them off uniformly and that the thrust
variance that would be involved between the

724
01:05:26,959 --> 01:05:32,829
two would be totally beyond the capability
of the vehicle to sustain it.

725
01:05:32,829 --> 01:05:36,538
So we dropped it.

726
01:05:36,538 --> 01:05:38,349
Thermal insulation, we talked about it.

727
01:05:38,349 --> 01:05:44,788
They were all new developments that had been
experimentally tested, they looked like they

728
01:05:44,788 --> 01:05:47,109
were going to work, but we had a lot of work
to do.

729
01:05:47,109 --> 01:05:52,609
And the ceramic tiles really turned out to
be one of the toughest new technologies that

730
01:05:52,609 --> 01:05:54,479
we got into.

731
01:05:54,479 --> 01:05:58,890
High-pressure stage combustion engine, we
knew that was a big new development.

732
01:05:58,890 --> 01:06:02,489
And so, as I said, that was started early.

733
01:06:02,489 --> 01:06:08,599
And design crew escape, well, the idea was
we were going to be able to terminate the

734
01:06:08,599 --> 01:06:10,709
thrust on the rocket engines.

735
01:06:10,709 --> 01:06:21,189
And we looked at these rockets to pull away
the cabin, we looked at all that stuff, and

736
01:06:21,189 --> 01:06:25,069
none of them had a broad application.

737
01:06:25,069 --> 01:06:28,189
You had the question of safety.

738
01:06:28,189 --> 01:06:31,839
If you took it off at the launch site, if
you took the whole front end off the vehicle

739
01:06:31,839 --> 01:06:39,189
at the launch site, it had big questions of
the reliability of the system.

740
01:06:39,189 --> 01:06:45,589
We went through a lot of studies to try to
find a way to capture the crew in case of

741
01:06:45,589 --> 01:06:53,380
a problem and never found a system that fit
into the program.

742
01:06:53,380 --> 01:06:57,660
So we ended up with crew escape only with
a complete structure.

743
01:06:57,660 --> 01:07:00,920
And that, of course, was the problem in Challenger.

744
01:07:00,920 --> 01:07:09,069
We ended up wrecking the structure to where
we did not have a recovery capability, but

745
01:07:09,069 --> 01:07:17,279
we put in a system where if the vehicle were
complete and structurally sound and was gliding

746
01:07:17,279 --> 01:07:18,769
the guys could get out.

747
01:07:18,769 --> 01:07:22,670
But that was the only escape system that we
had.

748
01:07:22,670 --> 01:07:31,299
I wanted to touch operation costs a little
bit.

749
01:07:31,299 --> 01:07:36,299
We had built enormous confidence from the
Apollo program.

750
01:07:36,299 --> 01:07:46,420
In spite of the Apollo 13 problem, the rest
of the vehicles had worked beautifully.

751
01:07:46,420 --> 01:07:52,829
I used to say that every flight always had
man in the loop some place during the flight

752
01:07:52,829 --> 01:07:55,369
that was important to the success of the program.

753
01:07:55,369 --> 01:07:57,959
Many times it was a minor thing.

754
01:07:57,959 --> 01:08:05,519
Like when Apollo 12 got struck by lightning
when it was launched, the guys were able to

755
01:08:05,519 --> 01:08:10,219
reconfigure switches to get the power back
on, get everything back to normal and had

756
01:08:10,219 --> 01:08:16,310
a nice flight to the moon and hit a few golf
balls.

757
01:08:16,310 --> 01:08:23,309
Every flight had man involved, but every flight
was a tremendous success, except Apollo 13.

758
01:08:23,309 --> 01:08:29,000
And, at the time, we were dealing here in
the 1970 time period.

759
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:36,630
Well, April of 1970 was when we launched Apollo
13.

760
01:08:36,630 --> 01:08:40,290
Anyway, we had tremendous confidence.

761
01:08:40,290 --> 01:08:45,238
And we thought we had tremendous support from
the industry and we thought we had tremendous

762
01:08:45,238 --> 01:08:55,719
support from the public, but we still were
concerned about the operational costs so we

763
01:08:55,719 --> 01:09:01,399
hired American Airlines, for one, to work
with us on what the costs would be and how

764
01:09:01,399 --> 01:09:10,719
would you design the system to give you the
least operational costs? The military, because

765
01:09:10,719 --> 01:09:16,318
they were committing to put their payloads
on the shuttle, had studies done by the Aerospace

766
01:09:16,318 --> 01:09:18,839
Corporation about the operation costs.

767
01:09:18,839 --> 01:09:28,799
There was a study done by IDA, Institute of
Defense Analysis.

768
01:09:28,799 --> 01:09:32,969
All three of them agreed that we were going
to have tremendous reductions in the cost

769
01:09:32,969 --> 01:09:33,880
of operations.

770
01:09:33,880 --> 01:09:39,299
They didn't quite come down to the same levels
that NASA had estimated but they were close.

771
01:09:39,299 --> 01:09:42,899
It was kind of interesting that we all thought
it could be done.

772
01:09:42,899 --> 01:09:48,198
We all thought there could be be enormous
reductions in the cost of operations with

773
01:09:48,198 --> 01:09:51,099
the shuttle.

774
01:09:51,099 --> 01:10:00,969
We thought we had enough space-based hardware
that we could do quick turnarounds and handle

775
01:10:00,969 --> 01:10:04,130
it more like an airplane.

776
01:10:04,130 --> 01:10:13,780
But NASA and these groups didn't really properly
account for the costs associated with post-flight

777
01:10:13,780 --> 01:10:20,050
maintenance, the rocket engine.

778
01:10:20,050 --> 01:10:25,130
When IDA and Aerospace did the studies, we
told them the rocket engine was going to be

779
01:10:25,130 --> 01:10:27,199
reusable for at least 20 flights.

780
01:10:27,199 --> 01:10:29,570
Well, it turned out it wasn't.

781
01:10:29,570 --> 01:10:36,170
And it was such an enormous new development
that in the early flights of the shuttle it

782
01:10:36,170 --> 01:10:41,380
took a lot of time and a lot of effort to
replace engines and refurbish engines.

783
01:10:41,380 --> 01:10:50,690
Assuring the safety of flight in a hostile
environment, and space is hostile, and we

784
01:10:50,690 --> 01:10:58,980
are dealing here with what amounts to a short
amount of R&D development testing when you

785
01:10:58,980 --> 01:11:00,730
get into these flights.

786
01:11:00,730 --> 01:11:02,650
Difficult cutting-edge technologies.

787
01:11:02,650 --> 01:11:11,219
The engine in the thermal program, the tiles
worked but they often got chips outs of the

788
01:11:11,219 --> 01:11:13,840
tiles so we had to replace tiles between flights.

789
01:11:13,840 --> 01:11:20,500
And this is fail operation, fail operation,
fail safe.

790
01:11:20,500 --> 01:11:23,630
The airplanes have fail operation, fail safe.

791
01:11:23,630 --> 01:11:29,020
They took the attitude that if you had three
computers that was plenty, and if one went

792
01:11:29,020 --> 01:11:32,020
bad during a checkout you launched anyway.

793
01:11:32,020 --> 01:11:39,110
You don't know that but that is what is happening
to you on commercial airplanes today.

794
01:11:39,110 --> 01:11:39,969
We went one more.

795
01:11:39,969 --> 01:11:42,380
We went fail operation, fail operation, fail
safe.

796
01:11:42,380 --> 01:11:47,730
We have four computers in the shuttle, but
we cannot fly without all four in perfect

797
01:11:47,730 --> 01:11:48,780
condition.

798
01:11:48,780 --> 01:11:52,739
So those things add cost when you do that.

799
01:11:52,739 --> 01:11:58,570
And then cost tradeoffs between R&D and operations,
people have argued with me many times that

800
01:11:58,570 --> 01:12:02,829
our decision to put the tank externally was
a bad deal.

801
01:12:02,829 --> 01:12:07,409
It turns out that it was certainly a bad deal
on Columbia.

802
01:12:07,409 --> 01:12:14,829
The foam on that tank came off and hit the
carbon-carbon leading-edge of the wing and

803
01:12:14,829 --> 01:12:22,170
broke a hole in it and caused thermal excesses
in the re-entry.

804
01:12:22,170 --> 01:12:28,690
So you could argue, yeah, we should have had
a two-stage fully recoverable system.

805
01:12:28,690 --> 01:12:42,829
But
those were the cost tradeoffs that were involved
in getting a system that would be accepted

806
01:12:42,829 --> 01:12:47,719
and bought off on by the administration.

807
01:12:47,719 --> 01:12:52,679
I want to talk a little bit about operation
costs.

808
01:12:52,679 --> 01:12:55,770
That has been the big miss that we made in
this program.

809
01:12:55,770 --> 01:13:00,150
As I said, cost of operations never got down
to what it should have been.

810
01:13:00,150 --> 01:13:02,250
Well, it never got down there for a couple
of reasons.

811
01:13:02,250 --> 01:13:10,420
We were never able to get up to a flight rate
that would favor a reusable vehicle.

812
01:13:10,420 --> 01:13:21,710
I think we got up to 26 flights in one year,
but most of them were down around eight or

813
01:13:21,710 --> 01:13:22,230
ten.

814
01:13:22,230 --> 01:13:29,840
And so we weren't up far enough to offset
the cost of the research and development costs

815
01:13:29,840 --> 01:13:32,809
to get the operational costs down low.

816
01:13:32,809 --> 01:13:34,739
But I have an interesting little summary.

817
01:13:34,739 --> 01:13:40,409
It is not an exact thing at all but it gives
you a little feeling for what I have seen

818
01:13:40,409 --> 01:13:41,389
out in this program.

819
01:13:41,389 --> 01:13:47,489
In 1970, the $10 million flight price was
based on the same accounting system that we

820
01:13:47,489 --> 01:13:49,199
used for the Apollo.

821
01:13:49,199 --> 01:13:53,639
Now, when you go down to Cape Canaveral we
had a lot of other things going on besides

822
01:13:53,639 --> 01:13:54,699
Apollo.

823
01:13:54,699 --> 01:14:04,469
And so we had the common support activities
like the medical department and the mail system

824
01:14:04,469 --> 01:14:12,260
and all that sort of stuff as a common separate
accounting.

825
01:14:12,260 --> 01:14:17,360
And all the costs for the Apollo were those
that we called hands-on, things associated

826
01:14:17,360 --> 01:14:22,929
with buying parts, bringing in spares, putting
on spares, checking out the vehicle and launching

827
01:14:22,929 --> 01:14:23,670
it.

828
01:14:23,670 --> 01:14:29,110
So we had two different pieces of money involved
in the Apollo program, and one of them never

829
01:14:29,110 --> 01:14:31,710
even was charged to the Apollo program.

830
01:14:31,710 --> 01:14:36,760
So we used that same system, it seemed logical
to go ahead with the same accounting system

831
01:14:36,760 --> 01:14:40,750
for the shuttle as we did for the Apollo.

832
01:14:40,750 --> 01:14:45,980
Well, it turned out that these separate items
were a pretty big chunk of money.

833
01:14:45,980 --> 01:14:49,969
And I have assumed that it was about $400
million a year.

834
01:14:49,969 --> 01:14:54,300
I am not sure that is right, but I wanted
to do it just to give you an idea of what

835
01:14:54,300 --> 01:14:56,530
happens with inflation.

836
01:14:56,530 --> 01:15:04,070
Remember we said we would do this job using
1970 dollars and we said that the costs would

837
01:15:04,070 --> 01:15:11,090
be $10 million of 1970 dollars? With $400
million in overhead and inflation, according

838
01:15:11,090 --> 01:15:16,960
to the Consumer's Price Index, which I looked
up on Google, by the way, they have a nice

839
01:15:16,960 --> 01:15:26,500
little calculator for inflation, 40 flights
a year, no overhead, in other words, like

840
01:15:26,500 --> 01:15:35,829
Apollo, a $10 million price in 1970 would
be $23 million by first flight and would be

841
01:15:35,829 --> 01:15:41,119
$50 million now.

842
01:15:41,119 --> 01:15:48,130
Same 40 flights but including overhead would
make the flight cost $20 million in 1970,

843
01:15:48,130 --> 01:15:56,190
$45 million in 1981 and $101 million per flight
for 40 flights in 2005.

844
01:15:56,190 --> 01:16:04,909
A huge increased price because of the inflation
that occurred in the 1980 to 1982 time period.

845
01:16:04,909 --> 01:16:12,889
Eight flights per year, including overhead,
runs it up to $60 million in 1970 dollars.

846
01:16:12,889 --> 01:16:16,699
And eight flights per year is sort of what
we have been running here recently.

847
01:16:16,699 --> 01:16:29,520
$135 million at time of first flight and $302
million a flight in 2005.

848
01:16:29,520 --> 01:16:32,920
Now, the cost per flight on the shuttle, I
don't know.

849
01:16:32,920 --> 01:16:37,800
I know that it is up in that $400 million
or $500 million price.

850
01:16:37,800 --> 01:16:43,070
I use this only to give you kind of a rough
feeling that, although we missed operational

851
01:16:43,070 --> 01:16:52,210
costs badly, we didn't really just be totally
out of the ballpark on them.

852
01:16:52,210 --> 01:16:54,110
Shuttle performance is great.

853
01:16:54,110 --> 01:16:58,139
The shuttle has done everything it was designed
to do, and probably a few more things we didn't

854
01:16:58,139 --> 01:16:59,520
think of at the time.

855
01:16:59,520 --> 01:17:06,380
It has put military devices in orbit, commercial
devices in orbit, scientific payloads all

856
01:17:06,380 --> 01:17:15,989
to LEO with solids we brought along, and it
has taken stuff to GEO, geosynchronous orbits.

857
01:17:15,989 --> 01:17:18,449
It has retrieved and replaced satellites.

858
01:17:18,449 --> 01:17:21,800
It has retrieved satellites and brought them
down to the ground and repaired them and brought

859
01:17:21,800 --> 01:17:23,300
them back into orbit.

860
01:17:23,300 --> 01:17:29,070
It has repaired satellites in orbit and it
has launched elements to the space station.

861
01:17:29,070 --> 01:17:37,320
In the 1980s, the shuttle had only 4% of all
the launches in the country but carried 41%

862
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:39,929
of the mass launched.

863
01:17:39,929 --> 01:17:47,230
Shuttle R&D was well within what Nixon and
Fletcher agreed to, $5.2 billion plus 20%

864
01:17:47,230 --> 01:17:52,030
in 1970 dollars.

865
01:17:52,030 --> 01:17:54,340
And I mean quite a lot of it.

866
01:17:54,340 --> 01:18:00,929
Probably the 20%, only about 5% to 10% of
that was actually used.

867
01:18:00,929 --> 01:18:07,400
In that sense, they overran what the OMB said
we were to develop it for where they didn't

868
01:18:07,400 --> 01:18:09,440
give us the 20% reserve.

869
01:18:09,440 --> 01:18:13,960
We overran it by 5% or 10%.

870
01:18:13,960 --> 01:18:16,639
Missed two key design issues.

871
01:18:16,639 --> 01:18:20,030
Call them system engineering issues.

872
01:18:20,030 --> 01:18:23,480
Cold O rings in the Challenger.

873
01:18:23,480 --> 01:18:30,159
We had O rings in that vehicle which when
they were cold they lost their flexibility.

874
01:18:30,159 --> 01:18:35,110
And when they were cold in a design that was
opened a little bit when the pressure came

875
01:18:35,110 --> 01:18:39,179
on internally, that was a disaster waiting
to happen.

876
01:18:39,179 --> 01:18:45,320
So that was a bad design of the way the O
rings were designed into the vehicle.

877
01:18:45,320 --> 01:18:50,590
The second one is the foam shedding.

878
01:18:50,590 --> 01:18:58,989
We knew that we were going to have ice and/or
foam on that tank, and we really pressed the

879
01:18:58,989 --> 01:19:03,050
industry to make sure that that foam was going
to stay on.

880
01:19:03,050 --> 01:19:08,150
We had foam enough that we didn't get a lot
of icing, but we had foam that had to stay

881
01:19:08,150 --> 01:19:08,829
on.

882
01:19:08,829 --> 01:19:15,349
Because we know that as it shed, we didn't
think so much of the carbon-carbon as the

883
01:19:15,349 --> 01:19:19,690
tiles, these brittle tiles that we had on
the bottom of the shuttle.

884
01:19:19,690 --> 01:19:26,510
So foam shedding was known to be a problem
all the way through this arm of the development

885
01:19:26,510 --> 01:19:29,599
but just has not been able to solved.

886
01:19:29,599 --> 01:19:36,119
And after the Columbia accident, the Martin
company, I assume, worked for two years trying

887
01:19:36,119 --> 01:19:38,219
to make that foam stick better.

888
01:19:38,219 --> 01:19:41,429
And it did stick better but pieces still came
off.

889
01:19:41,429 --> 01:19:47,329
So the fleet has been grounded and they got
to get that fixed.

890
01:19:47,329 --> 01:19:51,389
And, of course, we missed the operational
cost.

891
01:19:51,389 --> 01:19:58,409
Two-stage reusable vehicle would have missed
worse, I am sure of that, because of the size

892
01:19:58,409 --> 01:20:05,760
of that first-stage booster and the mach numbers
it had to go to.

893
01:20:05,760 --> 01:20:09,780
I guess I have concluded that spacecraft are
not like airplanes.

894
01:20:09,780 --> 01:20:12,090
Every flight is a structural dive demonstration.

895
01:20:12,090 --> 01:20:19,300
You know, you develop an airplane and you
fly it many times before you fly it to the

896
01:20:19,300 --> 01:20:21,780
corner of a VG diagram.

897
01:20:21,780 --> 01:20:25,900
And I can only think of one exception.

898
01:20:25,900 --> 01:20:32,980
A guy named Weese Welch, one of the greatest
test pilots North America every had flew the

899
01:20:32,980 --> 01:20:38,760
first flight of the F-86 which is the fancy
new jet that we brought in just before the

900
01:20:38,760 --> 01:20:40,460
Korean War.

901
01:20:40,460 --> 01:20:47,329
And, on his first flight, it flew so well
that he took it into a little dive and the

902
01:20:47,329 --> 01:20:49,590
mach meter went up to one.

903
01:20:49,590 --> 01:20:57,340
And, actually, the ground data showed that
he probably went to 1.04.

904
01:20:57,340 --> 01:20:59,230
Some say they heard a sonic boom.

905
01:20:59,230 --> 01:21:01,440
I am not sure of that.

906
01:21:01,440 --> 01:21:10,590
But that was about a month before the X1 went
supersonic.

907
01:21:10,590 --> 01:21:15,070
In those days, test pilots were kind of innovative
and they did things that they were told not

908
01:21:15,070 --> 01:21:15,570
to do.

909
01:21:15,570 --> 01:21:17,079
And he did it.

910
01:21:17,079 --> 01:21:20,179
But every flight is a structural dive demonstration.

911
01:21:20,179 --> 01:21:23,360
We go right up to max Q every time we fly.

912
01:21:23,360 --> 01:21:28,320
We go through wind shears and take it up to
high Gs.

913
01:21:28,320 --> 01:21:33,460
We go to high Gs on the way up, we go to high
Gs on the way down, we go max thermal every

914
01:21:33,460 --> 01:21:34,550
flight.

915
01:21:34,550 --> 01:21:42,530
So we are dealing with a tough set of activities
when we do this.

916
01:21:42,530 --> 01:21:47,429
No reusable space system ever gets the millions
of hours of stressed operation that airplanes

917
01:21:47,429 --> 01:21:48,130
get.

918
01:21:48,130 --> 01:21:52,949
Once an airplane gets through development,
it starts getting millions of hours of test

919
01:21:52,949 --> 01:21:57,270
data or information where if you have a problem
you fix it.

920
01:21:57,270 --> 01:21:59,570
And you just don't get that in these systems.

921
01:21:59,570 --> 01:22:08,420
The space system has decades of evolutionary
model development.

922
01:22:08,420 --> 01:22:15,710
In other words, the airplane business has
been so dramatically economical that you could

923
01:22:15,710 --> 01:22:19,360
build new airplanes every ten years or so.

924
01:22:19,360 --> 01:22:25,000
And each new airplane took advantage of all
the things known from the past airplane and

925
01:22:25,000 --> 01:22:27,449
designed into it.

926
01:22:27,449 --> 01:22:33,889
As I said, every reusable system is exposed
to enormous environmental variations every

927
01:22:33,889 --> 01:22:34,579
time.

928
01:22:34,579 --> 01:22:40,210
Thermal, vibration, pressure, mach number,
all these things happen every time.

929
01:22:40,210 --> 01:22:47,929
And so I look at the shuttle as being an amazing
piece of machinery which is done extremely

930
01:22:47,929 --> 01:22:52,150
well in what I consider a continuing R&D environment.

931
01:22:52,150 --> 01:23:01,570
We just don't have yet an operational system.

932
01:23:01,570 --> 01:23:05,369
So my view of the next program, keep it simple.

933
01:23:05,369 --> 01:23:13,079
It has sort of been a prime view that I have
had of design every since I have been in the

934
01:23:13,079 --> 01:23:14,820
airplane business.

935
01:23:14,820 --> 01:23:17,920
Don't stretch the technology.

936
01:23:17,920 --> 01:23:24,510
Use really good margins of safety because
we are dealing here with, as I said, maximum

937
01:23:24,510 --> 01:23:25,949
conditions on every flight.

938
01:23:25,949 --> 01:23:29,690
You better play it safe.

939
01:23:29,690 --> 01:23:30,869
Keep it small.

940
01:23:30,869 --> 01:23:33,599
Carry as few passengers as possible.

941
01:23:33,599 --> 01:23:36,219
Carry people or cargo but not both.

942
01:23:36,219 --> 01:23:38,679
Keep the requirements to a minimum.

943
01:23:38,679 --> 01:23:42,730
Use as many past components and systems as
have been proven to be reliable.

944
01:23:42,730 --> 01:23:49,420
Design for operations, very important.

945
01:23:49,420 --> 01:23:50,760
Easy access.

946
01:23:50,760 --> 01:23:52,670
One man can replace a black box.

947
01:23:52,670 --> 01:24:02,429
You don't have to run a big pickup machine
to take something out of it.

948
01:24:02,429 --> 01:24:07,469
And keep the design reserved while you are
designing it so that when operational issues

949
01:24:07,469 --> 01:24:15,409
come up you can design for the operational
issue and keep reducing the cost of operations.

950
01:24:15,409 --> 01:24:16,550
I don't know what all that means.

951
01:24:16,550 --> 01:24:22,429
I think it means that if we had it to do over
again it would have been great to be able

952
01:24:22,429 --> 01:24:30,420
to contain the requirements within NASA, probably
build a much smaller system that you could

953
01:24:30,420 --> 01:24:39,000
get many more test flights at lower cost,
but we didn't have that opportunity, as you

954
01:24:39,000 --> 01:24:41,349
now know.

955
01:24:41,349 --> 01:24:49,739
So we have the shuttle disappearing into the
distance.

956
01:24:49,739 --> 01:24:54,670
Decision has been made that the shuttle be
phased out in 2010.

957
01:24:54,670 --> 01:25:02,039
And it is going to be a tough issue because
now the shuttle is down in between flights

958
01:25:02,039 --> 01:25:04,300
because we lost foam on the last flight.

959
01:25:04,300 --> 01:25:09,940
They grounded the fleet until we can figure
out what to do about that foam problem.

960
01:25:09,940 --> 01:25:19,320
And then Hurricane Katrina knocked off the
top of the VAB, which isn't a big deal, but

961
01:25:19,320 --> 01:25:25,070
it really messed up some of the tank facilities
and tank access.

962
01:25:25,070 --> 01:25:30,179
And people's lives have been affected with
losses of homes.

963
01:25:30,179 --> 01:25:35,550
So there is a whole bunch of new issues involved
in the shuttle that I read in the paper this

964
01:25:35,550 --> 01:25:41,139
morning which may mean another delay in the
next launch of the shuttle.

965
01:25:41,139 --> 01:25:46,489
And that means a compression of the time between
now and 2010 when they are trying to use the

966
01:25:46,489 --> 01:25:52,110
shuttle to meet the commitments that we have
with the Europeans and the Japanese about

967
01:25:52,110 --> 01:25:57,670
putting pieces of the space station up into
space.

968
01:25:57,670 --> 01:25:59,639
An interesting new problem for the shuttle.

969
01:25:59,639 --> 01:26:11,329
OK? [APPLAUSE] HOFFMAN: Let's take a
one-minute stretch break.

970
01:26:11,329 --> 01:26:21,630
Stand up if you'd like, turn around in a few
circles, and then we will have a half an hour

971
01:26:21,630 --> 01:26:26,380
for some questions, answers and general comments.

972
01:26:26,380 --> 01:26:32,670
The external environment, the background,
what went into the design of the shuttle.

973
01:26:32,670 --> 01:26:40,340
And I think what Dale alluded to at the end
is very much to the point, and we will be

974
01:26:40,340 --> 01:26:46,539
talking about this with the people when they
talk about the individual systems.

975
01:26:46,539 --> 01:26:50,270
In terms of the actual performance, which
we have gotten out of the shuttle, despite

976
01:26:50,270 --> 01:26:57,579
the fact that we have had two catastrophic
accidents which, by the way, involved not

977
01:26:57,579 --> 01:27:02,849
only the design of the shuttle but the way
we operated the shuttle.

978
01:27:02,849 --> 01:27:09,150
And that is an important thing that we will
spend time talking about.

979
01:27:09,150 --> 01:27:16,010
Had we not made the decision to launch Challenger
on that cold day, who knows what would have

980
01:27:16,010 --> 01:27:22,139
happened? And, similarly, we accepted the
fact that foam was continually falling off

981
01:27:22,139 --> 01:27:32,929
of the tank, even though that was incompatible
with the design specifications on the thermal

982
01:27:32,929 --> 01:27:34,139
insulation for the shuttle.

983
01:27:34,139 --> 01:27:40,489
So we had basically two parts of the shuttle
system and we had design incompatibilities,

984
01:27:40,489 --> 01:27:45,500
but we chose to keep on flying.

985
01:27:45,500 --> 01:27:51,159
But, as a whole, the shuttle has been remarkably
successful from a technical point of view

986
01:27:51,159 --> 01:28:01,179
in terms of what we have been able to do in
near earth space, has been I think, compared

987
01:28:01,179 --> 01:28:13,179
to what you could do working out of an Apollo
capsule, was absolutely phenomenal.

988
01:28:13,179 --> 01:28:19,630
And, in fact, I think in terms of near earth
operations, the shuttle will be sorely missed

989
01:28:19,630 --> 01:28:25,530
when we retire it and there will be a lot
of capabilities that we will be giving up.

990
01:28:25,530 --> 01:28:32,349
But, on the other hand, where we really got
it wrong, by orders of magnitude, was in the

991
01:28:32,349 --> 01:28:35,630
cost and reusability of the shuttle.

992
01:28:35,630 --> 01:28:41,070
Now, perhaps that goes back to the requirements
because, again, we were trying to do an awful

993
01:28:41,070 --> 01:28:47,000
lot of things for the very first time and,
yet, we were being told by the Office of Management

994
01:28:47,000 --> 01:28:50,800
and Budget that you said it had to be cost-effective.

995
01:28:50,800 --> 01:28:56,730
I mean, in a sense, NASA was being asked to
operate the shuttle almost as a commercial

996
01:28:56,730 --> 01:28:58,820
enterprise and to make money on it.

997
01:28:58,820 --> 01:29:05,510
This is like you build a test vehicle for
the first time and you are being asked, at

998
01:29:05,510 --> 01:29:09,829
the same time, to operate it at a profit.

999
01:29:09,829 --> 01:29:17,199
And, as you know, one of the systems engineering
principles is you have this triangle.

1000
01:29:17,199 --> 01:29:28,440
I am sure you have all seen this.

1001
01:29:28,440 --> 01:29:36,289
Performance, cost, schedule, you have all
seen the triangle, right? And you cannot specify

1002
01:29:36,289 --> 01:29:37,349
all three.

1003
01:29:37,349 --> 01:29:41,820
They are not all independent parameters.

1004
01:29:41,820 --> 01:29:50,869
If you specify the performance and then you're
limiting the cost, you cannot control the

1005
01:29:50,869 --> 01:29:53,090
schedule.

1006
01:29:53,090 --> 01:30:01,010
Anyway, all three of those we, in a sense,
got specified when we accepted the requirements

1007
01:30:01,010 --> 01:30:03,750
to build the shuttle.

1008
01:30:03,750 --> 01:30:05,590
And something has to give.

1009
01:30:05,590 --> 01:30:08,929
And, in the end, it was the schedule and the
cost.

1010
01:30:08,929 --> 01:30:15,050
And we will have more to say about this in
the next couple of lectures, but now let's

1011
01:30:15,050 --> 01:30:22,949
take advantage of the last 20 minutes and
give you a chance to ask some questions about

1012
01:30:22,949 --> 01:30:27,539
the content of the lecture.

1013
01:30:27,539 --> 01:30:29,650
And Dale can try to answer them.

1014
01:30:29,650 --> 01:30:36,050
I will say, by the way, in terms of the schedule
of the class, when this was given as an aircraft

1015
01:30:36,050 --> 01:30:44,079
systems course, there were two lectures of
an hour and a half and then there was a laboratory

1016
01:30:44,079 --> 01:30:45,570
period scheduled on Wednesdays.

1017
01:30:45,570 --> 01:30:52,559
And the idea, I think, was that by scheduling
a lab everybody would have one period of time

1018
01:30:52,559 --> 01:30:58,949
at the same time so that it would make it
easier for you to work as teams on your project.

1019
01:30:58,949 --> 01:31:07,270
Because we have so many people coming from
out of town, I thought that it would be better

1020
01:31:07,270 --> 01:31:14,139
to make sure that they have full time to interact
with you.

1021
01:31:14,139 --> 01:31:20,409
And so we didn't schedule a laboratory period
for this course.

1022
01:31:20,409 --> 01:31:23,079
Instead, we have two two-hour lectures.

1023
01:31:23,079 --> 01:31:29,070
And I am assuming that all of you, once you
form teams, will be able to work out some

1024
01:31:29,070 --> 01:31:31,349
times when you can get together.

1025
01:31:31,349 --> 01:31:36,699
The only other thing I will mention, if you
look ahead for Tuesday, September the 20th,

1026
01:31:36,699 --> 01:31:46,400
that is the first deliverable regarding your
term project.

1027
01:31:46,400 --> 01:31:52,900
And all we want you to do there is just to
think about what subsystem you might be interested

1028
01:31:52,900 --> 01:32:00,099
in studying and write a paragraph about what
you think you might want to do with it.

1029
01:32:00,099 --> 01:32:03,800
And what we will do is we will be taking a
spiral approach to this project.

1030
01:32:03,800 --> 01:32:11,230
So, if you look ahead, you will see there
are various times when we ask for preliminary

1031
01:32:11,230 --> 01:32:12,469
results.

1032
01:32:12,469 --> 01:32:20,030
And then we will work with you, give you guidance
in how to deepen that so that then you can

1033
01:32:20,030 --> 01:32:20,469
go back.

1034
01:32:20,469 --> 01:32:26,000
And the next time you hand something in it
will be at a deeper level until the end when

1035
01:32:26,000 --> 01:32:27,429
you're finished with the project.

1036
01:32:27,429 --> 01:32:31,210
OK, let's move into the question and answer
period.

1037
01:32:31,210 --> 01:32:33,679
And there has been a lot of material presented.

1038
01:32:33,679 --> 01:32:38,300
And this is your chance to ask the guy who
was here when it all happened.

1039
01:32:38,300 --> 01:32:40,510
Dale, why don't you take center stage now?
MAN: Thanks so much for coming.

1040
01:32:40,510 --> 01:32:43,020
I was kind of intrigued by your talking about
the different phases of development.

1041
01:32:43,020 --> 01:32:45,710
You called it phase A, phase B and C/D.

1042
01:32:45,710 --> 01:33:01,809
And I was kind of wondering when, in those
phases, you kind of developed the high-level

1043
01:33:01,809 --> 01:33:03,409
requirements, when you developed kind of low-level
requirements, how much industry was involved

1044
01:33:03,409 --> 01:33:06,320
in different levels? What percent was industry
engineers and what percent was NASA engineers

1045
01:33:06,320 --> 01:33:09,219
in those studies? And I was just wondering
if you could expand on that.

1046
01:33:09,219 --> 01:33:09,650
MYERS: Yeah.

1047
01:33:09,650 --> 01:33:10,880
Good question.

1048
01:33:10,880 --> 01:33:18,780
The theory is that you do phase A as conceptual
activity and, when you have gotten your requirements

1049
01:33:18,780 --> 01:33:22,300
nailed down, you then do a phase B.

1050
01:33:22,300 --> 01:33:27,770
And that's what we thought we had done.

1051
01:33:27,770 --> 01:33:42,510
It turned out that
military requirements came in after phase
B had been started, so we actually had to

1052
01:33:42,510 --> 01:33:50,230
change the contracts with the industry to
take into consideration those military requirements.

1053
01:33:50,230 --> 01:33:52,570
And they were a big change to the requirements.

1054
01:33:52,570 --> 01:33:58,780
So, in that sense, we had some inefficiency
in phase B.

1055
01:33:58,780 --> 01:34:07,809
And it was after we began to get the results
of phase B that we realized we didn't have

1056
01:34:07,809 --> 01:34:11,699
a system that was going to meet the requirements.

1057
01:34:11,699 --> 01:34:18,230
So, instead of canceling phase B, we finished
the phase B because we needed that basic understanding

1058
01:34:18,230 --> 01:34:23,630
of all of the systems and all of the elements
that made up the system.

1059
01:34:23,630 --> 01:34:30,309
We finished phase B but we started some additional
phase As, conceptual activities to try to

1060
01:34:30,309 --> 01:34:32,110
find a solution.

1061
01:34:32,110 --> 01:34:41,059
And I don't remember how we worked from the
recognition of the new configuration back

1062
01:34:41,059 --> 01:34:42,539
into the phase B guys.

1063
01:34:42,539 --> 01:34:49,059
Oh, we had a phase B extension to bring that
new configuration.

1064
01:34:49,059 --> 01:34:53,489
NASA's decision that we would go to an external
tank.

1065
01:34:53,489 --> 01:35:00,369
We modified the phase B studies again with
an extension that allowed the industry then

1066
01:35:00,369 --> 01:35:03,170
to catch up with what was going on.

1067
01:35:03,170 --> 01:35:08,760
And, by the time we finished that phase B
extension, we all the requirements in place,

1068
01:35:08,760 --> 01:35:17,570
we had all of the design understood well enough
to start phase C/D.

1069
01:35:17,570 --> 01:35:23,869
I think it is pretty amazing that a device
that was going to do what we wanted to do

1070
01:35:23,869 --> 01:35:29,110
with the shuttle, go into orbit, come back
in and land, the configuration really stayed

1071
01:35:29,110 --> 01:35:30,320
the same from that point on.

1072
01:35:30,320 --> 01:35:38,269
It is just amazing that we did that well,
I think, in definition so that when we really

1073
01:35:38,269 --> 01:35:44,329
started the C and D phase, which is the detailed
design, things stayed in place.

1074
01:35:44,329 --> 01:35:48,989
And that meant all the aerodynamic work that
had been done which was, by the way, the most

1075
01:35:48,989 --> 01:35:55,280
aerodynamic work, most wind tunnel testing
ever done on a new system, I think, logically

1076
01:35:55,280 --> 01:35:59,190
because we were working through the mach number
range.

1077
01:35:59,190 --> 01:36:06,840
And all of the other elemental testing that
had gone on all allowed us to keep the configuration

1078
01:36:06,840 --> 01:36:09,849
identical from that point.

1079
01:36:09,849 --> 01:36:18,679
MAN: I know there has been a lot of talk,
but it seems obvious now in hindsight that

1080
01:36:18,679 --> 01:36:27,880
the capsule, or the orbiter or what have you
should be on the top of the launcher to clear

1081
01:36:27,880 --> 01:36:32,469
it from the debris from the fuel tank or what
else.

1082
01:36:32,469 --> 01:36:37,739
What I'm wondering is at the time in the early
stages, was there ever any talk about safety

1083
01:36:37,739 --> 01:36:45,260
issues in putting the orbiter so low on the
hull on the side? MYERS: Yeah, there was a

1084
01:36:45,260 --> 01:36:50,260
lot of talk with Martin about foam shedding
at that time.

1085
01:36:50,260 --> 01:37:02,170
And, during the initial decision process for
putting it on the side, we had done studies

1086
01:37:02,170 --> 01:37:04,969
of stacking it in series.

1087
01:37:04,969 --> 01:37:11,380
And it was a weight problem.

1088
01:37:11,380 --> 01:37:17,190
It was literally an issue of the structural
weight of the orbiter mounted vertically because

1089
01:37:17,190 --> 01:37:22,119
of the terrific loads that you get separately
on that system.

1090
01:37:22,119 --> 01:37:33,769
And so we recognized that the side mounted
tank was going to be a much more economical

1091
01:37:33,769 --> 01:37:34,869
system.

1092
01:37:34,869 --> 01:37:38,579
So we had to worry about ice and foam.

1093
01:37:38,579 --> 01:37:42,110
And so we had a lot of discussion with Martin
Company at that time.

1094
01:37:42,110 --> 01:37:44,630
I think we did a lot of work down at Marshall,
too.

1095
01:37:44,630 --> 01:37:46,219
COHEN: That's a very good question.

1096
01:37:46,219 --> 01:37:52,210
In fact, I will try to develop some of that
thought process as we go along.

1097
01:37:52,210 --> 01:37:56,800
The key point to make is the following.

1098
01:37:56,800 --> 01:38:04,480
Should we have challenged the requirements?
Making the orbiter so big with the payload

1099
01:38:04,480 --> 01:38:08,539
base so big, it was very difficult to put
that on top.

1100
01:38:08,539 --> 01:38:10,849
If you made it smaller you could.

1101
01:38:10,849 --> 01:38:13,980
The real question, I think, and I was going
to ask Dale this question which is a follow-up

1102
01:38:13,980 --> 01:38:22,840
to yours, should NASA, once OMB and the White
House gave a cost constraint and once we had

1103
01:38:22,840 --> 01:38:26,679
the change in the Air Force requirements,
should NASA had said no, we don't want to

1104
01:38:26,679 --> 01:38:34,489
do it? And that is really a very fundamental
issue in terms of understanding your requirements,

1105
01:38:34,489 --> 01:38:39,179
because the requirements drove the 14-day
turnaround time, the fact that you wanted

1106
01:38:39,179 --> 01:38:44,269
large payloads, you wanted to get to the payloads,
put the orbiter where it was.

1107
01:38:44,269 --> 01:38:49,880
The fact that you needed a high-performance
engine and a lot of payload in orbit said

1108
01:38:49,880 --> 01:38:54,460
that you needed a liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen
engine to get the highest specific impulse

1109
01:38:54,460 --> 01:38:56,480
to get the engine at highest performance.

1110
01:38:56,480 --> 01:39:01,389
All that added together, the thermal protection
system was basically a glass house which was

1111
01:39:01,389 --> 01:39:05,130
incompatible with material coming off the
tank.

1112
01:39:05,130 --> 01:39:11,460
So there was some, you might say, incompatibilities
and requirements.

1113
01:39:11,460 --> 01:39:14,230
And the question is should we have challenged
those requirements more strongly? That's really

1114
01:39:14,230 --> 01:39:14,820
the fundamental question.

1115
01:39:14,820 --> 01:39:15,849
I don't think we should of.

1116
01:39:15,849 --> 01:39:19,539
But let me ask Dale because it would say what
you would have done with the orbiter.

1117
01:39:19,539 --> 01:39:21,170
MYERS: I did.

1118
01:39:21,170 --> 01:39:26,280
I challenged the requirements inside NASA.

1119
01:39:26,280 --> 01:39:31,730
I never challenged it with the military, but
I challenged it inside NASA with George Low

1120
01:39:31,730 --> 01:39:33,320
and with Jim Fletcher.

1121
01:39:33,320 --> 01:39:40,860
And their conclusion was that we would not
have a Manned Space Flight program if we challenged

1122
01:39:40,860 --> 01:39:43,980
the military requirements.

1123
01:39:43,980 --> 01:39:46,210
And then the rest of it followed.

1124
01:39:46,210 --> 01:39:48,280
HOFFMAN: But your question is a very, very
pertinent question.

1125
01:39:48,280 --> 01:39:48,739
MYERS: Yeah, it sure is.

1126
01:39:48,739 --> 01:39:51,150
HOFFMAN: It is a very key question in today's
environment.

1127
01:39:51,150 --> 01:39:53,519
Of course, you are infinitely smarter after
it happens, but your point is very well taken.

1128
01:39:53,519 --> 01:39:53,519
MAN: Do we have better systems engineering
tools now than we did in the `70s? And so,
if you used today's tools to design the shuttle
then it would be better? MYERS: I think.

1129
01:40:09,719 --> 01:40:10,610
Well, of course.

1130
01:40:10,610 --> 01:40:16,199
MAN: Would you have avoided cost overrun and
so on? MYERS: System engineering is better,

1131
01:40:16,199 --> 01:40:17,550
yes.

1132
01:40:17,550 --> 01:40:23,889
Cost estimation, I'm not so sure.

1133
01:40:23,889 --> 01:40:29,230
We had the best guys in the country doing
cost estimations on the shuttle, but we missed

1134
01:40:29,230 --> 01:40:35,300
it probably as much as anything else by just
not having those people understand the complexities

1135
01:40:35,300 --> 01:40:37,710
of operating in space.

1136
01:40:37,710 --> 01:40:43,940
And I think a lot more is known generally
now about the cost of operating in space.

1137
01:40:43,940 --> 01:40:52,909
I think that the next try at a reduction in
cost for getting into space will be a much

1138
01:40:52,909 --> 01:40:59,920
more significant activity, but I consider
cost estimation a part of system engineering.

1139
01:40:59,920 --> 01:41:08,829
A lot of it is much better, some of it is
not, I think.

1140
01:41:08,829 --> 01:41:11,929
COHEN: Well, just to follow-up a little bit.

1141
01:41:11,929 --> 01:41:17,329
When we designed the orbiter, we didn't have
CAD/CAM systems.

1142
01:41:17,329 --> 01:41:21,639
If you look in the aft end of the orbiter,
it is sort of like the hardest thing you have

1143
01:41:21,639 --> 01:41:24,170
ever seen because we didn't have a computer-aided
design.

1144
01:41:24,170 --> 01:41:28,739
If we had had that, we probably would have
done a much easier job in the aft end of the

1145
01:41:28,739 --> 01:41:32,340
orbiter and in the mid fuselage and in the
cockpit.

1146
01:41:32,340 --> 01:41:33,429
That is systems engineering.

1147
01:41:33,429 --> 01:41:39,599
You today have much more valuable tools than
we had during the Apollo program and during

1148
01:41:39,599 --> 01:41:43,699
the Shuttle program, but there still is a
lot of education you need in systems engineering.

1149
01:41:43,699 --> 01:41:46,340
And I think Dr.

1150
01:41:46,340 --> 01:41:51,659
Hoffman explained the famous triangle, cost,
schedule and performance.

1151
01:41:51,659 --> 01:41:56,599
And that is a continued work in systems engineering.

1152
01:41:56,599 --> 01:42:05,920
MYERS: And I always think of systems engineering
as the people who work across the system with

1153
01:42:05,920 --> 01:42:11,070
everybody in a real communication system.

1154
01:42:11,070 --> 01:42:16,789
And it is that kind of communication that
does good system engineering.

1155
01:42:16,789 --> 01:42:17,159
Tools are not.

1156
01:42:17,159 --> 01:42:20,269
OK? Anything else? MAN: Could you talk a little
bit about the Astronaut Office and what they

1157
01:42:20,269 --> 01:42:24,630
thought during these conversations? Were they
in favor of the recoverable fully piloted

1158
01:42:24,630 --> 01:42:36,619
booster and what were their input on the risk
conversations? MYERS: Yeah.

1159
01:42:36,619 --> 01:42:41,329
They were aware of it.

1160
01:42:41,329 --> 01:42:47,190
We kept in touch all the way through the development
program, including the decisions not to have

1161
01:42:47,190 --> 01:42:50,849
a launch abort system.

1162
01:42:50,849 --> 01:42:56,690
And they all recognized there was risk in
the program, no question about it.

1163
01:42:56,690 --> 01:42:57,340
Aaron, you were there.

1164
01:42:57,340 --> 01:42:59,300
What about it? HOFFMAN: Well, you said it
right.

1165
01:42:59,300 --> 01:42:59,880
I think that's right.

1166
01:42:59,880 --> 01:43:05,119
They were part of the design and development
team and the requirements team, so they were

1167
01:43:05,119 --> 01:43:06,179
very much in favor of it.

1168
01:43:06,179 --> 01:43:09,800
Of course the big issue, which we will talk
more about, is escape systems.

1169
01:43:09,800 --> 01:43:11,349
And we will go into that a little bit.

1170
01:43:11,349 --> 01:43:15,550
Why don't we have an escape system? And I'm
sure when Chris Kraft comes you can ask him

1171
01:43:15,550 --> 01:43:16,349
a lot of questions about that.

1172
01:43:16,349 --> 01:43:20,829
I'm sure he will have a lot to say about it,
but a lot of us will talk about that.

1173
01:43:20,829 --> 01:43:27,730
I think the astronauts were very much a part
of the design, the development, the requirements

1174
01:43:27,730 --> 01:43:28,699
in this phase of the program.

1175
01:43:28,699 --> 01:43:32,320
So they were very much a part of it.

1176
01:43:32,320 --> 01:43:36,739
MYERS: They weren't too much in favor of an
automatic landing system.

1177
01:43:36,739 --> 01:43:41,090
HOFFMAN: That's right.

1178
01:43:41,090 --> 01:43:49,800
MAN: That was my next question.

1179
01:43:49,800 --> 01:44:06,809
MAN: [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] When does it
appear clearly that the Space Shuttle was

1180
01:44:06,809 --> 01:44:15,480
not a low-cost access to space, or was it
already too late to change the program or

1181
01:44:15,480 --> 01:44:28,750
requirements? MYERS: I think the problem was
that we never got up to flight rate.

1182
01:44:28,750 --> 01:44:33,670
There were payloads waiting for us but we
never got to flight rate.

1183
01:44:33,670 --> 01:44:39,489
And, if we had gotten to a higher flight rate,
operational costs would have been lower.

1184
01:44:39,489 --> 01:44:44,579
Not enough lower because, no matter what we
would do, we never would have met our original

1185
01:44:44,579 --> 01:44:46,789
estimates on operational costs.

1186
01:44:46,789 --> 01:44:58,360
But, as you saw by that inflation story that
I had, costs today would be enormously higher

1187
01:44:58,360 --> 01:45:04,679
than that $10 million estimate that we had
in 1970 just because of inflation.

1188
01:45:04,679 --> 01:45:10,019
But we never got flight rate so we didn't
ever get to the lower cost.

1189
01:45:10,019 --> 01:45:17,280
And, in the early days, I wasn't there, but
it appears to me there was a lot of pressure

1190
01:45:17,280 --> 01:45:23,920
to get that flight rate up so that the cost
per flight would come down.

1191
01:45:23,920 --> 01:45:31,800
And that pressure got to be instilled into
the people at NASA and the industry to where

1192
01:45:31,800 --> 01:45:37,719
the decision made on that cold day in January,
or whatever it was, on the Challenger.

1193
01:45:37,719 --> 01:45:44,369
Even though there was evidence that those
O links had leaked in previous flights, the

1194
01:45:44,369 --> 01:45:46,179
decision was made to launch.

1195
01:45:46,179 --> 01:45:55,320
Now, that is a management policy issue associated
with trying to reduce the cost of flight.

1196
01:45:55,320 --> 01:45:59,039
And so that was a bad decision.

1197
01:45:59,039 --> 01:46:07,989
Anything else? HOFFMAN: I will say one other
thing on cost per flight.

1198
01:46:07,989 --> 01:46:15,400
You have to realize when you're dealing with
a reusable system it is hard to specify exactly

1199
01:46:15,400 --> 01:46:18,989
what you even mean by the cost of the flight.

1200
01:46:18,989 --> 01:46:24,829
You can take the total amount of money you
spend on the shuttle program every year and

1201
01:46:24,829 --> 01:46:26,429
divide that by the number of flights.

1202
01:46:26,429 --> 01:46:29,940
Well, this year we only had one flight which
came to a pretty high cost.

1203
01:46:29,940 --> 01:46:31,590
And last year the cost was infinite.

1204
01:46:31,590 --> 01:46:40,139
On the other hand, you can look at what is
the cost of flying six flights a year versus

1205
01:46:40,139 --> 01:46:43,099
what is the cost of flying seven flights a
year.

1206
01:46:43,099 --> 01:46:48,980
And that is what you would call in economics
the incremental cost of a flight.

1207
01:46:48,980 --> 01:46:53,750
Also, you have to realize that in the cost
of the flight there are an awful lot of things

1208
01:46:53,750 --> 01:46:54,920
that are wrapped up.

1209
01:46:54,920 --> 01:46:56,440
Not just the cost of the shuttle itself but
all of the mission operations, the flight

1210
01:46:56,440 --> 01:47:02,010
planning that has to be carried out.

1211
01:47:02,010 --> 01:47:09,429
There was one flight, a space lab flight I
think back in the `80s where they launched

1212
01:47:09,429 --> 01:47:13,869
the space lab mission, it was supposed to
be a two-week mission, but they had fuel cell

1213
01:47:13,869 --> 01:47:17,849
problem so they had to come back after four
days.

1214
01:47:17,849 --> 01:47:24,840
And, in order to give the scientists the opportunity
to get their flight data, they rescheduled

1215
01:47:24,840 --> 01:47:27,719
the flight for a few months later.

1216
01:47:27,719 --> 01:47:34,579
So they had the same crew, they had the same
flight plan so they didn't have all of the

1217
01:47:34,579 --> 01:47:41,550
expenses, the paperwork expenses, the training,
all of the re-planning and the experiments

1218
01:47:41,550 --> 01:47:43,110
were the same.

1219
01:47:43,110 --> 01:47:46,519
It was the least expensive flight that we
possibly could have run.

1220
01:47:46,519 --> 01:47:57,420
And, at the time, the estimates were that
that actually cost NASA probably about $120

1221
01:47:57,420 --> 01:47:58,840
million.

1222
01:47:58,840 --> 01:48:07,159
That was kind of the barebones estimate of
the incremental cost of a shuttle flight.

1223
01:48:07,159 --> 01:48:13,639
And then it can go from there all the way
up to billions of dollars if you just take

1224
01:48:13,639 --> 01:48:16,150
one flight a year like we have this year.

1225
01:48:16,150 --> 01:48:21,429
COHEN: Well, the other thought, too, I remember
going up to see Dale Myers when he was Associate

1226
01:48:21,429 --> 01:48:24,650
Administrator for Manned Space Flight and
I was the Orbiter Project Manager.

1227
01:48:24,650 --> 01:48:26,369
As he pointed out, we had four computers.

1228
01:48:26,369 --> 01:48:32,030
The original thought is if one computer went
out on the ground we would lift off with three

1229
01:48:32,030 --> 01:48:33,059
computers.

1230
01:48:33,059 --> 01:48:34,489
And that's what we talked about.

1231
01:48:34,489 --> 01:48:36,190
Well, of course, that never happened.

1232
01:48:36,190 --> 01:48:38,440
I mean, not only that, we have five computers
now.

1233
01:48:38,440 --> 01:48:42,739
We actually have a fifth computer which is
a backup computer.

1234
01:48:42,739 --> 01:48:50,320
So things change, environments change, and
we were going to do very routine payloads.

1235
01:48:50,320 --> 01:48:53,989
We were going to take it up, launch a payload
and come back down, just very routine payloads.

1236
01:48:53,989 --> 01:48:56,590
Almost every payload today is different.

1237
01:48:56,590 --> 01:49:02,099
And it does take that large amount of infrastructure
to get that.

1238
01:49:02,099 --> 01:49:08,980
MYERS: One of the cost elements in our cost-effectiveness
study was a reduction in the cost of scientific

1239
01:49:08,980 --> 01:49:14,679
payloads because we were going to have sort
of a boilerplate bus.

1240
01:49:14,679 --> 01:49:22,769
A heavy, rugged bus that had power and communications.

1241
01:49:22,769 --> 01:49:29,880
And the scientists would bring their experiments
to this bus, put it on this standard vehicle,

1242
01:49:29,880 --> 01:49:34,699
take it into orbit, launch or keep it, depending
on what the experiment was, then bring it

1243
01:49:34,699 --> 01:49:35,590
back.

1244
01:49:35,590 --> 01:49:40,550
And we were going to have this standard bus
that was going to be one of the big improvements

1245
01:49:40,550 --> 01:49:42,889
in cost of the science payloads.

1246
01:49:42,889 --> 01:49:48,519
So we showed a reduction in the cost of scientific
activity in our cost-effectiveness studies.

1247
01:49:48,519 --> 01:49:49,179
That never happened.

1248
01:49:49,179 --> 01:49:53,769
The science guys never could accept the idea
of an independent bus.

1249
01:49:53,769 --> 01:50:01,159
HOFFMAN: We could go on talking for a long
time, but it is the end of the class.

1250
01:50:01,159 --> 01:50:03,489
Let's thank Dale Myers again.

1251
01:50:03,489 --> 01:50:05,360
[APPLAUSE] MYERS: Thank you.

1252
01:50:05,360 --> 01:50:06,760
I enjoyed it.

1253
01:50:06,760 --> 01:50:11,219
HOFFMAN: So send me your bios and have a good
weekend and see you next Tuesday.