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Welcome everybody.

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We are extremely fortunate and proud to have
with us today Christopher Kraft.

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Actually, Christopher Kraft, Jr.

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He told us last night that his father, Christopher
Kraft, was born within about a block of Columbus

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Circle and that is how he picked up the name
Christopher Columbus Kraft, which was passed

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onto Chris Kraft, Jr.

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I don't really need to say very much by means
of introduction because Chris Kraft is a name

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that has been associated with America's Space
Program since the very beginning.

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And, actually, from the very beginning of
his career, right after he graduated from

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a university in Virginia, he went to work
for the old NACA, the National Advisory Commission

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for Aeronautics.

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01:00 And
eventually the director of the Johnson Space
Center which is the home of Human Space Flight

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in this country.

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He had that position through 1982, which was
the end of the original orbital flight test

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phase of the orbiter.

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So, he really was in charge of the Space Center
when the Space Shuttle was being developed.

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And, of course, this course is of course in
the systems engineering of the Space Shuttle.

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I just want, in public here, to acknowledge
that there have been expenses involved in

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bringing all of the special lecturers that
we have had who have participated in this

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course.

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And would not have been possible without the
support of the Draper Laboratory.

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And we thank Dr. Eli Gai who has provided
that support.

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We couldn't have done it without you, and
we really appreciate it.

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That is enough for me.

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We all came here to hear Chris Kraft talk
about the invention and development of Mission

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Control and the systems engineering and development
of the Space Shuttle.

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I will tell you that Chris Kraft is somebody
who is not afraid to express his opinions.

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And we are looking forward to hearing them.

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Chris.

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Good morning.

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It is not hard but sometimes difficult to
return to MIT where I have a lot of friends

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who came this morning.

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They sort of overwhelmed me then, and I am
sure they would overwhelm me now if we got

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into some deep technical subject about which
I knew very little at the time.

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And I will say a little bit more about that.

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What I did want to say, though, is that the
people that preceded me in lecturing to you,

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you've been very fortunate.

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Because they indeed are the stars of the Space
Shuttle.

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They did a fantastic job.

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And I hope you got that sense from them as
they spoke to you.

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They are the best.

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And if I were going to say two things about
management that I have learned in my lifetime,

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the first would be you are absolutely no better
than the people around you.

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Without a lot of great brains around you you're
not very good, no matter if you're the best

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person in the world.

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And too many people have learned that the
hard way and not recognized that fact.

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The second thing we talked about last night
around dinner, and that was the second thing

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you learn as an engineering manager is that
every day is a compromise.

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Everything you do you have this idealistic
view of doing it the best way possible, doing

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it better every day, doing it without worrying
too much about the cost, too much about the

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budget, too much about schedule.

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You go in with that idea.

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But those things you have to face every day,
and so managers become great compromisers.

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If the systems that you end up with are not
what you really wanted, but if you're smart

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they do the job.

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If I were going to add two things to your
education at MIT, that is where I would come

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from.

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The third thing I would say is that, whether
you like it or not, you people sitting here,

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no you old heads, but you people sitting here
are the people that are going to do the next

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Space Program.

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You are the ones that are going to take us
back to the Moon, if and when we get there.

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It is going to be up to you to do the job.

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In 1968, the average age of my organization,
and I think I was 44, was 26.

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We had an awful lot of young people who did
the job and did it extremely well.

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The guy sitting there on Apollo 11 screaming
into his headset that it was still go I think

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was 25 years old at the time, and he was a
veteran.

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And if he hadn't been a veteran, he sure in
hell was a few minutes after he kept yelling

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into that microphone that it was go.

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And I hope you've seen that on television.

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If you haven't it's a really great moment
in Apollo.

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Let me start from the beginning.

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In Project Mercury, we started with a space
task group of 35 people, eight of which were

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secretaries.

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And those of us that came out of the NACA,
the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,

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were smart guys.

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We were very capable people, but we didn't
know a damn thing about how to fly in space,

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believe me.

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If you would have asked us at the time how
do you get fluid out of a tank at zero G,

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I don't believe you would get the right answer
from more than two guys.

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Maybe Max Faget would have said well, you've
got to put a bladder in there and put pressure

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behind it and squeeze the stuff out because
it is going to be floating.

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You don't know where it is in the tank.

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And, secondly, how much have you got left
in a tank?

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Kind of an interesting project if you don't
know what zero G is all about.

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When we started in Project Mercury we didn't
know much about systems design for space.

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We certainly had high questions about man's
capability to perform a task in space.

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And I would say 98% to 99% of the medical
community in the United States thought that

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the astronaut, when he got there, would be
a blithering idiot, that he would probably

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swallow his tongue, that he couldn't see because
his eyeballs were bulging out or that because

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of the worry he was going through he would
have a 24 hour ulcer sitting on the pad.

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And they would suddenly have to be at his
side, the medical community thought.

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That is where we were coming from, so we decided
we're going to put man in space.

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It was a daunting task but one which most
of us realized from the get-go that we were

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in the middle of probably man's greatest adventure.

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Believe me.

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We did know that.

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I felt it and I think everybody felt it.

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It was sort of a euphoria.

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And we were in what you might call engineering
euphoria like Ed White was on Gemini 4.

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When he was outside the spacecraft, I am absolutely
certain he was euphoric.

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The press said he must have been euphoric.

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And I said oh, no, he was worried about doing
the right things and doing all the right things

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at the right time.

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He was euphoric.

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And you don't recall but they said something
finally at the end of that.

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They said well, what does the flight director
have to say?

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And I said get him back in the spacecraft
as loud as I could say it.

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I think that is only one of the few times
I have ever spoken on the air to ground.

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We were faced with putting somebody into this
new environment for the first time.

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And how do you do that?

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What are the problems you are faced with?

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When we began to think about how we did flight
tests on airplanes, you would sit it on the

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ground and you would write a flight test requirement,
a set of things you wanted them to do on a

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flight.

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You would sit on the ground, hold a microphone
and talk to him.

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And he would say I just did so and so.

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And, if he was one of the best test pilots,
he probably didn't tell you damn thing.

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They just kept quiet like Neil Armstrong did
most of the time.

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He just kept quiet.

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And you kept having to prompt them to tell
you what they were doing.

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That is where we were coming from.

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We had instrumentation.

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We had been developing telemetry from the
bomb drop tests that we had made at Langley.

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So, we knew quite a bit about telemetry.

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We knew very little about air to ground.

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We knew that we would like to talk this guy
about 15 minutes or so.

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That is what you did when you went across
the country as an airplane pilot.

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If you're going around the world, we would
like to talk to them about every 15 minutes.

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And so we got out the geography books and
said well, we're going to fly around this

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thing and here is what this Chinese finger
puzzle looks like as it goes around the Earth.

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And we are going to be over this part of the
Earth and this is where insertion is going

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to take place and this is where we're going
to do orbit determination and this is where

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we're going to do retrofire.

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And we are going to be up there going around
this particular section of the Earth.

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And you looked at the geography and said well,
we've got a tracking range in Cape Canaveral.

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We've got tracking range on the West Coast.

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We have a few radars in Australia.

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But, if we're going to speak to them every
15 minutes, this is where we would like to

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be.

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And so we end up saying well, there are the
Canary Islands, there is Kano, there is Zanzibar,

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there is Muchea and Australia and so on.

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And immediately said well, if we're going
to have to talk to them, we're going to have

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reception there so we're going to have to
build a station at each one of those locations.

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And then we're going to have to tie them all
together.

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And, Lord have mercy, here we are with a whole
requirement to build a worldwide network and

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nobody to do it with, 35 people to do it with.

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And so we immediately got a group together.

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And we got
Western Electric and Bell Labs and a bunch
of people like that and started building the

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worldwide network.

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That was a heck of a project to do at that
point in time.

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And just the diplomatic requirements in all
the states that we had to deal with around

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the world was a project in itself.

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Having done that we just said how many times
around the Earth do you think we would like

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to go or need to go on the first flight?

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And what do you think would determine that?

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Well, in 1959, if you put a spacecraft up
from Cape Canaveral or from Vandenberg Air

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Force Base and you asked is it in orbit, of
the then flight director, he would say I don't

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know.

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I will tell you when it comes up over Kodiak,
Alaska 45 minutes from now.

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And I am saying to myself well, if this thing
isn't in orbit and I want to bring it down

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in the water before it hits the coast of Africa,
I have got to know when to turn that spacecraft

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around and fire the retrorockets.

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I have to know immediately, or at least within
two or three minutes to turn the spacecraft

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around and fire the retrorockets, what the
orbit is.

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Because, if I don't, I don't know where it
is coming down and I don't know where to send

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the ships to pick that young astronaut up.

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Realize that in 1959 nobody knew what a short
arc solution was from a C-ban radar in 30

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seconds of data.

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Furthermore, they didn't have a computer to
do it with.

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We were slide rule people, Marchant computers,
crank computers.

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And you were suddenly faced with the fact
that you've got to build a computer system

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to take radar data from Cape Canaveral and
Bermuda, massage that data and within 30 seconds

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of the short arc solution tell the people
that have got to turn that spacecraft around

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and fire the retrorockets in two minutes.

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Today that sounds unbelievable.

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When you talk about air to ground communications
or ground to ground communications, in Africa

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the best you had was 20 words of teletype
per minute.

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Now, you've got to know what is going on in
the spacecraft or what the astronaut said

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as he flew over Kano, Nigeria.

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You were going to get it back in 20 words
of teletype.

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How do you make real-time decisions under
those circumstances?

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What is a real-time decision?

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Where are you going to make a decision?

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Do you need some central facility which invented
Mission Control?

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And suddenly then, if we're going to do this
job and we're going to have people looking

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at this data, we have got to train a group
of people to go to all these locations around

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the world.

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And if you're going to make decisions in a
central location then you've got to have some

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means of getting that data back to them, of
massaging that data, letting people know outside

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the limits of that control facility what is
going on so they can interrelate with each

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other.

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Nobody had ever done that before.

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And the first time we cranked ourselves up
in a bunch of small cubby holes in an old

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wind tunnel building in Langley Field, Virginia
and started doing what we would call the initial

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simulations, we found that we didn't even
know how to talk with each other.

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And everybody was talking at once.

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And so we had to invent a whole new language
and had to have negative reporting and things

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like that which people had never heard of
before.

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And rapidly then we began to realize that
we had a big task in front of us.

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If you're going to recover this gentleman
at the end of the flight, that is not too

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hard.

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We can send a few ships out there.

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And we probably ought to have a helicopter
there to pick them up.

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And maybe we could have one of these light
carriers.

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But if the doctors are right, we might have
to come down anywhere in the 360 degrees on

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those three revolutions.

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Now, who are we talking to?

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We're talking about talking to the search
and rescue people.

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We're talking to destroyer captains.

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We're talking to people that have got to fish
this thing out of the sea.

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And how do they do that and how do they not
get burned with the fuel that might be running

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out of the spacecraft.

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And suddenly we have to train probably 10,000
people on how to recover this machine.

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If the spacecraft is sitting in the water,
we've got to train several hundred frogmen

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how to jump out of an airplane with tools
to get to the astronaut.

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It was a tremendous task for a group of people
who had never done much but do wind tunnel

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tests or flight tests out of Langley Field,
Virginia.

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The early days we had to come up with orbit
determination.

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How to look at the astronaut's health.

220
00:18:55,690 --> 00:18:58,049
How do we get something down that we can look
at?

221
00:18:58,049 --> 00:19:00,750
Can we get an EKG down?

222
00:19:00,750 --> 00:19:06,270
Can we get his breath rate down to each one
of these stations so we know what the man's

223
00:19:06,270 --> 00:19:07,240
health is?

224
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:08,880
An interesting story.

225
00:19:08,880 --> 00:19:15,880
We did eventually build a simulator to train
the astronauts, and we had no way of getting

226
00:19:16,440 --> 00:19:22,929
data to each one of these sites around the
world that would allow us to run a full-fledged

227
00:19:22,929 --> 00:19:26,490
worldwide simulation in real-time.

228
00:19:26,490 --> 00:19:29,260
We would put it on tape.

229
00:19:29,260 --> 00:19:31,740
Cut it up in sections.

230
00:19:31,740 --> 00:19:36,880
Send out a script of what the astronaut was
going to say and do.

231
00:19:36,880 --> 00:19:42,900
And play this six or eight minutes of a tape
as that's what they would see as the spacecraft

232
00:19:42,900 --> 00:19:45,270
appeared over their station.

233
00:19:45,270 --> 00:19:51,490
And when we said we've got to train a bunch
of doctors, an interesting story was we went

234
00:19:51,490 --> 00:19:58,490
down to the Veteran's Administration in Houston
and said we'd like to put some instruments

235
00:20:01,309 --> 00:20:04,350
that we were developing on people that are
sick here.

236
00:20:04,350 --> 00:20:07,990
And so, as they come in, various types of
diseases.

237
00:20:07,990 --> 00:20:14,659
And, fortunately, one day we had a guy instrumented
and he had a heart attack.

238
00:20:14,659 --> 00:20:18,850
We were able to record all of these things
that were going on in this gentleman, his

239
00:20:18,850 --> 00:20:25,760
temperature, his EKG, his breath rate, what
his blood pressure was and so on, and put

240
00:20:25,760 --> 00:20:27,850
all that on the tape.

241
00:20:27,850 --> 00:20:30,809
And we sent that out to the remote sites.

242
00:20:30,809 --> 00:20:37,260
And then at each of the sites, as this occurred,
had the doctors diagnose what was wrong with

243
00:20:37,260 --> 00:20:39,250
the astronaut.

244
00:20:39,250 --> 00:20:45,130
I don't believe in any one of the 17 stations
we had anybody diagnosed it as a heart attack.

245
00:20:45,130 --> 00:20:52,130
They all said he had an appendicitis or he
was having some kind of shock take place to

246
00:20:52,860 --> 00:20:56,500
him because he was frightened to death.

247
00:20:56,500 --> 00:20:58,320
Anything but a heart attack.

248
00:20:58,320 --> 00:21:05,320
So, that was sort of classical of the things
we did and improvised in order to get ourselves

249
00:21:07,340 --> 00:21:14,340
capable of running a worldwide operation which
allowed us to make decisions in real-time.

250
00:21:15,029 --> 00:21:20,390
Now, the other thing that we invented at that
time, I say invented, it just came about by

251
00:21:20,390 --> 00:21:22,830
evolution, was a book called Mission Rules.

252
00:21:22,830 --> 00:21:26,500
And that was probably the smartest thing we
ever did.

253
00:21:26,500 --> 00:21:32,500
As we began to look at the spacecraft systems,
we started asking questions.

254
00:21:32,500 --> 00:21:39,460
If this system is failing, what are the measurements
that we're going to have there?

255
00:21:39,460 --> 00:21:44,480
And, if it is failing and it isn't operating
at the right temperature or the right pressure

256
00:21:44,480 --> 00:21:49,350
and it is off nominal, what will the system
do?

257
00:21:49,350 --> 00:21:51,029
And how do we measure that on the ground?

258
00:21:51,029 --> 00:21:52,630
How do we detect it?

259
00:21:52,630 --> 00:21:58,350
Where is the instrument located on the system
because it might be effected by the position

260
00:21:58,350 --> 00:21:59,940
it is located in the spacecraft.

261
00:21:59,940 --> 00:22:00,580
It might be hot.

262
00:22:00,580 --> 00:22:01,539
It might be cold.

263
00:22:01,539 --> 00:22:06,419
It might be suffering different kinds of pressures
than it was measured on the ground.

264
00:22:06,419 --> 00:22:13,419
And, as we began to ask those questions of
the system engineer, the "system" engineer.

265
00:22:13,649 --> 00:22:19,130
Not "systems" engineers because I don't think
we had any at the time.

266
00:22:19,130 --> 00:22:22,370
And they would say why the hell do you want
to know that?

267
00:22:22,370 --> 00:22:25,360
The system is either working or it ain't working.

268
00:22:25,360 --> 00:22:30,409
And we said yes, that's a good answer except
that now we've got this system in space.

269
00:22:30,409 --> 00:22:34,120
And if we want to continue this flight and
not have a contingency operation, we would

270
00:22:34,120 --> 00:22:39,240
like to know how long the system is going
to last if it isn't operating under normal

271
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:41,490
conditions.

272
00:22:41,490 --> 00:22:47,470
That prompted us then to start thinking about
how the system failed and what we were going

273
00:22:47,470 --> 00:22:50,250
to do about it.

274
00:22:50,250 --> 00:22:57,110
If the thermal system that kept the astronaut
from getting hot or getting too cold wasn't

275
00:22:57,110 --> 00:22:59,490
functioning properly, what could we do about
it?

276
00:22:59,490 --> 00:23:06,490
How long could he stand being at a temperature
of 85 degrees inside his space suit?

277
00:23:07,520 --> 00:23:12,390
And then that said well, if it stays there
and we can only go X number of minutes, what

278
00:23:12,390 --> 00:23:13,710
are we going to do about it?

279
00:23:13,710 --> 00:23:20,440
What is the rule of the game that says we
should re-enter or not re-enter or go to the

280
00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:23,789
next primary recovery area, et cetera?

281
00:23:23,789 --> 00:23:29,710
And it allowed us then to write down, for
every system, and the man what we would do

282
00:23:29,710 --> 00:23:31,669
under certain circumstances.

283
00:23:31,669 --> 00:23:33,820
Called those a set of mission rules.

284
00:23:33,820 --> 00:23:39,250
And that prompted us to develop a bunch of
malfunction criteria.

285
00:23:39,250 --> 00:23:42,679
What malfunction procedures are you going
to go through?

286
00:23:42,679 --> 00:23:47,260
And then that prompted us to ask the contractor
and the manufacturer of the systems.

287
00:23:47,260 --> 00:23:52,149
And that developed a whole new set of schematics
that they hadn't been used to.

288
00:23:52,149 --> 00:23:55,220
It cost us a lot of money to do that, and
they didn't want to do it.

289
00:23:55,220 --> 00:23:57,429
They didn't know why we wanted to do it.

290
00:23:57,429 --> 00:24:02,010
But as they began to see the mission rules
-- We got those out in front of them and said

291
00:24:02,010 --> 00:24:05,580
we're going to do this with your spacecraft
and your system.

292
00:24:05,580 --> 00:24:08,529
Then they began to realize they better start
thinking about those things.

293
00:24:08,529 --> 00:24:15,110
And that is what brought, in my mind, a group
of people together in "systems" engineering

294
00:24:15,110 --> 00:24:21,950
because you began to find out how the systems
reacted with each other.

295
00:24:21,950 --> 00:24:27,289
And that was a question that most engineers
didn't think about.

296
00:24:27,289 --> 00:24:33,240
If the thermal control system is not functioning
properly, what does it do to the reaction

297
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:34,640
control system?

298
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:41,529
Or, as we had on one of our first orbital
flights, the seats on the small thrusters

299
00:24:41,529 --> 00:24:45,730
they were using for attitude control were
not seating properly.

300
00:24:45,730 --> 00:24:47,260
And the experts said it is freezing.

301
00:24:47,260 --> 00:24:53,330
It is getting slush in the system and is causing
the valves to stay open and they're not getting

302
00:24:53,330 --> 00:24:54,679
the proper fluid to it.

303
00:24:54,679 --> 00:25:01,260
So we put a thermostat on the next spacecraft
and it wasn't freezing, it was getting hot

304
00:25:01,260 --> 00:25:06,059
because the feedback from the thruster was
getting on the lines and causing the seats

305
00:25:06,059 --> 00:25:06,620
to warp.

306
00:25:06,620 --> 00:25:12,039
And it was sitting there dribbling out and
causing the attitude to be sloppy and jump

307
00:25:12,039 --> 00:25:12,289
around.

308
00:25:12,220 --> 00:25:17,850
And, as a matter of fact, on one flight we
had to reenter early with the first chimpanzee

309
00:25:17,850 --> 00:25:22,779
flight because the machine was running out
of propellant.

310
00:25:22,779 --> 00:25:29,779
It began to have everybody start thinking
about how does my system fit with everybody

311
00:25:30,659 --> 00:25:31,649
else's system?

312
00:25:31,649 --> 00:25:36,529
How does that fit with the game plan that
we're trying to come up with?

313
00:25:36,529 --> 00:25:43,529
And, at the same time, the organization then
was able to look at all of these things that

314
00:25:47,929 --> 00:25:51,750
we said we were going to do and became a heck
of a management tool.

315
00:25:51,750 --> 00:25:58,750
I remember James Webb used to come down, the
Administrator of NASA at the time, and I would

316
00:25:59,399 --> 00:26:04,309
show him, in the Control Center, how we ran
an operation and how we made decisions.

317
00:26:04,309 --> 00:26:11,309
And he was absolutely livid about that because
he said that's what I want in Washington.

318
00:26:12,100 --> 00:26:15,919
I want to be able to have those kinds of things
put in front of me so I've got all these things

319
00:26:15,919 --> 00:26:17,240
so I can make a decision.

320
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:18,750
I need you in Washington.

321
00:26:18,750 --> 00:26:23,990
I want you to come up here and tell me how
to build a system like that to do management.

322
00:26:23,990 --> 00:26:30,190
I must say that I have never been able to
do that, but he was very emphatic about wanting

323
00:26:30,190 --> 00:26:34,980
to do that.

324
00:26:34,980 --> 00:26:37,830
Jump to the conclusion of Mercury.

325
00:26:37,830 --> 00:26:40,309
I think we learned an awful lot form that
program.

326
00:26:40,309 --> 00:26:43,590
We learned that man could do a job.

327
00:26:43,590 --> 00:26:46,090
He could do it just as well at zero gravity.

328
00:26:46,090 --> 00:26:51,260
Particularly, in Mercury where he couldn't
move around and he didn't get sick, fortunately,

329
00:26:51,260 --> 00:26:54,580
as he did eventually in some of our spacecraft.

330
00:26:54,580 --> 00:27:01,130
But certainly man could do the job in space
as well up there as he could in a fighter

331
00:27:01,130 --> 00:27:05,470
airplane on the Earth.

332
00:27:05,470 --> 00:27:07,750
But it was child's play.

333
00:27:07,750 --> 00:27:10,169
Mercury was child's play.

334
00:27:10,169 --> 00:27:15,240
We put it up there, we fired the retrorockets
and it landed, and then we picked them up.

335
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:19,149
A hell of a job at that time, but it was child's
play.

336
00:27:19,149 --> 00:27:21,029
And so Mr.

337
00:27:21,029 --> 00:27:28,029
Kennedy, in his great wisdom, in April of
1961, when he saw the reaction of it, we were

338
00:27:31,850 --> 00:27:38,850
all down in Sheppard's first flight, asked
NASA what can we do to ace the Russians?

339
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:49,320
And NASA, in its great wisdom said well, probably
in about ten years we can go around the Moon.

340
00:27:49,630 --> 00:27:56,630
George Low and others at Washington had been
doing some work on a lunar spacecraft.

341
00:27:58,669 --> 00:28:05,179
And in the great wisdom of whoever made such
a decision, the president asked why can't

342
00:28:05,179 --> 00:28:08,120
you land on the Moon?

343
00:28:08,120 --> 00:28:15,120
Now, I want you to know that that was 1961
and Chris Kraft did not know how to determine

344
00:28:17,850 --> 00:28:23,450
orbital mechanics from 30 seconds of radar
at Cape Canaveral.

345
00:28:23,450 --> 00:28:30,450
And this man, in 1961, says we're going to
the Moon in this decade.

346
00:28:32,590 --> 00:28:36,220
And I thought he was a little daft.

347
00:28:36,220 --> 00:28:40,820
I must say, I thought he was a little daft.

348
00:28:40,820 --> 00:28:47,820
The second day I thought a little bit better
of it.

349
00:28:48,049 --> 00:28:55,049
And then about three months later, when he
came to make that famous speech in Rice Stadium,

350
00:28:59,139 --> 00:29:04,750
I was called back from Cape Canaveral to tell
him how we were going to go to the Moon.

351
00:29:04,750 --> 00:29:11,750
And, I am telling you, I did not know a damn
thing about how to go to the Moon.

352
00:29:13,139 --> 00:29:20,139
If you had said free return trajectory to
me, god, I'd a thought it was a pass to the

353
00:29:20,389 --> 00:29:24,860
Astro's baseball game.

354
00:29:24,860 --> 00:29:28,799
But here I was faced with the fact I've got
to stand up in front of the President of the

355
00:29:28,799 --> 00:29:34,750
United States in a room, much like this one,
only with about ten or 12 people in it and

356
00:29:34,750 --> 00:29:39,299
tell that gentleman how you're going to go
to the Moon.

357
00:29:39,299 --> 00:29:45,460
And that was a quick learn, I'm telling, a
really quick learn from people like these

358
00:29:45,460 --> 00:29:52,460
guys, John Mayer and Bill Tindall taught me
in a few hours how to do the orbital mechanics

359
00:29:53,460 --> 00:29:54,260
to go to the Moon.

360
00:29:54,260 --> 00:29:59,250
Not how to do it but what took place.

361
00:29:59,250 --> 00:30:00,519
Here we were at the end of Mercury.

362
00:30:00,519 --> 00:30:03,340
And we are going to then have to go to the
Moon.

363
00:30:03,340 --> 00:30:04,620
And how are we going to get there?

364
00:30:04,620 --> 00:30:05,740
And how are we going to train ourselves?

365
00:30:05,740 --> 00:30:08,059
What are the systems we need to do the job?

366
00:30:08,059 --> 00:30:09,850
What new control center do we need?

367
00:30:09,850 --> 00:30:12,799
What kind of operation do we need to think
about?

368
00:30:12,799 --> 00:30:15,429
What kind of trajectory analysis do we need?

369
00:30:15,429 --> 00:30:17,220
And what kind of computers do we need?

370
00:30:17,220 --> 00:30:19,649
And what kind of communications do we need?

371
00:30:19,649 --> 00:30:23,580
Suddenly, we've got a whole new set of problems.

372
00:30:23,580 --> 00:30:27,340
If we're going to do rendezvous at the Moon,
we've got to teach ourselves how to do rendezvous

373
00:30:27,340 --> 00:30:30,460
at the Earth.

374
00:30:30,460 --> 00:30:36,679
If we're going to send something around the
Moon, we better have a heck of a system to

375
00:30:36,679 --> 00:30:42,830
determine whether we are truly aiming at the
Moon or whether we're going to hit the Moon.

376
00:30:42,830 --> 00:30:48,159
And, in fact, on Apollo 8, I wasn't sure that
George Miller, who was the head of Manned

377
00:30:48,159 --> 00:30:55,080
Space Flight, was sure we weren't going to
hit the Moon when we told him that we wanted

378
00:30:55,080 --> 00:30:58,600
to do the trajectory as we were going to do
it when we landed.

379
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:04,580
Then it ended up being 60 miles above the
lunar surface as you entered orbit around

380
00:31:04,580 --> 00:31:04,899
the Moon.

381
00:31:04,899 --> 00:31:11,899
And can you really tell me 270,000 miles away
whether the spacecraft is going to hit the

382
00:31:13,580 --> 00:31:19,970
Moon when you are ten hours away or is it
going to go around the Moon?

383
00:31:19,970 --> 00:31:21,919
So, we were faced with all those new problems.

384
00:31:21,919 --> 00:31:24,990
That is what got us to the Gemini program.

385
00:31:24,990 --> 00:31:30,039
We wanted to be able to build a spaceship
that would allow us to do maneuvering in orbit.

386
00:31:30,039 --> 00:31:36,580
That would allow us to stay up there 14 days,
which is how long the spacecraft flight to

387
00:31:36,580 --> 00:31:43,580
the Moon and back would be, that would allow
us to do reentry guidance using the L/D of

388
00:31:44,500 --> 00:31:51,500
a blunt body, enough to skip it out as you
came back to Earth and then go back up and

389
00:31:53,500 --> 00:31:58,690
then reenter at a much lower velocity so you
wouldn't burn up the spacecraft.

390
00:31:58,690 --> 00:32:03,299
Those are the kind of things we were suddenly
thinking about as we built the Gemini spacecraft.

391
00:32:03,299 --> 00:32:05,460
We needed an onboard computer.

392
00:32:05,460 --> 00:32:08,169
Unheard of in that time period.

393
00:32:08,169 --> 00:32:15,169
The Air Force had been putting some on airplanes
but never had we had on onboard a spacecraft.

394
00:32:15,559 --> 00:32:20,299
So Gemini was designed to be a maneuvering
capability in space to rendezvous and dock

395
00:32:20,299 --> 00:32:27,299
with a target, to determine the capability
of man to survive for 14 days, to do a heat

396
00:32:29,450 --> 00:32:35,690
shield which was much more flexible and reusable.

397
00:32:35,690 --> 00:32:37,889
And to build a maneuvering system.

398
00:32:37,889 --> 00:32:44,889
And, finally, to do guidance and control for
landing point and control and develop a footprint

399
00:32:46,169 --> 00:32:51,100
on the Earth for Gemini which is what we were
going to have to do on Apollo.

400
00:32:51,100 --> 00:32:54,000
Gemini was a very successful program.

401
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:55,600
Without it we could never have gone to the
Moon.

402
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:58,970
We learned how to operate in space, how to
maneuver in space.

403
00:32:58,970 --> 00:33:05,570
We learned how to do EVA, which was a total
disaster as we flew in Gemini.

404
00:33:05,570 --> 00:33:12,570
I don't think we even, by doing it five or
six times on the final flight of Gemini 12,

405
00:33:13,899 --> 00:33:20,130
Buzz Aldrin was able to do a reasonable job
in extra vehicular activity.

406
00:33:20,130 --> 00:33:23,919
We had to build a suit that was flexible to
be able to walk on the Moon.

407
00:33:23,919 --> 00:33:30,919
We had to build a backpack which was, in truth,
another spacecraft to do Apollo.

408
00:33:33,299 --> 00:33:40,299
We had to build a new control center because
we had a computer which we actually doubled

409
00:33:40,860 --> 00:33:46,210
the storage capacity on Mercury and then gave
it 64,000 words.

410
00:33:46,210 --> 00:33:52,830
Today, you have that in some kid's thing that
he carries on his airplane and one touch of

411
00:33:52,830 --> 00:33:53,899
his stroke.

412
00:33:53,899 --> 00:33:56,870
But 64,000 words was all that we had then.

413
00:33:56,870 --> 00:34:01,190
When we flew Gemini, we had a million words.

414
00:34:01,190 --> 00:34:07,000
When we flew Apollo, we had 5.5 million words,
so that computer complex was changing on us

415
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:07,620
continuously.

416
00:34:07,620 --> 00:34:13,918
When we did Mercury, we used a grease pencil
to write down the numbers as they came back

417
00:34:13,918 --> 00:34:17,679
from Kano, Nigeria and 20 words of teletype.

418
00:34:17,679 --> 00:34:23,469
We had to build a new display system, a digital
display system with a computer.

419
00:34:23,469 --> 00:34:28,159
And the first digital display system was not
graphics at all.

420
00:34:28,159 --> 00:34:35,159
What we did was build a slide that was the
background for the display that you wanted.

421
00:34:37,589 --> 00:34:44,589
We had a set of 4.5 inch lantern slides, a
bank of 100 for each station in the Control

422
00:34:47,879 --> 00:34:50,899
Center, and then the computer filled in the
numbers.

423
00:34:50,899 --> 00:34:56,290
Now, that was in 1964, '65 and '66.

424
00:34:56,290 --> 00:35:01,510
It wasn't until we got to the latter stages
of Apollo that we had computer graphics.

425
00:35:01,510 --> 00:35:05,950
I don't know whether you can realize that
or not.

426
00:35:05,950 --> 00:35:11,839
Computer graphics today is, golly, you have
football games on computer graphics.

427
00:35:11,839 --> 00:35:17,030
But then we didn't have it so we had to redesign
a control center and continuously redesign

428
00:35:17,030 --> 00:35:17,690
a control center.

429
00:35:17,690 --> 00:35:22,230
We had to have a computer controlled communication
system.

430
00:35:22,230 --> 00:35:23,440
All of those things were built.

431
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:30,440
We had to utilize and build in NASA the first
communication satellite from which came the

432
00:35:32,210 --> 00:35:37,680
revolution in the world, in my opinion.

433
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:44,680
I want to go through Apollo and things like
translunar trajectories and free return trajectories

434
00:35:50,079 --> 00:35:56,540
and what might happen if you were off by a
few feet per second or a few tenths of a degree

435
00:35:56,540 --> 00:36:03,540
when you fired the orbital maneuvering system
of Apollo on the backside of the Moon, which

436
00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:11,280
is where you had to do it for optimum performance
characteristics.

437
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:18,270
When the thing showed up as it came out on
view on the front side of the Moon, and it

438
00:36:18,270 --> 00:36:24,200
was not in the right trajectory, what the
hell are you going to do about it?

439
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:24,810
Where is it going?

440
00:36:24,810 --> 00:36:27,859
Is it going around the sun?

441
00:36:27,859 --> 00:36:30,650
Is it coming back to Earth?

442
00:36:30,650 --> 00:36:33,060
Is it going to hit the Moon?

443
00:36:33,060 --> 00:36:40,060
And what am I going to do about it if it is
on one of those paths and my maneuvering engine,

444
00:36:40,460 --> 00:36:46,150
which has 10,000 pounds of thrust, is not
working or not working properly or it wasn't

445
00:36:46,150 --> 00:36:47,660
pointed in the right direction?

446
00:36:47,660 --> 00:36:54,660
You had to be prepared to think about those
problems and make a real-time decision as

447
00:36:55,359 --> 00:36:58,569
to what to do.

448
00:36:58,569 --> 00:37:02,750
I hope I am impressing you with that because
that is what you guys are faced with in going

449
00:37:02,750 --> 00:37:05,960
back to the Moon.

450
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:09,880
It isn't just a simple problem of orbital
mechanics.

451
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:16,170
It is a problem of what are you going to do
if it isn't correct, if it isn't on the right

452
00:37:16,170 --> 00:37:16,589
path?

453
00:37:16,589 --> 00:37:22,339
If the system isn't working properly can you
land?

454
00:37:22,339 --> 00:37:29,339
Those things have to be thought out and thought
out carefully before the fact, not in real-time.

455
00:37:31,020 --> 00:37:36,329
You can make all of the decisions in the compute
which you would have made after you had thought

456
00:37:36,329 --> 00:37:43,329
about it in real-time, but think of the orbital
mechanics problems associated with that in

457
00:37:46,950 --> 00:37:53,140
real-time and the background then of the math
and the thought processes that have to go

458
00:37:53,140 --> 00:37:56,720
into making those decisions.

459
00:37:56,720 --> 00:37:58,329
You're descending to the Moon.

460
00:37:58,329 --> 00:38:05,329
And as one of these gentlemen sitting here,
you start to do the descent to the Moon, and,

461
00:38:10,650 --> 00:38:17,339
low and behold, you bring up the system on
the LEM and the abort light is on.

462
00:38:17,339 --> 00:38:20,079
What the hell does that mean?

463
00:38:20,079 --> 00:38:27,079
Well, it means if you start the engine right
now it is going to start doing a rendezvous

464
00:38:27,950 --> 00:38:29,060
back with the command module.

465
00:38:29,060 --> 00:38:33,150
It is not going to land on the lunar surface.

466
00:38:33,150 --> 00:38:39,319
And I've got a computer program that is hardwired
to do that job with.

467
00:38:39,319 --> 00:38:44,540
I don't have the capability of reprogramming
it like you would have by just sending up

468
00:38:44,540 --> 00:38:46,660
a whole new set of software.

469
00:38:46,660 --> 00:38:48,900
How am I going to figure that damn thing out?

470
00:38:48,900 --> 00:38:55,900
I've got a thousand words of pad in this computer.

471
00:38:56,329 --> 00:39:03,329
Is it possible in real-time to obviate that
abort signal and still land on the Moon?

472
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:08,690
And this gentlemen sitting over here figured
that out.

473
00:39:08,690 --> 00:39:15,690
He figured out how to tell the computer to
ignore that signal by going into the certain

474
00:39:17,290 --> 00:39:24,290
places in that hardwired software and saying
don't listen to the abort signal for a while.

475
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:31,740
Don't listen to it, but if I need to listen
to it on the way down then listen to it.

476
00:39:31,740 --> 00:39:33,930
You've got to do that with a thousand words.

477
00:39:33,930 --> 00:39:40,930
That is a pretty tough problem in real-time,
one which nobody had thought about before

478
00:39:42,720 --> 00:39:44,069
until it happened.

479
00:39:44,069 --> 00:39:51,069
Or, as I said, this 25 year old young man
on Apollo 11 and the vehicle is descending

480
00:39:51,310 --> 00:39:57,890
to the Moon and he is getting all these signals
back that says the computer is overloaded

481
00:39:57,890 --> 00:40:02,849
and is doing so many tasks and stopping.

482
00:40:02,849 --> 00:40:03,910
Why is it doing that?

483
00:40:03,910 --> 00:40:08,980
We've done it on Apollo 10 when we started
down to the Moon and it worked fine, and we

484
00:40:08,980 --> 00:40:14,250
did a rendezvous from it, but we had the radar
on.

485
00:40:14,250 --> 00:40:17,200
And going down to the Moon, we didn't need
the radar on it.

486
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:21,150
That radar was going into the computer, it
was flooding the computer with data, but these

487
00:40:21,150 --> 00:40:23,569
guys didn't know that.

488
00:40:23,569 --> 00:40:29,059
They had to figure out how to get around that
signal.

489
00:40:29,059 --> 00:40:35,150
If I sound like that is a big problem, it
is a big problem, and it is going to get bigger.

490
00:40:35,150 --> 00:40:40,650
With a spacecraft you're going to get more
complex with each passing day and you're going

491
00:40:40,650 --> 00:40:43,230
to have to figure out how to do that stuff
in real-time.

492
00:40:43,230 --> 00:40:49,369
And that is what you, the flight operations
people and the designers of tomorrow are going

493
00:40:49,369 --> 00:40:55,680
to be, and that is what you're going to be
faced with.

494
00:40:55,680 --> 00:41:02,680
I know you're working on the Space Shuttle
trying to make it better.

495
00:41:03,670 --> 00:41:10,670
That is what your task is in this class.

496
00:41:11,359 --> 00:41:18,359
We should have had you around for the last
25 years because it needs to be made better.

497
00:41:19,559 --> 00:41:26,559
And it is a travesty, I will use that word
again, that we haven't been making it better

498
00:41:29,309 --> 00:41:33,849
and making it less costly to fly.

499
00:41:33,849 --> 00:41:36,780
We should have been doing that.

500
00:41:36,780 --> 00:41:43,780
Let me start into the Space Shuttle a little.

501
00:41:45,460 --> 00:41:52,460
One of the questions that Jeff asked me that
these people will be interested in hearing

502
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:59,680
is how did you decide to do it manned as opposed
to unmanned on the first flight?

503
00:42:07,309 --> 00:42:12,450
Sort of out of necessity I guess you would
say.

504
00:42:12,450 --> 00:42:19,329
The more we looked at the systems, the more
we looked at the Space Shuttle the more we

505
00:42:19,329 --> 00:42:26,329
realized that the man could furnish us a certain
amount of reliability in space operations

506
00:42:26,609 --> 00:42:27,960
and in space systems.

507
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:33,710
And in choosing systems the more reliable
the machine would become.

508
00:42:33,710 --> 00:42:39,190
But we had to convince ourselves that that
was a rational thing to do.

509
00:42:39,190 --> 00:42:46,190
Now, let's go back and give you some thought
process about the Space Shuttle design.

510
00:42:48,369 --> 00:42:54,660
As we did the initial design, we wanted an
escape system.

511
00:42:54,660 --> 00:43:01,660
We wanted to build a pod into the cockpit
to allow the astronauts to escape if we had

512
00:43:05,500 --> 00:43:05,750
problems.

513
00:43:05,569 --> 00:43:11,079
And building the Space Shuttle main engine
was very difficult.

514
00:43:11,079 --> 00:43:14,980
Do these people know about sub-synchronous
whirl?

515
00:43:14,980 --> 00:43:19,780
They heard about it from J.R.

516
00:43:19,780 --> 00:43:24,069
We couldn't find any bearings in the world
that would withstand that load.

517
00:43:24,069 --> 00:43:24,859
They were failing.

518
00:43:24,859 --> 00:43:31,450
And you didn't know when they were going to
fail, so we built an automatic shutdown system

519
00:43:31,450 --> 00:43:35,819
into the engine.

520
00:43:35,819 --> 00:43:42,099
And Aaron and I were talking about that this
morning with Professor Cohen.

521
00:43:42,099 --> 00:43:46,550
That was well, we'll just figure out what
all the parameters are that tell you when

522
00:43:46,550 --> 00:43:51,480
the engine is malfunctioning and shut it down
because we don't want it to blow up.

523
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:56,740
We are going to look at RPM of the pumps and
we're going to look at temperature in the

524
00:43:56,740 --> 00:44:01,660
prompts and we're going to look at the pressure
in the engine head and we're going to look

525
00:44:01,660 --> 00:44:05,280
at the fuel flow rates, et cetera.

526
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:12,010
That sounds like we can do that, but how do
you know it is right?

527
00:44:12,010 --> 00:44:14,940
How do you know you're not shutting down a
good engine?

528
00:44:14,940 --> 00:44:21,940
And the point I am making there is that reliability
of the instrument becomes more important than

529
00:44:22,420 --> 00:44:25,230
the engine.

530
00:44:25,230 --> 00:44:26,579
Think about that.

531
00:44:26,579 --> 00:44:29,119
You can say I will have an automatic shutdown.

532
00:44:29,119 --> 00:44:34,579
I will have the automatic abort and get the
astronaut away, but somebody has got to make

533
00:44:34,579 --> 00:44:36,450
that decision.

534
00:44:36,450 --> 00:44:41,410
Nobody on the ground can do it fast enough
if the engine is going to blow up.

535
00:44:41,410 --> 00:44:42,750
The astronaut cannot do it.

536
00:44:42,750 --> 00:44:46,740
His reaction time is about 1.5 seconds, no
matter how much data you give them or how

537
00:44:46,740 --> 00:44:47,940
good the data is.

538
00:44:47,940 --> 00:44:51,150
So, it has got to be automatic.

539
00:44:51,150 --> 00:44:54,900
And that is a very difficult task for an engineer.

540
00:44:54,900 --> 00:45:01,900
He can make this system work but he cannot
tell you very rapidly when it is going to

541
00:45:04,050 --> 00:45:04,750
fail.

542
00:45:04,750 --> 00:45:11,750
And rocket engines have a bad, nasty habit
of going like that and it is gone.

543
00:45:12,720 --> 00:45:18,140
You've got to figure out when that is going
to happen, so designing instrumentation to

544
00:45:18,140 --> 00:45:19,720
do that.

545
00:45:19,720 --> 00:45:26,720
We then started thinking about that in application
to the Space Shuttle.

546
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:33,800
And our experience with redundancy, reliability
numbers thinking about that we said we want

547
00:45:36,670 --> 00:45:43,670
a system in the Shuttle that is going to be
fail operational, fail safe.

548
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:51,760
That is quad redundancy, so every critical
system has quad redundancy in the Space Shuttle.

549
00:45:56,819 --> 00:45:59,140
It sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

550
00:45:59,140 --> 00:46:02,849
We will come back to that in a minute.

551
00:46:02,849 --> 00:46:09,849
We said we would like to have an escape pod
but the escape pod has got to have a stability

552
00:46:11,940 --> 00:46:13,109
and control system.

553
00:46:13,109 --> 00:46:17,550
It has got to have a control system because
it is going to be a spacecraft.

554
00:46:17,550 --> 00:46:19,300
When is it going to use the pod?

555
00:46:19,300 --> 00:46:26,300
Is the pod going to be used at 100 feet off
the pad, 100,000 feet off the pad, 500,000

556
00:46:28,660 --> 00:46:31,250
feet off the pad?

557
00:46:31,250 --> 00:46:37,230
And if this thing is descending from any one
of those altitudes, how are you going to control

558
00:46:37,230 --> 00:46:38,160
it?

559
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:40,829
Very rapidly that is another spacecraft.

560
00:46:40,829 --> 00:46:46,609
It is probably a bigger job in building that
spacecraft than building the Space Shuttle

561
00:46:46,609 --> 00:46:47,309
itself.

562
00:46:47,309 --> 00:46:49,890
So you can see why we didn't do it.

563
00:46:49,890 --> 00:46:56,319
It is too tough, too big a job.

564
00:46:56,319 --> 00:47:00,809
We said we would like to have a go around
capability on this machine.

565
00:47:00,809 --> 00:47:07,809
It is going to have an L/D of about four to
five at best and the descent angle that you

566
00:47:11,609 --> 00:47:15,839
come down to land is 23 degrees.

567
00:47:15,839 --> 00:47:17,240
Let me tell you something.

568
00:47:17,240 --> 00:47:24,240
I have flown in a Gulfstream II on a 23 degree
descent trajectory and that is scary as hell.

569
00:47:26,030 --> 00:47:28,680
You're flying a brick.

570
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:35,680
That machine is coming down like that and
you're hanging on your straps.

571
00:47:37,030 --> 00:47:38,780
We would like to be able to have a go-around
capability.

572
00:47:38,780 --> 00:47:42,059
OK, we'll put some jet engines on it.

573
00:47:42,059 --> 00:47:43,309
It has got to have fuel.

574
00:47:43,309 --> 00:47:44,380
It has got to have a tank.

575
00:47:44,380 --> 00:47:45,970
It has got to have lines on it.

576
00:47:45,970 --> 00:47:50,790
It has got to have a certain amount of redundancy
with it and a certain amount of power.

577
00:47:50,790 --> 00:47:56,470
It has got to be absorbed into the thermal
protection system and come out and extend.

578
00:47:56,470 --> 00:48:01,980
What I want to do is go around as I'm reentering
from space so I can go once around the runway

579
00:48:01,980 --> 00:48:04,230
and land.

580
00:48:04,230 --> 00:48:08,760
It didn't take us long to figure out if we
built that system we couldn't carry a damn

581
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:12,250
pound into orbit.

582
00:48:12,250 --> 00:48:16,760
There went our payload.

583
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:23,760
And we very rapidly started figuring out how
to do dead-stick landings and how to preserve

584
00:48:25,349 --> 00:48:32,349
the energy and how to get this machine lined
up on the runway at way high altitudes, et

585
00:48:33,089 --> 00:48:34,349
cetera.

586
00:48:34,349 --> 00:48:37,290
So we did away with the go-around capability.

587
00:48:37,290 --> 00:48:38,410
We've done away with the pod.

588
00:48:38,410 --> 00:48:40,849
We've done away with the go-around capability.

589
00:48:40,849 --> 00:48:44,660
Now we don't have an escape system.

590
00:48:44,660 --> 00:48:48,609
What is your escape system on the Shuttle?

591
00:48:48,609 --> 00:48:55,609
Well, on Mercury and Apollo the escape system
is a solid rocket.

592
00:48:57,500 --> 00:49:02,309
Solid rockets have close to 100% reliability
as you can get.

593
00:49:02,309 --> 00:49:05,819
Usually, if it lights it burns and it goes.

594
00:49:05,819 --> 00:49:10,190
God, we've got two solid rockets on the Shuttle.

595
00:49:10,190 --> 00:49:13,150
Why aren't they our escape system?

596
00:49:13,150 --> 00:49:20,150
Because, if we can get this thing to 200,000
feet, it will fly.

597
00:49:21,940 --> 00:49:27,579
We can return to the launch site and land
from 200,000 feet because you aren't very

598
00:49:27,579 --> 00:49:31,150
far down range at 200,000 feet.

599
00:49:31,150 --> 00:49:38,150
That is a good idea, a great idea, but the
rockets have to be 100% reliable.

600
00:49:38,190 --> 00:49:45,190
It wasn't 100% reliable in the Challenger
accident.

601
00:49:49,290 --> 00:49:56,290
Unfortunately, I cannot account for the fallacies
of man.

602
00:49:56,440 --> 00:50:01,609
And I will come back to that, if you want
me to talk about the Challenger accident.

603
00:50:01,609 --> 00:50:08,609
But we built solid rockets to have 100% reliability,
and they were our escape rocket.

604
00:50:10,740 --> 00:50:17,740
We've got quad redundancy, we've got engines
that will perform to the best of our ability

605
00:50:19,680 --> 00:50:26,680
and shut down if they are going to explode,
we've got solid rockets as an escape system,

606
00:50:27,430 --> 00:50:33,770
and we will teach the pilots, with the best
control system we can come up with, to land

607
00:50:33,770 --> 00:50:38,180
this machine dead-stick.

608
00:50:38,180 --> 00:50:42,089
Now we've got to convince ourselves and the
management that the best way to fly this thing

609
00:50:42,089 --> 00:50:48,030
is unmanned or manned on the first flight.

610
00:50:48,030 --> 00:50:49,799
And we looked at flying it unmanned.

611
00:50:49,799 --> 00:50:50,750
We could have done that.

612
00:50:50,750 --> 00:50:56,400
We could have put an automatic control system
in to take the place of man.

613
00:50:56,400 --> 00:51:03,400
And these pilots that tell you they do manual
control during reentry in the Shuttle, hogwash.

614
00:51:06,540 --> 00:51:09,780
Pure hogwash.

615
00:51:09,780 --> 00:51:15,049
The Shuttle will not fly without the automatic
control system.

616
00:51:15,049 --> 00:51:19,640
The pilots are flying the outer loop.

617
00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:20,950
I could fly it.

618
00:51:20,950 --> 00:51:23,480
I have flown it in the simulator.

619
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:25,040
You know how I do it?

620
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:29,319
I don't touch the damn thing.

621
00:51:29,319 --> 00:51:36,319
You set the damn end of the runway into the
computer, right down.

622
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:42,210
And that's the way 95% of the airliners land
today, on automatic control.

623
00:51:42,210 --> 00:51:45,359
And, frankly, that is how the astronauts ought
to do it.

624
00:51:45,359 --> 00:51:47,520
They haven't done it yet.

625
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:50,440
They keep telling me what are we going to
do if the system fails?

626
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:55,410
And I say to them you better wind your damn
clock because if that system fails the thing

627
00:51:55,410 --> 00:51:56,089
is gone.

628
00:51:56,089 --> 00:52:01,349
It is an unstable machine.

629
00:52:01,349 --> 00:52:08,260
From mach 25 to touchdown it is an unstable
machine.

630
00:52:08,260 --> 00:52:11,900
If it diverges it is gone.

631
00:52:11,900 --> 00:52:18,900
If pilots tell you they are doing manual entry
on the Space Shuttle, I repeat that statement,

632
00:52:20,589 --> 00:52:21,549
hogwash.

633
00:52:21,549 --> 00:52:24,970
It cannot be done.

634
00:52:24,970 --> 00:52:31,970
Now, I can teach them, however, by building
a Gulfstream II into a space shuttle like

635
00:52:33,859 --> 00:52:34,140
vehicle.

636
00:52:34,140 --> 00:52:37,200
I can put the control system that they've
got in there.

637
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:38,890
I can repeat that.

638
00:52:38,890 --> 00:52:40,450
I can make it come down.

639
00:52:40,450 --> 00:52:45,520
I can put reverse thrust, if you believe,
on both engines in a GII.

640
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:50,930
And you're descending and you've got both
those damn engines back there going like that

641
00:52:50,930 --> 00:52:57,030
as it does its reverse thrust to match the
drag of the shuttle during entry.

642
00:52:57,030 --> 00:52:59,780
But I can teach them pretty well how to do
dead-stick landings.

643
00:52:59,780 --> 00:53:06,240
And so, I put all that together.

644
00:53:06,240 --> 00:53:13,240
And Professor Cohen and myself and a few others
go to Washington to convince the powers that

645
00:53:13,569 --> 00:53:19,869
be that we can fly this machine manned on
the first flight because it is the most reliable

646
00:53:19,869 --> 00:53:22,880
way to fly the machine.

647
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:23,770
And we convince them.

648
00:53:23,770 --> 00:53:30,770
It took a little doing, a lot of fancy talking,
I guess, but that is what we decided to do.

649
00:53:30,950 --> 00:53:33,540
And I think it was a good decision.

650
00:53:33,540 --> 00:53:40,540
In retrospect, it was a lousy decision.

651
00:53:40,630 --> 00:53:41,780
Why?

652
00:53:41,780 --> 00:53:48,480
Because if we had had unmanned flying capability
on the orbiter and we had the Challenger accident,

653
00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:55,480
we could have flown it again the next day
with the unmanned control system and proved

654
00:54:01,089 --> 00:54:03,079
that it was OK.

655
00:54:03,079 --> 00:54:06,710
Well, we didn't have that capability.

656
00:54:06,710 --> 00:54:13,710
And, when you get into the politics of flying
men in space in this country, rational thinking

657
00:54:15,690 --> 00:54:19,559
does not carry the day.

658
00:54:19,559 --> 00:54:22,799
Political thinking carries the day, even in
NASA.

659
00:54:22,799 --> 00:54:29,400
You will find that out as young engineers
also, that you not only have to be an engineer,

660
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:36,400
you do have to be somewhat of a politician
in order to sell your programs.

661
00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:45,920
We convinced ourselves that it was the best
thing to do at that time to fly man on the

662
00:54:48,349 --> 00:54:52,140
first flight.

663
00:54:52,140 --> 00:54:57,180
Because it is in my head and it comes out,
I want to say a little bit about the problems

664
00:54:57,180 --> 00:54:59,730
that they face today.

665
00:54:59,730 --> 00:55:06,730
Or the way in which they use the Space Shuttle
today is frankly not how we intended the machine

666
00:55:09,990 --> 00:55:12,230
to fly.

667
00:55:12,230 --> 00:55:16,020
We have quad redundancy.

668
00:55:16,020 --> 00:55:23,020
And the way NASA uses it makes it less reliable
than if we had just had a damn single string

669
00:55:25,510 --> 00:55:27,569
system.

670
00:55:27,569 --> 00:55:29,640
Why?

671
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:34,900
Because they have to have all quad redundant
systems working at liftoff.

672
00:55:34,900 --> 00:55:40,569
So all four systems have to be operating at
liftoff.

673
00:55:40,569 --> 00:55:42,130
That is hard.

674
00:55:42,130 --> 00:55:45,789
It is hard enough to have one operating properly.

675
00:55:45,789 --> 00:55:51,650
Now you have to have all four in all the places
where you have quad redundancy.

676
00:55:51,650 --> 00:55:54,589
That isn't how we intended it to work.

677
00:55:54,589 --> 00:55:58,119
What we intended it to do was, you would get
to the pad and get ready to launch and one

678
00:55:58,119 --> 00:56:00,740
system fails, you would keep right on going.

679
00:56:00,740 --> 00:56:04,680
If you have two fail you keep right on going.

680
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:11,680
That is the way we intended it to be because
we wanted it to be a reusable system with

681
00:56:13,039 --> 00:56:14,869
quick turnaround.

682
00:56:14,869 --> 00:56:21,369
Two weeks we want to be able to turn that
machine around.

683
00:56:21,369 --> 00:56:26,339
And you could do that today because they've
flown in 100 and something times.

684
00:56:26,339 --> 00:56:27,150
They know that machine.

685
00:56:27,150 --> 00:56:28,140
They know it well.

686
00:56:28,140 --> 00:56:29,640
They know how the systems perform.

687
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:35,559
You can look at the telemetry when it lands
and say all three of the four were working

688
00:56:35,559 --> 00:56:36,859
and I've got a thing over here.

689
00:56:36,859 --> 00:56:38,579
I can fix that in ten minutes.

690
00:56:38,579 --> 00:56:40,349
I am ready to go.

691
00:56:40,349 --> 00:56:47,349
They put more time on the systems on the ground
than they do in flight testing the machine.

692
00:56:50,299 --> 00:56:53,450
Is that expensive?

693
00:56:53,450 --> 00:57:00,450
My God, that's the reason it cost $4 billion
a year to keep all those running standing

694
00:57:02,539 --> 00:57:07,420
Army at Cape Canaveral.

695
00:57:07,420 --> 00:57:14,049
If you're going to build redundancy in the
future, you guys, if you're going to put redundancy

696
00:57:14,049 --> 00:57:20,059
in this machine, don't tell them about it.

697
00:57:20,059 --> 00:57:22,660
Now, that may sound funny.

698
00:57:22,660 --> 00:57:27,140
But that is how your computer is designed.

699
00:57:27,140 --> 00:57:31,720
You don't have BITE in your computer anymore,
built-in test equipment.

700
00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:32,880
Do you know why?

701
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:36,780
Because damn engineers kept using it.

702
00:57:36,780 --> 00:57:42,539
Now the computer builders build in the test
equipment but they don't tell you it is there.

703
00:57:42,539 --> 00:57:45,980
The redundancy works automatically.

704
00:57:45,980 --> 00:57:50,440
Probably got three or four in there just like
we do in the Shuttle, but your computer keeps

705
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:50,690
working.

706
00:57:50,599 --> 00:57:56,260
It might be a little slower, sometimes it
can get you as mad as hell, but they don't

707
00:57:56,260 --> 00:57:57,619
tell you about it.

708
00:57:57,619 --> 00:58:01,859
My advice is don't tell the people about it
the next time.

709
00:58:01,859 --> 00:58:05,130
Don't tell the people at the Cape this thing
has quad redundancy.

710
00:58:05,130 --> 00:58:12,130
Now, that is probably somewhat foolishness
but I guaranty that if I had anything to do

711
00:58:12,260 --> 00:58:18,119
about it the next time, I might very well
do it that way because it is not the right

712
00:58:18,119 --> 00:58:20,720
way to think about this machine.

713
00:58:20,720 --> 00:58:27,720
The machine is a beautiful, wonderful piece
of hardware.

714
00:58:28,510 --> 00:58:35,510
The orbiter system, the most complex system
ever built by man to fly, I was talking to

715
00:58:39,140 --> 00:58:46,140
some coops a few days ago, I've said that
word 14 times, it has never had a failure.

716
00:58:48,770 --> 00:58:55,770
The orbiter has never had a failure that would
have prevented that machine from landing safely.

717
00:58:59,010 --> 00:59:06,010
NASA is now going to use, however, all of
the components that have failed.

718
00:59:07,690 --> 00:59:12,940
They are going to use the solid rocket.

719
00:59:12,940 --> 00:59:19,940
They are going to put a command-like service
module on top of it with an escape rocket

720
00:59:20,910 --> 00:59:22,510
and fly it.

721
00:59:22,510 --> 00:59:24,400
That system has failed.

722
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:28,780
They are going to use the tank.

723
00:59:28,780 --> 00:59:35,780
Engineers, this day and time, cannot figure
out how to put insulation on the tank.

724
00:59:36,150 --> 00:59:37,450
Ridiculous.

725
00:59:37,450 --> 00:59:39,329
Not only ridiculous.

726
00:59:39,329 --> 00:59:40,660
Ludicrous.

727
00:59:40,660 --> 00:59:44,319
You mean to tell me there is not a design
engineer sitting in this room that cannot

728
00:59:44,319 --> 00:59:48,020
tell you how to keep the foam insulation on
that tank?

729
00:59:48,020 --> 00:59:50,160
Hell, my son could do it.

730
00:59:50,160 --> 00:59:57,160
In fact, my grandson could probably do it.

731
00:59:57,400 --> 01:00:04,400
The Space Shuttle main engines, now that is
a damn tough piece of hardware.

732
01:00:04,599 --> 01:00:05,369
That is what we're going to use.

733
01:00:05,369 --> 01:00:12,369
That is what we're going to put in orbit and
use as a propulsion system to send you to

734
01:00:13,510 --> 01:00:14,119
the Moon.

735
01:00:14,119 --> 01:00:18,650
Now they say we're going to make some changes
to it and make it better.

736
01:00:18,650 --> 01:00:25,650
I will probably be dead and gone, but I would
like to see it.

737
01:00:27,660 --> 01:00:31,329
That thing is designed right up to the teeth.

738
01:00:31,329 --> 01:00:38,329
The maximum power you can get out of hydrogen
and oxygen has an ISP of about 460, and the

739
01:00:38,619 --> 01:00:40,349
engine on the Shuttle is 458.

740
01:00:40,349 --> 01:00:47,349
I don't know how you could get much more efficient
than that, but that really is a tough engine.

741
01:00:48,039 --> 01:00:51,369
You're continuously changing components on
it.

742
01:00:51,369 --> 01:00:53,920
But those are the three components.

743
01:00:53,920 --> 01:01:00,760
NASA says I am going to use those to go to
the Moon, but I will throw the orbiter away.

744
01:01:00,760 --> 01:01:04,420
Never had a failure on the orbiter.

745
01:01:04,420 --> 01:01:11,420
We talked a little bit about RTLS, return
to launch site.

746
01:01:13,299 --> 01:01:17,520
That sounds like something easy to do, but
think about the software involved in that

747
01:01:17,520 --> 01:01:24,520
little dude in figuring out how to do it,
how to take that machine back to land at Cape

748
01:01:27,069 --> 01:01:29,250
Canaveral if you do have an abort.

749
01:01:29,250 --> 01:01:31,049
Think about the software involved in that.

750
01:01:31,049 --> 01:01:32,640
Think about the possibilities.

751
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:34,950
Think about the cutoff conditions.

752
01:01:34,950 --> 01:01:41,950
Think about the mach number range you're going
to have to fly.

753
01:01:42,760 --> 01:01:49,760
Return to launch site was part of our philosophy
of not having an escape system per se on the

754
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:56,549
Shuttle.

755
01:01:56,549 --> 01:02:01,750
I know we have some navigation and guidance
people in this audience.

756
01:02:01,750 --> 01:02:04,309
How then did we decide?

757
01:02:04,309 --> 01:02:08,609
Jeff asked me to fly the first time.

758
01:02:08,609 --> 01:02:14,299
That was tough, very difficult.

759
01:02:14,299 --> 01:02:19,940
We had some of the best experts in the world
come review what we were doing and look at

760
01:02:19,940 --> 01:02:22,029
all the systems.

761
01:02:22,029 --> 01:02:28,349
The one thing, two things, really, that they
had the most trouble with in making sure we

762
01:02:28,349 --> 01:02:31,849
knew what we were doing.

763
01:02:31,849 --> 01:02:34,960
First was the thermal protection system.

764
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:41,960
And we never really convinced the experts
that we did have a thermal protection system

765
01:02:42,480 --> 01:02:43,690
that would work.

766
01:02:43,690 --> 01:02:50,690
As a matter of fact, the man who invented
lunar orbit rendezvous, he didn't invent it

767
01:02:52,210 --> 01:02:57,920
but he sold the day in using lunar orbit rendezvous.

768
01:02:57,920 --> 01:03:04,920
And the chief structures engineer in the United
States, that is probably a stretch but one

769
01:03:05,980 --> 01:03:12,980
of them at Stanford wrote me a cosigned letter
on T minus one month after we had reviewed

770
01:03:17,079 --> 01:03:19,809
this system, we had done everything they asked
us to do.

771
01:03:19,809 --> 01:03:25,859
We ran combined loads test, we ran worst loads
test, we ran combined worst loads test to

772
01:03:25,859 --> 01:03:29,750
prove to ourselves that the thermal protection
system wouldn't fail.

773
01:03:29,750 --> 01:03:32,490
I got this letter at T minus one month.

774
01:03:32,490 --> 01:03:36,038
It is now in my effects at Virginia Tech.

775
01:03:36,038 --> 01:03:41,520
As a matter of fact, Virginia Tech said are
you sure you want this letter in your files?

776
01:03:41,520 --> 01:03:44,619
I said oh, yes, I want that letter in my files.

777
01:03:44,619 --> 01:03:48,160
It is probably the most important letter you
will ever have in my files.

778
01:03:48,160 --> 01:03:55,160
But these two gentlemen said we implore you
not to fly the orbiter because the tiles are

779
01:04:02,380 --> 01:04:03,369
going to come off.

780
01:04:03,369 --> 01:04:10,369
It may not come off while you're at the max
heating pulse, but by the time you get ready

781
01:04:11,119 --> 01:04:17,559
to land NASA is going to be totally embarrassed
because all the tiles are going to fall off.

782
01:04:17,559 --> 01:04:24,559
And we would ask you to put a steel net around
this vehicle so that they won't fall off.

783
01:04:31,750 --> 01:04:37,309
I am still aghast at that letter because I
don't know what else we could have done to

784
01:04:37,309 --> 01:04:40,599
satisfy them that we had done everything they
asked us.

785
01:04:40,599 --> 01:04:47,109
They were concerned that the strain isolation
pad, which is what the tile sits on, and you've

786
01:04:47,109 --> 01:04:52,890
had that explanation, they were concerned
that the combined vibrations and aerodynamic

787
01:04:52,890 --> 01:04:59,890
loads would cause a failure in the SIP or
at least at the glue joint.

788
01:05:00,220 --> 01:05:04,329
And that, indeed, all the major tiles that
had gone through the large heat pulse would

789
01:05:04,329 --> 01:05:06,710
fall off.

790
01:05:06,710 --> 01:05:13,710
Professor Cohen and I met them on the Queen
Mary at an AIEE meeting after the first flight

791
01:05:22,950 --> 01:05:23,839
had taken space.

792
01:05:23,839 --> 01:05:25,038
It was satisfactory.

793
01:05:25,038 --> 01:05:26,829
It flew well.

794
01:05:26,829 --> 01:05:29,319
It flew beautifully.

795
01:05:29,319 --> 01:05:34,130
Those two gentlemen came running out and asked
Aaron if we could come and sit down and have

796
01:05:34,130 --> 01:05:38,049
a drink with them.

797
01:05:38,049 --> 01:05:45,049
And we said hell, no, and walked away from
them.

798
01:05:45,130 --> 01:05:52,130
That is what I thought of that letter.

799
01:05:52,730 --> 01:05:58,069
Say that again.

800
01:05:58,069 --> 01:05:58,549
We didn't get the last part.

801
01:05:58,549 --> 01:06:02,470
Now, the other thing I want to talk about
is the control system of the Shuttle.

802
01:06:02,470 --> 01:06:09,210
We had several gentlemen [NOISE OBSCURES]
and said we are infinitely smarter today.

803
01:06:09,210 --> 01:06:10,859
Yes, I did.

804
01:06:10,859 --> 01:06:17,859
The public affairs officer said we need a
comment from you, after the machine had landed,

805
01:06:19,029 --> 01:06:21,520
on what you think of this flight.

806
01:06:21,520 --> 01:06:27,210
I said we have just become infinitely smarter.

807
01:06:27,210 --> 01:06:32,049
Not so much about the tile were we infinitely
smarter but the story I'm about to tell.

808
01:06:32,049 --> 01:06:39,049
The automatic control system, in terms of
the aerodynamic parameters that it has to

809
01:06:41,170 --> 01:06:48,170
deal with, there are roughly 35 variables
in the aerodynamics of the machine all the

810
01:06:50,569 --> 01:06:53,970
way from products of inertia to cnBeta.

811
01:06:53,970 --> 01:07:00,890
Does everybody know cnBeta?

812
01:07:00,890 --> 01:07:07,890
CnBeta is the capability of the rudder to
stabilize the machine, the yawing moment due

813
01:07:12,279 --> 01:07:14,900
to side slip.

814
01:07:14,900 --> 01:07:20,900
And I still do remember a little bit of my
aerodynamics.

815
01:07:20,900 --> 01:07:27,900
Anyway, there are no facilities in the world
to measure those 35 parameters, very accurately

816
01:07:33,809 --> 01:07:40,809
anyway, that would tell you what to design
the automatic control system to.

817
01:07:43,460 --> 01:07:50,460
It is not so difficult at high mach numbers
above, say, ten.

818
01:07:51,400 --> 01:07:56,970
You can use, what do you call it, Newtonian
flow?

819
01:07:56,970 --> 01:08:00,680
And, as you well know, you use the aerodynamic
controls when you can.

820
01:08:00,680 --> 01:08:07,680
You use the thrusters when you can, and you
combine the two as you transfer from one to

821
01:08:08,059 --> 01:08:11,250
the other in the range of flight regimes.

822
01:08:11,250 --> 01:08:17,170
But, actually, it is a guess.

823
01:08:17,170 --> 01:08:24,170
We looked at all of the possibilities that
had been done on the X-15, had been done on

824
01:08:24,729 --> 01:08:29,290
the Dyna-Soar program, had been done in wind
tunnel tests of almost every configuration

825
01:08:29,290 --> 01:08:32,190
for hypersonic flow.

826
01:08:32,190 --> 01:08:37,630
And you just couldn't nail down what those
35 parameters were.

827
01:08:37,630 --> 01:08:44,630
What we did was said here is what we think
it is, here is a variation on top of that,

828
01:08:45,940 --> 01:08:52,940
and here is a deviation on top of that and
here are those 35 parameters throughout the

829
01:08:53,279 --> 01:08:55,500
total mach range.

830
01:08:55,500 --> 01:09:02,500
And we are going to do a Monte Carlo analysis
at every tenth of a mach number from 25 to

831
01:09:07,640 --> 01:09:11,090
touchdown and have no failures.

832
01:09:11,090 --> 01:09:17,990
And, if we have a failure, we have to change
the gains and go back and run it again.

833
01:09:17,990 --> 01:09:20,870
I don't know about you.

834
01:09:20,870 --> 01:09:26,220
That sure convinced me that that machine would
fly.

835
01:09:26,220 --> 01:09:30,830
But I still said we just became infinitely
smarter.

836
01:09:30,830 --> 01:09:37,830
I said, before we flew, we certainly have
to change the gains because there will be

837
01:09:39,040 --> 01:09:46,040
regions where the machine is oscillatory coming
down and might frighten somebody, even if

838
01:09:47,220 --> 01:09:49,910
it were going to damp.

839
01:09:49,910 --> 01:09:51,350
That was post-flight.

840
01:09:51,350 --> 01:09:55,240
I said I don't ever want to change the gains.

841
01:09:55,240 --> 01:09:59,130
The damn thing worked.

842
01:09:59,130 --> 01:10:06,130
So, those two problems were the fundamentally
hardest problems to be able to test and assure

843
01:10:06,740 --> 01:10:09,540
yourself that you were ready to fly.

844
01:10:09,540 --> 01:10:15,170
But, in the end, how did we decide to fly?

845
01:10:15,170 --> 01:10:21,790
Frankly, I didn't know what else to do.

846
01:10:21,790 --> 01:10:28,500
In my mind, Professor Cohen's mind, John Yardley's
mind who was head of Manned Space Flight,

847
01:10:28,500 --> 01:10:34,210
these gentlemen sitting in front of me that
worked on the automatic control system, we

848
01:10:34,210 --> 01:10:34,820
didn't know what else to do.

849
01:10:34,820 --> 01:10:38,000
We had done everything we could think of.

850
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:41,520
We suspected that there were some unknown
unknowns.

851
01:10:41,520 --> 01:10:47,120
A good old NASA term, "unknown unknowns".

852
01:10:47,120 --> 01:10:49,120
But we didn't know what they were.

853
01:10:49,120 --> 01:10:56,120
We didn't know how to test it so we've got
to go light the torch and do it.

854
01:10:56,580 --> 01:11:03,580
I don't think it took a lot of guts or nerve.

855
01:11:12,940 --> 01:11:19,940
71:00 And

856
01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:40,600
the responsibility of the program because
it may very well be something that just causes

857
01:11:40,600 --> 01:11:45,270
the Space Program to collapse in the United
States.

858
01:11:45,270 --> 01:11:48,970
And that is a tough task.

859
01:11:48,970 --> 01:11:50,960
You don't learn that overnight.

860
01:11:50,960 --> 01:11:54,420
You just sort of have to learn to live with
it.

861
01:11:54,420 --> 01:11:59,020
And, frankly, you have to like it.

862
01:11:59,020 --> 01:12:02,930
You have to like being in that position.

863
01:12:02,930 --> 01:12:09,930
I had one of my flight directors who became
very much affected by it mentally.

864
01:12:16,170 --> 01:12:20,630
So affected that he quit and went and became
a psychiatrist.

865
01:12:20,630 --> 01:12:27,630
Did not ever perform as a psychiatrist but
got his degree in psychiatry.

866
01:12:29,220 --> 01:12:35,540
Phil Shaffer, if you know him, one of my very
closest friends.

867
01:12:35,540 --> 01:12:42,540
He is now making me kind of rich because we
own a lot of oil wells in Oklahoma together.

868
01:12:45,120 --> 01:12:51,340
It is a tough job but it is a marvelous job.

869
01:12:51,340 --> 01:12:58,040
There is nothing I can think of, including
pitching in the World Series or winning the

870
01:12:58,040 --> 01:13:05,040
US Open that comes close to being in this
business.

871
01:13:06,900 --> 01:13:13,900
Every day is a challenge, every day is hell
and everyday is the best feeling you've ever

872
01:13:16,700 --> 01:13:18,710
had in your life.

873
01:13:18,710 --> 01:13:22,370
That is how you feel every day.

874
01:13:22,370 --> 01:13:28,230
You go through those transients almost every
day.

875
01:13:28,230 --> 01:13:31,480
I highly recommend it to you.

876
01:13:31,480 --> 01:13:37,370
I don't think you can get rich until you retire
and become a board member like some of us

877
01:13:37,370 --> 01:13:44,370
have, but before that you're not going to
get rich but you're going to be happy every

878
01:13:44,980 --> 01:13:45,410
day.

879
01:13:45,410 --> 01:13:49,380
And you are going to feel like you contributed
every day.

880
01:13:49,380 --> 01:13:54,700
And I don't know, at least in our business,
anything better than that.

881
01:13:54,700 --> 01:14:00,160
And these gentlemen all sitting here in front
of me will attest to that.

882
01:14:00,160 --> 01:14:03,320
It is a great life.

883
01:14:03,320 --> 01:14:10,320
With that I will stop and take your questions.

884
01:14:12,380 --> 01:14:19,380
[APPLAUSE] Chris, well, I'll start off.

885
01:14:23,760 --> 01:14:26,590
Aaron, can you stand up?

886
01:14:26,590 --> 01:14:26,890
Yes.

887
01:14:26,890 --> 01:14:33,890
What would be the systems that you would think
could use most improvement on the Shuttle

888
01:14:34,559 --> 01:14:36,470
today?

889
01:14:36,470 --> 01:14:43,470
With today's technology and then as you see
things, what would be the systems that you

890
01:14:52,440 --> 01:14:59,440
think could use the most improvement in terms
of performance margin?

891
01:15:06,010 --> 01:15:13,010
Well, again my first answer would be political.

892
01:15:14,750 --> 01:15:21,580
I would approve the thermal protection system.

893
01:15:21,580 --> 01:15:28,200
I don't think it has to be improved very much,
but it would sure get a lot of people off

894
01:15:28,200 --> 01:15:32,160
our backs if we improved the thermal protection
system.

895
01:15:32,160 --> 01:15:35,059
And there are ways of doing that today.

896
01:15:35,059 --> 01:15:42,059
There are some advancements in the state-of-the-art
of the materials probably in the way you attach

897
01:15:42,750 --> 01:15:47,490
to the plow to the machine, probably the way
you proof test it.

898
01:15:47,490 --> 01:15:52,059
All of those things, I think, would be where
I would go first.

899
01:15:52,059 --> 01:15:57,390
I would put an electric system in secondly.

900
01:15:57,390 --> 01:16:00,360
What about hydraulics?

901
01:16:00,360 --> 01:16:07,360
And get rid of the hydraulics because I think
that is a maintenance problem.

902
01:16:08,710 --> 01:16:13,120
And I think that the APUs are always going
to be a problem because that is something

903
01:16:13,120 --> 01:16:20,120
that is turning up at 400,000 RPM, a rotor
that is about that big turning up 400,000

904
01:16:20,170 --> 01:16:20,870
RPM.

905
01:16:20,870 --> 01:16:27,420
And, because at 400,000 RPM, actually, instead
of being this diameter is now an eight to

906
01:16:27,420 --> 01:16:33,460
a quarter of an inch bigger because the metal
is stretching under those conditions.

907
01:16:33,460 --> 01:16:36,750
The valves we've had trouble with, as you
well know.

908
01:16:36,750 --> 01:16:40,920
The material where this thing is pulsing.

909
01:16:40,920 --> 01:16:44,940
And these are nothing new.

910
01:16:44,940 --> 01:16:49,940
There are designs, there are electric motors,
there are power systems that would do it much

911
01:16:49,940 --> 01:16:56,940
better than a hydraulic system.

912
01:16:57,340 --> 01:17:00,620
Those two systems, I think, are primary.

913
01:17:00,620 --> 01:17:04,640
Now, the other thing is you have to keep up
with the state-of-the-art.

914
01:17:04,640 --> 01:17:10,580
And one of the biggest problems you have with
the Shuttle today is nobody builds the parts

915
01:17:10,580 --> 01:17:11,550
anymore.

916
01:17:11,550 --> 01:17:15,220
You go to the manufacturers and they say oh,
we stopped building that system ten years

917
01:17:15,220 --> 01:17:16,870
ago.

918
01:17:16,870 --> 01:17:20,809
All the circuit boards and everything is passé.

919
01:17:20,809 --> 01:17:23,530
And that sounds like, well, we'll just change
the circuit boards.

920
01:17:23,530 --> 01:17:29,000
Well, that is a tough problem because the
process specs have got to be looked at.

921
01:17:29,000 --> 01:17:35,940
The sneak circuitry, the sneak paths have
got to be looked at because that was the thing

922
01:17:35,940 --> 01:17:42,809
that always got to us in space flight, everything
works fine and then some day somebody turned

923
01:17:42,809 --> 01:17:47,790
something off and the thing glitches and it
fired the retrorocket or something like that.

924
01:17:47,790 --> 01:17:54,790
And so you have to be sure that when you do
redesign the circuitry into the modern world

925
01:17:55,150 --> 01:17:59,710
that it is properly done.

926
01:17:59,710 --> 01:18:03,550
A lot of things you don't need on Space Shuttle
probably, you don't need the backup flight

927
01:18:03,550 --> 01:18:09,140
control system which costs a lot of money.

928
01:18:09,140 --> 01:18:16,140
And then I think the biggest thing I would
do is force the system to use automated checkout.

929
01:18:16,200 --> 01:18:20,240
That is where all the money is, I think.

930
01:18:20,240 --> 01:18:27,240
And maintaining the machine, nobody is willing
to use automatic checkout.

931
01:18:27,870 --> 01:18:34,870
It is there and you can do it very easily
but the people at Cape Canaveral, they need

932
01:18:37,640 --> 01:18:40,270
to be flight controllers.

933
01:18:40,270 --> 01:18:47,270
What I mean by that is the people at Cape
Canaveral who prepare and maintain the machine

934
01:18:47,309 --> 01:18:54,309
have a totally different approach to the space
machine than the flight controllers do.

935
01:18:54,350 --> 01:18:58,230
The people at the Cape want it to be perfect
when it is launched.

936
01:18:58,230 --> 01:19:03,510
And so, when they do the checkout and it doesn't
work right, they go plug a new board in or

937
01:19:03,510 --> 01:19:07,200
they go put a new system in or change out
the fuel cell.

938
01:19:07,200 --> 01:19:09,930
A flight controller does not have that prerogative.

939
01:19:09,930 --> 01:19:16,930
He has got to figure out how do I live with
what I've got and make the best of it?

940
01:19:17,100 --> 01:19:18,280
I think that is the best attitude.

941
01:19:18,280 --> 01:19:23,520
And they need more of that in the maintenance
side.

942
01:19:23,520 --> 01:19:28,100
I think that is where the biggest savings
and the biggest improvement could be made

943
01:19:28,100 --> 01:19:30,250
in the Space Shuttle.

944
01:19:30,250 --> 01:19:35,620
The other thing I think about is the engine,
SSME.

945
01:19:35,620 --> 01:19:42,620
I think if you derated the SSME that the turnaround
time on the engine and the reliability of

946
01:19:43,890 --> 01:19:48,890
the engine would go up significantly.

947
01:19:48,890 --> 01:19:55,450
If you derated the engine, i.e., instead of
asking it to put out 108% every time you go

948
01:19:55,450 --> 01:19:58,970
to the Space Station because you're going
up to the higher inclinations.

949
01:19:58,970 --> 01:20:05,970
You just put a bigger head in it or whatever
it takes to derate the engine.

950
01:20:07,720 --> 01:20:09,170
Make it run at 95% power.

951
01:20:09,170 --> 01:20:16,170
Gee whiz, the thing would last forever if
you did that.

952
01:20:23,980 --> 01:20:29,809
Chris, you mentioned in your talk about going
back to the Moon.

953
01:20:29,809 --> 01:20:34,540
And I was going to ask you a couple of parts
of the question.

954
01:20:34,540 --> 01:20:35,940
One is what for?

955
01:20:35,940 --> 01:20:42,780
Two is it to go to the Moon or is it set in
stone to do something else?

956
01:20:42,780 --> 01:20:49,240
And then perhaps you could comment on what
your prediction is for the Space Program for

957
01:20:49,240 --> 01:20:51,490
the US in the future.

958
01:20:51,490 --> 01:20:54,640
You're going to get graded on it.

959
01:20:54,640 --> 01:20:59,430
Why go back to the Moon?

960
01:20:59,430 --> 01:21:06,430
Well, I think that there are enough resources
on the Moon to make it economically viable,

961
01:21:12,420 --> 01:21:14,080
number one.

962
01:21:14,080 --> 01:21:21,080
Number two, I think you could develop enough
electrical power on the Moon to provide enough

963
01:21:28,280 --> 01:21:32,350
power for the people that were going to live
there and be stationed there permanently.

964
01:21:32,350 --> 01:21:36,050
And you would do it on the backside, by the
way, not on the front side.

965
01:21:36,050 --> 01:21:40,820
That is where you would want your permanent
base on the Moon to be on the backside because

966
01:21:40,820 --> 01:21:44,750
it would be shielded from all the electronic
signals from the Earth.

967
01:21:44,750 --> 01:21:49,880
It is the best place in the world to look
at the rest of the universe.

968
01:21:49,880 --> 01:21:55,170
I would build my space base on the backside
of the Moon.

969
01:21:55,170 --> 01:22:02,170
And then I believe there are possibilities,
although it is not technically sound yet.

970
01:22:02,470 --> 01:22:09,470
But I believe there are possibilities of providing
enough electrical power to the Earth from

971
01:22:11,080 --> 01:22:16,059
the Moon that you could shutdown every power
plant on the Earth.

972
01:22:16,059 --> 01:22:20,070
You get that much electrical energy from the
Moon.

973
01:22:20,070 --> 01:22:26,000
And that would certainly offload the power
requirements on the Earth which are almost

974
01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:26,250
logarithmic, aren't they?

975
01:22:26,160 --> 01:22:33,160
China is going to end up using more electrical
power than we do shortly, so we need electrical

976
01:22:36,020 --> 01:22:36,430
power.

977
01:22:36,430 --> 01:22:38,660
And I think you could get that from the Moon.

978
01:22:38,660 --> 01:22:45,660
Plus, I think that the geophysicists and the
geologists, astrophysicists all can give you

979
01:22:49,620 --> 01:22:56,620
a thousand reasons why you should go back
to the Moon because of what Professor Yuri

980
01:23:01,970 --> 01:23:03,320
said.

981
01:23:03,320 --> 01:23:07,400
It is the Rosetta Stone of the universe.

982
01:23:07,400 --> 01:23:14,160
There is more to be known from the Moon about
the Earth than you can ever get out of the

983
01:23:14,160 --> 01:23:15,940
Earth.

984
01:23:15,940 --> 01:23:19,900
It is still very useful to go back there from
a scientific point of view.

985
01:23:19,900 --> 01:23:26,480
Plus, the engineering and economics of it.

986
01:23:26,480 --> 01:23:33,480
I didn't say it because I wasn't sure you
wanted to have such a discussion.

987
01:23:33,490 --> 01:23:35,260
But I will.

988
01:23:35,260 --> 01:23:40,790
I think it is a travesty that we aren't doing
it with the Space Shuttle and the Space Station

989
01:23:40,790 --> 01:23:46,130
to go back to the Moon or to go to Mars.

990
01:23:46,130 --> 01:23:47,600
Why do I think that?

991
01:23:47,600 --> 01:23:53,890
Because, in either case, I don't understand
why you would want to build an Earth entering

992
01:23:53,890 --> 01:23:57,090
vehicle to go to the Moon.

993
01:23:57,090 --> 01:24:02,590
What you want is an interplanetary spacecraft.

994
01:24:02,590 --> 01:24:05,180
Why does it have to have a heat shield?

995
01:24:05,180 --> 01:24:09,580
Why does it have to have parachutes or some
kind of landing capability?

996
01:24:09,580 --> 01:24:13,770
Why not just go to and from Earth orbit?

997
01:24:13,770 --> 01:24:20,770
And the Space Shuttle is the greatest machine
for carrying things too and from orbit that

998
01:24:21,290 --> 01:24:22,760
has ever been thought of.

999
01:24:22,760 --> 01:24:28,350
And the one they are going to build, even
if it's an unmanned vehicle, is still going

1000
01:24:28,350 --> 01:24:31,950
to have an awful lot of complexity to it.

1001
01:24:31,950 --> 01:24:36,790
And I think that if you've made the Space
Shuttle economically viable, which nobody

1002
01:24:36,790 --> 01:24:37,910
thinks you can.

1003
01:24:37,910 --> 01:24:40,550
And maybe Chris Kraft is the only one that
thinks you can.

1004
01:24:40,550 --> 01:24:43,730
If that is true then that is true.

1005
01:24:43,730 --> 01:24:44,680
I don't think that way.

1006
01:24:44,680 --> 01:24:51,680
I think the Space Shuttle is an economically
viable machine, and so it is a travesty to

1007
01:24:53,520 --> 01:24:55,120
me to throw it away.

1008
01:24:55,120 --> 01:25:00,390
And the Space Station could be used as the
place where you assemble all this stuff.

1009
01:25:00,390 --> 01:25:02,900
And everybody says well, it's at the wrong
inclination.

1010
01:25:02,900 --> 01:25:04,700
Yes, it is at the wrong inclination.

1011
01:25:04,700 --> 01:25:11,700
You were foolish to put it there in the first
place, but that is where it is.

1012
01:25:12,330 --> 01:25:18,790
Every time I had a little bit of fuel left
over, I'd inch it down a little bit, and the

1013
01:25:18,790 --> 01:25:22,580
first thing you know we'd be down to 28.5
degrees [NOISE OBSCURES].

1014
01:25:22,580 --> 01:25:28,790
Today it costs you 15,000 pounds of payload
to go to the Space Station, and that is a

1015
01:25:28,790 --> 01:25:30,600
travesty, too.

1016
01:25:30,600 --> 01:25:33,830
You wouldn't want to do that continuously.

1017
01:25:33,830 --> 01:25:38,930
I would use the Space Station as my assembly
point and I would use the Space Shuttle as

1018
01:25:38,930 --> 01:25:40,250
the machine to go there.

1019
01:25:40,250 --> 01:25:47,250
And then I would build myself a bunch of interplanetary
spacecraft to go to and from the Moon and

1020
01:25:48,430 --> 01:25:48,900
Mars.

1021
01:25:48,900 --> 01:25:55,900
And when I did that I would be smart enough
to build all these newfangled structures,

1022
01:25:56,100 --> 01:26:00,070
inflatable structures, et cetera, which you
could use not only as the interplanetary spacecraft.

1023
01:26:00,070 --> 01:26:05,260
You would use that where you would live on
the Moon.

1024
01:26:05,260 --> 01:26:11,740
I think it has a better approach from an engineering
point of view.

1025
01:26:11,740 --> 01:26:17,620
Whether that is the political way to sell
the program, Mr.

1026
01:26:17,620 --> 01:26:18,520
Griffin has got to do that.

1027
01:26:18,520 --> 01:26:20,470
I mean that is what his job is.

1028
01:26:20,470 --> 01:26:23,850
Fortunately, it is not mine.

1029
01:26:23,850 --> 01:26:30,390
I was asked to be the Deputy Administrator
and the Administrator of NASA several times.

1030
01:26:30,390 --> 01:26:34,380
And you can hear the way I talk here that
I would have lasted about six days to six

1031
01:26:34,380 --> 01:26:38,640
months.

1032
01:26:38,640 --> 01:26:44,470
What do I think about the possibilities of
today's plans?

1033
01:26:44,470 --> 01:26:51,470
I hate to say this but I think it is going
to fail.

1034
01:26:52,160 --> 01:26:55,520
I don't think it will work.

1035
01:26:55,520 --> 01:27:02,520
I don't think that the program as stipulated
today is the way to do it.

1036
01:27:06,020 --> 01:27:13,020
And I don't think that political climate is
such that the budgetary support will be provided.

1037
01:27:14,570 --> 01:27:16,180
And I hope I am wrong.

1038
01:27:16,180 --> 01:27:19,590
I don't think I am.

1039
01:27:19,590 --> 01:27:23,960
Do you think the Chinese will be there?

1040
01:27:23,960 --> 01:27:24,420
Beg your pardon.

1041
01:27:24,420 --> 01:27:25,330
Does that mean the Chinese will be there?

1042
01:27:25,330 --> 01:27:25,580
No.

1043
01:27:25,430 --> 01:27:28,770
Hell, the Chinese are 50 years from going
to the Moon.

1044
01:27:28,770 --> 01:27:30,180
They cannot buy it from Russia.

1045
01:27:30,180 --> 01:27:32,710
That is what they're doing today.

1046
01:27:32,710 --> 01:27:39,320
They're buying all their technology to put
man in space from Russia.

1047
01:27:39,320 --> 01:27:45,130
You know, that makes me think the Russians
are still using the same spacecraft, with

1048
01:27:45,130 --> 01:27:50,559
slight variation, that they put Gagarin up
in 1961.

1049
01:27:50,559 --> 01:27:54,790
Literally, it's pretty close to it.

1050
01:27:54,790 --> 01:27:56,290
I've sat in it.

1051
01:27:56,290 --> 01:27:59,450
Have you sat in it, Fred?

1052
01:27:59,450 --> 01:28:02,610
You sit in it like this.

1053
01:28:02,610 --> 01:28:09,150
But they used it over and over and over and
over again.

1054
01:28:09,150 --> 01:28:13,870
The B-52 has been used over and over again.

1055
01:28:13,870 --> 01:28:15,450
It has a new wing.

1056
01:28:15,450 --> 01:28:16,770
It has new electronics.

1057
01:28:16,770 --> 01:28:18,050
It had new bombs.

1058
01:28:18,050 --> 01:28:21,010
It has new everything on it.

1059
01:28:21,010 --> 01:28:25,270
The only thing that is the same is the configuration.

1060
01:28:25,270 --> 01:28:27,970
It had new engines probably five times in
its lifetime.

1061
01:28:27,970 --> 01:28:33,650
That is what we ought to be doing with the
Shuttle, isn't it?

1062
01:28:33,650 --> 01:28:38,380
We seem to have this great propensity in this
country for building something wonderful and

1063
01:28:38,380 --> 01:28:44,059
great and high performance and then throwing
it away.

1064
01:28:44,059 --> 01:28:46,600
We put up the SkyLab.

1065
01:28:46,600 --> 01:28:46,850
Wonderful.

1066
01:28:46,760 --> 01:28:51,590
Throw it away and don't build anymore.

1067
01:28:51,590 --> 01:28:52,990
Build the Saturn 5.

1068
01:28:52,990 --> 01:28:59,610
Gee whiz, it will put 200,000 pounds to the
Moon.

1069
01:28:59,610 --> 01:29:05,280
It is rotting away at Johnson Space Center.

1070
01:29:05,280 --> 01:29:09,050
The Trekkies in the country got so mad at
the Johnson Space Center that they made them

1071
01:29:09,050 --> 01:29:14,280
build a hanger to put it in so it wouldn't
rot anymore.

1072
01:29:14,280 --> 01:29:17,460
We built a Space Station and we're throwing
it away.

1073
01:29:17,460 --> 01:29:21,540
We built a Space Shuttle and we're throwing
it away.

1074
01:29:21,540 --> 01:29:28,540
Golly, my mother would have gone bananas.

1075
01:29:28,880 --> 01:29:33,650
We had leftovers almost every other meal.

1076
01:29:33,650 --> 01:29:40,650
I know that's trite, but don't you think that
is foolishness to do things that way?

1077
01:29:41,970 --> 01:29:45,480
I think it is.

1078
01:29:45,480 --> 01:29:52,120
We did learn from space flight that everybody
seemed to learn from everybody else's experiences.

1079
01:29:52,120 --> 01:29:56,620
That was an amazing factor to me, in the early
days particularly.

1080
01:29:56,620 --> 01:30:03,550
The astronauts, each one that flew was so
much better than the one before.

1081
01:30:03,550 --> 01:30:10,090
And knew how to do the job better than the
one before.

1082
01:30:10,090 --> 01:30:16,500
All of those things, you could see yourself
advancing, and they just built on this experience

1083
01:30:16,500 --> 01:30:17,600
of each man.

1084
01:30:17,600 --> 01:30:19,860
And I don't know how they transmitted that
to each other.

1085
01:30:19,860 --> 01:30:23,660
They didn't, obviously, because they didn't
have a brain connection.

1086
01:30:23,660 --> 01:30:26,190
But that is the way we ought to be doing it
here.

1087
01:30:26,190 --> 01:30:31,670
We've got all these things that we build and
then throw away and don't take advantage of.

1088
01:30:31,670 --> 01:30:33,140
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

1089
01:30:33,140 --> 01:30:34,860
Now, I know there are politics involved.

1090
01:30:34,860 --> 01:30:40,460
And that is a reason I said you had to take
into account the politics.

1091
01:30:40,460 --> 01:30:41,750
When can you get the money?

1092
01:30:41,750 --> 01:30:43,720
How do you convince people that you need to
do things?

1093
01:30:43,720 --> 01:30:47,940
What does it do to the job situation?

1094
01:30:47,940 --> 01:30:53,360
How does it affect each senator's and each
congressman's state in terms of the money

1095
01:30:53,360 --> 01:30:56,610
that you bring into that area, et cetera.

1096
01:30:56,610 --> 01:31:03,610
When we built the Space Shuttle we had a contract
in every state in the union except Alaska.

1097
01:31:04,940 --> 01:31:10,440
And we did that on purpose.

1098
01:31:10,440 --> 01:31:17,440
Aaron and I flew to every one of those 75
major subcontractors in the Shuttle.

1099
01:31:17,860 --> 01:31:23,320
They were all over the country, and we would
go visit them at least three or four times

1100
01:31:23,320 --> 01:31:26,460
n a period of a couple of years.

1101
01:31:26,460 --> 01:31:30,230
The politics has to be there.

1102
01:31:30,230 --> 01:31:33,140
We were lucky in Apollo.

1103
01:31:33,140 --> 01:31:38,160
I call it the conjunction of the stars and
the conjunction of the politics.

1104
01:31:38,160 --> 01:31:43,830
That is a story I meant to tell.

1105
01:31:43,830 --> 01:31:50,830
By 1978, '77 maybe, we were really behind
a power curve on the budget for the Shuttle.

1106
01:31:59,120 --> 01:32:06,120
We had been pushing a wave of about 10% less
funds than we needed each year.

1107
01:32:06,880 --> 01:32:13,600
At about that time period we needed, if we
were going to have any semblance of making

1108
01:32:13,600 --> 01:32:20,600
a 1980 or '81 first flight, we needed a $600
million supplement and about that much per

1109
01:32:24,080 --> 01:32:27,700
year more than we were getting.

1110
01:32:27,700 --> 01:32:32,440
And NASA had this big meeting down at the
Johnson Space Center.

1111
01:32:32,440 --> 01:32:35,930
And we all talked about what the problems
were and how we were going to meet that.

1112
01:32:35,930 --> 01:32:41,550
And everybody, absolutely all the politics
said you cannot go ask for a supplement, you

1113
01:32:41,550 --> 01:32:45,710
cannot go ask the Congress for any more, you
cannot go to the White House and say we need

1114
01:32:45,710 --> 01:32:46,720
more money.

1115
01:32:46,720 --> 01:32:53,720
So we may just have to turn this thing into
an X-15 project, a research project.

1116
01:32:53,990 --> 01:32:58,540
The first Shuttle flight will be whenever
we can build it and it will just be a test

1117
01:32:58,540 --> 01:33:01,380
vehicle.

1118
01:33:01,380 --> 01:33:03,930
We were all very downhearted about that.

1119
01:33:03,930 --> 01:33:10,930
Dr. Frost, who was then the administrator,
went up to the White House about three days

1120
01:33:11,270 --> 01:33:12,950
later.

1121
01:33:12,950 --> 01:33:18,990
And Carter, who was the President, called
him in and said I want to tell you how wonderful

1122
01:33:18,990 --> 01:33:22,340
that Space Shuttle is.

1123
01:33:22,340 --> 01:33:28,010
And Frost said he could feel himself tighten
up.

1124
01:33:28,010 --> 01:33:33,520
And he said, you know, I just had this meeting
with the Russians at the Salt Talks, whatever

1125
01:33:33,520 --> 01:33:35,880
SALT meant.

1126
01:33:35,880 --> 01:33:40,070
And I was pointing out to them that we were
building this marvelous new space machine

1127
01:33:40,070 --> 01:33:43,220
and we were going to be able to do all kinds
of things with it.

1128
01:33:43,220 --> 01:33:48,110
We were going to be able to fly over Russia
and look at the world.

1129
01:33:48,110 --> 01:33:53,430
And he said it carried the day.

1130
01:33:53,430 --> 01:34:00,100
And Frost said, oh, my God, what is NASA going
to do about that?

1131
01:34:00,100 --> 01:34:07,100
He came back, thought about it for a few days
and went back to see the President.

1132
01:34:07,200 --> 01:34:07,840
He said, Mr.

1133
01:34:07,840 --> 01:34:11,940
President, I have to tell you, this Shuttle
is in trouble.

1134
01:34:11,940 --> 01:34:12,690
We don't have the money.

1135
01:34:12,690 --> 01:34:14,820
We're not going to make the launch dates.

1136
01:34:14,820 --> 01:34:19,200
It is questionable whether we can even build
the machine at this point in time because

1137
01:34:19,200 --> 01:34:20,830
we haven't built the thermal protection system.

1138
01:34:20,830 --> 01:34:25,690
We didn't even have the factory built yet
to build the tiles in.

1139
01:34:25,690 --> 01:34:25,940
Mr.

1140
01:34:25,880 --> 01:34:32,880
Carter said how much do you need?

1141
01:34:34,910 --> 01:34:41,910
And he said, well, I think we need about $600
million this year and I think we will need

1142
01:34:42,639 --> 01:34:45,210
about $400 million a year.

1143
01:34:45,210 --> 01:34:50,050
That was a WAG on Dr. Frost's part.

1144
01:34:50,050 --> 01:34:53,690
And the President said you will get it.

1145
01:34:53,690 --> 01:35:00,690
That was how close we were to the Shuttle
failing from a political point of view.

1146
01:35:07,420 --> 01:35:11,719
I don't know what the politics of tomorrow
is that might change our mind.

1147
01:35:11,719 --> 01:35:18,460
It would be wonderful if the Chinese would
land on the Moon tomorrow because that might

1148
01:35:18,460 --> 01:35:21,400
get the Congress back in action.

1149
01:35:21,400 --> 01:35:28,400
But can you see the Congress, in the face
of what has happened with Katrina and Rita

1150
01:35:29,520 --> 01:35:35,490
and a few other things that happened in the
United States, and the Iraqi War and the budgetary

1151
01:35:35,490 --> 01:35:39,990
problems they face -- I cannot see them giving
NASA the money they would need to do the program.

1152
01:35:39,990 --> 01:35:46,990
And NASA says they can go back to the Moon
between now and 2018 for $106 billion.

1153
01:35:54,270 --> 01:35:54,520
Mr.

1154
01:35:54,469 --> 01:35:57,300
Webb doubled the price.

1155
01:35:57,300 --> 01:36:02,950
All us great cost estimators, we estimated
the cost of the Shuttle, and Jim Webb got

1156
01:36:02,950 --> 01:36:06,340
it and multiplied it by two.

1157
01:36:06,340 --> 01:36:12,300
Today I would say you would have to multiply
that by ten if you think you're going back

1158
01:36:12,300 --> 01:36:16,020
to the Moon.

1159
01:36:16,020 --> 01:36:19,010
I cannot imagine.

1160
01:36:19,010 --> 01:36:23,700
Aaron and I worked on a program in 1998.

1161
01:36:23,700 --> 01:36:30,700
When did we do the Mars study?

1162
01:36:34,480 --> 01:36:36,880
In '89.

1163
01:36:36,880 --> 01:36:43,880
We estimated the cost in 1989 dollars to go
to Mars at $400 billion, and I think we were

1164
01:36:47,460 --> 01:36:54,460
low.

1165
01:36:55,020 --> 01:36:58,050
I keep have to catch myself.

1166
01:36:58,050 --> 01:37:02,059
I know it's the politics that you have to
be concerned about.

1167
01:37:02,059 --> 01:37:07,730
If you told them that it was going to cost
$400 billion dollars then for sure it would

1168
01:37:07,730 --> 01:37:10,040
be cancelled, right?

1169
01:37:10,040 --> 01:37:13,700
You've got to tell them something that is
rational, but I don't think they will get

1170
01:37:13,700 --> 01:37:18,980
supported even with the amount of money they
say it is going to cost.

1171
01:37:18,980 --> 01:37:20,480
I hope I am a pessimist.

1172
01:37:20,480 --> 01:37:20,770
Yes, sir.

1173
01:37:20,770 --> 01:37:21,230
I have two separate questions.

1174
01:37:21,230 --> 01:37:22,090
One is the improvements you said that were
made in computing capability from Mercury

1175
01:37:22,090 --> 01:37:29,090
through the Shuttle, I was wondering if there
was any thought into making the computer systems

1176
01:37:29,930 --> 01:37:34,080
on the Shuttle more upgradable?

1177
01:37:34,080 --> 01:37:41,080
And, if there was, would there have been any
value in using modern systems?

1178
01:37:43,020 --> 01:37:50,020
And then the second question is related to
the comment you made about if the Shuttle

1179
01:37:51,170 --> 01:37:54,170
was designed to fly automatically after the
Challenger accident they could have just flown

1180
01:37:54,170 --> 01:37:55,600
again the next day.

1181
01:37:55,600 --> 01:38:02,600
I wasn't really sure what you meant by that
so if you could elaborate on it a bit.

1182
01:38:02,840 --> 01:38:03,690
Let me go to your first question.

1183
01:38:03,690 --> 01:38:04,200
It isn't the hardware.

1184
01:38:04,200 --> 01:38:04,710
It is the software.

1185
01:38:04,710 --> 01:38:10,320
And it is the software checkout and it is
the software validation that you have to worry

1186
01:38:10,320 --> 01:38:12,920
about on the orbiter.

1187
01:38:12,920 --> 01:38:18,889
When you have four systems that are operating
on a 40 millisecond time cycle and checking

1188
01:38:18,889 --> 01:38:25,889
with each other at the end of that cycle that
they are all in lock-step -- John is looking

1189
01:38:27,150 --> 01:38:29,530
at me saying my God, how did we ever do that?

1190
01:38:29,530 --> 01:38:32,050
And I don't know how we ever did it, but we
did it.

1191
01:38:32,050 --> 01:38:36,110
It is the software and not the hardware.

1192
01:38:36,110 --> 01:38:43,110
When you have an updatable computer, which
you should have and will have, it is the software

1193
01:38:44,130 --> 01:38:46,430
that is the problem, not the hardware.

1194
01:38:46,430 --> 01:38:51,190
That has always been the case.

1195
01:38:51,190 --> 01:38:56,660
Trying to make the software fit into the new
computer, the way the hooks are in system

1196
01:38:56,660 --> 01:38:59,090
is just totally different.

1197
01:38:59,090 --> 01:39:06,090
And, therefore, the guaranty that the system
doesn't have a bunch of glitches in it that

1198
01:39:08,370 --> 01:39:15,370
are going to get to you, you know, when we
flew to the moon on Apollo 11, we had a book

1199
01:39:16,410 --> 01:39:20,880
about that thick with computer anomalies in
it.

1200
01:39:20,880 --> 01:39:26,340
We understood them all, but that is how many
software fixes we needed to make.

1201
01:39:26,340 --> 01:39:33,340
We just didn't make them because we didn't
want to nor had the time to do them.

1202
01:39:33,490 --> 01:39:40,490
What I meant by flying an unmanned shuttle
was that you couldn't convince the politicians

1203
01:39:41,340 --> 01:39:48,340
or the powers that be, whoever they are, that
you could fly the shuttle the next day manned.

1204
01:39:48,950 --> 01:39:53,500
But, if you didn't have a man in it, who would
have cared?

1205
01:39:53,500 --> 01:39:57,340
And so you could have flown it the next day
and it would have worked perfectly because

1206
01:39:57,340 --> 01:39:59,830
it was warmer at the Cape.

1207
01:39:59,830 --> 01:40:06,830
Do you know what the condition on the pad
was the morning they launched Challenger?

1208
01:40:09,820 --> 01:40:16,820
There were icicles hanging off the gantry
that long and that big around at Cape Canaveral.

1209
01:40:19,059 --> 01:40:21,690
Let me tell you something.

1210
01:40:21,690 --> 01:40:23,550
You know why they got there?

1211
01:40:23,550 --> 01:40:26,650
They did what we did in 1920.

1212
01:40:26,650 --> 01:40:33,650
They turned the water on and let it run all
night because they were afraid that the fire

1213
01:40:33,840 --> 01:40:40,670
suppression system on the pad was going to
freeze and not be able to be turned on when

1214
01:40:40,670 --> 01:40:47,670
they launched so they let it drip all night.

1215
01:40:47,809 --> 01:40:54,389
And I am sitting there saying that solid rocket
has not been qualified for temperatures below

1216
01:40:54,389 --> 01:40:59,219
47 degrees Fahrenheit.

1217
01:40:59,219 --> 01:41:06,219
And they're convincing themselves that the
core temperature of the solids is much higher

1218
01:41:06,500 --> 01:41:10,920
than that because it has been sitting in the
sun for the last two months and the temperature

1219
01:41:10,920 --> 01:41:15,510
is so and so, but they didn't think about
the seals.

1220
01:41:15,510 --> 01:41:21,740
If you remember that professor sticking the
seal in the ice.

1221
01:41:21,740 --> 01:41:25,930
Well, that's what I meant.

1222
01:41:25,930 --> 01:41:30,860
The next day the temperature would have been
warmer, put new rockets on it.

1223
01:41:30,860 --> 01:41:36,160
Max Faget said the next day, why don't you
just put a heater around the joint and put

1224
01:41:36,160 --> 01:41:38,820
a belly band over the top of it and fly?

1225
01:41:38,820 --> 01:41:42,130
Damn good idea.

1226
01:41:42,130 --> 01:41:44,340
Yes, sir.

1227
01:41:44,340 --> 01:41:51,340
You mentioned that one of the reasons the
Shuttle is so expensive is because you have

1228
01:41:53,500 --> 01:41:55,680
so many redundant systems onboard.

1229
01:41:55,680 --> 01:41:58,050
Now, what would be your solution?

1230
01:41:58,050 --> 01:42:03,730
Not to have them onboard or just not to have
them all upgrading at launch?

1231
01:42:03,730 --> 01:42:05,980
No, you got the wrong implication there.

1232
01:42:05,980 --> 01:42:12,800
It is expensive because they insist on having
them operating at the time of launch.

1233
01:42:12,800 --> 01:42:17,580
It is not the redundancy that makes it more
expensive.

1234
01:42:17,580 --> 01:42:23,250
It is the checkout and the testing and proof
that it's there and the replacement of the

1235
01:42:23,250 --> 01:42:28,400
systems and the use of the systems that makes
it more expensive.

1236
01:42:28,400 --> 01:42:35,400
But what makes the Shuttle so expensive are
the numbers of people involved in preparing

1237
01:42:35,860 --> 01:42:37,980
it.

1238
01:42:37,980 --> 01:42:44,980
There are roughly 10,000 people involved in
that operation who make X number of dollars

1239
01:42:46,190 --> 01:42:48,650
per hour or day.

1240
01:42:48,650 --> 01:42:55,650
And it costs, in today's money, about $5 billion
a year to fly the Shuttle seven times.

1241
01:42:56,150 --> 01:43:00,580
It probably cost $5 billion a year to fly
it 30 times.

1242
01:43:00,580 --> 01:43:01,570
Not much difference.

1243
01:43:01,570 --> 01:43:02,120
Maybe $5.5 billion.

1244
01:43:02,120 --> 01:43:03,260
So, it is the people.

1245
01:43:03,260 --> 01:43:06,180
You've got to get rid of the people.

1246
01:43:06,180 --> 01:43:13,030
And people have been trying to do that ever
since Mercury, get rid of the amount of people.

1247
01:43:13,030 --> 01:43:20,030
And they try and they put in the automaticity
and the automatic checkout and then don't

1248
01:43:20,670 --> 01:43:22,469
use it.

1249
01:43:22,469 --> 01:43:23,790
Check it out.

1250
01:43:23,790 --> 01:43:29,880
And, as I said, they put more hours on it
in the hanger than they do in space.

1251
01:43:29,880 --> 01:43:32,440
It wears out the system checking it.

1252
01:43:32,440 --> 01:43:36,559
And it takes people to do that, so it's people.

1253
01:43:36,559 --> 01:43:39,980
So what's your solution to that?

1254
01:43:39,980 --> 01:43:46,980
I think you have to have some hardnosed SOB
that says I'm going to get rid of the people,

1255
01:43:47,860 --> 01:43:52,450
and you do it with automaticity, automatic
checkout, automatic everything.

1256
01:43:52,450 --> 01:43:57,639
In today's world, why would you do it any
other way?

1257
01:43:57,639 --> 01:43:58,820
I will give you another example.

1258
01:43:58,820 --> 01:44:05,820
When we built the caution and warning system
on the Space Shuttle, the safety and reliability

1259
01:44:08,590 --> 01:44:13,480
people said it has to be hardwired.

1260
01:44:13,480 --> 01:44:16,630
Can you imagine that?

1261
01:44:16,630 --> 01:44:20,809
Why wouldn't you use bits instead of hardwire?

1262
01:44:20,809 --> 01:44:23,480
Oh, but it's a lot safer and a lot more reliable.

1263
01:44:23,480 --> 01:44:26,030
I will use my same word, hogwash.

1264
01:44:26,030 --> 01:44:31,650
It is a lot safer and more reliable with bits.

1265
01:44:31,650 --> 01:44:36,510
But that's the system.

1266
01:44:36,510 --> 01:44:39,150
You've got to change it.

1267
01:44:39,150 --> 01:44:44,030
And two of us have tried.

1268
01:44:44,030 --> 01:44:47,880
You can see us flying down in flames almost
everywhere.

1269
01:44:47,880 --> 01:44:49,559
Yes, sir.

1270
01:44:49,559 --> 01:44:56,559
For the young engineer, a lot of us hear about
the Apollo Mission and talk about the good

1271
01:44:59,510 --> 01:45:02,330
old days where we wish we were in the days
of engineering by the seat of your pants.

1272
01:45:02,330 --> 01:45:08,219
Is that type of job and that type of excitement
of engineering possible in NASA's environment

1273
01:45:08,219 --> 01:45:12,010
today or should we look elsewhere like towards
private enterprises?

1274
01:45:12,010 --> 01:45:16,350
Could we find the type of job we hear about
in NASA these days?

1275
01:45:16,350 --> 01:45:21,840
I have to be careful how I answer that.

1276
01:45:21,840 --> 01:45:26,730
I want you in NASA.

1277
01:45:26,730 --> 01:45:30,320
It is important that you guys be in NASA.

1278
01:45:30,320 --> 01:45:35,130
Or at least in the Space Program working in
the industry.

1279
01:45:35,130 --> 01:45:42,130
Because you are tomorrow's opportunity.

1280
01:45:42,300 --> 01:45:47,900
Just because you hear Chris Kraft say things
that doesn't mean a damn thing tomorrow.

1281
01:45:47,900 --> 01:45:49,480
You have to do it yourself.

1282
01:45:49,480 --> 01:45:51,730
And you have to want to do it yourself.

1283
01:45:51,730 --> 01:45:55,700
And you have to bring the ideas to the program.

1284
01:45:55,700 --> 01:45:58,460
And you have to be willing to do that.

1285
01:45:58,460 --> 01:46:05,460
And this willingness to take on the things
that must be taken on in order to get the

1286
01:46:07,550 --> 01:46:09,510
job done.

1287
01:46:09,510 --> 01:46:13,650
Your question about seat of the pants, et
cetera, sure, we did a lot of things when

1288
01:46:13,650 --> 01:46:19,750
we first started by seat of the pants because
we didn't know any other way to do it.

1289
01:46:19,750 --> 01:46:20,980
We did it by feel.

1290
01:46:20,980 --> 01:46:23,830
We did it by past experience.

1291
01:46:23,830 --> 01:46:30,590
A lot of us had been in an airplane flight
test world.

1292
01:46:30,590 --> 01:46:37,590
So, we did it by having seen the past doing
things the right way.

1293
01:46:37,750 --> 01:46:39,870
That was our seat of the pants.

1294
01:46:39,870 --> 01:46:46,870
Our seat of the pants wasn't just a scarf
around our neck, so to speak.

1295
01:46:47,540 --> 01:46:51,940
It was an educated seat of the pants.

1296
01:46:51,940 --> 01:46:53,480
And that is what you have to provide.

1297
01:46:53,480 --> 01:46:59,300
In the end it will take a lot of the seat
of the pants.

1298
01:46:59,300 --> 01:47:06,300
I think the way I know Aaron and I have done
it was to believe in the people you had.

1299
01:47:07,719 --> 01:47:14,160
You have to learn how to find out who the
guys are that know what they're talking about

1300
01:47:14,160 --> 01:47:15,080
and trust them.

1301
01:47:15,080 --> 01:47:21,639
You have to put them in the job, give them
the responsibility and authority to do it

1302
01:47:21,639 --> 01:47:23,250
and then trust them.

1303
01:47:23,250 --> 01:47:27,260
And you have to build them.

1304
01:47:27,260 --> 01:47:33,160
The biggest problem that you have today, that
NASA has today and the aerospace industry

1305
01:47:33,160 --> 01:47:40,160
has today, the biggest problem, I cannot say
that too strongly, is that they have not built

1306
01:47:41,000 --> 01:47:45,590
anything in 25 years.

1307
01:47:45,590 --> 01:47:51,500
And so they've forgotten what it takes to
do it.

1308
01:47:51,500 --> 01:47:53,309
You don't know how to do it.

1309
01:47:53,309 --> 01:47:59,340
But if I put you on the job and gave you the
authority to do it, you could do it in three

1310
01:47:59,340 --> 01:48:01,210
or four years.

1311
01:48:01,210 --> 01:48:08,210
You need my help and guys like me to tell
you where the bumps in the road are.

1312
01:48:08,670 --> 01:48:14,340
But you're going to do it a hell of a lot
better than I did given the opportunity to

1313
01:48:14,340 --> 01:48:16,260
do it.

1314
01:48:16,260 --> 01:48:19,650
Did that answer your question?

1315
01:48:19,650 --> 01:48:23,150
[AUDIENCE QUESTION] I think it is.

1316
01:48:23,150 --> 01:48:30,150
You might have to help it.

1317
01:48:31,930 --> 01:48:35,440
You have to vote.

1318
01:48:35,440 --> 01:48:42,010
In the `60s, I was hoping that all these space
cadets, all these Trekkies, all those guys

1319
01:48:42,010 --> 01:48:49,010
would now be in the Congress and that they
would vote for the Space Program.

1320
01:48:49,050 --> 01:48:53,809
Boy was I ever dead wrong.

1321
01:48:53,809 --> 01:48:55,900
There aren't enough Grateful Dead fans around.

1322
01:48:55,900 --> 01:48:56,150
Yes, sir.

1323
01:48:56,139 --> 01:49:03,139
Do you think the success of the Apollo Project
was in some way linked to the ferment that

1324
01:49:08,219 --> 01:49:13,710
was taking place in the `60s?

1325
01:49:13,710 --> 01:49:14,990
Oh, absolutely.

1326
01:49:14,990 --> 01:49:21,990
I think that we had an enthusiasm at the time
that is probably unparalleled in engineering

1327
01:49:27,260 --> 01:49:28,740
circles.

1328
01:49:28,740 --> 01:49:33,969
Now, we had the Manhattan Project to build
a nuclear bomb.

1329
01:49:33,969 --> 01:49:40,710
Draper had the project to build a Polaris
submarine, but it was clustered.

1330
01:49:40,710 --> 01:49:45,840
What is that word?

1331
01:49:45,840 --> 01:49:52,760
And it wasn't seen as we brought it to the
fore.

1332
01:49:52,760 --> 01:49:55,030
It wasn't a national program.

1333
01:49:55,030 --> 01:49:56,969
It wasn't a national priority.

1334
01:49:56,969 --> 01:49:58,840
It wasn't national pride.

1335
01:49:58,840 --> 01:50:01,440
Nobody knew about it.

1336
01:50:01,440 --> 01:50:05,110
Everybody knew about Apollo.

1337
01:50:05,110 --> 01:50:12,110
I was damn proud to walk into any room where
I ever went to say I worked on Apollo.

1338
01:50:12,389 --> 01:50:19,389
That reminds me of a horrible cartoon, to
make my point.

1339
01:50:21,820 --> 01:50:28,820
I was in Austin, Texas following the Challenger
accident.

1340
01:50:29,320 --> 01:50:33,950
And here I am one of the proudest people to
ever be in NASA.

1341
01:50:33,950 --> 01:50:39,350
The cartoon in the paper when I got up that
morning was the following.

1342
01:50:39,350 --> 01:50:46,350
It showed these kids playing with a Frisbee.

1343
01:50:46,530 --> 01:50:52,330
The first one throws it over here to this
guy.

1344
01:50:52,330 --> 01:50:53,940
The second one throws it back.

1345
01:50:53,940 --> 01:50:57,090
The third one the damn thing explodes in his
face.

1346
01:50:57,090 --> 01:51:00,010
The fourth was says his father works for NASA.

1347
01:51:00,010 --> 01:51:07,010
Boy, that brings it home to you pretty damn
fast, doesn't it?

1348
01:51:09,910 --> 01:51:16,910
Nobody in 1967, '68, '69 would have dared
put that cartoon in the paper.

1349
01:51:20,820 --> 01:51:27,820
By having new people in a space program there
is always this lack of experience which you

1350
01:51:29,570 --> 01:51:31,440
have to train just to have.

1351
01:51:31,440 --> 01:51:36,840
How do you transmit that experience to the
new people?

1352
01:51:36,840 --> 01:51:42,050
You intermingle the young with the old.

1353
01:51:42,050 --> 01:51:49,050
You bring the elderly engineers into the system
and make you responsible for designing the

1354
01:51:50,760 --> 01:51:54,930
system but have me in your hip pocket.

1355
01:51:54,930 --> 01:52:01,930
After six months, two years, you won't need
me in your hip pocket anymore because you

1356
01:52:02,610 --> 01:52:08,050
would have learned all those things And learned
them better and done them better.

1357
01:52:08,050 --> 01:52:10,600
You have to mix them.

1358
01:52:10,600 --> 01:52:14,870
The ingredients for the pie and the cake have
to be there.

1359
01:52:14,870 --> 01:52:18,420
And that is part of the ingredient.

1360
01:52:18,420 --> 01:52:21,530
And why hasn't that taken place?

1361
01:52:21,530 --> 01:52:24,860
Because of two reasons.

1362
01:52:24,860 --> 01:52:31,210
NASA hasn't done anything in terms of building
new hardware, other than the Space Station

1363
01:52:31,210 --> 01:52:33,969
which really wasn't testing the state-of-the-art.

1364
01:52:33,969 --> 01:52:38,280
It was a great program but didn't test the
state-of-the-art.

1365
01:52:38,280 --> 01:52:41,880
The industry has been doing the same thing.

1366
01:52:41,880 --> 01:52:45,370
The industry has been building airplanes,
but they haven't been building any spaceships

1367
01:52:45,370 --> 01:52:47,730
so they've lost that capability also.

1368
01:52:47,730 --> 01:52:49,460
That's the travesty, too.

1369
01:52:49,460 --> 01:52:52,760
You've got to rebuild them both at the same
time.

1370
01:52:52,760 --> 01:52:57,480
But it only happens by experience.

1371
01:52:57,480 --> 01:53:04,480
I cannot take what Professor Cohen knows and
what I know and put it in your head.

1372
01:53:05,630 --> 01:53:09,900
You have to fail a few times.

1373
01:53:09,900 --> 01:53:15,080
It is only by the failures that you're going
to learn.

1374
01:53:15,080 --> 01:53:22,080
I once heard a sermon that said when you're
a young Christian or Hebrew walking down the

1375
01:53:26,910 --> 01:53:33,430
aisle all your doors are open.

1376
01:53:33,430 --> 01:53:39,600
I am walking down the aisle and I'm pretty
close to the end and all the ones behind me

1377
01:53:39,600 --> 01:53:43,400
are shut.

1378
01:53:43,400 --> 01:53:47,639
You're willing to go in all those doors.

1379
01:53:47,639 --> 01:53:52,250
I am frightened to death to go in those damn
doors.

1380
01:53:52,250 --> 01:53:58,830
We need you and you need me, but you don't
need me very long until you get up to speed.

1381
01:53:58,830 --> 01:54:00,320
Don't be frightened of it.

1382
01:54:00,320 --> 01:54:01,780
Go do it.

1383
01:54:01,780 --> 01:54:04,980
And don't be afraid to fail.

1384
01:54:04,980 --> 01:54:11,980
You learn much more from our failures than
you ever learn from our successes.

1385
01:54:14,610 --> 01:54:15,370
Back there.

1386
01:54:15,370 --> 01:54:22,370
Given all these problems with NASA that we've
seen just growing over the years, what do

1387
01:54:26,040 --> 01:54:32,050
you think about the commercial efforts to
access space?

1388
01:54:32,050 --> 01:54:34,260
Not necessarily what is going on now but also
in the future?

1389
01:54:34,260 --> 01:54:34,510
If we had that ability to sort of bypass NASA's
framework with all the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] bureaucracy

1390
01:54:34,360 --> 01:54:37,800
issues, is that a possibly way for us to continue?

1391
01:54:37,800 --> 01:54:44,800
Well, I think it is very possible but the
problem is investment.

1392
01:54:52,139 --> 01:54:58,950
The investment specialists say if you cannot
give me a return on investment in three years,

1393
01:54:58,950 --> 01:55:03,400
maximum five years, I won't invest in it.

1394
01:55:03,400 --> 01:55:06,460
And the aerospace industry is worse than that.

1395
01:55:06,460 --> 01:55:07,670
They don't have any money.

1396
01:55:07,670 --> 01:55:12,880
They aren't willing to make an investment
in the future.

1397
01:55:12,880 --> 01:55:16,480
The investors who have the money want a return.

1398
01:55:16,480 --> 01:55:22,750
The guys that have the capability to do it
don't have the money to invest.

1399
01:55:22,750 --> 01:55:29,550
Until it gets to the point where it is a little
more realistic from the return on investment,

1400
01:55:29,550 --> 01:55:34,750
it is not going to get to the point where
commercial ventures are willing to do it.

1401
01:55:34,750 --> 01:55:38,940
Because it is just too expensive.

1402
01:55:38,940 --> 01:55:45,940
And probably if failure is so high in our
business that investors shy away from it.

1403
01:55:49,670 --> 01:55:56,370
I think it will come to that, but I don't
think it is going to come very rapidly as

1404
01:55:56,370 --> 01:56:00,780
it did, for instance, in the airplane business.

1405
01:56:00,780 --> 01:56:07,780
I mean even today we wouldn't be flying the
transports we have or the supersonic airplanes

1406
01:56:12,000 --> 01:56:19,000
that we have without government having made
that investment at the time.

1407
01:56:19,520 --> 01:56:26,520
The 707, the first big really good jet transport,
was totally dependent upon the B-47 airplane,

1408
01:56:30,969 --> 01:56:36,980
which is built by the same people, right?

1409
01:56:36,980 --> 01:56:38,830
And so it was a government investment.

1410
01:56:38,830 --> 01:56:44,520
I said, well, we did it in an airplane business,
to a certain extent, but nowhere near as much

1411
01:56:44,520 --> 01:56:45,960
as people think.

1412
01:56:45,960 --> 01:56:52,840
All of the technology was done by the government
investment in the airplane.

1413
01:56:52,840 --> 01:56:59,530
And the next step, the supersonic transport,
which we ought to have.

1414
01:56:59,530 --> 01:57:06,530
That is another travesty, that we don't have
a supersonic transport.

1415
01:57:06,830 --> 01:57:13,830
That hasn't been done by Boeing or Lockheed
because they won't invest that kind of money

1416
01:57:16,880 --> 01:57:19,100
on their own.

1417
01:57:19,100 --> 01:57:26,100
They take the investment of the government
in supersonic aerodynamics and engines and

1418
01:57:27,740 --> 01:57:33,730
structure and use it in a supersonic airplane.

1419
01:57:33,730 --> 01:57:34,940
I think it is a ways off.

1420
01:57:34,940 --> 01:57:41,940
A lot of people have tried it, the most notable
being Kistler recently, and have failed.

1421
01:57:44,900 --> 01:57:48,650
I think it can be done and done better.

1422
01:57:48,650 --> 01:57:52,219
You can do it better outside of the government
because you don't have all those regulations

1423
01:57:52,219 --> 01:57:57,840
to contend with and all the GAOs on top of
you.

1424
01:57:57,840 --> 01:58:02,580
It is just going to take a while.

1425
01:58:02,580 --> 01:58:08,230
I hesitate to say this but I will.

1426
01:58:08,230 --> 01:58:15,230
Programs like SpaceShipOne, that is trickery,
that is child's play what he is doing.

1427
01:58:26,480 --> 01:58:31,320
Wait until he tries to go to orbit.

1428
01:58:31,320 --> 01:58:32,920
That is his next step.

1429
01:58:32,920 --> 01:58:39,920
Tell me when that is going to happen.

1430
01:58:41,360 --> 01:58:44,800
He is kidding the world at the moment.

1431
01:58:44,800 --> 01:58:47,710
Chris Kraft says that.

1432
01:58:47,710 --> 01:58:54,469
I want you to remember that because I could
be dead wrong, but that is my opinion.

1433
01:58:54,469 --> 01:58:59,000
Just child's play.

1434
01:58:59,000 --> 01:59:00,330
We did the X1 in 1946.

1435
01:59:00,330 --> 01:59:06,559
And we didn't have any buckling in the structure
either, which he had.

1436
01:59:06,559 --> 01:59:09,570
Where do you think that buckling came from?

1437
01:59:09,570 --> 01:59:16,530
What do you think happened there?

1438
01:59:16,530 --> 01:59:17,420
Where did it come from?

1439
01:59:17,420 --> 01:59:24,420
But if his plane renews interest in space,
I mean if it inspires a ten year old to end

1440
01:59:27,830 --> 01:59:29,070
up working for NASA 15 years from now, isn't
that a good thing?

1441
01:59:29,070 --> 01:59:29,350
That is great.

1442
01:59:29,350 --> 01:59:29,600
Absolutely.

1443
01:59:29,440 --> 01:59:35,590
But don't kid yourself that the next step
is flying a machine to orbit.

1444
01:59:35,590 --> 01:59:42,590
I am at fault for being so negative about
it because, you're right, I think it does

1445
01:59:42,940 --> 01:59:47,380
inspire the young to do it.

1446
01:59:47,380 --> 01:59:53,520
As much as I hate to cut us off, it is 11:00.

1447
01:59:53,520 --> 01:59:55,260
Class is over.

1448
01:59:55,260 --> 01:59:57,780
Students again remember to pick up your papers.

1449
01:59:57,780 --> 02:00:04,610
Chris, that has been just an extraordinary
opportunity and an experience for all of us.

1450
02:00:04,610 --> 02:00:08,300
And, once more, we are very appreciative.

1451
02:00:08,300 --> 02:00:15,300
We know you don't give very many public lectures
these days, and that you chose to come here

1452
02:00:15,970 --> 02:00:21,680
and talk to everybody at MIT, we truly appreciate
it and we would like to thank you again.

1453
02:00:21,680 --> 02:00:21,930
[APPLAUSE]