I Have Been at JSC Throughout All the Shuttle Missions

I arrived prior to STS-2 and have been at JSC throughout all the shuttle missions. In April, 1981, the space shuttle program began with STS-1. A fellow teacher and I had our classes watching STS-1 on television when I made the decision to move my family back to Houston and work in the shuttle program. I have recently been supporting an astronaut working landing and rollout issues. I had the great opportunity of going out to the Ames Research Center in California in January, 1997 during a session at the Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS). I even got to fly the simulator with astronauts. What an experience! Also during the period since 1990, I did a two year stint training as a flight controller in Mission Control in the Mechanical group. This was a tremendous opportunity to actually be in the Mission Control Center during actual flight operations.

I Trained to Be Mission Flight Controller

For almost two years, I trained to be a mission flight controller in Mission Control. That was very interesting and there is a wealth of information in that area. I really admire all the people who are flight controllers, because of the depth of knowledge they must have, and because they are involved in Mission Control, where everything is happening. That has a great sense of satisfaction. It is also a pressure cooker as well because the flight controllers do not want to make a decision that will hurt or possibly kill someone.

The Opportunity to Work in the Astronaut Office

The opportunity that I've had to go to work in the Astronaut Office presented itself about 7 years ago, and was probably the most significant event to happen to me in my career. I've been involved in the space program, on and off, since 1965. It always seemed like the jobs that I had were always in the background. There are many people at JSC and KSC who do jobs that would, otherwise, not get done and the space shuttle would not be flying. Those are important jobs, and I feel like the job I had was important.

However, when the opportunity came to work in the Astronaut Office, I jumped at it. I thought it was a chance for me to do the kinds of things I like to do, and it is much more visible. In the jobs that I had before, if I was ever in the same room with one of our astronauts, my mouth would just hang open. I would think, "My goodness! These people are gods and goddesses." I thought, "They must be very egotistical and tied up with themselves." Then in the summer of 1990, I went to work in the Astronaut Office and, very quickly, I found out that they were not that way at all. They're everyday people and have families just like us, and they like to go to movies and dinner. They're friendly in the hallway, and they're just like coworkers. That's been the biggest revelation to me.

Comments About The Cape

When the show "The Cape" started, Bob Cabana, who is the head of the Astronaut Office, was talking about it in his Monday morning meeting. He was talking about the show, which was going to be starting that day. I've never heard anybody in the office that has really made any comments positively or negatively. Perhaps no positive comments could be taken as negative. The show has a lot of dramatizations, a lot of which I think are unrealistic things. But who am I to say? The end result of the whole thing is that it advertises our space program. As far as I'm concerned, that's good. That's a positive.