continues to speak to americans. >> that is a great party think that wraps it up for us today. i want to encourage everyone who is out there attending our discussion. thank you david. i thoroughly enjoyed this and i hope next time have a discussion without the screen between us. thanks to you, to all of you out there, stay safe you will keep reading, thank you. >> thanks. next semester's virtual tucson festival pulse i reflects on his career. spirit joining us today for the shuttle mission is paul dive. paul has four decades of aviation experience, nasa in 2013 with longest serving

flight director and history. see the outstanding leadership medal, three service metals in the presidential medal. leaders and consultants and speakers as well as his book is my life in the center of mission control. paul, it's great to having her by the way. >> thanks it's great to beards good to be here. >> excellent. >> talk a little bit about the book and how came about. what did readers expect? 's vigil i guess the first thing to say is, we are getting a lulac with their. their very first flight directors chris craft back in the mercury days and chris wrote a book about his days in the space program. and then gina carranza wrote a book, failure is not an option, but here you're his

ears as a flight director for apollo. i kinda felt somewhat need to capture the view from the flight director consul at mission control for the shuttle program. there are now, we are seeing lots and lots of excellent books by mostly astronauts about their years in the shuttle program. the thing i like people to remember is that for every astronaut that flies, there are tens of thousands of people contributed to the program. slop a broader perspective about what works but like in the cockpit. most are written by my friend's comments to him to make sure you would capture some of the viewpoint control center. i retired in 2013 retard the shuttle and 2011. i was writing notes of theirs is very, very busy until we count the book last year, with

airplanes and a lot of flying and writing, took the impetus of my life to save going to write the book or not? she really helped push that along. very good publisher who helped me take all the material that i had put together and formulate how we wanted the book to look. and so, one of the things i like to tell people right up front being a flight director in the mercury program was a couple of years, jean's book cover the apollo program and going to the moon. that was a few years for the shuttle program lasted 30 years. the flight program lasted 30 years the program lasted 40 years. to try to tell the entire story is virtually impossible but that's the first thing had

to wrap my head around to get serious about putting the video together. to realize all i could do was tell some stories from my point of view. and i hope a lot of books get written by people in the program to save the history of what everybody did not look like. so that is really what the book is about. hopefully the book will give people some insight views of the technology of the shuttle, which we tend to think of in extremely high-tech. and it is but it's very high-tech for 1970 and 1980. the technology is a very complex system. want to understand the people that made it work. the people who sat in mission control, did the planet, and

understand the process of flying the shuttle was all about. it is a lot more complex than watching star wars may put it that way. and lastly the dedication of the people in the fund that they had doing it. even though it was an incredibly complex at the overview of the book when they get a chance to read it, thank you very much. it is your window going to dig into a little of that. but before i go, i was struck immediately, when you talk

about the people that came before the two programs, there struck by the legacy of this prior flight directors. i guess it's a complicated sort of forces must have complicated for you. can you talk about the notion of taking the center seat and what it entails customer particularly in light of the shoulders of the giants at rest. speak what i was given the opportunity to be given a student at nasa, i was an engineering student. either a complex set of events i suddenly applied to go down to houston. i did not think i would work in the space program i thought i was going to build airplanes. i sent in my application i get this note back that says report to houston building 110 on such and such a date in such and such a time. i had no idea what is going to be doing. i got there and discovered they'd been asked the people in the operations organization had to ask or repair a learned

later is because i had been a pilot since high school. and i was working my way through college as a scuba diving instructor and technician. i understood real-time operations. so i walked in the control center did not have any preconceived notions of what is going to see. i saw this group of people sitting in the front room, i don't think i really recognize the flight director for what they were until a little bit later on. and i describe it in an odd sort of way. if you've watched any of the science-fiction movie to late 50s an early 60s or so is something threatening the survival of the planet. on the politicians will be arguing about this. there's always one strong leader who kind of took charge and said this is what we're going to do, this is how are going to solve the problem and save the planet. they warned management, they weren't worker bee they were inspirational leader. that's really what the flight director turns out to be.

the person that visibly takes control of things during a mission and the planning for the mission. and i guess a little bit of that made me want to be the hero of the science fiction that you watch back then. if you want the marsh and maybe, i think shawn bean is a flight director does a really good job there. doesn't take any golf from anybody including administrator and nasa who after his resignation set on fire were going to get these guys home first and then you can have it. star work with flight directors pretty early in my career. i got fast-track to the front room of mission control. started working with these guys. i realized they were made in the same image of the very earliest people. the first white directors, and i was fortunate i woke up with

jean a lot more than chris i was kind of in all of him. it really made me realize the responsibility that these people had as they took on their shoulders. and at the same time you were just doing the job. you're doing the job that needs to be done. standing on the shoulders of giants. more than anything you do not want to let them down. they want to make darn sure that you could do the best job that you possibly can all the time. >> that really comes through in the book. in your mantra i think was preparation. but that's sense i got was a people that sat in center seat whether they conducted the orchestra and i think you even use that analogy.

high functioning general might not be the smartest person on any one thing. but might actually be the most knowledgeable. at least you had the wide and broad base of knowledge. you tells a little bit about that? >> it is. as a flight controller, you had to be very, very into your system had to use every digital bit by its first name. and i'm not kidding when he say that. every bit had a name, you need to know everything about it. having all the test data. you need to know everything and each and about your system. not only that you had to know everything about interface with the other system. so i was in charge one time of the shuttle from one of the things i was in charge for a

while the auxiliary power units that provided flight control power. the engineering manager of the ap you, new more about the ap than i did. but he did not know thing about the hydraulic pump that attached to it. manager of the hydraulic pump, but did not know much about ap then needed to know everything about both of them. when they became a flight director they need to know a lot about all of those things. so it yet with been described many times as a conductor of the orchestra. we have to understand it may not have the skill to play every instrument, but we know how they should sound. if we are good enough at what we do, we're going to make everybody else in the orchestra think we know how to play their instruments as well as they do. we don't. but we understand where the questions are. we had a flight director the chief of the flight director office who was incredible. you can sit in a meeting with

tommy explaining a technical issue. he sat there at the end of the table you are not quite sure whether tommy was awake or asleep. he would listen for hours to the arguments of what was going on at the very end he would ask one single question that blew everybody out of the water. you understood that he not only heard everything, but it sympathized at all and came up with the one flaw in everybody's argument. that's an example of where the flight director lived. but how to get right to the heart of the issue is a rare trait. the person who can get through an enormous amount of information for ischemic it does take a certain amount of courage and confidence to sit in the center seat. first off you have to show confidence. like the captain of a ship you cannot show fear you cannot show you're not on top of

things than your people don't have confidence in what you're doing. but what we learned is that you also have to submerge your ego. it does not do any good to stand up there and proclaim you are the smartest guy in the room. you need to let people either figure that out or not figured out, one way or the other. you have to learn to ask smart questions and you have to learn to listen to the answers. and then you need to mixture you've done away with preconceived notions. because it's really easy if you got a big ego to walk into a situation, become for that you know the answer, and not hear the real information on the real data pretty have to be willing to let somebody sway your argument. when charlie mentioned earlier with your mantra being preparation, conclusions this

notion of being the best competitive person in the room seems like it was key to your success. they burgeoning simply a history buff to simply an autobiography. it became a leadership book. a book on followership, a book on organizational communication, in some respects for some younger people probably a fantastic career planning move. >> you saw right through, didn't you? >> tell me a little bit about that again going back to this notion of preparation was your

mantra. but how did that impact your experience as a leader? >> first off, you could never expect your people to do anything you are not willing to do yourself. and so, that includes being the best prepared person in the room. they learn something you need to learn it. i'm a one bedroom apartment they had work on room on the second level of the bill in the training liber that had every workbook on the shuttle program. it has workbooks and training to work all of the hardware and at night that's what i

worked on. i developed a habit early on of not taking lunch. i would sit at my desk and read a workbook. when i finished my co-op tour already finished with the training manuals that they had available. and so then i discovered in 1978 when the first large astronaut class, gf and jesus came in, it's. >> i'm not sure our listeners know entirely what cf mgs mean. set that stands for the 35 new guys. i am sticking with it. they videoed all of the classes that all those videotapes. this is back before beta and vhs i have it can preserve,

i'd go up in a drill down to my office and for five hours watching those videos. just because i was fascinated by all of it. but i was setting the stage to become a flight director just like the others apogee in the exact same thing. as a minority people in the job. but you really needed to be so well-prepared. what i always told people the control center, the flight director who has about a dozen flight controllers in the front room, that's the room you see on tv at mission control working for him for then each one of those peoples have a back room of people supporting them in their discipline. i always told and counseled young foes if you are akron flight control you ought to think like a front room flight controller. you ought to be thinking a level above what you are doing.

if you want to be a cracker jack front room operated you ought to think like a flight director. you want till what does my flight director need? what doesn't he need? is it might turn to buckley flight director or the other discipline is way worse than mine. i went to sit and watch what's going on. you can tell from it early career age who is trying become a flight director who is not. it was pretty obvious that you need to put in that dedication. you need to put in that work to get not only a broad knowledge, but a deep knowledge. [inaudible]

gathering and command interfaces. that all intertwine. we just lost abc, you needed to know what that lose in the meantime also wouldn't lose data wise so that, it looks like the computers offered not really awfully don't have an indication it's on because that telemetry is invalid. it's a lot of memorization if you will. although i hate memorization had little cue cards is a lot of radical jetted dive down. >> you are supposed to live in

the rabbit hole and poke your head up enough, particularly in the amount of time you spent preparing, but was that shakeout being narrowly focused. made a lot of points of the flight director's got a much bigger prompts a one-time deal with him first and come back to me i will manage this problem for you. and in doing that, he let the flight director know that you had that break of knowledge and you knew that he knew that you are thinking about what was going on.

wondering what was best for discipline. that to think about what's best for their system the backroom flight controller made them think about what's best for their system. let your system burn up because you can get what you need out of it but they can fix it when it gets to the ground, right? sometimes you would we always joke the jpl guys, flight all of these missions to mars and the like. they never get the hardware back. that very little attachment to the hardware. the blessed skin in the game.

dido how to word this without a yes or no, everybody in that room is auditioning for something except the flight director. or am i missing something? it became kind of odd. for someone like myself and my compadres who became flight directors, we did not intuitively understand why everybody did not want to be a flight director, all right? but there were lots of people who just wanted to go to work and do the best dog on job they could and they would look and said do not want the responsibility. he got a heck of a lot of responsibility in the job you're in, you do realize that? i hate to say it this way, they wanted to have family, kids, and everything. a lot of flight directors were single people. but the flight director is also, i was kind of unique as the longest -- there's a reason is the longest serving

flight director in space flight history that's 20 years, that is because i absolutely loved the job. there is no other job in the space program that i wanted. most people spend five -- seven years as a flight director. then they go off and become a program manager. the last two program managers in the program were former flight directors. and so they wanted to be deputy director of the senator or deputy administrator at nasa. i'm a field general. i absolutely love being right in the thick of the action. that's where i wanted to be pretty do joke a little bit but it is kind of true. there is no line from that movie top gun about we don't make policy, we're just carrying it out. the truth of the matter is people want to move up in nasa so they can make policy. you never going to make policy as a civil servant. politicians make policy.

we carried out pretty get really disappointed to get too high. so is try to do the best of the code of the flight program. >> knowing you have found your place and that certainly is not for everyone. that shines through in the book. and looking back to the field of preparation, is everything you look back on, i know you look back a lot and doing leadership consulting, you look back in your own preparation if you like is keystone or irreplaceable towards basically forming that fairly unique set of talents. >> guest: first off one thing you had to bring into nasa, into operations was leadership skills. i spent most of my life in leadership positions.

and i still not convinced. i am not certain about whether leadership is inherent or whether it is trainable. we can train skills and we can explain people what good leadership is. i learned leadership in scouting when i was a boy scout. the more i look back on where might leadership skills come from the more i realize that is where it came from. an awful lot, there are in awful lot of eagle scouts running around the halls of nasa and the astronaut office and the flight director office. nobody talks about it, but you learn that stuff there. a lot of people who learn leadership in military organizations or in sports, or in clubs in college. so you bring that in with you. and then, i think that a large

part of the kind of thing you have to learn is just how to put your nose to the grind stone. learning technical aspects. and then learning how to deal with people. and my house we really loved watching the big bang theory. not just because we knew those people, it was because we were those people. suspect that the exact same thing in my household. >> guest: he discovered that you had to figure out how to work with people. so after i had been a senior flight controller and it was clear they were people who thought i was flight director material, i was brought into a managers office and he said paul, you are that one of the most incredible operational engineers would seem.

but if you don't learn how to work brother with people, somebody's going to kill you. that's when i realized that you really do need how to submerge that ego. you need to let other people talk. i need to let other people air out what they want. >> are always tooting the skills that you have. and so you had to change her attitude from okay, i've got this technical stuff down really, really well. i understand how spaceships work. and i understand how we fly spaceships. now i need to figure how to fly people. and i tell people that really crackerjack technical stick bills will get you a long ways. but you will hit a ceiling until you learn how to work with comic communicate and understand other people. that's when you're going to make that leap into a

leadership goal or people are going to feel good working for you. i really ended up in a role of institutional mentor for flight control got to the point where when i would do simulations they were not trying to train me, i was considering myself part of the training team. in helping the training team put in situations for my flight controllers so they would get the lessons they needed. and then i had a constant steady stream of flight controllers coming through my office when we were not at the control center, wanted to sit down and see what they can learn. so that was kind of fun. >> comes after that mentorship just a moment. before we do, have some inside baseball stories in the book that were fascinating and fun. i am curious the part of your leadership style you are doing

watch the perseverance land on mars the other day it was really exciting. there is this story about how they encoded the jpl motto and the location of jpl latitude and longitude into the parachute using code i thought that was so neat. somebody sent me a note saying these jpl guys have so much fun. why in the world were you guys such stick in the months when you are flying the shuttle? and i love the jpl guys they are doing amazing things. i flew payload for them, they knocked my socks off is incredible stuff. i really think it is neat. the thing you have to remember is they are not putting human lives at risk. the human lives being put at

risk are the human lives knowingly and for reason. it's not a grim kind of thing. but you learned that it really would look horrible if you lost somebody and then people found you were messing around. and so we were always, always image-conscious. if you are sitting in a meeting planning a mission and somebody said hey, wouldn't it be cool if, that killed the idea but you did not even need to hear the idea. because we never did anything because it was cool. what we were doing was cool enough. we were at launching people into space for heaven sakes and we are bringing them back in a waiting vehicle that weighs to hunt a thousand pounds. right? this is cool enough for you. we always had to be very, very careful not to appear frivolous in any way.

but at the same time he wanted to have some fun. so yeah, we did some cool stuff and maybe some are in the book some are not. what people would not notice is sometimes, this would happen more often with the space station them the space shuttle. middle of the night in houston you're flying a mission going to have a path that flies right over houston and we knew it was going to be right overhead, we would designate one person to be the watch keeper. everyone else would go outside. we'd abandon to logical overhead, we come back inside to call the crew and say hey we just saw you play over. something bad happened right at that moment when you're gone, everybody's career would've been over those involving the flight director for certain. you had to be very careful. there were some fun times we

have. so every astronaut got to fly a little personal preference kit. pdk. libya couple things taken but they would have to have things for, there take things her friends and family that they could bring back and say hey, this watch fob flew in space. or this whatever. i had a mission where flight director malika thomas making sure stuff got into the crews pp k. subject calls me up and said i need stuff for their. you have anything. who walk into my office had liquor my office and all the while, on my wall was a minnesota golden gophers patch. i was university of minnesota graduate bird dispatch was not mine it was for my mother's letter jacket. she was aggressor the minnesota gophers verdict took

it down said here fly this. and so he took it. the next thing i know, i see some video coming down from the to see that lockers in the mid deck taped onto it is this minnesota golden gophers patch. and all i could think of is the crew opened up the book found its purple and gold gopher and had no earthly idea what it was, what it meant or what it was for. but the taped to the wall of the locker summit would sit on the ground. so we had fun things like that. we give you two more stories one was we would do rendezvous simulations. you are flying a rendezvous, you are getting in close to the space station or your target, the closer you get the slower you want to go.

so we had called breaking gates. then at 5:30 yard she wanted to be slower yet. 100 yards slower yet. so those are called breaking gates. you always wanted to fly your breaking date. if you're faster than your breaking date you are hot docking. we had friday breaking gates or simulations. you know you been in the control center all week, guys have been the cockpit all week. it is three in the afternoon, things are going slow. somebody would simply say friday breaking gates, that spacecraft would go on into the space station and dock at warp speed. okay were done, or out of here , meech of the outpost. the outpost was a local bar.

you ever saw the movie, the right stuff, there is pontius bar out of the middle of the desert. we had her own version of ponchos it was called the outpost for the ellie think even the outpost from falling down was all the turbines were holding hands. the place eventually burned down, fortunately the fire department and the people who were in the place of the time, understood the value of all of the mementos on the wall. they basically said let the structure burn, let's get everything out herbie had pictures, patches, there was no wallpaper. it was paint it was all momentous all this of got saved but the bar is gone. and then the last story i will tell you, it was not uncommon after a shift in the control center for people to go out and have a beer together. that worked great, they could meet at the outpost or meet at the singing will or whatever. except at 3:00 a.m. the bars were closed.

and so for a long time meet in the parking lot of the rec center. somebody would have a cooler in their truck or car there pull out a beer and have a beer before they went home. then security did not like that. the calls there's people out in the woods and drinking beer at three in the morning. in the head of operations to its security working for them called us up and said look, i know you guys need to do something, i've smoothed it over security and here's what we're going to do. there's a saturn five building prints we had a big old saturn five on display unit 60-foot tall rocket for the build the building around and it was air-conditioned for the tours. he said on nights when you guys want to go blowoff a little steam, call this number at the chief security desk, they will go out an hour before, turn on the lights in the air conditioning in the

building and you guys can go drink your hearts content there all night. >> turning a museum into a bar. submit your go out there to be sitting there drinking underneath the f1 engines of a saturn five. it was like drinking in church. this is like a cathedral. the something really wild about it. got a call from a flight director consul they would open it up and half it would be great for its treatment will get to that. take a look at the questions there we get to those questions, sprinkle it throughout looks like a little bit of a narrative going.

love the inside baseball stories. along with that notion eventually you become the mentor. eventually become the senior mentor. you've been around spin around the longest things change at nasa by then? with the mission changing at nasa did that change the organization? >> it did. i am a traditionalist. i learned something that is a tradition and i am an idealist , i learned from the best rate learn from the guys that flew apollo, i learned want to make sure we did not lose the lessons. but nasa changed.

the problem with the shuttle program nasa was a research organization. it was not designed to be an operational organization but is not designed to run an airline. we were always caught in this dichotomy. we want to keep trying the shuttle there attempted to turn it over to contractors. something she really direct control of the people who do not have fry fits in mind just there to serve once we started flying lots and lots of missions in the early show program there's assessments were going to fly 50 missions a year or week you cannot deal with four shuttles you cannot

do it with the kind of staffing we have. we did flight 12 in one year. got really, really busy. we tried to systematize everything for that every flight controller seat exact same set of failures in their training and when they saw them all there ready to be certified. they were not developed the basic philosophical skills but yes they were checking off bits and pieces but they were not getting the subjective part of the thing. so they would do an evaluation they did not have their training and they would fail. that's in guys like me would come in and try to help mentor them in the soft skills of doing that. we tried to create an assembly line like custom votes, not

production line votes. we need to be honest about what the real goals are. i am a big supporter of the space program guys like elon and the guys doing these commercial programs because nasa should be in the business of fundamental research and exploration. nasa should be going to the moon. they should not trying to figure out how to get people back and forth to the space station, we've done that we've got that knowledge we can give that to somebody. the predecessor to nasa was the naca the national and buys three committee for aeronautics. most of the things that created the modern airline structure came out of basic research. but they did try to run an airline.

is the shortest of all things research you want to learn mrs. [inaudible] and there's an inside for your part i work with a lot of guys that actually worked at naca and they transferred to nasa. they always said nasa but they never said napa. they said the naca. and there must be some sort of accommodation. >> i don't know what it means but the guys, the guys who came out the naca they already called it the naca. they would also say naca airfoil. >> so who knows. [laughter]

anyway, he sort of answered a question in the q&a i'm sorry, i will read the question so you can see there's anything more you can add. how do you feel watching spacex control room versus nasa control from the iss? >> it is a little different. it is a younger crowd. they have a different set of social mores. i've always said that we lost two shuttles, we lost two settles in their crews and 135 flights, it's going to happen to elon. and how they treat the business will reflect on them when they do. if you treat it the slate you'll have a problem. i have seen them be very serious about what they do. seen them doing a lot more

chilling in that kind of thing, which is very cool because they should be enthusiastic about it. you also need to remember, people watching it need to know look at any post- landing there at letting off steam first the spacecraft is done it's landed you could do that. make it seems clear to me i'm curious what your perception is. i think there's a very big sense they understand their standing on the shoulders of giants as well parts of think they do. that is a neat place to go work. i have had a chance to visit spacex and blue origins, and virgin, and all of this people and talk to them about flying

people in space. there senior management is me, asking us and other flight directors can buy this for a a call from one of the companies they said some of my former guys were working there predict called me up and said were getting ready to fly her first human. and they said i need you to, but the fear of god into these people. we just need you to come and tell them how serious it is to what they're about to do. and i have done that. it's really fun and they appreciate it. >> on that note the most popular question on q&a right now can you share your best day on the job as well as your worse? so backing out the worst day on the job have to be losing a spacecraft. interestingly enough i was a flight control of the loss of challenge i was not on on the next mission. i was training for the next mission we are going into a meeting to work up a checklist

we stopped to watch the launch. we knew instantly we saw the smoke it was over there is no hope. columbia, i've been a flight director for years. i was flying every mission to the hubble space station i loan every mission to mirror. in 2007 the last mission of columbia was not going to the space station it was research mission. it was might mission off. as one mission i was not working directly. i was not even paying attention to it to a certain extent. it really took it off break onto the airport that morning to fly got out there, it was foggy so was headed home i stopped at an auto parts are to pick up something, 70 so my flight jacket and said what happened with columbia said i don't know what happened to columbia customer kissimmee is coming down to pieces all over dallas for no sooner than that my pager went off, my phone started ringing, and i was

headed into the control center. cinnabar emergency operations center which was the liaison with the rest of the world. we had a wall map and putting pins in the map whether fighting debris in texas. managing a whole bunch of aircraft's that we were using first search and recovery and stuff. it was a bad day. and i don't want to ever make light of that because there's nothing light about it. by that time i'd lost a lot of friends and flying machines. aeronautical flying machines, spacecraft, and i've gotten very used to that kind of thing happening. you don't never learn to like it pretty should never learn to like it you do everything you can to avoid it. and then you know the probably the best in the control centers every day the worst

day in the control center that was better than the best in the office, anytime. the best time in the control center was when a team was absolutely clicking. i'll give you one example are mapping the entire planet. be absolutely ready to go every time we came feet dry or we're going to miss stuff. we feet wet, we had this path of 53 minutes long before we were feet dry on africa. and we lost our attitude control thrusters. we had trained for this over and over again. my team clipped i mean everything absolutely click to the point we had -- it took us most all that time i did back in attitude were relieved to be after that. watching a good flight control team click like that. all had to do stan beckinsale the way.

>> not that there's no problems, very, very good, thank you on that. joe ever wished you on the flight rather than standing in mission control? [laughter] 's >> you know the matter is, i come applying to the office moving up in the selection office in terms of i finally reached a point as a flight director already, and i got the call saying before put you into an interview, what exactly is your uncorrected vision, paul question rick of course they already knew because they had all my medical records a been taking care of me for my whole career. but by that point in time, the crews were all working for me when we were flying.

it would have been really fun to do a single flight just to say you did it. but it is a long haul to the astronaut office to spend years to get ready for that one flights. it would been great to fly but had a pretty good crew the way it was. >> is probably a lot of space tourism is going to be available at some point. >> probably not in my budget range. we'll have to see if somebody offers me a discount. my advantage is a been a pilot my whole life. i do an awful lot of experimental aviation page a lot of flight testing. i get to do an awful lot of fun stuff. i didn't get a chance to get in an airplane every day or every other day, then i might think a little bit differently g it would been fun to fly the space shuttle once. >> i have an airplane going to test flavor. [laughter] i might do that. [laughter]

>> so another question that came in, do you think the shuttle program ended when it did urge you think it should have continued? was it a reasonable end? >> i can say this not because i don't work for nasa anymore. i really believe it's a shame a retard the shuttle when we did with the goal the space shuttle was to build and service the space station. as the fundamental view of it. and once we finish the space station, we retired the shuttle. that is really a political decision. i call it a loss of national will. if you polled individual people, citizens would we have a majority of support. they did not like the risk. i think we should've continued flying the shuttle for quite a bit longer.

because it carried a whole lot of stuff up and back. it was designed to serve as a space station. we could probably continue building onto the space station it would be a much bigger thing. so i think we retired the shuttle early. i would have liked to have continued seeing it fly. >> host: you just finished answering one of the other programs you feel the program is under pressure by the public? >> guest: you know, we are a victim of her own success. oh yeah, the shuttle it up again. will that did that six times this year, so what? when you become successful, people stop paying attention is not exciting anymore. but i will tell you what, it was really exciting every time you look both shuttle engines, it was never boring. >> no doubt. do you think the shuttle inspired some of what goes on of the rest of the world different space programs? >> it absolutely did. we bootstrapped a lot of

different space programs. a lot of the knowledge we learn things that would then applied. it's just the research organization again that is what we are do. take public money you get knowledge additive at that knowledge out there for people to use. it always pays for itself or its direct strikes me a handle milk runs to and from orbit do you think nasa is going back to a little bit of its roots with going back into the exploration business? >> i hope so. i say very well-connected with my friends in houston, the newer generation of flight directors. and i know it's going on and they are working hard to get back to a lunar presence but i personally would rather see a really robust lunar presence

before go to mars should make sure that will make a tomorrow we can do it to stay. when need to practice on the moon rather than get to mars when you're half a year from earth and have a problem. spirit one of the last questions, how do you deal with stress? you are in the role where so much of the weight but was going on was on your shoulders. >> guest: the pat answer to that you're given to react to stress in a negative way you're not going to qualify as a flight director. i couldn't say that before a mission, if i was getting spun up i would go out, get in my airplane and fly a bunch of aerobatics to unwind. that would center me and relax me a bit. once you get right in the middle you are so you don't

have time to be stressed. you just plow ahead. so when we are almost out of time i'm going to hit you with one last question. it conceals my very strong opinion. you are an extremely strong writer. i have experienced it firsthand and we are on the same aircraft. not the same kinds of airplanes. i'm curious about, obviously you've gone on your sill and editor at large, what degree in your personal journey? >> i think writing and communication are the same thing. verbal or written to write them down in aces synced manner and pass them line get

you noticed. if you can write a well thought out sissy and meaningful essay and one page on a topic that shows the reason why think should be a certain way, that's going to get you noticed is no question about that. the book is extraordinarily well written. it is not just history, it's not just an autobiography. it is an extraordinary book on personal development. i mentioned earlier in career planning going to hit you up later for organization i am involved in. i like to encourage all of our watchers and all of our listeners big green button this is by book. you will do very well to be buying this book.

what else would you like to say? or probably down to sec. if not a minute. >> i just want to thank tucson festival books to asked me to it come talk. last couple chapters in my book on leadership. but the way she can be more successful in complex operations. that would be intense. but they think everyone is watching perspective and cute. >> gotta switch screens here, a little bit of my -- that is it for us today everyone. thank you to paul for your participation today i thank you for attending, if you get

the chance and can the tucson festival, again thank you for being a sponsor >> and no more original virtual tucson festival of books. best to give journalist jeff and television producer daniel friede's report on a former army intelligence officer turned on man. >> i am excited i was asked to moderate this panel. because like both of our authors seal meat and a second, i spent my career in journalism. i worked in television news for 40 years, the last 25 of that investigative reporting including over seven years at kb oh eight tv in tucson so i retired last may. my memoir confessions of an investigative reporter dropped last may and humbled