service. the longest-serving flight director reflected on his life and career during his conversation at the 2021 tucson festival of books. he wrote shuttle houston life in the center seat of mission control. >> joining us today for the panel shuttle houston is paul dye with four decades of experience as an engineer, builder and retired in 2019 is the longest-serving flight director in history. and the leader of several missions. he received an outstanding leadership medal, three exceptional service metals and presidential medal. now a leadership consultant and

speaker and former engineer of kipling's magazine. his book is shuttle houston, my life in the center seat of mission control. it's great to have you here by the way. >> talked a little bit about the book and how it came about. what can the readers expect? >> i guess the first thing to say -- we are getting a little echo. but the first flight director was back in the mercury days and chris wrote a book about his days in the space program. then the book failure is not an option about his years of apollo. i kind of felt somebody needed to capture the view from the flight director and mission control for the program. we are seeing lots and lots of

excellent books by mostly astronauts about their years in the shuttle program. the thing i would like people to remember is that for every astronaut that flies, there are tens of thousands of people contributing to the program and there is a lot broader perspective than just what it's like to be in the cockpit or the cabin. as much as i enjoy the books because most of them are written by my friends i figured it was time to make sure we capture the viewpoints from the control center and it took a little time to write. we retired the shuttle in 2011 and i collected notes writing chapters and things like that over the years but i was very busy between then and last year with external airplanes and doing a lot of writing and flying and so it took my wife finally saying are you going to write the book or not.

she really helped push that along. we got a very good publisher and i have a wonderful editor who helped me take all of the material i put together and formulate how we wanted the book to look. one of the things i like to tell people right up front, the book covered the mercury program which was a couple of years and jeans book covered the apollo program going to the moon and that was a few years. the shuttle program lasted 30 years. the flight program lasted 30 years, the program 40 years. to try to tell the entire story of the shuttle program in virtually that was the first thing i had to wrap my head around when i got serious was to realize that all i could do is tell some stories from my point of view and i hope that a lot of

books get written by people that were in the program to save the history. that is what the book is about. hopefully the book will give people the views of the technology of the shuttle. the technology of the systems today would be considered quaint but it was very complex. i want people to understand the people that made it work, what the people that sat at mission control and did the planning and is set in this simulators and trained the astronauts, what they had to do to make it work and i want people to understand the process of what flying the shuttle was all about. it's more complex than watching star wars i will put it that way. then last, the dedication of the

people and the fund that they had doing it because even though it was an incredibly complex and many would say stressful job, if it wasn't fun, you were not going to last very long. so that is kind of the overview and what i hope people will take from it when they get the chance to read it. >> it's part history and part autobiography but it is in the entire history of the program as you said it is your window and it's not an entire autobiography, but we get a lot out of it. before i go any further, i was struck immediately because you talk about the people that came before were struck by the legacy of those flight directors and

what a complicated set of forces that created for you so can you talk about the notion of taking the center seat and particularly in light of the shoulders of the giants in which it rests. >> i was in aeronautical engineering student and i had a complex set of events i didn't think i would work in the space program and i sent in my application and got a note back saying such and such date and time. i had no idea what i was going to be doing. when i got there i discovered the people in the operations organizations asked for me and i learned later it's because i had been a pilot and was working my way through college as a instructor and technician so they figured i understood real-time operations. so i walked into the control

center and i didn't have preconceived notions of what i would see what i saw people sitting in the front room and i don't think that i recognized the flight director for what they were until a little bit later on. this is what we are going to do and how we are going to solve the problem and save the planet. they were not management and they were an inspirational leader and that is what the flight director turns out to be is a person that visibly takes control of things during a mission and i guess a little bit of that made me want to be the hero of the science fiction movies that you watch back then.

if you watch the martian movies, titled the martian, i think sean plays the flight director and he does a good job because he doesn't take anything from anybody including the administrator at nasa who says we will get these guys home first. but i started working with flight directors fairly early in my career i got fast tracked to the front of the room at mission control and started working with these guys and realized that they were made in the same image of the very earliest people off of the first directors and i was fortunate to work with both chris and jean although chris was the center director of the time so i was in all of him but it made me really realize the

responsibility these people had and that they took on their shoulders and at the same time you just are doing the job that needs to be done so they were impressive people and like you said standing on the shoulders of the giants and more than anything, you don't want to let them down. you want to make sure word that you do the best job you possibly can all the time. >> that comes through in the book and i think the launch was preparation but the sense that i got is the conductor of the orchestra if you will and i think that you even used that analogy that you were a high functioning general and might not be the smartest person but you might be the most

knowledgeable in the broad base of knowledge in many cases. can you talk a little bit about that? it's almost an archetype. >> it is. as a flight controller, you had to be very meek in your system, no every digital bit by its first name and i am not kidding when i say that. every bit had a name. you had to know all of the test data, everything there was to know about your system and not only that but you had to know about everything and how it interfaced in the system. i was in charge at one time the shuttle, one of the things i was in charge of for a while was the hydraulics that provided flight control power and the engineering manager knew more about it than i did but he

didn't know anything about the hydraulic pump that connected to it. he knew everything there was but not that much about the ap. i needed to know everything about both of them. when you became a flight director you needed to know about all of those things. we have been described many times as the conductor of the orchestra and have to understand we may not have the skills to play every instrument but we do know how they should sound. if we are good enough at what we do we are going to make everybody else in the orchestra think we know how to play the instrument as well as they do. we don't but we understand where the questions are. we had a flight director who was the chief of the office when i was a young flight controller who was incredible because you could sit in a meeting explaining a technical issue. he sat there at the end of the table and you were not quite sure whether he was awake or asleep. he would listen for hours and at

the very end he would ask one single question that blew everybody out of the water. you understood he not only heard everything but he synthesized it all and came up with the one flaw in everybody's argument and that is the kind of example of where the flight director lives. ... >> that 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 figure that out are not figure that 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 make sure you have done away with preconceived notions. because it's really easy if you have a big ego to walk into a situation because you know the answer and not hear the real information are the real data. have to be willing to let somebody sway your arguments. host: with your mantra being preparation i keyed in on that. and not to be and from which you can draw conclusions.

going into that and with the other person in the room it seems like it was tedious but this is where the book diverges simply from a history book or autobiography it became a book on leadership and followership and organizational communication. and in some respects for some younger people a career planning book. >> you saw are right through it. [laughter] >> so how did your mantra impact your experience as a leader? >> you can never expect people to do anything you're not willing to do yourself.

that includes being the best prepared person in the room. when i was a very young flight controller i moved down to houston i had a one-bedroom apartment motorcycle and that was it. and the room the second floor the library they had every workbook on the shuttle program all the systems and operations and dynamics it was workbooks and training manuals on how to work all the hardware and software and mission control i took a book and that's what i worked on. and then i would sit at my desk and read a workbook.

and with all the training manuals they had available i discovered in 1978 when the first large astronaut class came in that stands for the 35 new guys it stands for the 35 new guys. i am sticking with that. [laughter] so they video it all the classes presented to that tf and g and they had all the videotapes. this was back before beta and vhs. and every thursday night i had the machine reserved and go up and get the machine and spent for five hours watching those videos.

a lot of that was because i was fascinated with that and what i learned later is that i was setting the stage to become a flight director just like the other few people out there doing the exact same thing. but you really needed to be so well-prepared but i always told people the control center in the flight director that's the room you see on tv is mission control working for him and then each has a back room of people and i have counseled young folks if you are backroom flight controller think of the front room flight controller and think a level above of what you are doing so that you know what your front room person needs if you want to be a crackerjack front room operator than think like a

flight director if you want to know what does my flight director need or doesn't need? is it my turn and that is way worse than my problems i will sit back and watch what's going on. so you could tell from an early age who was trying to become a flight director and who was not. 's it was pretty obvious you need to put in that dedication and the work not only to get the broad knowledge but the deep knowledge. >> not just avoiding the rabbit holes that you just have to put in that time. >> put in the time because what you discover in the show because it is a complex system you have a lot of different electrical places where things

are connected and a lot of different data gathering and command interfaces so the electrical guide said we need to say what does that lose data -wise. we just don't have an indication that telemetry is valid so it is the memorization although i always had cue cards like cheat sheet to give me that data so there were a lot of rather holes you have to dive down. host: you are flight controller before the flight director. you are supposed to live in the rabbit hole am poke up your head long enough to learn the flight director's job. what is at odds what was that

shakeout to be narrowly focused? >> you made a lot of points with the flight director. you set i have this problem with such and such but i know the officer were there has a much bigger problem so deal with him first and then come back to me and i will manage this problem for you and we'll take care of it. and in doing that coming let the flight director know that you have the breadth of knowledge and that he knew you knew what was going on and you were acting almost as his assistant not just somebody sitting down with their own discipline. and those i can't think about what's best for their system but what's best for the

mission and then one of the toughest things to learn as a flight controller is to let the system burn up because you can get what you need out of it but they will fix it when it gets to the ground. sometimes you have to sacrifice the hardware to make the mission work that they never get their hardware back. they had very little attachment to the hardware. >> they approach engineering from a slightly different perspective with less skin in the game. >> yes. >> everybody in that room once that position except the flight director or am i missing something it becomes

odd because for someone like myself and my compadres we, we do not intuitively understand why everybody didn't want to be a flight director. but there are lots of people who want to go to work to do the best job and then say i don't want the responsibility. but you have a heck of responsibility in the job you are in. you realize that? hate to say it this way that they wanted to have a family and kids and a lot of flight directors were single. but the flight directors also i was unique. there is the reason i was a longest-serving flight director in space flight history of 20 years. because i absolutely love the job. there is no other job in the space program that i wanted.

most people spend five or seven years and then they go off to become a program manager. the last two program managers were former flight directors. they want to be deputy director were deputy administrator of nasa but i am the field general i like to be in the thick of the action. i do joke a little bit that it is true that movie top gun we don't make policy we just carry it out what people want to move up and nasa so they can make policy you never make policy as a civil servant politicians make policies and you get disappointed if you get too high. i tried to do the best job that we could in the flight program. host: knowing that you found

your place and certainly that is not for everyone. and that shines through in the book. is there anything that you look back on in your own preparation was basically toward storming that? >> first off i think one thing you have to bring in with you to nasa operations was leadership skills. i have spent most of my life in leadership positions and i am still not convinced. i am not certain if leadership is inherent or trainable.

we can train skills and explain to people with good leadership is. i learned leadership in scouting when i was a boy scout. the more i look back where my leadership skills come from the more i realize that is where it came from. and there are an awful lot of eagle scouts running around the halls of nasa. the astronaut office and flight director office they don't talk about it that you learn that stuff they are. people who learned leadership in military organizations or sports or clubs in college you bring that in with you but i think the large part of the kind of thing you had to learn

is how to put your nose to the grind stone to learn the technical aspects. and then learn how to deal with people. in my house we loved watching the big bang theory. not just because we knew those people that because we were those people. and then you discover that you have to figure out how to work with people so after i was a senior flight controller and it was clear there were people who thought i was flight director material, was brought into a manager's office and he said your with the most incredible operational engineers we've ever seen but if you don't learn how to work better with people somebody will kill you. that's what i realized you really do need how to learn to

submerge the ego and let other people talk. host: and your tuning the skills that you have. >> it was the tuneup lecture. so you have to change your attitude from i have the technical stuff down i understand how spaceships work and how we five spaceships. now i need to figure out how to fly people. so with those crackerjack technical skills will get you a long ways that you will hit the ceiling until you learn how to work with, communicate and understand other people. that's we make the leap into a leadership role where people will feel good working for you. i really ended up in the role

of institutional mentor for flight control skills. when i would do simulations they were not trying to train me i was part of the training team and helping the training team put in situations for flight controller so they would get the lessons they needed and then the constant steady stream of flight controllers coming to my office who wanted to sit down and see what they can learn. host: you have some insight it is fascinating and it is fun aiming curious how important was it with your leadership style clearly what you are doing. >> watching perseverance land on mars was exciting because

there was a story about how they encoded the jpl latitude and longitude into the parachute into ascii code and i thought that was so neat. somebody sent me a note to say they have so much fun why were you are stick in the night when you flew shadow? i love the jpl guys they knock my socks off i think it is neat but the thing you have to remember is that they are not putting human lives at risk. the human lives we are putting at risk are those that knowingly and for a reason it's not a grim kind of thing but you learn it would really look horrible if you lost

somebody and then they found out you were messing around so we were always very image-conscious. if you are sitting in a meeting planning and mission and somebody said wouldn't it be cool if? that would kill the idea you don't even need to hear it because we never did anything because it was cool. what we were doing was cool enough. were launching people into space for heaven sakes and bringing them back in a winged vehicle 200,000 pounds. this is amazing stuff this should be cool enough for you but we always had to be very careful not to appear frivolous in any way but at the same time we wanted to have fun so we did some cool stuff and what people wouldn't

notice this would happen more often with the space station that if you have a good clear night in houston and flying a mission and fis right over houston and we knew it would rain overhead we would designate one person to be the watch keeper everybody else goes outside and we would come back inside and call up the crew and say we watched you fly over. know if something bad had happened right at that moment when you were gone everybody's career would have been over. the flight director for sure so you have to be very careful but there were some fun times everybody got to fly a little personal preference kits. they asked to have things they

take things for friends and family that they can bring back that this flew in space or whatever. and my lead cap, made sure that staff got into the crew pd k and said i need stuff do you have anything? and walks into my office and on the wall was a minnesota golden gophers patch. it wasn't mine it was from my mother's letter jacket. i said here fly this. so he took it. the next thing i know, i see video coming down and the

lockers and taped onto it is a minnesota golden gophers patch and all i could think of is when the crew open the book to see this purple and gold gopher and had no earthly idea what it meant and what it was for but they taped it to the wall on the lockers of somebody would see it on the ground so we had fun things like that. i will give you two more stories. we would do rendezvous simulations. closer you get the slower you want to go coming up on your target so at 1000 yards he went to go the speed if you got to the thousand yards then that's great and you always

want to fire breaking games and if you are faster than you would really hotdog it. we had friday breaking gates for simulations. you going to the control center all week and it is three in the afternoon and things are going slow. and somebody would simply say friday breaking gates and then that spacecraft would go on network speed. which the outpost was the local bar. if you ever saw the movie, the right stuff it was ponchos bar.

it was called the outpost the only thing keeping the outpost from falling down that the termites were holding hands. the place eventually burned down. fortunately the fire department and people in the place at the time understood the value of all of the mementos on the wall and said let the structure burn get everything out. pitchers, patches, no wallpaper or paint it was all mementos at all got saved. and then the last story i would tell you is that it was not uncommon for the control center for them to grow and have a beer together and then meet at the outpost but at 3:00 a.m. the bars were close so for a long time they would meet in the parking lot of the rec center.

and then they just have a beer and then go home. but then ahead of center operations called us up and said you need to do something so i smoothed over was security and here is what we will do. the saturn five building on display they build the building around the rocket it was her condition for the tourist. so call this number at the chief security desk and then to turn on the lights and air-conditioning and you can go drink to your hearts content there all night. but then you go out there and

drink underneath the f1 engine of the saturn five. it was like drinking in church. and there is something always really wild about that. so they got a call from the flight directors littleton up and turn the air conditioning on for us. it was great. host: if you look at the questions then you can upload the ones you want to answer first or most likely. >> i'm not out of questions yet but we seem like we have a little bit of a narrative going. i love the inside baseball stories with the notion because eventually you become

a senior mentor. you have been around the longest. have things changed at nasa by then? and with that mission changing at nasa does it change the organization? >> it dead. i am a real traditionalist and i am an idealist i learned from the best and the guys from the other flight directors and i want to make sure we didn't lose those lessons. that nasa changed. the problem with the show program that nasa was a research organization. it was not designed to be

running an airline. and then to turn the shuttle over to contractors but it's like hiring a contractor to fight your work for you if you are a nation something should be under the direct control of the people who don't have profits in mind and are there to serve the good of the people. so once we started flying lots of missions and then to 550 missions a year, that is one a week you cannot do it with the staffing we had. it was impossible that we do 512 in one year and it got busy. so we got into the mode to

systematize everything that every flight controller would see the exact same set of failures in their training and when they saw them and we always had problems with it because they were not developing the basic philosophical skills but checking off dix on - - bits and pieces but not getting the subjective part so we do evaluations they have the training objectives met but not subjective zen fail. so that's when guys like me would help to mentor them on those of the soft skills to do the job. we try to create and assembly-line it was not in assembly-line product it's like custom boats not production line boats. and you really need to know of

the big supporter of the commercial space program guys elon musk and commercial programs because nasa should be in the business of fundamental research and the exploration and should go to the moon they shouldn't be figuring out how to get people back and forth to the space station. we have that knowledge. the predecessor to nasa would be an aca but the airline structure came out of that research but they did not try to run an airline. host: but that's based on my limited view of an airplane though there but not to your level that nasa is the source

of all things research. >> yes it would be an aca stuff and that's inside baseball. i work with a lot of guys that actually worked at an aca then transferred to nasa they always say nasa but they always said the and aca. host: like it has a bad connotation. >> i don't know but the guy that came out always call that the and aca. >> you answer the question but i will read the questions how

do you feel watching the space x control room? >> it is a little different. it is a younger crowd. they have a different set of search. but just as we lost two shuttles and their crews and 135 flights it will happen to elon musk. how they treat the business will reflect on them when they do if you treated frivolously then you will have a problem but i have seen them be very serious at what they do i've seen them do a lot more cheering which is cool because they should be enthusiastic about it but always remember i don't think they need to remember but people watching

need to know they take the job seriously. let me put it that way. if you take a look at any post wedding celebration with apollo of guys waving flags and smoking cigars, they were letting off steam. host: it seems clear to me that with your perception that it's the understanding they are on the shoulders of giants. >> i think they do. it's a neat place to go work. i had a chance to visit blue origin and space x and virgin to talk about flying people in space. the senior management me and astronauts and other flight directors i got a call from one of the companies that basically said my guys are working there and said we are

getting ready to fly our first humans i need you to come put the fear of god into these people we need you to tell them how serious it is and what they are about to do. i did that and they appreciated it. >> what is the best on the job as well as the worst? >> the worst has to be losing a spacecraft. i was a flight controller at the time we lost the challenger. i was not on that mission i was on the next one we were going to a meeting to work on a checklist. we stopped to watch the launch and we knew instantly when we saw the forked tail smoke that it was over and no help.

columbia i was a flight director for years. flying every emission so the last mission of columbia was not going to the space station it was a receiver on - - research mitch - - mission but i was not working directly. i was not even paying attention to it. i don't know what happened to columbia they said it's coming down and pieces all over dallas they know sooner said that my pager went off and i was headed into the control center to set of the emergency operations center so just to

put pins in the maps where you are finding debris and with that aircraft we were using for search and recovery. for credit went to make light of that but that by that time i'm flying aeronautical flying machines and spacecraft and i had gotten very used to that happening. you don't ever learn to like it. so that they stay in a controlled center is every day. and the best time in the control center was when the

team was absolutely clicking. one example. we flew a radar mission where we were mapping the entire planet. we had to be absolutely ready to go every time we came feet dry but we went feet wet and had to pass a 53 minute launch before we had africa and we lost altitude control thrusters and we had trained for this over and over again. my team collect. everything. absolutely click to the point where it took us back where we were watching a good flight control team and professional people click like that, i had to do was stand back and stand out of the way. it was fabulous. when it comes together. >> .

host: what about mission control quick. >> everyone that goes to the space center wants to be an astronaut when they get there. i went to the astronaut office and went to the selection process i finally reach the point i was flight director already. i got the call to say we before we put you in an interview what is your uncorrected vision? they already knew because they have all my medical records they had been taking care of me for my whole career. but by that time so it would have been really fun to do a single flight and then just

ten years to get ready for that one flight but i had a pretty good career the way it was. >> . >> you probably have the inside view on that. >> will have to see if i'm offered a discount. i have been a pilot my whole life and i do a lot of experimental aviation in a lot of the fun stuff. if i didn't have a chance to get into an airplane every other day i may think differently it may be fine to fly the space shuttle. >> . >> do you think the shuttle program ended or be

discontinued? >> i don't work for nasa anymore we retired it when we did but it was to service the space station that was the fundamental view of it. once we finish the space station we retired the shuttle. that was a political decision. i colorado loss of national will. if you pulled individual people are citizens we have a majority of support the politicians did not want to keep going. i wish we would've flown it longer it was designed to service the space station we could have continued building and it would be a much bigger thing. i think we retired the shuttle

early but i would like to continue to see it fly. host: do you feel the program was underappreciated by the public? >> we are a victim of our own success. the shuttle went up again. so wet. then people stopped paying attention is not exciting anymore but it was exciting for us. >> but we would bootstrap a lot of space programs and a lot of the knowledge that we learned would then be applied. and then we give away what we learned because that we were

tasked to do we take public money and put the knowledge out there for people to use. it always pays for itself. host: it strikes me that going to and from orbit. and then go back into the exploration business? >> i stay well-connected with my friends and houston and the newest generation of flight directors. they know what's going on and they are working hard. i would rather see a robust lunar presence before we go to mars to make sure when we go to mars we can do it tuesday. we need to practice on the

moon. >> how do you deal with stress? but so much of that weight was on your shoulders. >> that if you are given to react to stress in a negative way you will not qualify as a flight director. and before admission i would get and my airplane and fly to unwind but that word center me and relax me of that. once you get in the middle you are so busy you don't have time to be stressed. plow ahead. >> one last question.

you are and extremely strong writer i have experienced it firsthand. obviously you have gone on but what degree in your personal journey at nasa was writing? >> i think that writing and communication are the same thing verbal or written. without a doubt, the ability to formulate your thoughts to write them down in a secede manner to pass them up the line get you noticed. to have a well thought out sustained and meaningful essay and one page on a topic that

spells the reasons why something should be a certain way that will get you noticed, no question. >> it is not just a not a biography but but i would like to encourage all listeners you will see a big green button that says buy the book and you will do very well to do so and by the book.

what else would you like to say? >> i just want to think tucson festival of books for asking me to come talk. it has been fun. the last couple of chapters in the book are lessons we have learned over the years on leadership and the way we can be more successful in complex operations. i'm glad you recognize that and that was the intent. thank you so much for having me here and for everybody watching. host: thank you everyone. thank you for your participation today. thank you for attending if you get the chance go to festival - - tucson festival of books.org and thank you to our

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