outstanding leadership metal and the presidential medal. now a leadership consultant and speaker and former editor-in-chief his book is

featured today and it's great to have you here today. talk about the book and how it came about and how - - and what can readers expect quick. >> quick. >> the very first flight director was back in the mercury days and he will his that his days in the space program and then jean krantz wrote a book failure is not an option as he was a flight director for apollo so i felt that somebody needed to capture the view from the flight director console in mission control for the shuttle program. we see lots of excellent books by mostly astronauts from

their years in the shuttle program and i want people to remember that for every astronaut that flies there are tens of thousands contributing to the program and there is a broader perspective i figured it was time we captured some of those from the control center. it took a little time to write we retire the shuttle in 2011 collecting those writing chapters from when we came out the book last year doing a lot of writing and flying so it is the impetus to say so we have

a very good publisher and i have a wonderful editor who helped me take all the material i put together to formulate how we wanted the book to look. i like to tell people bite up the front that chris's book covered the flight director of the mercury program and jeans book cover the apollo program going to the moon. that was a few years. the shuttle program lasted 30 years the flighthe program but the actual program lasted 40. to try until the entire history of the shuttle program is virtually impossible that's the first thing i had to wrap my head around to realize that all he could do was tell some stories from my point of view. i hopeat that a lot of books are written by those that were in the program just to say the

history of what they look like. that's what the book is about. hopefully it will give son inside use of the technology of the shuttle which we tend to think of extremely high tech and it is but it was very high-tech for 1970 and 1980. the technology and the computer systems today would be considered quaint but very complex. i want people to understand that the people that made it work those that sat in mission control doing the planning and sat in the simulators training the astronauts what they had to doer to make it work. and also modifying the shuttle was all about. >> andn lastly the dedication of the people in the fund they had doing it.

the overview of the book and what i hope people take from it. host: of course i have read and i enjoyed it very much. it's clear is not the entire history of the program. in clearly not an entire autobiography i will dig into a little bit of that. the people that came before the two programs with that complicated set of forces so

talk aboutlk the notion of the center seat on the shoulders of giants on which it rests? >> when i was given the opportunity i was an aeronautical engineering student and through a complex set of events i applied to go to houston. i would build airplanes and then i sent in my application i get a letter back saying report at this date and time i had no idea what i would be doing. but i got there that people of the operation organization has asked her me and i learned later and working my way through college as a scuba diver instructor and technician so i walked into the control center i had no preconceived notions but i saw

this group of people sitting in the front room and i don't think i recognize the flight director for what they were intel later on. if you ever watch the science fiction movies from the fifties and early sixties, there was always something threatening the survival of the planet and the politicians would be arguing one strong leader took charge and said this is what we will do and save the planet. they were an inspirational leader that's what the flight director turns out to be. the person that visibly takes control during a mission and planning for the mission that makes me be the hero of that science fiction movie.

he does a really good job in there because he doesn't take guff from anybody including the administrator at nasa and says you can have it. i started working with flight directors fairly early inoo my career and was fast-track to the front room of mission control. they were made in the same image of the earliest people the first three flight directors. and i was fortunate to work with both chris and jean. i worked with jean a lot more than chris who was the director at the time. me realize the responsibility these people had as they took on the

shoulders and at the same time you are just doing the job that needs to be done. so standing onn the shoulders of giants you don't want to let history down you want to make darn sure you do the best job you possibly can all the time. host: that really comes through in the book. and the mantra was preparation and then the high functioning generals. to be the smartest person on anyone thing.

so tell us about that it's almost like the archetype. >> it is. as a flight controller you have to be very deep in the system to know every digital bit by its first name and i am not kidding. you have to know everything. all the test data and everything there was tot know about your system. not only that but how it interfaced with the other system. i was in charge at one time of the shuttle auxiliary power units and power system that provided flight control and the flight control manager knew more than i did he didn't

know anything about the hydraulic pump that attached to it the manager of the hydraulic pump knew that but i had to do everything about both of them. when you become a flight director you need to know a lot about all of those things. we have been described many times as conductor of the orchestra to understand we may not have the skills to play every instrument - - instrument that we know how they should sound and if we are good enough at what we do we will make everybody else think we know how to play the instruments as well as they do. we don't but we know the flightff director who was incredible because that was a technical issue and you are not quite sure if tommy was awake or asleep. he will listen to ours the arguments at the very end he would ask one single question

that would blow everybody out of the water. that not only he heard everything and synthesized it all and came up with the one flaw in everybody's argument so that's the example where the flight director lives. host: knowing how to get to the heart of the issue is a trait leading to an enormous amount of information. >> it is what we look for it does take a certain amount to sit in the center seat first you have to show confidence you cannot show fear that you are not on top of things so what we learned is you also haveve to submerge your ego it doesn't do any good to stand

up there and proclaim you're the smartest guy in the room you have to let people figure that out or not. one way orha the other. you have to learn to ask smart questions and have to learn to listen to the answers and then you need to make sure you have done away with preconceived notions because if you walk into a situation be confident you know the answer and then sway the argument. >> i keyed in on that and i felt that to be prepared with the foundations. so going into that this notion

it seems like it was the key to your success. like it iss simply in history the coronado biography it became a book on leadership and followership and to some respects some career planning. >> you saw right through it. [laughter] >> so going back to the notion of preparation and your experience as a leader. >> first off you can never expect your people to do anything you're not willing tot do yourself. and that includes being the best prepared person in the

room. if they learn something then i had a one-bedroom apartment and my motorcycle and what i discovered on the second floor of theib training library had every workbook on the shuttle workbook and then how to work all the hardware and software mission control and i went in there every day and i got another book and i would sit at my desk and i would read a workbook and out i would read all the training manuals.

so that i t discovered in 1978 when the tf angie's came in. host: i was going to say i'm not sure our listeners know exactly what tfng means. >> it means 35 new guys and i am sticking with it. [laughter] they videoed all the classes presented to the tfng and they had all of those videotapes this is before beta and vhs and every thursday night i had the machine reserved i would get the machine and put it in my office and spent four or five hours watching the videos. a lot of itde was because i was fascinated and what i learned

later on i was setting the stage to become a flight director like the other people out there doing the exact same thing. but you really needed to be so well-prepared the control center and the flight director has a dozen flight controllers in the room like you see mission control and each of them have a back room of supporting them in their discipline. i told folks if you are black one - - - a backroom flight controller you should be thinking a level above of what you are doing so you know what the front room person needs if you want to be a crackerjack front room operator you want to know what does a flight director need? is it my turn our that's a

problem any other discipline that's way worse than my problem. so you could tell from the early career age who is trying to become a flight director and who was not. it was pretty obvious you need to put in that dedication and that work not only to have a broad knowledge but the deep knowledge. >> this is an trying to go broader you have to go down every rabbit hole. >> what we discovered in the shuttle as a complex system you have a lot of different electrical buses where things were connected and different data gathering and command interfaces that intertwine so

they said we lost bus abc you have to know what did that lose you data wise? looks like and computers awful not really because the telemetry is invalid so it's a lot off memorization. although i hate memorization i had cue cards that was a cheat sheet so theret were a lot of rabbit holes i had to go down. host: as the flight director you are supposed to poke your head up enough so what was at odds of how you prepared what was that shakeout to be in

that controller position to be narrowed? >> you made a lot of points with the flight director if you said i have this problem with such and such but i know he is a much bigger problem so do with him first and come back to me i will manage this problem and we will take care of it and in doing that you let the flight director no you have the breadth of knowledge and you knew he knew you were thinking about what was going on and you are acting almost as his assistant. not just somebody sitting down there in their own discipline. the front room operator they can't think about what's best for their system c but what's best for the mission the backroom things what's best for their system and one of

the toughest things toto learn as a flight controller is to let the system burnout. you can get what you need out of it but sometimes you have to sacrifice the hardware to make the mission work that you did i would say the jpl guys fly all these missions to mars but they never get their hardware back so they had very little attachment to their hardware. >> they probably approach>> engineering with a slightly different perspective they have less skin in the game. >> yes. host: so everybody in that room what something except the flight director? >> no. it seems odd because for someone like myself and my

composite raise who became flight directors, we did not understand why everybody didn't want to be a flight director. but they just want to do the best job that they could do and say in don't want the responsibilityes. but you have a lot of responsibility in the job you are in. you realize that? i hate to say it this way but they wanted to have a family and kids but a lot of flight directors were single people. but the flight directors i was unique as the longest-serving flight director, there is a reason and spaceflight history of 20 years a because i absolutely love the job. there was nomo other job in the space program i wanted. most people spend five or seven years as a flight

director and then they become a program manager. the last two program managers were former flight directors they want to be deputy director or center director or deputy administrator of nasa. i'm a field general. i love to be right in the thick of the action and answer i wanted to be there is a line from top gun we don't make policy we just carry it out that people want to move up in nasa so they can make policy. you will never make policy as a civil servant. politicians make policy. 's you can get very disappointed if you go to high so i tried to do the best in the flight program. >> youin found your place and that certainly isn't for

everyone so going back to the theme of preparation can you look back in your own preparation? to basically look at that unique set of skills. >> the one thing you had to bring in with you to nasa into 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 s good leadership is.

i learned leadership in scouting as a boy scout. the more i look back where my leadership skills come from the more i realize that's where it came from. andze there are a lot of eagle scouts running around the halls of nasa in the astronaut office and flight director office. nobody talks about it but you learn that stuff there. a lot of people who learned leadership in military organizations or sports or clubs in college. you bring that in with you. think a large part of the thing you have to learn is how to put your nose to the grind stone and learn the technical aspects and then learn how to deal with people.

in my house we love watching the big bang theory not just because we knew those people that we were those people. host: the same in my household. >> you discover you have to figure how to work with people. after i'd been a senior flight controller and it was clear they thought i was flight director material i was brought into a managers office and he said you're one of the most incredible operational engineers we have ever seen but if you don't learn how to work better with people somebody will kill you. that's when i realized you reallyly do need how to submerge that ego and let other people talk and other people air out what they want.

host: and you always to the skills that you have. >> you have to change her attitude from i have this technical stuff down really well i understand how the spaceship works and how we fly spaceships know i need to figure out how to fly people. then i tell people the crackerjack technical skills will give - - get you a long ways but you will hit a ceiling until you learn how to work with and communicate and understand other people that's when you will make the leap into a leadership role where people will feelak that working for you. i really ended up in the role of institutional mentor for flight control skills. got to the point when i would

do simulations they were not trying to train me i consider myself part of the training team to put in situations for my flight controllers so they could get the lessons they needed and then a constant steady stream of flight controllers coming toli my office at the control center who wanted to sit down and see what they can learn. host: i want to come back to that mentorship. do have insight based on stories of the book? how important was it as part of yourt leadership style because clearly what you were doing is that. >> yes watching perseverance land on mars the other day was exciting because there was a new story how they put the jpl

latitude and longitude into the parachute with ascii binary code. i thought that was so neat. somebody said jpl guys have so much fun why were you sticking the meds whenyo you flew the shuttle? i love the jpl guys. they knock my socks off. it's incredible but the thing you have to remember is they are not putting human lives at risk and the human lives we are putting at risk those that are doing it knowingly for a reason it's not grim but you learn it with the corbel if you lost somebody and then people 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 that idea you even need to hear the idea because we never did anything because it was cool. what we were doing was cool enough. we are launching people into space for heaven sakes bring them back in a wink vehicle that weighs 200,000 pounds this is amazing stuff it is cool enough for you. we always had to be very careful not to appear frivolous in any way but at the same time we want to have some fun. so yes we did some cool stuff what people wouldn't notice

and this wouldld happen more often with the space station nowadays than the shuttle but if it's a clear night in houston flying a mission and the path lies right over houston and we knew it would be overhead, we would designate one person to be the watch keeper and everybody else would go outside we would combat on - w - abandon the control center we would call up the crew and say we just watched you fly over. is something that happened right at that moment when you were gone everybody's career would have been involved. you have to be very careful. and then the little personal preference kit. they would usually be a couple of things but they take things for friends and family they

could bring back to say this watch flew in space or whatever. i believe the flight director was in charge of making sure stuff got into the cruise kits. somebody said i need stuff. have you got anything? he walked into my office and on the wall was a golden gophers patch from the university of minnesota. it wasn't mine. it was from my mother's letter jacket. she graduated from the minnesota gophers. i said fly this. the next thing i know, and

then i see on the lockers taped onto it is the minnesota golden gophers patch all i can think is the crew open the book to see this purple and gold gopher and had no earthly idea what it was or what it meant or what it was for but they take it to the wall of the locker so somebody would see it on i the ground. so we have fun things like that. i will give youou two more stories. and then do rendezvous simulations the closer you get the slower you want to go so that 1000 yards you want to be going the speed and if you got to that 1000 yards he went to make surehe that speed and then

you want to be slower yet and is over yet you we want to fly your breaking speed if you're faster than your breaking gabe and you are hot talking and in trouble. so we had friday breaking gates forin simulations of your in the control center all week kaiser in the cockpit all week it is three in the afternoon and things are going slow. somebody would say friday breaking gates this spacecraft would dock at warp speed. we are done and out of here. which the outpost was the local bar. if you ever see the movie the right stuff, ponchos bar in the middle of the desert we had her own version was called the outpost. think keeping it from falling

down is the termites were holding hands. it burned down that fortunately the fire department understood the value of all of the mementos on the wall and basically said let the structure burne get everything out. pictures and patches and there was no wallpaper no paint it was all mementos. all of that got saved and then the last story was it was not uncommon after shift in the control center for people totr have a beer together. we could meet at the outpost except at 3:00 a.m. in the parking lot of the rec center

but then we would have a beer and go home but then security did not like that because then they would get calls that people are drinking beer at three in the morning so the head of center a operations called this up to say i know you need to do something so i smoothed over was security and here is what we will do. the saturn five building, we had a big saturn five on display 360-foot tall rocket they built a building around it with air-conditioning for the tourist. on nights when you want to blow off steam, call this number, the chief security desk they will go out one hour before turned the lights in the air-conditioning and go drink until your hearts content. so then your drinking underneath the effluent engine of the saturn five it was like

drinking in church it's like a cathedral. and that they got the call from the flight director console they would open it up. >> you have been doing a great job putting in your questions to the listeners. if you look at the questions upload the ones you want to be answered first. i love the inside baseball stories. but then as you said you become a mentor and then a senior mentor.

you have been around the longest everyone looks up to you. have things changed at nasa by then? and with the mission changing at nasa does that change the organization? >> i and a real traditionalist a when i learn something that is a tradition and an idealist i learned from the best and from the guys who through apollo who took us to the moon from dean kranz and the other flight directors i want to make sure we did not lose those lessons. the problem with the shuttle program nasa was a research organization not designed to run an airline and we were

always caught and the dichotomy and there were over to to turn it contractors but but to fight your war for you something should be under the direct control for those that are just there t to serve like serve the constitution so to speak. so once we start flying lots of missions the early shuttle program flying 50 missions a year one a week and you cannot do with the staffing we had but we did fly 12 and one year and it got busy so we got into the mode to systematize everything they would see the

exact same set of failures in their training and when they saw them then they are ready to be certified we always had problems because it wasn't the basic philosophical skills checking off bits and pieces but not really getting the subject of g part. we have all the training objectives met but not this sobjectives met. and then guys like me come and try to help mentor them in the thought skills. we tried to create an assembly line and itin was in the assembly line product. we were building custom one offs not production line votes. and you really need to be honest about your real goals. that's why i am a big

supporter of the commercial space program like elon musk and the commercial programs because nationalist should be in the business of fundamental research and exploration nasa should be going to the moon not trying to figure out how to get people back to the space station we've done that. we havee that knowledge. the predecessor to nasa was the national advisory committee of aeronautics, t14 what created the modern airline structure came out of basic tfng research on - - t14 research but they did not try to run an airline. >> nasa is the source of all things research.

>> it will be the t14 stuff. there is inside baseball i worked with a lot of guys who actually worked at t14, and aca theytr always said nasa that they always said the and aca. >> i don't know what it meansuy and those that came out of their always call it by the letters and also say with the airflow of. host: yes. you answer the question with the q&a but i will read the question so you can see if there's anything more you would add with the control room how was that different

quick. >> it's a little different. it is a younger crowd. they have a different set of social morays. i have always said we lost two shuttles and their crews and 135 flights it will happen to elon musk. and how they treat the business will reflect on them when they do. if you treated frivolously you have a problem but i have seen them be very serious at what they do i have seen them doing a lot more cheering which is very cool because they should be a doozy a stick about it. but always remember, i don't think they need to remember but people watching it need to know and remember that they take the job seriously. let me put it that way.

if you take a look at any post landing celebration with apollo waving flags and smoking cigars they weree letting off steam although it was landed so you could do that. host: it seems clear to me but i thinkn there is a big understanding of standing on the shoulders of giants. >> i have had a chance to visit blue origin and space x and virgin and talk to them about flying people in space their senior management with me and astronauts come by and say i got a call from one of the companies that basically said some of a my former guys are working there and said were getting ready to fly our

first human i need you to come to put the fear of god into these people. we just need you to tell them how serious it is. i have done that and it was really fun and they appreciated t it. host: on thatd note the most popular question right now is can you share the best and the worst day on the job? >> there were stay on the job has to be losing a spacecraft. interestingly enough i was not on the challenger mission i was on the next mission it was

one mission i was not working directly. i was not even paying attention to it i got to the airport that morning to fly so i was headed home and i stopped at the auto parts store somebody saw my flight jacket and they said what happened to the columbia i said i don't know and they said pieces are coming down all over dallas no sooner they said that my pager went off and then w i was headed into the control center than thetr emergency operations center. it was like the movie and putting pins in the maps where we were finding debris.

and then to manage a bunch of aircraft we were using for search and recovery. so that was a bad day. i don't ever want to make light of that there's nothing light about it but but by that time aeronautical flying machines and spacecraft i had gotten very used to that kind of thing happening. you don't ever learn to like it you should never learn to like it. but then the problem with the best day in the control center was every day. the worst day in the control center was better than the best day in the office at any time. it was when a team was absolutely clicking i will give you one example we flew a

radar mission mapping the entire planet we had to be absolutely ready to go every time we came feet dry or we wouldam miss stuff we went feet wet and had 53 minutes before we go feet dry on africa and we lost our altitude control thrusters we trained for this over and over again my team clicked everything where we were back we need to be when we came up on africa watching people click like that all he had to do was stand back and stay out of the way it was fabulous. >> is not that there were any problems but you solve them. >> did you ever wish you are

on the flight quick. >> almost everybody at the space center wants to be an astronaut when they get there i kept applying to the astronaut office and moving up in thed selection process i thought i reached a point i was flight director already and i got the call thing before we put you in an interview what exactly is your uncorrected vision? of course they already knew because they hadr my medical records and they had been taken care of me my whole career. but by that pointle in time, they were all working for me when we were flying so it would have been fun to do a single flight just to say you did it. but it is a long haul to be in the astronaut office to get ready for that one flight. but i had a good career the way it was.

host: space tourism will be available at some point. >> but not in my budget range. host: you may have an inside deal on that. >> we will have to see if somebody offers me a discount. my advantage i d have been a pilot my whole life i do a lot of flight testing and fun stuff. if i didn't get a chance to get an an airplane every day or every otherot day then i might think differently it may have been fun to fly the shuttle. host: do you think the shuttle program ended when it did or should have continued?

>> i can say this now because i don't work for nasa anymore i don't think we should have retired it when we did that was built to service the space station that was the fundamental view and once we finish theta space station we retire the shuttle that was a political decision i call it a loss of national will. if you pulled individual people and citizens we have a majority of support the politicians didn't want to keep going. they didn't like the risks but i think we should have continued flying the shuttle because it carried a s lot of stuff up them back and designed to serve as the space station we could have continued building on the space station it would be a much bigger thing. i think we retire the shuttle early i would like to have continued to cfi.

host: so you feel it was underappreciated by the public? >> we are a victim of her own success. the shuttle went up again. so what? when you become success. he - - paying attention is not exciting but it was exciting every time with those engines it was never boring. host: did the shuttle inspire around the world with different space programs? >> absolutely weld bootstrapped a lot of different programs a lot of that knowledge were things that were then applied but that research organization we gave away what we learned because that is what we were tasked to do we take public

money and get knowledge of it for people to use. it always pays for itself. host: it strikes me handling those milk runs to and from orbit. do you think nasa is going back to its roots? >> i hope so and i stay connected with my friends in houston and theor newer generation of flight directors. and i want to know what's going on and they are working hard to get back to a lunar presence i would rather see a robust lunar presence before we go to mars so that when we go to mars we can do it tuesday. we need to practice on the moon. we are only three days from earth ratherr than mars it's a year and then have a problem.

host: how do you deal with stress? you were in the role so much of the weight of what was going on was on your shoulders. >> if you are given to react to stress in a negative way you will not qualify as a flight director. i can tell you that before admission i would go out and get in my airplane and fly online and that was sent to me and relax me of that. once you get right in the middle you are so busy you don't have time to be stressed. you just plow ahead. >> we are almost out of time.

you are an extremely strong writer. it shows in the book. i have experienced it firsthand that i am curious because you cannot to be editor in chief but what degree of your personal journey at nasa influenced your writing quick. >> writing and communication on the same thing. verbal or written. without a doubt to formulate your thoughts are right them down in a sustained manner to up the line get you noticed. if you can write day well thought out sustained and meaningful essay and one page on a topic that sells the reasons why something should be a certain way that will get you noticed.

no question about that. host: i would like to reiterate the book is extraordinarily well written. not just history. not just an autobiography but it is an extraordinary book and when i mentioned career planning i will talk you on - - you up later about an organization and we know but i will encourage all of the viewers to look at the big green button that says bible can you would do very well to buy the book. what else would you like to say quick. >> thank you to the tucson festival of the book's asking me to talk it has been fun.

the last couple chapters are lessons we have learned over the years on leadership and the ways you can be more successful and complex operations. i am glad youer recognize that. that was the intent. thank you so much for having me here and everybody who is watching. >> thank you. that is it for us today thank you for your participation thank you for attending. if you get the chance go to tucson festival of the books.org senate for the newsletter thank you for your engineering and technology and also to our sponsors.