>> watch "the communicators" with reason magazines elizabeth nolan brown on her recent article the bipartisan antitrust crusade against big tech saturday 6:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> author eric berger looked at the grip of entrepreneur elon musk and history of his rocket company spacex in his new book "liftoff." the blue willow bookshop in houston host this event. >> welcome everyone. n my name is valerie koehler and on thend owner of blue willow bookshop in houston, texas. i know we are people joining us from all over the country and possibly even beyond the world. i'm thrilled to be here with, to introduce an icon of our staff. where so thrilled that they're going to be joining us tonight. partner.

and for, senior editor for our next, nasa and beyond. his former reporter for the file you historically, he is is the city residents over so thrilled easier to read in my decision with andrea lance brown, since my read and being in stacy here we have a lot to talk about. when it comes to space to turn this over to a position. on this question and answer period. welcome andrea, thank you for coming. >> you down. >> is very exciting about your book i will have you started it off. right now we have so much happening in south texas with the source which now is in

texas we learned today. but you know, it feels a little like maybe the cowboy days of the falcon one so i'm curious to, why you decided what similarities you see me must have a nap and then you. >> i will readers understand why we should care about this dinky low rockets that is so much is launching 50 years. agency. the way the speed at which space x moves the reality is that they had been successful with the falcon one rocket they finally lost in 2008 successfully never would have gotten to worry, they continued. the company wouldn't exist today you understand is the way space x is today, although their dna was established back in this really times period from 2000

2008 when the start of the company with you on was hired with and succeed in this market, from scratch. and so you know, the fact that there in boca filling this crazy starship that one day make people to mars all down to what happened then. an interesting use another parallel.. in one from nowhere in this is so you fly from a july, is to again, like herself what really is all texas and nowhere you have a lot of freedom to operate. in south texas in white line where foresight only and do what they need to move it to seize that he likes to move. >> but they will accept a

small company and your book talks about how there's a handful of people working all thesehours . they were very hard there are companies so how do you release myself irritated designs where they cast and they say this. how can he doing? >> therefore a business is open nine that's what you want to use on your mission is this spring. and so that market really work they want to their keeping pace with thatvehicle won't successfully study his times . sunday was assessment that you want to have success starships, then you want to any time soon. even going, not 500 some of their processes.

images and control the last of a test challenges relaying ages. so all that out. they got this factory, self texas turn vehicle after vehicle thomas london. they will learn from each day move forward. >> when you be elected early this new ways to explore and when he was so excited, has on the things that you have is this is his wholecareer was designed to they're not doing . they're doing is on design doesn't feel the same way? >> is really interesting. the way elon musk started the country is he hired more kids

in their 20s just out of school or stillin right school, the best of the best . they didn't have families to go home to they basically were going to kill themselves in terms of working hard for the company and if you go down and visit boca chica, there's hundreds instead of dozens of engineers but they are still people in the mostly. usually years and they are running around, scurrying around and they don't have, where 50 hats like the people in the fountain one day and there no less of a see. that's again down to disk drive that elon musk has to push it seems former as fast as they can go. >> i love you yearbook. if you're looking through just picture elon musk

chuckling, i just love that detail i was a survivor fan, i know there shows where the islands so long. our interviews did it take to get these key details do you have one? >> is hard to figure 1. i spent 20 hours with elon musk and settings and lots of time with the other employees, each one to our interview go back for questions and clarifications get feedback from their. just to make sure i was like, someone would tell the story a else to go with you about this. there i'll is this incident from 2002, actually after the companywas formed .

mosque and some of the engineers were flying to some company to try someone go, tax. they had to be way obtain these chills and they stayed at the express one night and one morning got up and went to the breakfast bar and i guess it was the first time he had encountered. because according to the other people, the company were in the practice room, you looked at stare at and was fascinating by then proceeded to close it then instead of putting vertically they. they even existed his hands in to live out. burden himself says nice work hollyexpressing wisconsin . another story that i like was when shotwell, she's the president of the company now.

hired on as vice president of sales in 2000 you and she was really successful number of levels the flat four, she was in scotland a difference. and she was you know, it was after midnight there and she was sitting in the bathroom watching it on alaptop . and she had gone there to actually explain the customers the third failure when market. so this was super uplifting. as she's watching this all alone screaming in the bathroom, and she told me that before we lost, she writes scotland's down in her shoes. so she's dating or scotland when they want. so i thought that was amazing to watch. >> it is nice touch. the main part of the book is usually on, they automatically-year-old

working hard this grind is the reason why it was successful. there's a reason why some people left and i'm sure when you were talking, how does he describe this? all the other employees described uses planning and how he made them want to work so hard and all that led to the success being able to have as he sees himself as rising hard. >> you for sure, understands what he does the, he has an expectation that people who come to work for him arlington work hard because they believe in whatever he's doing. and the rare gift that he gives them is theability to make a difference . because if you go to space x, you can be someone who >> you can be someone who really does builds the first rocket privately developed. you can land a rocket on a boat;

right? you can build a spaceship that's going to go to mars. and it's not like you're going there and waiting for a government contract to come through or you're, you know -- the program's going to be cancelled because congress changed, like, he has a track record for getting success done. and so as one of your engineers who left told me, he said, look, you know, i gave 15 years, the best years of my life, and it was a trade i was willing to make for the opportunity. and so he realizes that, but he also expects it, like, he's just like -- i mean, i don't want to say he uses people up, but i mean, he expects people to give their all. >> yeah, and i feel like there's the same attitude towards regulators. early on in the book, you were

talking about he went head-to-head with nasa and a couple other regulatory authorities. how did that fearlessness i guess in the beginning help? can you talk about that some? >> even before they launched their first rocket space x had sued northup grumman, lockheed and boeing, the biggest competitors in the airspace industry. they protested nasa, the government. they sued the department of defense. this is someone who is breaking some eggs, right, on the way to space. and that is just sort of how he acts, like, if he feels like he's been wronged, he will fight back. and it doesn't always suit him. it doesn't always help him because i mean he comes across as brash, maybe unreliable and can anger potential customers. for some people in the government, it makes him uncomfortable to work with, but

in the end, he typically does deliver. it really was his protest of a nasa contract in 2004 that ultimately would save the company. this was a contract nasa had awarded to a company called kissler to begin developing a transportation system to bring cargo to the international space station. and elon had thought that wasn't fair. he was told not to protest our potentially most important customer, nasa, and he said no, this is not right. we have got to do it. he ended up being right because that protest basically forced nasa to withdraw the award, hold an open competition. that led to commercial cargo, the dragon spacecraft and eventually led to commercial crew. it was one of those contracts that they got in the end of 2008 that saved the company from bankruptcy. so, you know, you take the good

and the bad with elon. he's a fighter, and he will fight, when he thinks he's on the right -- has right on his side, he will fight you. >> and i know like when i was reading the book, i kept thinking like okay this is the one. this is the one. i felt like they kept getting such terrible luck. [inaudible]. like when you were hearing these stories, were you thinking like they got like every rough card that they could have? >> i think they probably felt that way. it is interesting -- i mean the book is ultimately around the fourth launches of the falcon one, the three failures and the fourth one was a success. i think each of the failures are really interesting because they tell you something about the company, the people who worked there and elon himself who made

some mistakes after the first launch he unfairly blamed an engineer and technician, when in fact, they left the vehicle exposed in this tropical environment for too long. that was in retrospect really pretty obvious mistake, kind of, you know, a rookie mistake, you might say. and then the second vehicle, they were aware of the potential problem with the second stage, but to fix it would have required a lot of time, and it would have added mass to the vehicle. they really needed to fly again. and the third one was just heart breaking because they had tested the engine, this new engine, newer engine and hadn't seen this thrust that came on right at the end of the burn, and that ultimately got them. yeah, i mean, it was -- there was lots of drama, and before i started working on the project, i thought i wonder if there's a

full book to be told about the falcon one, and boy when i got into it, it was just fascinating, because the people involved and sort of what they went through to get that rocket to orbit is really a heck of a story. >> yeah. then you weave in the back stories really nicely. the [inaudible] have you tried it? >> yeah, it is great. one of the characters in the book is from turkey, and, you know, this group of people grew really close because they were living -- sometimes they would overnight on this tie any island -- tiny island, where the rocket was being assembled. they would cook steaks. there was a recipe of this turkish -- he had this recipe of

turkish goulash. i thought this was so cool. he said i could put the recipe in the book. you can make it at home. >> when you were going through the process of interviewing and writing this book, what was that like? this is your first book; right? >> yeah. >> you have been a journalist forever, but now taking that like 500 words to a whole book, 300 something pages, what was that process like? >> it was a lot of fun, andrea, because i can say that i wasn't even aware of the space x when they launched that fourth flight, the rocket. people in houston in september of 2008, now for falcon but for hurricane ike. we saw that storm coming more than two weeks before it made landfall. there were days and days, and i was doing forecasting for the

chronicle like tracking that storm every day, you know, all day, and then it made landfall, in mid september, and it sort of had this devastating storm surge, and then like i was done. i was like exhausted, so i like, you know, just -- it wore me out, and so like september of 2008 is a complete blur, so writing the book was a lot of fun because i knew a lot about space x from about 2010 to present day, but i knew almost nothing from 2002 to 2008. it was an exploration to go back and find it out like a reader would. things that were new and interesting to me i thought would be new and interesting to other people. there were other people who were familiar with the story but i was able to talk to people who had never really talked like

this before. details and stuff that have never been told before. i don't think it's ever been reported that an intern for spacex brought a gun to the army base, so, yeah. >> you talk about how eager they were to tell their stoies and share the early years in particular. why do you think that was? >> well, i think first of all, the engineers and the technicians who pulled this off are incredibly proud of their achievement, because it was really against all odds to do it with that little amount of money, with the brand-new technology and to sort of be uprooted from when you thought you were going to launch from california to the central pacific and dealing with the logistical challenges with that. first of all, i think they felt it was -- you know, they were proud of it. they felt it was time to tell the story. elon, when i approached him in early 2019 basically said okay i think it is time to tell the

story. so he basically sent a green light to people that it was okay to talk now. >> right. you know, i have to ask, you know, from ap style, how did you feel about using the oxford comma? did it kill you a little when you had to put the comma before the and, or did you ease right into it? >> in 2015, there were huge proponents for the oxford comma, having not used it for 15 years, i had that beaten into my head, so i was okay with that. you know what was weird, when i got the book, all the numbers, like 50, was like fifty instead of 50, and i'm like this isn't how it's done, i don't know, i learned that. [laughter] >> and so i guess is there anything else you want to tell the readers or the people who are buying this book, about all

that went into it, or you know, everything that you hope they get out of it? >> no, i would just say it's a hell of a story. it is like everything was on the line for elon musk and for spacex and basically for, you know, they really had a profound impact on the space industry. it could have all come for not if that fourth launch hadn't taken place. it was really touch and go. there was an eight-week period between the third and fourth flights that -- where it was a crisis every day, and they just really pulled together to make something special happen, and it's -- it was super fun to tell that story. >> these are great great stories. we have some questions. i want to ask you, because you

had some behind the scenes access, what is the funniest thing you have seen in someone's lab or on their desk? >> a chief propulsion engineer, one of the key lieutenants was kevin miller in spacex, and around about 2011, elon started talking about building this falcon heavy rocket which was taking three falcon nines and sticking them together so you had 27 engines, and kevin miller on his desk sometime back in, i don't know, 2012 or 2013, had taken like one of the early schematics drawings of that and sort of written on there retire before this happens. [laughter] this is an engineering challenge. he didn't retire. i thought that was funny. >> so there's a question from

david. your favorite story that was great but you had to cut it from the book? >> boy, you know, i put in a lot of stuff that i thought -- i mean, everything i really wanted to have in there about the falcon one was in there. i did cut some information about the falcon nine, the first couple launches of that because i really just wanted the book to be about the falcon one. the last chapter i kind of glossed over. the launch director for the falcon one and nine told me a funny story which really resonated and kind of tells how musk is kind of always looking -- his eyes are never really on the present. he's always looking to the future. there's an anecdote in the book about the fact during the first launch of the falcon one, he gets very aggressive with the launch conductor and pressing him, this was like 20 minutes before lift-off, asking him about ordering aluminium for the falcon five, the bigger rocket which never ultimately got built. it was just like he never

launched a rocket before, and like this was crunch-time, and here he was sort of aggressively -- and so on the night before the first falcon nine launch in 2010, he and buzz had gone out to the launch pad because there was this issue with the storm and the rocket had been damaged and needed to be fixed before the first launch attempt. they were driving back to the hotel about 4:00 in the morning. and elon was just -- his mind was on the future, like he wanted to talk about, you know, landing the falcon 9. he wanted to talk about, you know, reusing them, and it was just like, you know, this -- for them at the time this huge rocket, the falcon 9, you know totally revolutionary booster, and he was always looking far beyond the next day to five or ten years down in the future. i think that's really interesting insight into his

psyche. >> so we have a question, where your love of rocket and space came from? i know your parents are on this call because they said they were very proud of you. [laughter] >> thanks, mom and dad. [laughter] >> i would say that when i was a kid, and this would have been like 1978, 79, so i was young, 5 or 6, i don't know if it was a project in class or what, but i wrote to nasa -- i guess it was johnson space then, i was living in michigan at the time. i'm interested in space and wanted to know more. they sent me back this envelope with these pictures of like taken by the voyagers of the planets and the solar system. they were beautiful like 8 by 10 photos with some press release information about each of the planets that the voyagers was discovered.

that was just like so cool and so eye opening, and so i think it speaks really to the power of nasa to really draw in people and like i mean, it worked for me, and i sort have had a lifelong interest in astronomy and space ever since. >> [inaudible]. a lot of people want to know your answer to that. >> the two companies -- is vastly different and it is because it's drawn from musk. he sets the tone with his extremely demanding workplace, and the phrase i use in the work is he wants to make the impossible possible. and he -- so he asks great things of his people, but then gives them the freedom to go out and do that.

he moves really fast. and that is in direct contrast to a lot of other companies, including blue origin. blue origin hired a ceo about three years ago, a guy from honeywell aerospace. they hired him to kind of come in as the company moved from this hobby shop development company to actually an operational company flying missions into space and winning nasa contracts and working with the department of defense. smith has made blue origin a lot more like a traditional aerospace company, much more closer to a boeing or a sierra nevada or a lockheed martin than to a spacex. and it's interesting, there was some parallel from history, in 2006, elon musk hired his first ceo, a guy named jim mazer from c launch which was a launch company partly owned by boeing, so a traditional launch company.

and mazer was a traditional ceo, like the adult in the room, you go from start up to a bigger company. he didn't last but a month. he didn't fit in with the culture. people on the floor were wearing shorts, t-shirts, flip-flops, which elon doesn't care about. you know, he's like get your job done. and as i say, he and elon clashed, and he was gone pretty quickly. >> all right. our world seems so divided today, space, space travel and stories inspire us. why is that? >> well, i think the one thing about space flight is it is -- it can be a very unifying experience. at the outset, it was clearly a cold war type thing. it was the soviets and the united states, and we were both trying to show the supremacy of

our various forms of government. but since the 1990s, even earlier, 80s, we have worked with the soviets and the russians in space, and so it has been a unifying, you know, adventure. you know, over the last decade, as our relationship with russia has grown worse, you know, we've -- nasa has gone right along trucking with the international space station and working with russia, very closely. for most of the last decade, you know, obviously americans got into space on russian vehicles. i would agree that space can be a competition, but also it is a way to bring us together. there's some hope that, you know, if we ultimately end up doing a human mission to mars, that it would be a global endeavor. it would be the united states, the traditional partners, but also russia and potential china,

and that would be a nice counterpart to the divisions here that we could all come together to do something greater for humanity which is set foot on another world. >> the next question that michael asks, are u.s. astronauts more likely to return to the moon on nasa or spacex? >> great question. spacex will play a role in that architecture in one way or another in getting humans back to the moon, mid to late 2020s. my guess ultimately would be that they would launch on a spacex rocket. masa has been building this ex -- nasa has been building this expensive vehicle called the space launch system, which back when i was covering this seven or eight years ago, it was in competition with the falcon heavy, like which rocket would launch first? and falcon heavy launched in 2018, and we're still waiting for the rocket. now, the competition is between sls and starship, spacex's much

larger rocket. it's very much an open question now whether star ship will reach orbit before sls and i think starship has a pretty good chance. that rocket is, you know, bigger, much cheaper, reusable, all those things the sls vehicle is not, and so if starship is successful i could see that becoming the baseline architecture for human landings on the moon. that's all to be determined. the biden administration is looking at this. not even a new nasa administrator in place. we will see. >> we have a question from croatia. who at the moment has the final say in approval, the faa [inaudible] for colonization? >> okay. the question is if elon

[inaudible] people to mars, who gives permission for that? the fact of the matter is it would be the u.s. government. so the faa would probably launch -- license to launch. the u.n. would probably not have much say at all in that. itar governs the transfer of u.s. secrets and technology to other countries including space stuff, so that really wouldn't play a role. the fact of the matter is, licensing a human launch to mars is going to be a tricky endeavor. it is not really for geopolitical reasons, although that could be a factor. it would be more along the lines of is there life on mars currently on the ground that we don't know about? small microbes, not talking about martians, right, but like little life under the ground, or was there past life? and would sending humans there sort of interfere with whatever martian ecosystem there is?

it's called planetary protection. and spacex, elon musk, he really doesn't care. if life is underground, he doesn't think that humans on the surface are going to disturb that, and even if they did, he would say they were just microbes, and humans need to be settling out in the cosmos, and we're starting at mars, and what's the problem? but there are people at nasa and there are scientists and there are environmentalists who would raise very serious concerns about that. so i think ultimately if spacex does go to mars, they would go hand in hand with nasa, which would help them address some of those issues, like planetary protection. >> we have a question from somebody i believe you know. his name is dwight. [laughter] >> i think you both know him. god forbid this should happen,

but how do you think spacex would respond to disaster where there was loss of life for the astronaut, and how would musk -- with the faa play out? >> that would not be an issue with the faa. it would be an issue with nasa and the u.s. congress which could be deep into spacex if that happened. that would be a terrible tragedy. it is certainly something possible. there are no guarantees with human space flight whatsoever. there are some pretty good safety precautions with the falcon 9 rocket which has an excellent record in terms of getting to orbit. the newest version has never failed, as i say, after about 70 attempts. if it does fail, unlike the space shuttle, it has a launch escape system. if something went wrong with the space shuttle on ascent, there was no way for the crew to get safely back to earth.

with dragon there's a launch escape system such as if something goes wrong with the rocket, within a fraction of the second, it has powerful thrusters that can push it away. theoretically the loss of crew probability is about 1 and 240 missions. it is definitely not zero, but the space shuttle was 2 in about 135, theoretically, at least, it is lower than the space shuttle. that would be an extremely serious issue and would raise all sorts of questions about whether all the promises of commercial space really are coming true. so there's a lot of effort obviously being taken to protect against that for many reasons, that being one of them. >> there are a lot of questions here. i know we won't be able to get to all of them as the time goes on. we don't want to take up too much of eric and andrea's time. what lessons, if any, should the larger aerospace industry take

from spacex? >> in my answer to that, i want to bring in andrea in too to get her thoughts on this. i had an interesting conversation last december about this, and we were talking about the fact about what they are doing in south texas is really remarkable in terms of how fast they are moving. it is unprecedented to be building a rocket ship every two weeks, which is what they are doing down there, launching them frequently during this test program. and i said, you know, we think -- what do you think the rest of the industry thinks about this, gwen? she just said look, we're not trying to show anybody up, but we think the space community deserves better; right? you know, you shouldn't wait 10 or 15 years for a rocket to be developed, right? it should happen faster. they are trying to show a different and, you know, better way. so i think they are leading by example, and they have had an

incredible forcing function on the industry over the last decade. not only in the u.s., but, you know, rocket groups in europe, china, japan, everywhere are sort of scrambling to catch up in materials of cost and reusability as well. -- in terms of cost and reusability as well. >> can you repeat the first part of that question, again? >> the question is -- i will get back to it up here, but it is what can -- what message is there to the larger aerospace industry, the larger, and not maybe just the rocket industry? the larger space? >> i think reusability has been key; right? that's really what's brought down costs. as we talk more and more about debris in space, you know, being able to reuse something instead of just leave it up there, it's something that's been focused on in a lot of different fields.

i think reusability is one aspect that spacex has definitely pushed for an agenda. that's being considered pretty broadly. also, there have been multiple announcements of human space flight missions that don't involve nasa, but every one of them are on a spacex rocket, capsule, or you know, the starship whenever that does launch people. i also think it is -- obviously it is still not really affordable or attainable to most of us, but i also think that they are kind of pushing the boundary into bringing more people into space. we haven't seen that since some tourists went up on the soyuz a long long time ago. i think maybe eight missions, seven people, something like that, so i also think that spacex is driving this agenda forward, but you know, it is going to be a while to bring down the cost, but it is definitely put reusability and

getting humans up there at a broader level. >> andrea raises a great point that for a lot of these activities, you know, things like tourists in orbit, space hotels, doing interesting things with private space stations, none of that could happen until you had a lower cost reliable way to get people up there, and 50 million dollars a seat or whatever spacex is charging to commercial customers is not cheap, but the fact of the matter is, with the space shuttle, that opportunity wasn't there. with the soyuz, you can get one tourist up at a time. in dragon, you can fly four people autonomously up and it can stay up there for three or four months if you go somewhere to a space station. this is opening up opportunities that didn't exist, and i frankly have been surprised by already the number of commercial tourism, commercial missions that have been announced --

announced. it suggests to me that there are more on the way and it will be -- again, that's all down to sort of having this lower cost system put in place. >> i'm going to ask one more question, and there's so many, that i don't know which to choose from. i thinkly -- i think i will go back up to this. i don't think we haven't asked this. without spacex, do you think we would have these other private launch companies active in the pipeline because spacex launched in the early 2000s? >> so yeah, one of the beneficial things that spacex has done for the industry is they have shown other -- they have shown investors that there's money to be made in space, and so it makes it a lot

easier, if you are a start up company, and you can say hey we're the next spacex because of xyz, right? we have a similar growth pattern. this is our mission. they revolutionized access to space. we're going to revolutionized whatever. after the first falcon 9 success, the amount of funding going into private equity for space companies has gone up a lot. and spacex has shown in terms of just launch companies, they've shown that you can be successful with a commercial vehicle, and so rocket lab has followed, and there are literally dozens of other companies trying to do the same thing, many which will fail but some will succeed sort of on the backs of spacex. >> these are fabulous questions. i really appreciate everyone joining us tonight. andrea, eric, kathy is in the back ground, our coordinator.

she's not too far from where i was in surfside beach in 1969, when the first man landed on the moon. it is just amazing what's happened, and eric, you have brought it to life for us, and really also what you've done, and i'm hoping everybody will appreciate this is like you said some of these things were happening when other major things were happening, and maybe we didn't pay as close attention, but now you are bringing it back and telling us the history of it, and helping us kind of form a base for how we go forward in our reading. andrea, we really appreciate all the reporting that you did for the chronicle and reporting on the space industry. it does mean so much to us here in the greater houston area. eric is going to be back. when he does, we will get them

out to you. a tiny little store to get all the books out. it's been a thrill to talk to both of you. as i said at the beginning, we can't live without him at the shop. it's a thrill to talk with you tonight. i know not all the questions weren't answered. hopefully you can contact him on social media. thank you, eric, you're a rock star. andrea and eric, thank you very much. we appreciate it from our book shop in houston, texas. weekends on c-span 2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday you will find events and people that explore our nation on american history tv. on sunday, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. it is television for serious

readers. discover, explore, weekends on c-span 2. this afternoon president biden will talk about the progress of the u.s. troop withdrawal from afghanistan. according to the pentagon, it is about 90% complete under a deal negotiated under former president trump. watch live coverage of president biden's remarks at 1:45 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. tonight on book tv, technology and e-commerce, we start with the author of a biography of amazon founder jeff bezos. then senator josh hawley on his book the tyranny of big tech. also the winners and losers of e-commerce, with the author of the book fulfillment. book tv tonight starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2.

the secret service was founded in the aftermath of the assassination of abraham lincoln. it wasn't until the death of john f. kennedy that the presidential protection service began to get closer attention from the american people. the reporting of the secret service for the washington post began in 2012. in the prologue of new book, there was a scandal of agents bringing prostitutes to their hotel rooms while making arrangements -- [inaudible]. we talk with the author in the new book subtitled "the rise and fall of secret service". >> listen at c-span.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcast. the longest serving nasa flight director reflected on his

life and career during this conversation at the virtual 2021 tucson festival of books. he wrote shuttle houston, life in the center seat of mission control. >> today for the panel shuttle houston, four decades of aviation experience as engineer, builder, and pilot, retired from nasa in 2013, as the longest serving flight director in history and the leader of several missions. he received a nasa outstanding leadership medal, three service medals and the presidential medal. he is now a leadership consultant and speaker, former editor and chief of a magazine. his book is my life in the center seat of mission control. paul, it's great to have you here by the way. 123450 -- >> well,