i believe that predict andea enr you thank you so much and eric thank you so much we appreciated it from our blue willow bookshop. thank you predict. >> tonight in book tv, technology and e-commerce, we start with the author of a biography of amazon founder. and then center josh on his book, the tyranny of big tech and also conversation on the winners and losers from e-commerce with the author of the book, fulfillment. otb is tonight starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on "c-span2" the longest serving nassau flying to director reflect on his life and career during this conversation of the 2021, tucson festival of books. wrote several houston life in the center seat of mission control. >> twenty is for today is paul, and for decades of aviation

experience as a builder and pilot and from nasa in 2013, the longest-serving flight director in history and the leader of several missions. an outstanding leadership, three of the service metals and presidential medal. in leadership consultant, and former editor-in-chief of magazine in his book life in the center seat of mission control. hall is going to have you hereby the weight. >> thank you and is going to be here. >> talk a little bit about the book and how it came about why did you write this. paul: well i guess the first thing to say is that were getting a little echo here but the very first flight director was chris back in those days and chris read a book about his days

in space program and then jean wrote a book about failures is not an option years of flight director from apollo and i kinda felt that somebody needed to capture the view from the flight director counsel for mission control the program. there are now we are seeing lots and lots of excellent books by mostly astronauts other years in the shuttle program and the thing that i like people to remember is for every astronaut that applies, there are tens of thousands of people contributing to the program and their is a lot broader perspective than just what looks like to be. and it so, as much as i enjoy the astronaut books because most of them are written by my friends who was trying to make sure the week capture some of the viewpoints from another viewpoint. and it's a little time to write, started in 2013, we started the show in 2011. i started coo cotton notes

chapters things like that over the years but between then and what we came out with a book last year. and with external airplanes to letterwriting supplying read so took my wife to say are you going to write the book or not. so she really helped push that long without a very good publisher and i have a wonderful editor who helped me take the material that i put together and sort of how we wanted the book to look. one of the things that i felt people i like to tell people right up front is that this book covered the merger of flight director merging program which is a couple of years and jeans book covers the apollo program and the moon. that was a few years. this program lasted 30 years in the flight program lasted 30

years the program lasted 40 years. try to tell my entire story of the show program is virtually impossible. that was the first thing that i had wrap my head around when i got serious about the book. as to realize that all i could do is tell some stories from my point of view. and i hope that a lot of folks get written by people in the program to save history of what everybody, but it was like printed that's really what the book is about. and hopefully, the book will give people inside view of the technology of the shuttle. we tend to think of an extremely high tech and it is but it was very high tech the 1970s and 1980s technology and computer systems today would be considered point. despite complex systems. how people understand that the people who made it work, but the people actually standing at

mission control in the simulators and trained the astronauts, what they had to do to make it work. normal people to understand the process of filing the shuttle was all about. it's a lot more complex than star wars, let me put it that way. and then lastly, the dedication of the people and the fun they had doing it. because even though is incredibly complex and many would say stressful jobs, it was not fun, you would not last long. so the overview of the book i hope people take from it, they had a chance to read it. george: i read it and i enjoyed it very much so thank you very much. it's part history part autobiography. is clear of the program and you said, in his non- entire biography but we get a lot out of it. i'm going to dig into a little

bit of that before i go any further, the notion freedom struck immediately because you talk about the people that came before, was about the legacy of those prior flight directors. it is 12 talk about the forces that demos are created for you pretty can you talk about this notion of taking the center seat and what it entails particularly in light of the shoulders of giants. paul: when i was given the opportunity to be a student an asset in aeronautical engineering student and i drew a complex set of events i suddenly applied who got into houston. i didn't think i would work in space program. i was going to build airplanes. in my application right and i was going there on such a such a date on such a such a time i had no idea what is going to be

doing. but again. the people in the operations organization that laid out for me and i learned later is because i've been a pilot since high school and i was working my way through college is scuba diving technician and so they thought i would interest in real-time operations or walked into the control center. i had no preconceived notions but so the people sitting in the spring from a night coming up really recognize that flight director and with the work until little bit later on. i described it an odd sort of way, watching the science fiction movies from late 50s and 60, there's always something threatening the survival of the planet and the politicians are arguing about this had also as a people at the bottom and there's always one strong leader who printed to charge and said, this what we are going to do with this i to solve the problem. they work management and they

weren't rookeries they were inspirational leaders and that's really what the flight director trip to be us the person visibly takes control thanks during mission. hunting for the mission. and i get a little bit of that make me want to be the hero of the science fiction movies that you washed back then. if you watch marsha movies, i think that actor plays a really good part, he doesn't any guff from anybody including nasa who after the resignation says going to get these guys home first and you can have them. but i started to work with flight directors fairly early in my career. and i kinda got fast track to the front room mission control. i was working with these guys and realized that they were made of the same image of the very earliest people of the first

preflight directors partied and i was fortunate to work with both chris and gene, though gene a lot more than chris. this was the center's director of the times i was just in awe of him. that really made me realize response ability that these people had an put on the shoulders. at the same time, just doing the job. doing the job the needs to be done. so the very impressive people. standing on the shoulders of giants, more than anything, you don't want to let them down and you don't want to history down. you and make darn sure you do the best job you possibly can all of the time. george: it really comes from the book grade in your mantra was preparation. the mess i got that the people sit in the center seat, the orchestra if you will and i like

how you use that as an analogy. in general, might not of been the smartest person on any one thing. but might actually be the most knowledgeable, at least you have a wide and broad knowledge rather than and can you talk a little bit about that. so most evolving. paul: it is. as a flight controller, you to be very very deep in your system. you had to know every digital bit by his first name and i'm not kidding when i say that predict every bit had a name. if you to know everything about it and you had to know all the tech data, everything there was to know about your system not only that but you know everything about how it interfaced with the other systems. so i was in charge and one time

of the shuttle in one of the things was the shuttle power units and hydraulic systems which provided flight control power and the engineering manager of the atu, knew more about the appeal than i did. but he didn't know anything about the hydraulic pump attached into it the marriage of that was everything there was to know about that hydraulic pump. i needed to know everything about both of them. when you become a flight director you need to know a lot about all of the things i guess, he described many times as a conductor of the orchestra and we have to understand, we may not have the skill to play every instrument we know how they should sound. never good enough that what we do, were going to make everybody else in the orchestra think we know how to play that instrument as well as they do. we don't but i understand it where the questions are treated in a flight director when i was

a young flight controller, tom holloway who was incredible because you can sit in a meeting with tom and explain a technical issue and he sat there than end of the table you were quite sure if he was awake or asleep. and he would listen for hours to the argument of what was going on at the very end, he would ask one single question that blew everybody out of the water. and you understood that he not only heard everything but he sympathized it all and he came up with that one flaw in everybody's argument. that is kind of the example of where the flight director lives predict. >> cedric is a rare trait predict a rare person and leads to an alarmist amount of information. paul: it is what we look for and it doesn't take a certain amount courage and confidence to sit in the center seat.

you have to show confidence but you can't show fear that you're not on top of things because your people won't have confidence in what you are doing. what we learned is that if you also have to submerge your work ego. it does not do any good to set up there proclaim that you are the smartest guy in the room. you need to let people either figured that out or not figure it out one way or the other. and so you have to learn to ask questions and you have to learn to listen to the answers. and then you need to make sure that you've done away with preconceived notions because it's really easy but if you have big ego to walk into a situation can be confident that you know the answer grade and not hear the real information in the real data. you have to be willing to let somebody sway your argument.

george: so your mantra being preparation and i see in the book that i feel like you are making a point to be the person 19 and to be prepared for the foundation. paul: right. george: and going into that, this notion of being the best person in the room seems like it was to your success. in this for the book diverse for me is simple history book or not a biography. you became a leadership book, a book on leadership and followership and a book on communications. in some respects, for some younger people could be there flight planning book. paul: used all right through it, didn't you. george:

[laughter] in the tell us a little bit more about this preparation your mantra but how does that impact your experience. as a leader. paul: will first off, you can never expected people to do anything that you're not willing to do your self. and that includes being the best prepared at present in the room. they learn something, you need to learn it. crimes of our young flight controller, moved down to houston and had one bedroom apartment and i am a motorcycle. those kind of it. and i had worked. what i discovered it was this room on the second floor of our building, the training library and every workbook on the shuttle program and on all of the systems and all of the operations and on all of the dynamics, it had workbooks and training manuals and mechanics and had workbooks and manuals on how to work all of the hardware

and all the software mission control. i went in there every day i got another book, and i took it home and at night, that is what i work on. and to develop the habit early not taking lunch i would sit at my desk i would rate it workbook. when i finished my co-op tour, i was already finished with all of the training manuals that they had available. so then i discovered in 1978, was the first hard as rock class and they came in and they had this dance for the 35 new guys. george: i'm not sure they know what that means predict. paul: it stands for the 35 new guys. and i'm sticking with it. anyways, they videoed all of the classes that were presented to the ps mgs they had all of those videotapes and this was back before beta and vhs so these big

old video machines and every thursday night, i had the machine reserved and i would not go home and we get the machine i would be looking to my office i would spend four or five hours watching those videos. and so a lot of it was just because i was fascinated by all of it. what he learned later on was that i was setting the stage to become a flight director just like the other few people that were out there doing the exact same thing. it was a minority of people in the job. but you really needed to be so well prepared and what i always told people was that if you come the control center and flight director who has about a dozen flight controllers in the front room of the room that you see on tv and mission control working for him and then each one of those people have a back room of people supporting them in their discipline. and it always told and counseled young folks that your back room

flight controller, you to think on the front room flight controller brady you want to be thinking about what you're doing great. so that you know what your present need this in working the interface with everybody. and if you want to be a cracker jack front row operator, you gotta think like a flight director rated want to know what is my flight director needed, what does he not need is my turn to perform as a flight director. in the problem and the other disciplines is way worse than my problem so i'm just going to sit back and watch what is going on read so you can tell from an early career age, who is trying to become a flight director and he was not. it was pretty obvious that you need to put in that dedication you need to put in that work to get not only abroad knowledge but a deep knowledge. george: .

[inaudible]. and down the rabbit hole, you just had to learn. paul: you had to put into the time. what you discovered it in the shadow, because is a very complex system, you have lots of different electrical functions that electrical places where things were connected and a lot of different data gathering and commanding interfaces that all intertwined. so the electrical guy said hey we just lost something and you need to know, what is that otherwise and also what is it lose you data wise so that it looks like the computer is not off. we don't have any indications and is on but is not off. sue is not a lot of kind of memorization if you will although i hate memorization. it always have terms that are used to gave the cheat sheets and give you all that data. so yes, it was a lot of rabbit holes that you had to dive down.

george: you were at the control before you are flight director read you were supposed to live in the rabbit hole and poke your head up enough to do the flight director's job or help him. so what are the odds particularly in the amount of time you spent preparing, how did you handle that. what was that about or that shakeout with controllers position really being narrowly focused as opposed to the wider focus. paul: you made up a lot of points in the flight director if you said, i have this problem with such and such but i know that the one of their has much bigger problem salty with him first and then come back and i'll manage this problem for you. and take care of it. and in doing that, he let the flight director know that you had that breath of knowledge and you knew that he knew that you were thinking about what was going on and that you were

acting almost at his assistance. not just nobody sitting down there in their own discipline. front room operator and flight controllers can think about footsteps of theirs as they have to think about what in terms of emission. the back room i controller can think about the system. and then there, one of the toughest things to learn is a flight controller is to let your system burn off. because you can get what you need out of it and don't fix it when he gets to the ground. and sometimes you have to sacrifice your hard work in order to make mission work. so that's what you did. i would joke that the jp guys, all these missions to mars and the like, than ever to the hardware back. they have very little attention to the hardware. george: and approaching engineering from a slightly different perspective. less skin in the game.

paul: yep. george: so i haven't figured out how to read this without a yes or no answer. something except the flight director, and work comes from. paul: no, you know, it became kind of odd because for someone like myself and my compadres to became like directors, we could not understand, we didn't intuitively understand why everybody didn't want to be a flight director but there were lots of people just want to go to work and just do the job. and they would say i don't want the responsibility. and you've got a heck of a lot of responsibly and in the job you have you do realize that right pretty but they just, had to say this way, they'd wanted to have a family and kids and everything and a lot of high directors were single people.

the plaintiff directors also i s kind of unique. there is a reason i was the longest-serving flight director in the space fight history, that was 20 years. that was because i absolutely loved the job. there was another job in space program that i wanted. and most people spend five - seven years as a flight director and then it may go off become a program manager. the last two program managers and shall program was flight director stop. and didn't want to be the deputy director in the center center director w administrator at nasa. in the field general. i absolutely love being right in the thick of the action. that's where i wanted to be read i do joke a bit but it's kinda true. old-line from the movie top gun about we don't make policy, were just carrying it out. with the truth of the matter is that people want to move up at nasa, so that they can make

policy. you're never going to make policy. politicians make policy. so you carried out negate get real disappointed when you get too high. so i always try to do the best tropicana the fight program. george: and knowing, you found a place not play certainly is not for everyone. i think that shines through the book. and moving back to the preparation, everything you look back on, that you look back in your own preparation and if you like it was a keystone or rare replaceable force basically forming a fairly unique balance to take the center seat. paul: first off, i think the one thing that you had to bring into, i think you had to bring it in with you to nasa into operations was leadership

skills. i spent most of my life in leadership positions. i am still not convinced. i'm not certain about whether leadership is inherent or trainable. we can train skills, we can explain to people good leadership is. i learned leadership when i was a boy scout. and the more i looked back on where my leadership skills come from, the more i realize that is where it came from read an awful lot, a lot of eagle scouts running in the halls of nasa. in the astronaut office in the flight director office. then talk about it that you learn that stuff a lot of people who learned leadership in military organizations, or in sports or in clubs in college.

you bring that in with you. and i think that a large part of the kind of thing that you had to learn was how to put your nose to the grindstone and learn the technical aspect and then learning how to be with people. so my house, we loved watching the big bang theory, not just because make those people read is because we were those people. george: is the exact same thing in my household. paul: you discovered it that you had to figure out how to work with people. so after a bit of senior flight controller and it was clear that there were people who can't i was flight director material, i was brought into managers office

and he said paul, your an incredible operational engineer we've ever seen but he'll learn how to work better with people, 70 is going to kill you. that's when i realized you really do need to learn how to submerge that ego and you need to let other people talk and you need to let other people are out what they want. george: and you're always turning the skills that you have. paul: and lecture and so, you had to change your attitude from okay, i get the technical stuff down really really well and understand how the spaceship works. understand no need to have her figure out how to apply this to people. until people that really crackerjack technical skills will get you and 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 going to make that leap into a leadership role where people are going to feel good working for you. i really ended up in the role of institutional mentor for flight control skills. i got to the point that i would do simulations, they were trying to train me. i consider my self part of the training team and helping the training team put in situations in mime flight controller so that they would get the lesson snake needed. and then at a constant steady stream of flight controllers coming into my office when we were in the control center. wanted to sit down and see what they could learn. that's kind of fun. george: only come back back to that mentor shape and mentorship. you have baseball stories in the book.

it was fun and i'm curious how important this part of your leadership styles. and have some diversion in it and that was really what you were doing was deadly serious. paul: yeah, so the perseverance landed on mars in today was really exciting because there was this story about how they encoded the jpl model and the location of jpl into the parachute using code and binary code and that was - and so he sent me a note saying that they had so much fun. why the world we guys stick in the mud. and i loved them guys, they're doing amazing things. they knocked my socks off. they've done incredible sups or thing is really neat. but the thing you have to remember is that they are not

putting human lives at risk. in the human lives at risk are the people knowingly and for reason. since the ingram cut think. but you learned that it would really look horrible if you lost to somebody and then people found that you were messing around. so we were always very image conscious. if you were sitting in a meeting, planning a mission, and somebody said what it be cool if and it killed the idea pretty didn't eat to hear the idea. because we never did anything because that was cool. what we were doing was cool enough. wanting people into space for heaven sakes were bringing them back and wing to be, weighs 200,000 pounds. this is a amazing stuff and this is cool enough for you read we

always had to be very very careful not to appear frivolous in any way. at the same time we wanted to have some fun. we did some cool stuff and maybe somebody reading the book, and what people would notice is sometimes is what happened more often and with space station, and the shuttle is that if you going to have a good clear night, middle of the night and using your funny mission, then you want to lie over houston and we know it would be right overhead, we designate one person to be the watch keeper and everybody else go outside pretty we would abandon the control center to watch the space capsule overhead we come back inside and we would say hey we just watched the flight over. now, if something bad had happened right at the moment when you were gone, everybody career would've been over those

involved. and the flight director certainly would had to have gone pretty soon the was fun times we had. so every astronaut can supply a little personal kit, and usually there would be a couple of things it would take. they would asked to have things for for friends and family that they could bring back and say hey, this watch food space for this whatever and an omission we i was late flight director and they were in charge of making sure the stuff got into the cruise pk. this only calls me up and said i need stuff for their pk, do you got anything and he would walk in my office i would look around it and on the wall, was a golden gophers patch because i was in minnesota graduate. this patch was on my coming this was my mother's letter jacket.

she graduated a minnesota gophers. its way to get here finest. as we took it. and the next thing i know, i see some video coming down from space-i see the lockers and take onto it is this minnesota gophers patch. and all i could think of was the crew opened up the book and found it this purple and gold gopher and they had no idea of what it was her one of us for what it meant but they take into the wall of the locker so somebody would see it on the ground. and so we kind of have fun things like that. and of giving to her stories. one was rhonda buse did relations. when you find rendezvous, and

you getting close to the space station or your target, the closer you get, the slower you want to go. we have a breaking gauge so that a thousand yards would be going the speed. got to that thousand yards great. then at 500 yards you want to be slower yet in at 100 yards even slower yet some of those were breaking gates u.s. wanted to fly breaking gate and you flew or if you are faster than you breaking gate, and he worked really hard to docking it. we had such a thing as friday breaking gate for simulation. even in the control center all week guys have been cockpit all week. in this regard in the afternoon and things are going slow. it just kind that and said he say, friday breaking gate and then the spacecraft would go on into the space station at docket hit warp speed.

like paper down and out of here read and the outpost was the local bar. p-letter ever saw the movie the right stuff, there is conscious bar the middle of the desert. we enter own version of hodges, called the outpost. the only thing keeping outpost from falling down was all the termites were holding hands. it was like, actually burn it down and fortunately, the fire department and the people who were in the place at the time, understood the value of all of the moment is on the wall. they basically said, let's get everything out. we have pictures and patches and and there was the wallpaper, it was all momentum entered mementos. all the separate say before the bar burned down. the last story that i will tell you is that it was not uncommon after shooting the control center for folks to go out and have a beer together. that was great. it gives me out and for me

second will or whatever predict the three m, the bars closed. and so for a long time people would be in the recreation center parking lot. so they would have a cooler in the trunk of the car they just go out have a beer before the window read in the security did not like that because they would get calls that people are out of the woods drinking a beer at 3:00 o'clock in the morning. in the head of the center operations and security working for them, seven said i know you guys need to do something. so i've smoothed it over with security and here's what we are going to do. there's a building, and big old saturn five on display, 360-foot rocket in the build a building around it and it's air-conditioned and is for the tourist and he said, on nights when you might want to go off,

call this number is the security desk and they will go out an hour before and turn the and air conditioning and ability and you guys can go drink there all night. george: love it. paul: and you cut it and he would go out there and you would be sitting there drinking underneath the f1 engines of the saturn five and it was like drinking in church. i mean,, this is like a cathedral. there is just always something really wild about that but it was something we enjoyed doing so they calls from the flight director council, the word open it up and turn the air conditioning on. george: that is awesome. i want to mention to the listeners that you're doing a great job putting the questions in and we will get to them. have you tickled the questions, you can upload the ones that you want to enter first are most likely. i'm not have a question yet but

we will get to those questions. so please, i'm them sprinkled throughout because it seems like we had a little bit of a narrative. all of the inside baseball stories and along with that notion of being center seat, actually you said, eventually you become a mentor. you're the one who has been around the longest. have things changed. and, with the mission at nasa, did that change the organization. paul: and dead. it did. when i learned something is a tradition and i'm an idealist, i learned from the best. i learned from the guys it flew apollo who took us to the moon and i learned from from these

early flight directors and wanted to make sure we do not lose those lessons. but nasa changed. the problem of the show program was vanessa was a research organization. it was not designed to be an operational organization or designed to run an airline we were always caught in this dichotomy of we want to fly the shuttle and they were tempted to just turn it over to contractors. but hiring a contractor to fight a war for you if you are a nation. some things should be under the direct control of the people who don't have profits in mind. they are just there to serve the wound and hunt good of the will of the people. so once we started point lots and lots of missions, the early

show program, we're going to find 50 missions a year, you can never do it with fork shuttles or the kind of setting we had. that was impossible but we did like 12 and one year. i got really really busy so we got into this moment of trying to put the systems aside that every flight controller would have the exact same set of failures in the training and when they saw them all, then they were certified and we always had problems with this because they want to developing the basic it philosophical skills. ... ...

we were building custom, it was like custom, not production line. he really needs to be honest about what your real goals are from a this is why i am a big supporter of marshall based guys. juan: and the guys doing commercial programs because nasa should be in the business of fundamental research and exploration. nasa should be going to the moon, section he's trying to figure sitting back and forth to the space station. without that, we can give that to somebody. the predecessor to nasa would be in aca, national advisory committee for aeronautics and most of the things that created the modern airline structure

came out of basic in aca research but innately did not try to run an airline. >> on my limited view as an aviator, nasa is the source of all things research. you want to learn about air, it's going to be. >> it's going to be naca. it doesn't inside part for you, i work with a lot of guys that worked at naca that made transfer, they always said nasa but they never said -- they always said naca. >> the guys like chris pratt and the guy that came out of the an ica, they product the naca but they also what say --

>> yes, so who knows. he sort of answered a question i wanted to ask on the q&a but i'll read the question so you can see if there's anything more you can at. nasa from the iss. >> it is a little different, it's a younger crowd, they've got a different set of social mores, i from he said just as we watched, it's going to happen to yvonne and how they treat the business will reflect on them when they do and if you treated frivolously you will have a

problem but i have seen them serious over what they do, i've seen them doing a lot more cheering, which is very cool because they should be enthusiastic about but you always need to remember -- i don't think they need to remember, i think people watching you to know and remember and take it seriously if you look at any posttraumatic celebration the guys waving flags and smoking cigars, they were letting off steam. >> it seems clear to me but i am curious what your perception is, i think there is they understand as well. >> i think they do i've had a chance to visit spacex origins

virgin and all those people who talk to them about flying people in space, there senior management me and some astronauts and others i'm back, i got a call from one of the companies that said some of my former guys were working there and called me and said we are getting ready to fight our first element and i said i need you to put the fear of god into these people. we just need you to tell them how serious it is and i've done that and they appreciated it. >> on that note, the most popular question on q&a right now, can you share your best and worst day on the job? >> the worst day on the job was losing the spacecraft. as a flight controller of the

time and not on a mission from ours on the next mission drivers training for the next mission and we were going to a meeting and we stopped to launch and renew instantly that it was over, there was no hope. columbia for years, i was flying every mission to the space station, i had fun every mission so the last mission was not going to the space station, it was research mission, one mission i was not working directly and i wasn't even paying attention to it. i really took it off and i went to the airport that morning to fly and got out there and it was foggy so i stopped at an auto parts store to pick up something from somebody saw my flight jacket and i said what happened to claudia? they said it's all over dollars

and no sooner they said that my pager and phone went off as i the control center setting up, and of our liaison for the rest of the world, getting debris i said running the air war managing a bunch of aircraft recusing for research and recovering and stuff. it was a sad day, i don't ever want to make light of but by that time i lost a lot and flying machines. spacecraft and i had gotten used to that kind of thing happening. you ever learn to like it, you should never learn to like it, do everything you can to avoid it.

problem with the prostate in the control center, everyday was the worst day in the control center was better than the best day in the office any time. the best times in the control center was one the team was absolutely clicking. one example, we flew a mission radar mission with we were mapping the entire planet, we had to be absolutely ready to go every time we came and we went off cap and we have this 53 minute long path on africa and we lost control and we had trained for this over and over again. my team clicked, everything, absolutely clicked, it took us most that time we were back before we needed to. watching a good control team

watching people quick like that, all i had to do was stand back and stay out of the way. >> when it comes to get. >> the passengers are no problem, you solve the problem so very good, thank you on back. did you ever wish you were on the flight rather than in mission control? [laughter] >> the truth is, almost everybody at the space center wants to be an astronaut when they get there sure, i stepped in the office moving up in the selection office in terms of, i finally reached the time for i thought the call saying before we put you in an interview, what is your division, paul of course they already knew because i had my medical records because they had been taking care of me my career so that's how it went but by then, the crews were working

for me when we were flying so it would have been really fun to do a single light but it is a long-haul spending years getting ready for that one flights. it would have been great to fly but i had a pretty good career as it was. >> it would be available at some time. >> but probably not in my budget range. >> are going to say, you might get on, you might have an inside deal on but. >> we will have to see on that. [laughter] my advantage is i've been a pilot hole life, i do a lot of flight testing and a lot of fun stuff. if i didn't get a chance to get an airplane every day or every other day that i might think a little different, it would be

fun to fly the space shuttle. >> i have if you want to testify. >> i would do not. >> this is another question that came in, should it -- was it reasonable? the policy that it is -- >> i can take this now because i don't work for nasa, i believe it would have changed when convicted. the goal of the space shuttle was built and so was the space station, that was the fundamental view of it and once we finished the space station, we retired the shuttle that was a political decision, kind of a i call it a loss of national will. if you hold individual people citizens, we have a majority of support but politicians didn't want to keep going and i didn't

like the risk so i think we should have continued fly the shuttle quite a bit longer because it carried a whole lot of stuff up and back it was designed to serve the space station, we probably could have continued building up the space station it would be a much bigger thing so i think we retired it too early and i would like to continue seeing it fly. >> you sort of answered another question, if you feel the program is underappreciated by the department? >> i think people -- you know, we were a victim of our own success. the shuttle went up again, six times this year, so what? when you become the test people stop paying attention, it's not exciting anymore but it was really exciting every time they went up, it was never boring. >> no doubt. you think the shuttle inspired

some of what goes on around the rest of the world with different space programs? >> it absolutely did. we bootstrapped a lot of different space programs and the knowledge we learned were things that were applied from the research organization from we gave away what we learned because that's what we were tasked to do, take public money, get knowledge out of it and put the knowledge out there for people to use so yes, it always did. >> it strikes me the president is probably going to handle the runs to and from orbit with the capacity not as much back. you think nasa is going back to its roots going back into this business? >> i hope so and i stay connected with my friends using the newer generation of flight directors and i know was going

on and they are working hard to get back to a lunar presence, i personally privacy a robust lunar presence before we go to mars to make sure when we go to mars, we can do it. we need to practice on the moon for we are only three days from first rather than get to mars for you are a half year from mars. >> i get that. one of the last question, how do you deal with the stress? i'll add this in, you were the role where so much of the weight of what was going on -- >> the answer to that, if you are reacting stress in a negative way, you're not going to qualify as a flight director. i can tell you before a mission, if i would get sprung up, i would get into my airplane fly

on my arm about what center and relax me a bit. once you get into the middle, you are so busy, you don't have time to be stressed. you just plow ahead. >> i love it. we're almost out of time or two hit you with one last question, it conceals my strong opinion, you are an extremely strong writer, it shows in the book. i've experienced it firsthand, we were on the same aircraft forms because we built the same kinds of airplanes but i am curious about that, obviously on the magazine, you are still an editor at large from which your personal journey, the writing? >> i think that writing and communication are the same thing, verbal or written without about the ability to formulate your thoughts to write them down

and pass it up the line get you noticed. if you can write a well thought out meaningful essay in frontpage on a topic that sells the reasons why something should be a certain way, that is going to get you noticed, there is no question about that. >> i would like to reiterate the book is extraordinarily well written, is not just history, not just autobiography although it is an extraordinary book on personal development. i mentioned earlier, i'm going to hit you up later for an organization involved in aviation, i would like to encourage all of our watchers was a big green button that says

buy book and you will do very well to buy this book so what else would you like to say? where probably down to seconds. >> i just want to thank the festival of books for asking me to come talk, it has been fun. the last several chapters of the book are lessons we've learned over the years on leadership the ways you can be more successful in complex operations so i'm glad you recognize that that was the intent. thank you so much for having me here for everybody watching. >> a little bit -- got to switch screens here.

that is it for us today, thank you for your participation today and thank you to the readers for attending. if you get the chance and make it to the festival of books.or, we'd love to have you sign up for the festival newsletter and thank you to the engineering technology. >> c-span shop.org c-span online store. his recollection of c-span products. your purchase will support nonprofit organization is to have time to order congressional directory with contact information for members of congress and the biden administration. her to c-span shop.org. nicholas on the creation of the space tourism company virgin galactic. test private engineers and leaders.