ochoa from nasa's johnson space flight center. she gave the keynote address this year at the u.s. air force academy's national character and leadership symposium in colorado springs. she was the first hispanic woman in space. >> ladies and gentlemen, my name is cadet second class amanda mcclain. it is my privilege to welcome you to this session of the 19th annual national character and leadership symposium. it is now my pleasure to introduce today's speaker. today's speaker was selected by nasa in 1990 and became an astronaut in july of 1991. she became the first hispanic woman to go into space with a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle discovery in 1993. a veteran of four space flights, she's logged nearly 1,000 hours in space.

along with her nasa career, she is also an accomplished pioneer of spacecraft technology. as the chief of intelligent systems at the nasa research center, she supervised 35 engineer scientists and the research and development of computational systems for aerospace missions while laying claim to three patents herself. currently, she's servings a the deputy director of the johnson space center. ladies and gentlemen, it's an honor to present you dr. ellen ochoa. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. well, thank you. it's my pleasure to be here this morning and to be speaking with you. i've been real fortunate in my career. i was selected as an astronaut at a time when the space shuttle was flying quite regularly during the 1990s and had the opportunity to be on four different space shuttle missions.

two of them were atmospheric research flights where we took experiments and were studying the problem of the ozone hole and ozone creation and depletion in our atmosphere. then the second two flights were part of the assembly of the international space station. my last flight was almost exactly ten years ago. it was in april 2002, and as i mentioned, it was part of the assembly of the space station. we took up the very first piece of the truss structure, which is now about 350 feet long. of course, that's the structure that the huge solar arrays hang off of. after i talk, i'm going to show you some video both from that flight as well as some of the current views of the international had space station

and some of the things going on there today. but what i wanted to talk to you a little bit about today was some of the leadership things that i have done since transitioning out of the astronaut corps. i knew going into that last flight, sts-110, that it would probably be my last space flight, or at least the last for several years. i was a veteran. it was my fourth flight. we had a lot of people in the astronaut office who had not had the chance to fly in space at all. one of our goals was to make sure we got those folks flight experience. so i was offering and accepted the position of deputy director of flight crew operations at johnson space center. the flight crew operations director is the organization there that manages both the astronaut corps and our aircraft ops division. at that time, we had about 41 aircraft in our aircraft ops division. most of them, about 30 of them, were the t-38 aircraft that astronauts fly in as part of our training. we also had four shuttle training aircraft, which are modified gulf stream 2 aircraft that shuttle commanders and pilots use to learn how to land the shuttle. of course, we had a couple of

747s that have been modified to care carry the shuttle on top. then we also had a few other aircraft like some wb-57 high altitude aircraft. this organization flight crew ops that i was now deputy director of, in addition to, you know, developing policies for our organization and managing the people and the budget, we also had a technical operational role in terms of representing the flight crew at the various program and agency level meetings where they need a flight crew representative. so some of those meetings, of course, we were at that time flying the shuttle in the middle of assembling the international space station. so when the shuttle would have their weekly control boards and they would make decisions about, you know, fixing software or doing inspections or just the

day-to-day decisions for the shuttle, we always had a flight crew representative there to provide the position of the flight crew. during an actual mission, we had mission management team meetings where the shuttle management as well as representatives from the various areas like flight crew or mission operations would gather and make decisions during the flight, depending on how things were going, reviewing the objectives of the flight, if there were failures that were happening in various pieces of equipment, understanding whether we could go in and do the next big milestone, whether it's rendezvousing with the station. so one of the very first meetings i attended in my new position was december of 2002. i had just been named in this position that month. the space shuttle program, about once a quarter, had meetings called council meetings, again, where sort of the management of the whole shuttle program as

well as people like me representing flight crew or people representing mission control, people representing the safety and engineering organizations would meet and talk over issues. so the program manager stood up at this meeting, and his basic theme was that the nasa administrator was focused on getting to a particular launch by february 2004. so that was a little over a year away. and that launch was going to bring up a piece of a module called node 2. at that point, we were going to be at a situation with the iss where it was called core complete. it wasn't the complete assembly of the international space station, but it was a point where you could have three crew members on board and support them, have enough power and have some laboratories that they could work in. we, of course, were going for six or seven crew members total, but this was sort of a phase

that was ending before you sort of built up to the six-person crew. so let me just give you a little bit of background on why they were so interested in this particular flight that was going to happen about 14 months away. about a year or two earlier, it turned out the space station was determined to be about $4 billion over its projected budget. and the administration declared that they were going to limit it to this core complete configuration. again, a reduced design that would have only accommodated three crew members. the deputy director of the office of management and budget in the white house, omb, presented a plan at a congressional hearing that would help bring these costs under control and basically it cut out some of the flights that were going to originally be part of

that core complete, cancelled some of the elements that were already in development, including a habitation module that was being built and also a crew rescue vehicle that the u.s. was providing. and then there was a task force that was formed at om b's request that recommended a reduced flight rate about four shut the flights per year, which would require longer station crews on orbit. so we already had crews living in orbit at that time. in general, we were trying to rotate crews out about every three months. this task force recommended increasing that to six month stays. at that time in 2001 with this reduced flight rate, they felt we could get to this core complete again by february 2004. and they recommended a performance gate. so they were going to see how nasa did over the next couple years, and in the fall of 2003, an assessment would be made looking at the iss program

performance and nasa's credibility. if it was satisfactory, they were going to look at what resources would be needed to get to the full assembly complete and see if they would provide those or not. if they didn't feel nasa's progress had been satisfactory, then they were going to end the assembly of the station at this core complete. so this was the approach that was adopted by the administration. the deputy director of omb, who as i mentioned, was kind of right in the middle of this, became the new nasa administrator. you can imagine because he was so involved in this cost controlling situation and had helped propose some of the steps that we were going to be taking that he was very focused knowing that in fall of 2003 they were going to make this decision and really trying to get to this node 2 launch in february 2004. in fact, from nasa headquarters, there was a screen saver that was sent around to all the human space flight centers, at least for all the managers to use. essentially, it was a countdown

to february of 2004. well, this made a lot of people at johnson space center very nervous. many of the people who were working on the shuttle program at this year, 2002, had actually been working on the shuttle program in 1986 when the challenger accident occurred. although there were certainly technical reasons that were the root cause of that accident, there were a lot of organizational causes that contributed to that, and one of them was felt to be schedule pressure. so back to this council meeting. again, the first one i'd attended in a management role. we did spend the majority of this all day meeting talking about the schedule. there was a person that stood up who's kind of in charge of the manifest. he talked about how we've lost 90 days of schedule in the last six months of 2002.

been able to mitigate about 30 days of that, but we're still down 60 days. we were working a technical issue with some of our main engines at the time and were delaying a little bit even then. talked about how many days of margin we had to the next assembly flight and directed the main contractor, who works in florida processing the shuttles, to actually work over the christmas holidays only giving folks christmas eve, christmas, and new year's off the only other topic, really, that was discussed much at all was one that fortunately had more to do on the technical or operations side. the person who was in charge of the orbiter, the orbiter project manager, said, you know, he was concerned that the way that we were operating the shuttle was quite different than the way equipment was actually originally certified. you may remember that when the shuttle was developed they were planning to fly it many times

per year. they thought at that time they could turn around shuttles much quicker than we ended up being able to turn them around. so they were talking about flying shuttles, you know, every couple of weeks. and they designed it for a certain number of missions. we were not anywhere near the number of missions that a lot of the equipment was certified to, but they assumed they would get to that number of missions maybe in a handful of years. here we were, you know, 20 years later not anywhere near that number of missions, but with the overall a calendar lifetime on this equipment much longer than we expected, they also talked about the way we ended up processing things at the cape was just different than originally anticipated. we had some oxygen lines we had recently had trouble with. they had originally been certified only to be moved like thousandths of an inch. that was probably why we were having some leaks in these lines.

he wanted to start up a program to sort of validate the way we were operating compared to the way we had originally certified equipment. so that was an example of looking at a technical operational issue that was bothering one of our top managers, but as i say, most of the meeting was really focused on the schedule. so that kind of sets the stage. so the next month, january, we were scheduled to launch sts-107. that was one of only, maybe, three flights on the books for the entire foreseeable future that was not part of the assembly of the international space station. it was a science flight, so there were a number of microgravity experiments on board. as we looked at the manifest, it didn't initially really affect the assembly of the international space station as long as, you know, it didn't prevent other flights from launching beyond it. i actually got to be in florida for that launch in the part of

the launch control center where the mission management team meets. so during a launch countdown, again, the managers associated with the shuttle program meet there, and if there are any issues that come up during the launch countdown that might hold off on the launch or cause one to talk about delaying a launch, that's what you actually do. i was also happy to be there because the commander of that flight was rick husband, his first chance to command a mission, air force pilot. i had flown with rick about three years earlier on another mission or two years earlier. so i was really happy to see him launching again and getting to command a mission. fortunately the launch went off very smoothly. during the mission, we had meetings every day. my boss, the director of flight crew operations, who was also new in his position, essentially said to me, well, i'll attend the mission management meetings

my boss who was also new in his position essentially said to me, i'll attend the mission management meetings. and you do other things that are required to run flight crew ops. so i heard about a concern about a debris strike that had happened during launch but was not really in on any of the meetings where they talked about it during the mission management team. i was in mission control for landing because, again, one of my duties, new duties in flight crew ops was to be the flight crew representative. not as one of the flight controllers or not as the cap com, which is a job i had done earlier where you talk to crews, but essentially as a manager there and always within the back of people's minds of having a manager there in case there were any issues that happened. well, obviously that was february 1st, 2003.

that was the day that we lost columbia. and, you know, that was probably the worst professional event you can imagine when you work in the human space flight program. so the next, you know -- that turned into a very long day, obviously, at johnson space center. and a very long next few months. we were very busy in flight crew ops immediately dealing with the loss of life and the impacts to the families and the astronaut corps. we needed to assign crew reps within a couple of days who would support a nasa team we were setting up to investigate as well as an independent team that was set up called the columbia accident investigation board or the cabe. so we had an astronaut representative who was an ex-official member of that board as well. and i think you probably know that, of course, they determined that the root cause was that there was a piece of foam that

came off the external tank, a piece that became debris, ended up hitting the shuttle in the reinforced carbon carbon area of one of the wings. essentially put a fairly large hole in that, allowed all the hot gases during entry to essentially melt the shuttle from the inside and caused the accident. when they put out their report, though, they also noted, as with challenger, that there were contributing organizational flaws. i'm going to quote from that report now. the organizational causes of this accident are rooted in the space shuttle program's history and culture, including the original compromises that we required to gain approval for

the shuttle program, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterizations of the shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of an agreed national vision. cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety and reliability were allowed to develop, including reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices, organizational barriers which prevented effective communication of critical safety information, and stifled professional differences of opinion, lack of integrated management elements and the informal chain of command and decision making processes that operated outside the organization's rules. so over the next two to two and a half years we prepared for what we called return to flight. that involved a lot of technical and engineering work, but it involved a lot of organizational work too where we went through a lot of training and classes and emphasis on making sure that

people realized they not only should speak up if they felt there was an issue that wasn't being addressed directly, but that they were actually required to speak up in those cases and how you can work more effectively as a team and particularly on the ground thinking of that mission management team that meets realtime during missions to make decisions, how you can take some of the things that, you know, i had learned as an astronaut and many of you learn about crew resource management or cockpit resource management where you work together as a small team, taking that to the level of the mission management team and even beyond to make sure that you're listening to each of the people on your team. of course, we had weekly control board meetings. we were trying to decide, you know, what we needed to fix, what we needed to change, what we needed to add.

these could actually be pretty emotional and contentious. a comment by a crew rep, and again many of the times i was the person in there representing the crew opinion, that, for example, questioned somebody's opinion could be interpreted by other people in the room as the flight crew really placing blame on that person or group for the accident. there was so much personal investment that people had that almost all the people in the room felt some amount of blame for what had happened. there were obviously lots of different opinions on what needed to be done to actually get back to a point where you could say you were ready to go fly. there were a lot of people who felt we were never going to be able to inspect on orbit to the level of resolution that was needed in order to determine whether the shuttle was safe for

re-entry and so felt we shouldn't even be trying. then there were a lot of people that felt we absolutely had to be doing these inspections and trying to do whatever was possible to make sure that we could do a good inspection and understand whether the shuttle was safe for re-entry on all the future flights that we flew. one of the things that we worked on as an organization during this time was nasa's core values. i would have to say i'm not even sure if we were just re-working or if we were developing. up to this point, i don't recall having heard someone talk to me about nasa's core values, but i certainly paid a lot of attention to it during this era. they came up with four core values for nasa. safety, excellence, teamwork, and integrity. i just wanted to read you a couple of excerpts from that, which you can find even today if you search on nasa's website. it starts out saying nasa's privileged to take on missions of extraordinary risk, complexity, and national priority. nasa employees recognize their responsibilities and are accountable for the important work entrusted to them.

if good strategic planning provides the long-term direction of our agency, our shared core values express the ethics that guide our behavior. under safety, it says nasa's attention to safety is the corner stone upon which we build mission success. we're committed individually and as a team to protecting the safety and health of the public, our team members, and the assets the nation entrusts to the agency. the other one i wanted to read was under integrity. nasa's committed to maintaining an environment of trust built upon honesty. ethical behavior, respect, and candor. our leaders enable this environment by encouraging and rewarding a vigorous open flow of communication on all issues in all directions among all employees without fear of reprisal. building trust through ethical conduct as individuals and as an organization is a necessary

component of mission success. about a year after columbia, while we were in the midst of all this, we got a new nasa administrator, mike griffin. one of the speeches he gave was called "nasa and engineering integrity." mike was a very good speaker, so i would often go and find his texts online and read through them myself. again, there was a paragraph in here that i thought was very relevant to what we were going through at that time. in engineer practice, integrity is speaking up in a meeting when you do not believe the facts match the conclusions being reached or that certain facts are being ignored. integrity is following the data. integrity is refusing to fall in

love with your own analysis, admitting that you're wrong when presented with new data that should alter your earlier view. integrity is keeping a promise or commitment or when circumstances change, explaining why an agreement cannot be kept. integrity is walking into your boss' office, closing the door, and speaking with frankness, openness, and honesty and listening the same way. integrity is being willing to put your badge on the boss' desk when you believe an ethical breach warrants such drastic action. so finally, close to two and a half years after the accident, we had our shuttle on the launch pad, discovery, for sts-114, our return to launch mission. and we were in the middle of a launch countdown, and we had a sensor problem. we call these particular sensors engine cut-off sensors. we abbreviate that like we abbreviate everything in nasa. we call them eco sensors. this was an issue that had nothing to do with anything we had worked through return to flight. let me, again, quote from one of the news articles that came out during that time.

a liquid hydrogen tank, low level fuel cut-off sensor failed a routine pre-launch check during the launch countdown causing mission managers to scrub the first attempt. members of an engineering team met to review data and possible troubleshooting plans. some of the troubleshooting included conducting electromagnetic interference and ground resistance testing on wiring in the engine compartment. orbiter engineers suspected that this wiring grounding issue as well as emi could lead to that sensor glitch. tests to check eight potential sources of that interference all turned up nominal. shuttle workers -- and this was a couple weeks later. shuttle workers are now buttoning up discovery's compartment home to a sensor electronics box that commanded much attention over the last couple weeks and are preparing to load the reactants that power the fuel cells.

so about two weeks later we did launch sts-114. no problems with the sensor or anything else. so let me just give you a little bit of background on these sensors. the rest of my talk sort of deals with how we dealt with this problem over the next couple of years. these engine cut-off sensors, there's four in the external tank that look at the liquid hydrogen. there's another four that look at the liquid oxygen. they're part of a back-up system that are intended to make sure the engines either don't shut down too early, resulting in abort, or run too long which is the much more serious case because that could drain the tank dry with potentially catastrophic results and engine fire or an explosion that could destroy the vehicle and crew. so you're unlikely to even need this back-up system, especially on the fuel side, which is where

the sensor problem was because you generally load more fuel than you need. but if you do need to use it, it's clearly critical, not only to mission success, but to crew survivability. this back-up system had been put to the test twice earlier in the history of the shuttle program. once in 1985 where a main engine had shut down. that affected the fuel consumption on the remaining two engines, resulting in an eco sensor commanding an engine cut off. and then just, i think, a couple years before there had been a hydrogen leak in one of the main engine nozzles that caused more oxygen to be consumed than expected. on the oxygen side, the eco sensors had triggered a shut down. it also turned out, as we were reviewing this, especially during those first two weeks when we were trying to determine when we could launch, that we'd had a history throughout the

shuttle program going way back to sts-1 of eco sensor problems. there's also other sensors in the tank that are of the same design that aren't used it to shut down the engine, but they are used to understand particularly when you're filling the tank where you are and other types of things. we'd had failures of those sensors as well. we hadn't seen it in a while until this particular launch countdown. we had a flight rule or what we call a launch commit criteria. so something that you have to meet in order to give the go to continue a launch countdown. all four of these sensors needed

to be working. there were a lot of people that felt maybe that was kind of overkill. quadruply redundant system on a back-up system. there were a number of people that came and talked about why it was designed that way, and again even though you were dealing with a failure that wasn't likely to happen in the first place, the consequences of running dry on the fuel side in particular were, again, catastrophic. they had actually added redundancy earlier in the program to this shuttle system. we did, through this two weeks, come up with a corollary to that, where if you had a sensor that wasn't working on a particular launch countdown, you drain the tank and try to launch again the next day, filling up again. if that same sensor showed that same signature but all the other sensors were still working, that the team could proceed with launch because it would require two more sensors to fail in order to pose a catastrophic threat in addition to being in a situation where you needed to use those sensors. now, the risk of two more sensors failing, obviously, depends on what caused the failure of that first sensor, right? if it is something particular to that one sensor and does not in any way effect whether another se f