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HOFFMAN: Welcome everyone to 16.885.

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And I guess this is ESD.35 as well.

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I think.

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I cannot keep track of the number.

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Formally the title is Aircraft Systems Engineering.

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I never thought I would actually be teaching
a course with aircraft in the title of it

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since I am not an airplane person, I am a
space person.

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But, as you all know, we have decided to devote
the course this year to a study of the Space

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Shuttle.

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Very briefly, what the course has been historically,
it was taught for quite a few years by Professors

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Murman and Hansman in the Aero-Astro Department.

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It is a course in systems engineering devoted
to aircraft systems.

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And what they typically would do would be
to have a series of lectures about principles

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of systems engineering, and also about various
systems - general systems in aviation.

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And then, as a class assignment, the students
would work in teams and choose an aircraft

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and do a systems analysis study of that aircraft.

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Well, a couple of years ago we were just sort
of sitting down and chatting.

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And someone brought up the idea that well,
you know, the Space Shuttle kind of is like

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an airplane.

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Maybe it would be interesting to devote the
course one year to a special study of the

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Space Shuttle.

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And that was actually the origin of what we
are doing this year.

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Following that, Professor Aaron Cohen, who
is sitting over here, and I will introduce

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him in more detail in a minute, visited MIT,
I think it was early last year, and gave a

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few lectures on systems engineering and the
development of the Space Shuttle.

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And we started talking about putting together
a course on the shuttle.

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And we were very fortunate now that this fall
Professor Cohen is here as a visiting professor.

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And he will be here at MIT roughly about half
the time.

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And he and I have put this course together.

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And the way we are going to organize it is
that we're going to emphasize two main areas.

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First of all, to get to an understanding of
the Space Shuttle as a flying machine, as

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a spacecraft, and also to study systems engineering
as an engineering discipline.

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We have put together a list of speakers, and
I am going to pass out here copies of the

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syllabus.

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If you will pass these around.

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I have also established a stellar class website
and, once you are all enrolled in the course,

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you will all have access to the website.

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If any of you are here as listeners or for
some other reason don't get formally registered

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to get course access, contact me independently
and we can set you up for a special access

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so that you can look on the website.

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If you look through here you will see that
most of the class periods are devoted to guest

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lecturers.

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And, thanks in large part to Professor Cohen,
we have actually been able to invite people

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who played pivotal roles in the very early
stages of the design of the Space Shuttle.

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And also people who played pivotal roles in
the testing and eventual operation of the

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shuttle.

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So we have people who are active in the design
and also some people who were critical in

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Mission Control and in the test flights of
the shuttle.

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It is, I think, a really unique collection
of speakers.

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And because I don't think there has ever been
a time where this sort of a collection of

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people has actually come together to share
their experiences on the shuttle.

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And because we thought that it would have
historical significance, and people would

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be interested in being able to look at that
in the future, we are having the lecture series

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taped for eventual inclusion on MIT's OpenCourseWare.

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So that is why you see the television camera
in the back.

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No need for all of you to dress up for it,
but just so that you know.

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The way we plan to run the course is as follows.

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The lectures will run roughly about an hour,
we will take a little break at the end of

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an hour, and then there will be an opportunity
basically for close interaction between you

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in the class and the lecturer.

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It is kind of free form because we have lots
of different lectures.

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Of course, there will be some variability
in the way lecturers go about presenting the

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material.

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Professor Cohen and I will attempt to make
sure that, in each case, we do emphasize some

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of the basic systems engineering aspects of
the presentation.

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We want you to understand the principles of
how some of the different subsystems were

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designed, basically how they were influenced
by external requirements to make sure that

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we understand what the requirements were,
how the systems were constructed and tested,

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and how they were operated.

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What we will be asking from you in terms of
your deliverables, first of all, we would

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like you to take notes on the lectures.

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We will post the lecture notes on the website.

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If you look through the schedule that I have
given you here, you will see that I list the

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deliverables, and I am going to have to adjust
the timing on that.

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Two times in the course we will ask to see
the lecture journals.

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What we are looking for is to make sure that
we are presenting and that you are getting

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out of this the basic systems engineering
principles for each of the subsystems that

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are presented.

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And we will talk a little bit about journal
notes in the future.

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The main deliverable from you will be a little
bit different from in the normal Aircraft

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Systems Engineering course where groups of
students basically chose and airplane and

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then looked at the design of that particular
airplane.

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We are only dealing with one vehicle, the
shuttle, so what we will be asking you to

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do is choose one of the subsystems on the
shuttle.

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And, as you look through the notes, you see
we will have information presented on a lot

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of the different subsystems.

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I have a lot of material available, and I
will go over that a little bit later, both

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in digital form and in books which we will
have on reserve at the library which go into

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great detail on all the different subsystems.

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So we have lots of information, as well as
experts that you can talk with.

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We will ask you to form up into teams, roughly
four people on a team, more or less.

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Choose a subsystem.

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And then, basically, write a paper on how
you would design that subsystem, if you were

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doing it today, using 21st century technology.

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It gives you an opportunity to understand
the subsystem, as it was designed for the

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shuttle, and then to take a look at current
technology in that subsystem.

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I know there are some people here from Engineering
Systems, as well as from Aero-Astro.

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People may have some other ideas.

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If you have some ideas about writing about
systems from a systems engineering and integration

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point of view or any other particular personal
ideas of what you would like to do as a project

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which is slightly different from specifically
working with a subsystem, come see me and

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we will talk about it.

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The main thing is to make sure that you have
a chance to explore some aspect of the systems

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engineering of the shuttle in greater depth.

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That is all I am going to say right now.

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Go to the website.

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I will be posting more information because
I want to give as much time as possible to

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our two speakers.

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I, by the way, will be posting bios of all
the speakers on the website so you will be

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able to look ahead of time and get an idea
of who it is who will be speaking to us and

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what their roles were in the development or
testing or operation of the shuttle.

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So I would like to present now Professor Aaron
Cohen who was born in Texas and has had a

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very distinguished career at NASA.

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Just very briefly, he was the project manager,
I guess first in Apollo, he was the Command

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and Service Module Project Manager.

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And then he was the Project Manager for the
Space Shuttle and eventually became the Center

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Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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When he retired in the early `90s he took
a teaching position at Texas A&M in the Mechanical

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Engineering Department where he is now Professor
Emeritus.

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And we are extremely fortunate to have him
here co-teaching the course with me.

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So, Aaron, I will turn it over.

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COHEN: Thank you very much.

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And it is a pleasure to be here with you.

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I have a few things I would like to talk to
you about very briefly and then I will turn

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it over to our guest speaker today.

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I would like to let you know what you can
expect for the next several lectures.

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I am going to provide you with the overall
shuttle, how the shuttle works, the requirements

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of the shuttle, the design and the development
of the subsystems to a certain extent to give

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you an overall view of the shuttle so you
will have a background of information when

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you later start to hear the detailed lectures
of the subsystems in some degree.

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As you listen to these various technical lectures,
you should be prepared to figure out what

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system you are really interested in and what
system you would like to move forward with

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in your future talks.

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And so you will see that.

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So that is what I will do in the next two
lectures, Tuesday and Thursday.

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In trying to figure out how we start the course,
I went back in my memory to figure out a man

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who was there at the very beginning in Washington.

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And this man, Mr.

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Dale Myers, who is going to talk today, is
what you might say is a true aerospace engineer.

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He had a very distinguished career in both
industry and government, in aircraft and space.

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Dale, or Mr.

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Myers, who was Deputy Administrator at NASA
from October 1986 to 1989, and that was when

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President Regan called Dale Myers back to
be Deputy Administrator after the Challenger

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accident.

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Mr.

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Myers was Corporate Vice President of Rockwell
International, President of the North American

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Aircraft Group, where he was responsible for
the B1 and various military and commercial

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aircraft.

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In 1970 he has been an Associate with Rockwell
International and Vice President and Manager

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for the Apollo Command and Service Module.

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So he was Apollo and Shuttle.

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The key thing that Mr.

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Myers is going to talk to you about today,
he was the NASA Associate Administrator for

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Manned Space Flight in 1970 when the Space
Shuttle began.

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And Mr.

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Myers is going to talk to you about the beginning
of the Space Shuttle and how the external

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environment helped create or generate requirements
that really forced, you might say, the configuration

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of the shuttle.

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And I think it is very important for you to
understand that, because many times, when

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you get out and start to work, go to work,
the requirements become generated by external

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environments.

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So, without further ado, let me turn the speaker
over to Dale Myers to give you his lecture.

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MYERS: Well, thanks for the opportunity to
talk to you guys about a very interesting

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historical element.

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I was asked to talk about the origin of the
shuttle.

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And I was there in 1970.

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And I think once we get this thing working
where I can run the slides -- The joy of electronics.

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When I first went to work for North American
Aviation we used Marchant Calculators where

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you put in your numbers and pull a lever and
actually move it to the next position.

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And we did a lot of dynamic analysis.

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And it took weeks to do a total dynamic flight
analysis of an aircraft with a Marchant calculator.

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Now we have the wonders of the computer.

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The first airplane I worked on was a P51 Mustang,
a fighter in World War II, and that had some

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interesting system engineering issues in it,
too.

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They used the inlet, it had a liquid cooled
engine, and we had a radiator that was in

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a duct.

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And the air came through the radiator, cooled
the liquid and heated up the air that was

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then properly adjusted with a flap at the
back of the radiator that gave it thrust out

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of the heat that was involved coming through
the radiator.

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That is the reason why the Mustang is about
15 miles an hour faster than the German's

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ME 109.

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That is one of the prettiest pictures I have
ever seen of the shuttle.

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That is a picture of the additional photography
that they brought into the system after the

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Columbia accident, and this was used on this
last flight.

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The first time I had ever seen the rearview
of all the connections for the transfer of

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fuel from the tank into the shuttle, the connections
to the tank, the forward bipod where the foam

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was that came off on the Columbia accident,
just a terrific picture of all the tiles up

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under the wing that Aaron was so involved
with.

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But what I want to talk about, oh, here is
another one that is really a first for me.

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This is the mach 1 shock on the shuttle about
20,000 feet altitude, mach 1.1.

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That big envelope of condensation, not as
pretty as it looks on an F-18 or some really

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slick airplane, but it is there.

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I am going to talk about what happened leading
up to the shuttle.

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And it is interesting because it involves
the specific interests and personalities of

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the people who were involved.

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Jim Webb was the administrator of NASA from
1961 to 1968, and he was a terrific interactor

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with the rest of the administration and with
the President directly.

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And did a great job of administrating NASA
through the Apollo program up through 1968.

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It turned out in 1968 things were kind of
going sour for President Johnson.

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Webb's big tie was with President Johnson,
and he ended up leaving in 1968 after he suggested

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to President Johnson that he might want to
leave some time soon.

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I think he was thinking he was going to stay
through the Lunar landing, but Johnson said

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why don't you leave now? And I don't really
understand the interaction that was involved

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there, but Webb did not want to make future
plans.

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He really never paid much attention to the
work that was being done inside the system

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on new ideas, new things beyond Apollo.

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Of course, the Apollo was an immense program,
400,000 people.

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Well, 300,000 on the Apollo, another 100,000
on other activities in NASA like the aeronautics

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program and the science programs.

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But Webb didn't want to talk about things
that were going to happen beyond that time

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period.

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In the meantime, in the back rooms a lot of
people were doing a lot of thinking about

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where does NASA go after the Apollo program?
Apollo at that time, that Webb was there,

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had planned to go through Apollo 20, I think.

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And so it was going to go on until 1973 or
so.

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And so I think Webb took the attitude that
we don't need to think about the future yet.

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Well, when he left in 1968, they brought in
a fellow named Tom Paine who had been at General

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Electric Company doing advanced planning for
General Electric, a very bright, very aggressively

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00:20:59.840 --> 00:21:01.230
forward-thinking guy.

220
00:21:01.230 --> 00:21:05.630
A guy that I always felt never saw a future
plan he didn't like.

221
00:21:05.630 --> 00:21:12.309
And NASA was doing a fantastic amount of future
planning at that time because in the 1968

222
00:21:12.309 --> 00:21:19.309
time period, we had just done the Apollo 7,
gotten it back into flight again.

223
00:21:22.530 --> 00:21:29.230
At the end of '68 we did the Apollo 8 which
went around the moon, and NASA could do no

224
00:21:29.230 --> 00:21:30.160
wrong at that time.

225
00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:32.940
They were just on a step.

226
00:21:32.940 --> 00:21:39.940
And with Tom coming in, in early '69, all
the work that was being done by NASA at that

227
00:21:42.690 --> 00:21:49.690
time, the idea was that the NASA programs
were going to continue to grow and that you

228
00:21:52.100 --> 00:21:56.520
could really begin to do some expansive thinking
about going out into space.

229
00:21:56.520 --> 00:22:03.520
There had been work going on since 1964 on
lifting bodies and on different configurations

230
00:22:07.110 --> 00:22:13.580
that people imagined could be used for traveling
in space and returning to the ground in a

231
00:22:13.580 --> 00:22:19.809
more sophisticated manner than coming down
on parachutes in the water.

232
00:22:19.809 --> 00:22:25.000
Water landings were extremely expensive, having
the whole Navy out there to support them,

233
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:28.610
and so people were beginning to think about
land landing.

234
00:22:28.610 --> 00:22:35.610
And by 1969, enough pressure came on the administration
that Nixon appointed his Vice President, Spiro

235
00:22:39.010 --> 00:22:46.010
Agnew, to run a program reviewing the future
of NASA.

236
00:22:46.110 --> 00:22:49.050
And he got a really good group of people together.

237
00:22:49.050 --> 00:22:55.720
He got Bob Seamans, I am sure you all know.

238
00:22:55.720 --> 00:23:02.720
Tom Paine, the Administrator of NASA, Lee
DuBridge had been head of Caltech and was

239
00:23:03.530 --> 00:23:07.100
the Science Advisor to the President.

240
00:23:07.100 --> 00:23:14.100
They had a guy that was the head of the Atomic
Energy Commission and the Head of the Bureau

241
00:23:15.350 --> 00:23:15.690
of the Budget.

242
00:23:15.690 --> 00:23:21.690
They did about a six month study supported
by NASA.

243
00:23:21.690 --> 00:23:28.690
And NASA's dreams were that there should be
a space transportation system that would include

244
00:23:32.760 --> 00:23:35.690
the moon and finally Mars.

245
00:23:35.690 --> 00:23:42.370
And it started with a 30 foot diameter, 12
man space station, two of them in earth orbit,

246
00:23:42.370 --> 00:23:47.860
possibly reaching 100 people in earth orbit.

247
00:23:47.860 --> 00:23:52.559
Another space station the same size around
the moon with 12 men.

248
00:23:52.559 --> 00:23:59.190
A lunar base.

249
00:23:59.190 --> 00:24:06.190
A nuclear stage to transfer resources from
earth orbit space stations to the lunar orbit

250
00:24:08.730 --> 00:24:13.460
space station.

251
00:24:13.460 --> 00:24:19.230
A two-stage fully recoverable shuttle with
100 to 150 flights a year because of this

252
00:24:19.230 --> 00:24:22.200
massive program that was being developed.

253
00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:24.950
A SkyLab with five visits by the Command Module.

254
00:24:24.950 --> 00:24:27.050
This, by the way, was a second SkyLab.

255
00:24:27.050 --> 00:24:34.050
SkyLab was in our program, and a second SkyLab
was under construction at that time in this

256
00:24:34.679 --> 00:24:35.650
time period.

257
00:24:35.650 --> 00:24:41.610
And, of course, to do all this, we would continue
the Saturn 1b and the Saturn V production.

258
00:24:41.610 --> 00:24:47.270
Those were the big rockets involved in the
Apollo program.

259
00:24:47.270 --> 00:24:54.210
And space tug to go to higher than low earth
orbit - to geosynchronous.

260
00:24:54.210 --> 00:24:56.880
And, as I mentioned, the nuclear stage.

261
00:24:56.880 --> 00:25:00.480
And a mars program by 1983.

262
00:25:00.480 --> 00:25:07.059
That was all presented to this group, and
they ended up setting up three different programs.

263
00:25:07.059 --> 00:25:11.850
One was this massive all-inclusive program.

264
00:25:11.850 --> 00:25:18.850
A second one was a program where the Space
Shuttle would be built and the plans to go

265
00:25:23.340 --> 00:25:25.390
to Mars.

266
00:25:25.390 --> 00:25:30.059
I never found the report so I don't know exactly
how to describe that.

267
00:25:30.059 --> 00:25:36.600
But, to go to mars, the NASA program said
you have to have a space station to first

268
00:25:36.600 --> 00:25:42.790
develop medical information about man's long
duration in space, in other words, how long

269
00:25:42.790 --> 00:25:49.790
a guy could last in space to go out to mars,
and it became a fuel transfer operation, where

270
00:25:52.340 --> 00:25:58.910
low earth orbit rendezvous and docking and
transfer of fuel would be made for a device

271
00:25:58.910 --> 00:26:01.770
to go onto mars.

272
00:26:01.770 --> 00:26:08.770
So, that second case, the one of build the
shuttle and go to mars was the one that Agnew

273
00:26:12.380 --> 00:26:15.320
and Paine recommended.

274
00:26:15.320 --> 00:26:18.690
Paine, in his mind, said there has got to
be a space station with that.

275
00:26:18.690 --> 00:26:25.690
And so he left in place the studies that NASA
had out with industry on building a space

276
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:28.980
station.

277
00:26:28.980 --> 00:26:35.950
And NASA then started a program on a fully
recoverable two-stage shuttle.

278
00:26:35.950 --> 00:26:40.800
There have been a lot of studies on how to
do that, and we are going to get into some

279
00:26:40.800 --> 00:26:47.800
of the system dynamics that we were involved
in that program as we go along here.

280
00:26:49.730 --> 00:26:51.590
Meanwhile, the budget crashed.

281
00:26:51.590 --> 00:26:57.020
NASA had a budget of about $6 billion in 1968.

282
00:26:57.020 --> 00:27:02.080
And, by 1970, it was down to about $3.7 billion.

283
00:27:02.080 --> 00:27:07.540
Actually, at the same time, the Manned Space
Flight budget had gone from about $3 billion

284
00:27:07.540 --> 00:27:09.200
down to $1.7 billion.

285
00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:14.380
So it got hit even harder than the rest of
NASA during this time period.

286
00:27:14.380 --> 00:27:20.240
And the reasons, well, we were in the middle
of the Vietnam War, the budget deficit was

287
00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:26.559
going up dramatically, President Johnson who
started The Great Society program for the

288
00:27:26.559 --> 00:27:30.809
poor in the country, and that was a big load
on the budget.

289
00:27:30.809 --> 00:27:37.410
And Nixon just wasn't a big supporter of the
space program, and so the budget was going

290
00:27:37.410 --> 00:27:44.390
down.

291
00:27:44.390 --> 00:27:48.830
The question was is there going to be a human
space flight program at all? And that was

292
00:27:48.830 --> 00:27:55.830
a really big question because in a time period
about a year after this period, one of the

293
00:27:57.540 --> 00:28:01.750
senators put a bill before the senate to cancel
the shuttle.

294
00:28:01.750 --> 00:28:06.600
The Shuttle Phase B program was underway by
that time.

295
00:28:06.600 --> 00:28:08.270
We did studies.

296
00:28:08.270 --> 00:28:10.840
Phase A, a small amount of money to industry.

297
00:28:10.840 --> 00:28:16.360
Phase B was enough to get a definition to
where you could decide that you were ready

298
00:28:16.360 --> 00:28:19.080
to go into detailed design.

299
00:28:19.080 --> 00:28:26.080
And Phase CD was actually the design and development
and testing.

300
00:28:26.130 --> 00:28:30.850
So we were into Phase B on the shuttle at
that time.

301
00:28:30.850 --> 00:28:37.850
He brought forward to the senate let's cancel
the shuttle, and the vote was 50/50.

302
00:28:38.900 --> 00:28:42.510
So the Vice President had to go in and vote
to keep the Shuttle program going.

303
00:28:42.510 --> 00:28:46.670
That is how close to cancellation it was.

304
00:28:46.670 --> 00:28:53.670
Now, a really important guy in all this was
a guy named George Miller.

305
00:28:53.820 --> 00:28:58.120
He had been head of the Manned Space Flight
program.

306
00:28:58.120 --> 00:29:04.760
He had been the stimulus within NASA for this
broad systems study of going out to lunar

307
00:29:04.760 --> 00:29:09.380
bases and then to Mars.

308
00:29:09.380 --> 00:29:13.070
And he left in late 1969.

309
00:29:13.070 --> 00:29:15.080
He had done his job.

310
00:29:15.080 --> 00:29:22.080
He got man to the moon and home safely, and
he saw this cut in budgets going on.

311
00:29:22.080 --> 00:29:27.120
I don't know whether that really influenced
him to leave, but I think his general pattern

312
00:29:27.120 --> 00:29:33.170
had been that whatever he wanted to do, he
wanted to complete it successfully and then

313
00:29:33.170 --> 00:29:33.950
he would move on.

314
00:29:33.950 --> 00:29:40.950
And he did that with the Apollo program so
he moved on.

315
00:29:40.970 --> 00:29:47.970
George was a guy that really supported this
tremendous set of future dreams for NASA.

316
00:29:49.910 --> 00:29:53.370
Tom Paine left in late 1970.

317
00:29:53.370 --> 00:29:57.870
And the reason he left was he kept pushing
for a space station.

318
00:29:57.870 --> 00:30:04.870
And the people in the administration had kind
of seen the studies that had been done by

319
00:30:06.990 --> 00:30:13.990
this Space Task Group, where Agnew had said
let's do the Shuttle and then let's go to

320
00:30:15.530 --> 00:30:16.390
Mars.

321
00:30:16.390 --> 00:30:21.410
Paine, knowing in his few that you had to
have a space station to be able to go to Mars,

322
00:30:21.410 --> 00:30:28.410
kept pushing the 12 man space station that
would require a Saturn V for a launch so it

323
00:30:29.350 --> 00:30:30.770
was a big expense.

324
00:30:30.770 --> 00:30:36.220
And it was a program that really called for
NASA's budget to go up instead of down.

325
00:30:36.220 --> 00:30:43.190
He accepted the idea that it had been pushed
down to the $3.7 billion level, but he expected

326
00:30:43.190 --> 00:30:46.860
it to be $6 billion or $8 billion by 1974.

327
00:30:46.860 --> 00:30:53.309
And nobody in the administration was buying
that so he left in 1970.

328
00:30:53.309 --> 00:30:55.580
And I think he was sort of asked to leave.

329
00:30:55.580 --> 00:31:00.540
I don't know that for a fact, but all the
evidence would seem to be that he wasn't really

330
00:31:00.540 --> 00:31:03.190
making it with the administration.

331
00:31:03.190 --> 00:31:09.840
And I think this, by the way, turns out to
be kind of an important part here because

332
00:31:09.840 --> 00:31:16.840
when Tom Paine left there was kind of a bad
taste in the administration about NASA being

333
00:31:17.530 --> 00:31:24.140
too aggressive and wanting more and more big
programs.

334
00:31:24.140 --> 00:31:25.610
Paine left in 1970.

335
00:31:25.610 --> 00:31:30.929
George Low became the acting administrator,
and he became a very important part of the

336
00:31:30.929 --> 00:31:33.429
shuttle system background.

337
00:31:33.429 --> 00:31:37.500
His background, by the way, started way early
in NASA.

338
00:31:37.500 --> 00:31:44.500
And he had been the program manager for the
Command and Service Module for a period of

339
00:31:44.549 --> 00:31:47.340
time before he went up to NASA headquarters.

340
00:31:47.340 --> 00:31:51.970
And I guess, Aaron, you became the program
manager after George left.

341
00:31:51.970 --> 00:31:58.970
And 
so I came in, in January of 1970.

342
00:32:00.710 --> 00:32:05.140
I had been in charge of the Command and Service
Module at Rockwell.

343
00:32:05.140 --> 00:32:07.679
And George Low asked me to come back.

344
00:32:07.679 --> 00:32:14.679
And I had worked so closely with George that
I felt kind of a commitment to help in that

345
00:32:15.070 --> 00:32:15.450
area.

346
00:32:15.450 --> 00:32:22.450
So I went back in 1970, Jim Fletcher came
in, in April of 1971, and we saw where we

347
00:32:27.929 --> 00:32:32.940
stood as far as the budget was concerned.

348
00:32:32.940 --> 00:32:39.940
So 1970, with this new cast of characters,
we kind of accepted the idea that we were

349
00:32:42.690 --> 00:32:46.980
in trouble to the place where we could lose
Manned Space Flight completely.

350
00:32:46.980 --> 00:32:53.980
And our real strategy had to be to get something
that would be important to the future of NASA

351
00:32:57.860 --> 00:32:59.929
with respect to the programs.

352
00:32:59.929 --> 00:33:06.929
And our view was the most important part of
the game was to build a shuttle that would

353
00:33:07.090 --> 00:33:11.030
reduce the cost of getting into orbit.

354
00:33:11.030 --> 00:33:16.480
And that was the whole idea of the shuttle.

355
00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:22.780
There was a general consensus that if you
had a shuttle that would be recoverable and

356
00:33:22.780 --> 00:33:26.850
reusable it would reduce the cost of the operations.

357
00:33:26.850 --> 00:33:32.210
As they used to say in those days, I think
I have it on another chart, you wouldn't think

358
00:33:32.210 --> 00:33:37.530
of flying from San Diego to Boston on an airplane
and then throwing away the airplane.

359
00:33:37.530 --> 00:33:44.530
Which was, of course, what we were doing with
the Ballistic systems.

360
00:33:44.820 --> 00:33:50.380
But we thought if we could get a low-cost
transportation system to a low earth orbit

361
00:33:50.380 --> 00:33:56.730
the rest of the systems would then follow
naturally.

362
00:33:56.730 --> 00:34:00.650
But, because of the budget picture and because
of where we stood with the shuttle in Phase

363
00:34:00.650 --> 00:34:07.559
B recognizing it was going to be an expensive
program, things started to fall out of the

364
00:34:07.559 --> 00:34:07.990
program.

365
00:34:07.990 --> 00:34:10.679
They cancelled the Apollo 18 and 19.

366
00:34:10.679 --> 00:34:12.329
I guess 20 had already been cancelled.

367
00:34:12.329 --> 00:34:19.329
And they cancelled Saturn 1b and the Saturn
V which were our big heavy lift capabilities.

368
00:34:20.039 --> 00:34:23.869
Cancelled the second SkyLab that was already
essentially complete.

369
00:34:23.869 --> 00:34:28.929
That is the one that is in the Smithsonian
Museum in Washington.

370
00:34:28.929 --> 00:34:31.359
Cancelled the Command and Service Modules.

371
00:34:31.359 --> 00:34:33.970
Cancelled the 30 foot diameter space stations.

372
00:34:33.970 --> 00:34:40.970
And that was a big hit against the group because
we were in phase B there getting ready to

373
00:34:41.389 --> 00:34:45.529
go into detailed design on a 30 foot diameter
space station.

374
00:34:45.529 --> 00:34:49.869
We didn't start the space tug, we didn't start
the nuclear stage and we cancelled the Mars

375
00:34:49.869 --> 00:34:50.179
program.

376
00:34:50.179 --> 00:34:55.159
No, excuse me, we deferred the Mars program.

377
00:34:55.159 --> 00:35:02.049
Industry went down from 400,000 people working
for all the NASA programs down to about 150,000.

378
00:35:02.049 --> 00:35:07.359
I have seen numbers lower than that.

379
00:35:07.359 --> 00:35:14.359
Now, concept for the shuttle, reusability
equals low-cost.

380
00:35:14.839 --> 00:35:16.849
That was fundamental.

381
00:35:16.849 --> 00:35:18.989
Everybody believed that.

382
00:35:18.989 --> 00:35:25.279
We had studies done by all sorts of outside
groups.

383
00:35:25.279 --> 00:35:32.279
IDA, the Aerospace Corporation and others
did studies that essentially agreed with us

384
00:35:33.279 --> 00:35:38.589
that there would be a terrific reduction in
the cost of getting stuff into orbit if we

385
00:35:38.589 --> 00:35:42.289
would build a recoverable vehicle.

386
00:35:42.289 --> 00:35:49.289
Now, it was clear that since the R&D already
T&E costs are higher, but you need a whole

387
00:35:50.519 --> 00:35:51.200
bunch of flights.

388
00:35:51.200 --> 00:35:58.200
If you had a few flights, the extra R&D on
the shuttle wouldn't pay off because you could

389
00:36:00.619 --> 00:36:05.930
build cheap Ballistic launch vehicles that
would pay off before the shuttle.

390
00:36:05.930 --> 00:36:11.249
So you need a lot of flights for a recoverable
vehicle to be economical.

391
00:36:11.249 --> 00:36:16.759
The lower the R&D the less flights needed
to be better than the Ballistic launch vehicles.

392
00:36:16.759 --> 00:36:23.329
And, if you got a lot of flights because the
flight costs are so low, then a two-stage

393
00:36:23.329 --> 00:36:27.140
fully recoverable system would be the right
way to go.

394
00:36:27.140 --> 00:36:31.660
That was our concepts of what we were dealing
with on the shuttle.

395
00:36:31.660 --> 00:36:36.119
There has been a lot of technology.

396
00:36:36.119 --> 00:36:41.960
I don't know how many of you know that the
early lifting-body was done by a guy named

397
00:36:41.960 --> 00:36:43.109
Burnelli.

398
00:36:43.109 --> 00:36:45.690
Not Bernoulli but Burnelli.

399
00:36:45.690 --> 00:36:52.690
Burnelli was in Long Island and he built the
first lifting-body.

400
00:36:57.069 --> 00:37:04.069
That is an airfoil section and that is a broad
piece of fuselage wide enough that the two

401
00:37:06.829 --> 00:37:09.660
engines could be involved in it.

402
00:37:09.660 --> 00:37:11.890
Big windows for transport.

403
00:37:11.890 --> 00:37:18.349
It was really quite an interesting beginning
of a cargo airplane in 1921.

404
00:37:18.349 --> 00:37:25.349
He built one of them and that was the end
of that, but there were a lot of other things

405
00:37:26.220 --> 00:37:27.440
going on.

406
00:37:27.440 --> 00:37:34.440
After Sputnik, the United States just kind
of went wild with ideas for a while and then

407
00:37:35.729 --> 00:37:42.729
settled down on having NASA put in place,
deciding that the military dinosaurs and mold

408
00:37:46.130 --> 00:37:49.579
programs wouldn't be done, that NASA would
take over that kind of activity.

409
00:37:49.579 --> 00:37:53.509
But we got some really interesting stuff going.

410
00:37:53.509 --> 00:37:58.670
HL-10 lifting-body.

411
00:37:58.670 --> 00:38:02.390
X-24A lifting-body.

412
00:38:02.390 --> 00:38:09.390
X-15, although that was not considered a space
device, by the time they put external tanks

413
00:38:10.900 --> 00:38:17.720
on it, it got up to mach 6 and 300,000 feet.

414
00:38:17.720 --> 00:38:24.720
Really some terrific performance out of that
airplane.

415
00:38:24.789 --> 00:38:29.559
And then I added the Navaho, which I worked
on for many years, because it had a parallel

416
00:38:29.559 --> 00:38:32.069
tank separation at mach 3.

417
00:38:32.069 --> 00:38:34.950
The booster was under the vehicle.

418
00:38:34.950 --> 00:38:40.529
The vehicle was a ramjet vehicle and it separated
at mach 3 at about 40,000 feet.

419
00:38:40.529 --> 00:38:47.529
It was a high dynamic pressure separation,
but it showed us that parallel separation

420
00:38:48.400 --> 00:38:48.839
would work.

421
00:38:48.839 --> 00:38:55.839
And that gets into this picture later.

422
00:39:01.440 --> 00:39:08.440
Next step was in that '69 to '71 time period
this guy named Max Faget who is really important,

423
00:39:13.859 --> 00:39:20.859
almost a genius in my mind in design that
did the original Mercury and Gemini capsules,

424
00:39:22.940 --> 00:39:29.869
physically designed the shape of the Apollo
Command Module and then came up with this

425
00:39:29.869 --> 00:39:35.979
first sort of practical view of a two-stage
fully recoverable system.

426
00:39:35.979 --> 00:39:38.599
It had straight wings like an X-15.

427
00:39:38.599 --> 00:39:44.579
In fact, if you looked at the plan form, it
looked quite a lot like an X-15.

428
00:39:44.579 --> 00:39:46.519
But it had two of them.

429
00:39:46.519 --> 00:39:48.329
It had pilots in each of the two stages.

430
00:39:48.329 --> 00:39:52.029
It had internal fuel.

431
00:39:52.029 --> 00:39:59.029
It had metal shingles, what I used to call
unobtanium, but it was like molybdenum and

432
00:39:59.630 --> 00:40:06.630
Rene 41 and some really interesting materials
which were really difficult to handle.

433
00:40:09.380 --> 00:40:13.079
Stress, corrosion problems and all kinds of
things that were tough to handle.

434
00:40:13.079 --> 00:40:18.289
That is why I talked about unobtanium or some
ablative.

435
00:40:18.289 --> 00:40:22.930
And Max expected to have to use ablative on
the leading edge of the wings.

436
00:40:22.930 --> 00:40:27.999
And it had varying payloads.

437
00:40:27.999 --> 00:40:32.589
The highest one I saw in any of the history
was 20,000 pounds.

438
00:40:32.589 --> 00:40:36.799
But 14,000, 20,000, that kind of thing.

439
00:40:36.799 --> 00:40:43.799
A payload bay of about 12x40 and 400 miles
max crossrange.

440
00:40:43.950 --> 00:40:47.170
This gets important in requirements.

441
00:40:47.170 --> 00:40:50.630
And, at that time, because we were going to
have all these space stations and go to the

442
00:40:50.630 --> 00:40:56.049
moon and all that sort of stuff, we were going
to have 100 to 150 flights a year.

443
00:40:56.049 --> 00:41:03.049
And, if you have a lot of flights, it overcomes
the base cost of the RDT&E.

444
00:41:04.329 --> 00:41:11.329
And he was getting down into the $5 million
a flight in his estimates.

445
00:41:13.460 --> 00:41:20.460
But, meanwhile, because we had lost the space
station, we had lost the lunar base, all this

446
00:41:21.499 --> 00:41:26.150
grand plan had disappeared, we needed more
payloads.

447
00:41:26.150 --> 00:41:32.499
We needed to get up to the 40 to 50 payloads
a year to be able to make the shuttle look

448
00:41:32.499 --> 00:41:39.499
economic at the levels of cost-effectiveness
that the Office of Management and Budget was

449
00:41:44.579 --> 00:41:46.519
demanding of us.

450
00:41:46.519 --> 00:41:53.519
After this vote in the senate, George Low
decided that we had to be responsive to the

451
00:41:54.940 --> 00:41:58.430
OMB so we had to get some more flights.

452
00:41:58.430 --> 00:42:03.700
And this is where our requirements began to
come into the picture.

453
00:42:03.700 --> 00:42:09.200
We spent about a year working with the military
where they finally agreed they would put all

454
00:42:09.200 --> 00:42:16.200
their payloads, and I mean all their payloads
on the shuttle if we could meet the cost estimates

455
00:42:18.299 --> 00:42:18.769
that we had.

456
00:42:18.769 --> 00:42:25.269
The commercial people were eager to get on
the shuttle if our costs would be this low

457
00:42:25.269 --> 00:42:32.269
because they were beginning to see launch
costs equal to or more than the cost of the

458
00:42:32.339 --> 00:42:34.329
satellites that we were putting up.

459
00:42:34.329 --> 00:42:38.979
And the science people bought into the idea
of space servicing.

460
00:42:38.979 --> 00:42:45.979
This really got important because they agreed
to design the Hubble Space Telescope so that

461
00:42:47.900 --> 00:42:49.279
it could be serviced in space.

462
00:42:49.279 --> 00:42:56.279
And that turned out to be, of course, the
key to the Hubble because of the mistake that

463
00:42:56.469 --> 00:42:58.849
was made in the mirror.

464
00:42:58.849 --> 00:43:05.609
The re-servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope,
is what - by bringing another optics in front

465
00:43:05.609 --> 00:43:12.569
of this distorted mirror - brought the Hubble
back to the fantastic performance that it

466
00:43:12.569 --> 00:43:14.150
has today.

467
00:43:14.150 --> 00:43:20.989
MAN: In your opinion, was the science community
really anxious to have this servicing or was

468
00:43:20.989 --> 00:43:26.039
it something that was really forced upon them
to increase the constituency? MYERS: I think

469
00:43:26.039 --> 00:43:28.640
originally they thought they were being forced.

470
00:43:28.640 --> 00:43:34.779
But, as they thought it through, they could
see that they could later change sensors and

471
00:43:34.779 --> 00:43:36.239
add additional stuff.

472
00:43:36.239 --> 00:43:43.239
At least I know that the head of the science
group, I cannot think of his name now, enthusiastically

473
00:43:45.710 --> 00:43:50.989
supported that and got the system out there
to support that idea.

474
00:43:50.989 --> 00:43:56.719
And they worked very closely with us on how
to design it so that you could get access

475
00:43:56.719 --> 00:43:58.789
to the thing in space.

476
00:43:58.789 --> 00:44:03.729
With all the difficulty we had with gloves
and so on, they worked to help us understand

477
00:44:03.729 --> 00:44:05.969
how to remove and replace systems.

478
00:44:05.969 --> 00:44:12.969
MAN: Was there at that time, if you recall,
an opposition from the space science community

479
00:44:14.489 --> 00:44:21.489
to the size of the NASA budget that was being
spent on the shuttle in the Manned program?

480
00:44:22.150 --> 00:44:24.349
MYERS: Oh, absolutely.

481
00:44:24.349 --> 00:44:26.549
Yeah, there was.

482
00:44:26.549 --> 00:44:32.619
But, on the other hand, some of the committees
like the town committee supported the shuttle

483
00:44:32.619 --> 00:44:36.359
because they could see other science opportunities
that were involved.

484
00:44:36.359 --> 00:44:40.869
So they didn't gang on us.

485
00:44:40.869 --> 00:44:47.869
They were shooting arrows at us here and there.

486
00:44:50.880 --> 00:44:56.269
And let me go on with the requirements.

487
00:44:56.269 --> 00:45:03.269
Because of the military requirements, we had
to change our specifications.

488
00:45:05.259 --> 00:45:09.849
And this became another one of the elements
that drove the final design.

489
00:45:09.849 --> 00:45:16.789
The military wanted a 60 foot long payload
bay.

490
00:45:16.789 --> 00:45:21.410
It had been 40 in the designs that we had
been doing so far.

491
00:45:21.410 --> 00:45:28.410
They wanted 40,000 pounds Polar, and that
made our due east payload up to about 65,000.

492
00:45:30.339 --> 00:45:34.920
That was a big change from 20,000 to 65,000.

493
00:45:34.920 --> 00:45:38.650
And they needed 1,500 crossrange.

494
00:45:38.650 --> 00:45:44.109
They wanted to be able to go around the earth,
while the earth turned, and land at the same

495
00:45:44.109 --> 00:45:45.819
spot.

496
00:45:45.819 --> 00:45:48.259
So they had to have 1,500 miles of crossrange.

497
00:45:48.259 --> 00:45:52.910
Now, you can do it a lot of different ways.

498
00:45:52.910 --> 00:45:58.809
You could carry turbojets when you came back
in and fly it back the 1,500 miles, or you

499
00:45:58.809 --> 00:46:04.819
could do it without turbojets which means
you have to have aerodynamic crossrange while

500
00:46:04.819 --> 00:46:10.160
you are coming in.

501
00:46:10.160 --> 00:46:13.519
Payload bay increased to 15x60.

502
00:46:13.519 --> 00:46:19.289
15 was an increase by NASA because they saw
that they didn't have a Saturn V anymore to

503
00:46:19.289 --> 00:46:25.239
do space station, so the best they could do
was increase the diameter of the shuttle to

504
00:46:25.239 --> 00:46:32.239
where they have a 15 foot diameter to where
they could carry the sections of the space

505
00:46:32.339 --> 00:46:35.140
station that we now have in the program.

506
00:46:35.140 --> 00:46:42.140
We thought anything less than that was just
too cramped for the guys.

507
00:46:42.489 --> 00:46:48.130
We decided that we would find a non-ablative
reusable thermal protection system.

508
00:46:48.130 --> 00:46:55.130
Technology had moved far enough by that time
that we were beginning to see these ceramic

509
00:46:55.799 --> 00:47:00.670
tiles develop to the place where they looked
feasible.

510
00:47:00.670 --> 00:47:06.930
They had been able to find a hardening for
the surface that made them less penetratable

511
00:47:06.930 --> 00:47:08.880
than they had been.

512
00:47:08.880 --> 00:47:15.880
And carbon-carbon came in that we could use
for the leading edge, for 3,000 degree leading-edge

513
00:47:15.940 --> 00:47:17.229
temperatures.

514
00:47:17.229 --> 00:47:24.229
We followed the tradition that said if it
is fully recoverable it is going to be cheaper

515
00:47:24.450 --> 00:47:28.650
so let's go for a two-stage fully recoverable
system.

516
00:47:28.650 --> 00:47:33.489
And, of course, all the other things that
we were developing at that time to reduce

517
00:47:33.489 --> 00:47:40.469
the cost of operations with automatic checkout
and so on.

518
00:47:40.469 --> 00:47:42.390
Well, that's a bad picture.

519
00:47:42.390 --> 00:47:49.390
I am not an expert at this stuff so I wasn't
able to get that slide down far enough to

520
00:47:50.940 --> 00:47:57.940
show where the Saturn V was, but Saturn V
is only about 50% longer than that upper stage

521
00:48:00.609 --> 00:48:01.859
there.

522
00:48:01.859 --> 00:48:03.890
So this thing had gotten big.

523
00:48:03.890 --> 00:48:08.329
And the booster was larger than a 747.

524
00:48:08.329 --> 00:48:13.170
It had to operate up to about mach 6.

525
00:48:13.170 --> 00:48:20.170
The orbiter was about the size of an MD-80,
MD-90, twin engine small transport.

526
00:48:23.660 --> 00:48:25.690
And so they were big.

527
00:48:25.690 --> 00:48:32.690
And these things had 12 big high-pressure
engines in them.

528
00:48:34.170 --> 00:48:39.989
And we in management, and I think the guys
in design, were getting pretty worried about

529
00:48:39.989 --> 00:48:46.989
whether an airplane that large at that mach
number was going to be a practical thing in

530
00:48:47.009 --> 00:48:48.150
terms of a system.

531
00:48:48.150 --> 00:48:50.599
And that's not a system engineering approach.

532
00:48:50.599 --> 00:48:54.219
That's sort of a gut feeling that you get
after being in the airplane business for a

533
00:48:54.219 --> 00:48:59.190
lot of years and watching the development
problems that were involved on the X-15, for

534
00:48:59.190 --> 00:48:59.729
example.

535
00:48:59.729 --> 00:49:03.440
How long it took the X-15 to get to where
it could go to mach 6.

536
00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:06.789
But that was the direction we were going in.

537
00:49:06.789 --> 00:49:13.789
By the way, one of the companies had the wings
on the orbiter turned up.

538
00:49:15.979 --> 00:49:21.930
I don't know why, but they had them turned
up.

539
00:49:21.930 --> 00:49:26.559
And by the way, the reason you see two different
configurations here is in our phase B studies

540
00:49:26.559 --> 00:49:33.099
to the industry we said design us one that
only has 400 miles crossrange and design us

541
00:49:33.099 --> 00:49:36.150
one that has 1,500 miles crossrange.

542
00:49:36.150 --> 00:49:38.219
The upper ones have 1,500 miles crossrange.

543
00:49:38.219 --> 00:49:42.999
And the delta wing will do that, the straight
wings won't.

544
00:49:42.999 --> 00:49:48.809
So, as we developed these requirements, it
became clear that we were not going to go

545
00:49:48.809 --> 00:49:50.339
with a straight wing system.

546
00:49:50.339 --> 00:49:57.339
These phase B studies that we had showed that
we were going to have a development cost of

547
00:50:01.599 --> 00:50:07.130
some place between $12 billion and $15 billion
for R&D.

548
00:50:07.130 --> 00:50:14.130
And about that time Nixon had a meeting with
Fletcher and said you can build any kind of

549
00:50:15.779 --> 00:50:19.209
shuttle you want, as long as it only costs
$5 billion.

550
00:50:19.209 --> 00:50:23.799
Well, that was a big shock to the system.

551
00:50:23.799 --> 00:50:27.489
And, having heard that, OMB said make it cost-effective.

552
00:50:27.489 --> 00:50:34.489
And that was a real tremendous driver in the
system because we had never been asked to

553
00:50:37.390 --> 00:50:37.930
do that before.

554
00:50:37.930 --> 00:50:44.930
And we had a whole new set of requirements
to try to deal with.

555
00:50:45.769 --> 00:50:50.829
So we had had this phase B program, it was
almost complete, we had all these big, beautiful

556
00:50:50.829 --> 00:50:57.829
configuration studies and we had to look again.

557
00:50:59.400 --> 00:51:01.890
So we went out and said let's get imaginative,
guys.

558
00:51:01.890 --> 00:51:05.160
Let's see if there is any way that we can
reduce the cost.

559
00:51:05.160 --> 00:51:10.599
There had been enough going on where one of
the companies had been looking at the possibility

560
00:51:10.599 --> 00:51:17.599
of putting external tanks like drop tanks
on the top of the wing on each side, two of

561
00:51:19.190 --> 00:51:22.009
them, one on each side of the orbiter.

562
00:51:22.009 --> 00:51:25.519
And it made the orbiter itself, of course,
much smaller.

563
00:51:25.519 --> 00:51:30.559
Remember, we were carrying hydrogen and oxygen,
and we were doing it inside the vehicles.

564
00:51:30.559 --> 00:51:34.569
It is in those studies you saw in phase B.

565
00:51:34.569 --> 00:51:39.150
And so it grew the outside dimensions tremendously.

566
00:51:39.150 --> 00:51:44.940
And by going externally with the fuels, it
really shrank down the system to where the

567
00:51:44.940 --> 00:51:49.910
diameter of a payload compartment was essentially
the diameter of the orbiter.

568
00:51:49.910 --> 00:51:56.160
And so people began to look at other ways
to do it.

569
00:51:56.160 --> 00:51:59.109
We had guys coming in talking about single-staged
orbit.

570
00:51:59.109 --> 00:52:06.109
And that was one that I rejected without study
because I knew that the mass fractions required

571
00:52:06.900 --> 00:52:13.059
for that were just out of the world of reality.

572
00:52:13.059 --> 00:52:19.140
There was a thing called a "trinese" where
the theory was you had three vehicles.

573
00:52:19.140 --> 00:52:22.529
They were deltas and fit together in a nice
little teepee.

574
00:52:22.529 --> 00:52:27.609
And two of them would be used for boosters
going up and the third one would go on into

575
00:52:27.609 --> 00:52:28.729
orbit.

576
00:52:28.729 --> 00:52:30.299
And that was kind of a dumb idea.

577
00:52:30.299 --> 00:52:34.969
Because it turns out boosters and orbiters
have entirely different requirements.

578
00:52:34.969 --> 00:52:39.329
And so they might look the same on paper but
they would not be the same when you build

579
00:52:39.329 --> 00:52:41.979
them.

580
00:52:41.979 --> 00:52:48.979
Lockheed came in with an X-24b which had tanks
mounted up forward of the delta wing.

581
00:52:49.700 --> 00:52:56.700
And the idea would be that they would peel
off after fuel was fed to the main engines

582
00:52:58.630 --> 00:53:01.829
in the orbiter itself.

583
00:53:01.829 --> 00:53:05.709
And then we began to see these external orbiter
tank studies.

584
00:53:05.709 --> 00:53:12.709
And when the tanks began to look good externally
then the question is do you boost from under

585
00:53:14.839 --> 00:53:21.839
the tank or do you boost with two boosters
parallel to the tank itself? When the tanks

586
00:53:28.309 --> 00:53:35.239
went external, it finally ended up obvious
that it would want one tank instead of two.

587
00:53:35.239 --> 00:53:40.249
So the one tank went underneath the orbiter.

588
00:53:40.249 --> 00:53:44.819
Then the question is do you boost through
the tank or do you boost in parallel to the

589
00:53:44.819 --> 00:53:51.819
tank with two attached boosters? 

590
00:53:57.839 --> 00:53:59.509
So we had all these different studies.

591
00:53:59.509 --> 00:54:06.509
And what was happening in the administration
was they were kind of locked up with reducing

592
00:54:09.400 --> 00:54:15.229
Manned Space Flight budget down to like $1.5
to $1.7 billion.

593
00:54:15.229 --> 00:54:21.059
And we needed to do this cost-effectiveness
study for OMB.

594
00:54:21.059 --> 00:54:28.059
We hired an outfit called Mathematica which
had a senior well-known economist named Morgenstern

595
00:54:29.309 --> 00:54:36.309
and a bright young guy named Klaus Heiss who
did a study for us on the cost-effectiveness

596
00:54:39.019 --> 00:54:41.690
of the shuttle.

597
00:54:41.690 --> 00:54:48.690
And, to make a very long story short, the
results were that the present configuration

598
00:54:49.029 --> 00:54:53.059
that we have for the shuttle today is the
one that looked the best.

599
00:54:53.059 --> 00:55:00.059
Present configuration being an orbiter with
a tank under it with the hydrogen and oxygen

600
00:55:00.630 --> 00:55:07.630
in that tank fed separately into the orbiter
and to the main engines which were so expensive

601
00:55:08.519 --> 00:55:11.289
that we wanted to recover them.

602
00:55:11.289 --> 00:55:18.289
And boosters being solid rockets attached
to the tank so that the total vehicle was

603
00:55:22.369 --> 00:55:23.069
a little shorter.

604
00:55:23.069 --> 00:55:28.979
Oh, an important point.

605
00:55:28.979 --> 00:55:32.739
At that time the solids were recoverable.

606
00:55:32.739 --> 00:55:39.739
Their wall thickness was enough that you could
use the solid rockets, drop them off by parachute

607
00:55:41.119 --> 00:55:46.190
into the ocean, pick them up, bring them back,
clean them out and use them again.

608
00:55:46.190 --> 00:55:51.380
And that was going to be a cost saving in
the program.

609
00:55:51.380 --> 00:55:55.849
And, by doing all this, we had liftoff thrust
augmentation of the engines in the orbiter.

610
00:55:55.849 --> 00:56:02.849
These engines, by the way, were 12,000 pounds
per square inch internal pressure engines

611
00:56:04.400 --> 00:56:05.789
stage combustion.

612
00:56:05.789 --> 00:56:08.599
The most advanced technology you could imagine.

613
00:56:08.599 --> 00:56:13.519
And they were started a year before the shuttle
was started to give them more time to develop.

614
00:56:13.519 --> 00:56:19.690
They almost became the long pole of the tent,
but I think maybe when it finally boiled down

615
00:56:19.690 --> 00:56:23.809
the thermal protection was the longest pole.

616
00:56:23.809 --> 00:56:25.339
He was down there trying to fix them.

617
00:56:25.339 --> 00:56:29.609
I think he was almost down there gluing them
on.

618
00:56:29.609 --> 00:56:33.099
Down at the Cape when we were getting ready
to launch, we were still having trouble getting

619
00:56:33.099 --> 00:56:39.069
the thermal protection system working right.

620
00:56:39.069 --> 00:56:43.539
Well, the result of all this, and there were
a lot of other things that happened at the

621
00:56:43.539 --> 00:56:50.539
time, in 1971, I don't remember when, the
Supersonic Transport was cancelled.

622
00:56:52.119 --> 00:56:55.449
And that was a big technology blow to this
country.

623
00:56:55.449 --> 00:57:02.449
In other words, there was a major program
that would have absorbed a lot of the high-tech

624
00:57:02.579 --> 00:57:07.829
engineers that were involved in the Apollo
program.

625
00:57:07.829 --> 00:57:11.940
And, I think, some of the administration thought
the Supersonic Transport is a better place

626
00:57:11.940 --> 00:57:15.699
to have our technology capability than would
be a shuttle.

627
00:57:15.699 --> 00:57:20.109
But Supersonic Transport was cancelled by
Boeing.

628
00:57:20.109 --> 00:57:26.420
And I think that probably helped the atmosphere
that was involved.

629
00:57:26.420 --> 00:57:30.930
But the other thing that happened is that
Congress and the administration finally got

630
00:57:30.930 --> 00:57:35.049
the idea that we really weren't going to build
a space station immediately.

631
00:57:35.049 --> 00:57:38.150
That we were just interested in getting the
shuttle started.

632
00:57:38.150 --> 00:57:45.150
And so we didn't have this massive budget
increase that Tom Paine kept wanting.

633
00:57:45.779 --> 00:57:51.869
And Fletcher kept working on trying to get
budgets spread so that it wouldn't be a major

634
00:57:51.869 --> 00:57:54.549
peak in budgets close in.

635
00:57:54.549 --> 00:58:01.549
And he did that by starting the main engine
early, starting the tanks late, starting with

636
00:58:01.699 --> 00:58:07.219
solids late and putting an obvious emphasis
on the orbiter itself.

637
00:58:07.219 --> 00:58:12.900
So that spread the budget out and helped a
lot in giving the administration the feeling

638
00:58:12.900 --> 00:58:17.430
that we weren't going to kill them with budget
requirements.

639
00:58:17.430 --> 00:58:21.719
So Nixon started the program January of 1972.

640
00:58:21.719 --> 00:58:25.749
George Low and Jim Fletcher went over and
had about a 40 minute talk with President

641
00:58:25.749 --> 00:58:31.019
Nixon, and he announced the same day we were
going to start building the shuttle.

642
00:58:31.019 --> 00:58:38.019
It was going to be a reusable orbiter, the
engines in the orbiter, reusable solid cases,

643
00:58:39.150 --> 00:58:46.150
an extendable fuel tank, 40 to 50 flights
a year, $10 million to $15 million a flight.

644
00:58:47.079 --> 00:58:53.660
Our internal calculations were more like $10
million but we wanted to have some pad in

645
00:58:53.660 --> 00:58:54.329
it.

646
00:58:54.329 --> 00:59:01.329
And $5.2 billion, plus a 20% reserve for the
administrator for what we call unk-unks, unknown

647
00:59:04.579 --> 00:59:09.289
unknowns, things you get into trouble during
a development program where you need some

648
00:59:09.289 --> 00:59:13.589
more money to do some more testing.

649
00:59:13.589 --> 00:59:17.809
And Nixon agreed to that.

650
00:59:17.809 --> 00:59:21.839
The Bureau of the Budget was in the meeting
with him.

651
00:59:21.839 --> 00:59:27.890
And, as soon as Nixon left office, the Office
of Management Budget forgot the 20%.

652
00:59:27.890 --> 00:59:32.670
So then it was now $5.2 billion of 1970 dollars.

653
00:59:32.670 --> 00:59:39.670
To make it worse, the NASA Comptroller pressed,
I'm sure by OMB, didn't agree that we would

654
00:59:39.739 --> 00:59:42.239
use 1970 as the base.

655
00:59:42.239 --> 00:59:45.809
He took the $5.2 billion in 1972.

656
00:59:45.809 --> 00:59:48.249
We lost two years of inflation.

657
00:59:48.249 --> 00:59:53.359
Well, it may not sound like a lot to you but,
boy, it sounded like a lot to the guys working

658
00:59:53.359 --> 00:59:58.170
on the program because it was clear that we
were going to have a tough time meeting that

659
00:59:58.170 --> 01:00:02.829
budget.

660
01:00:02.829 --> 01:00:09.829
Here I am explaining to the press, I think
it was about two days after Nixon's announcement,

661
01:00:12.039 --> 01:00:19.039
one of the studies was to use the first stage
of the Saturn V, the S1C.

662
01:00:19.630 --> 01:00:24.819
This one apparently, I think this is the winged
version, because all the engines at their

663
01:00:24.819 --> 01:00:28.029
back center gradually all the way back here
some place.

664
01:00:28.029 --> 01:00:35.029
And we were using, in this design, using the
first stage of Saturn V boosting directly

665
01:00:35.569 --> 01:00:40.359
into the tank which was attached to the orbiter.

666
01:00:40.359 --> 01:00:44.749
This one was parallel.

667
01:00:44.749 --> 01:00:46.209
I guess that was liquids.

668
01:00:46.209 --> 01:00:47.539
They look like they have bigger diameter.

669
01:00:47.539 --> 01:00:54.539
And I didn't talk about that, but a lot of
people were pushing a pressure-fed liquid

670
01:00:58.920 --> 01:01:04.059
engine so that you'd be sure you had the capability
to cut them off.

671
01:01:04.059 --> 01:01:08.449
And the idea was that because they were pressure-fed
that the thickness of the walls was enough

672
01:01:08.449 --> 01:01:12.839
that they, too, could be recovered in the
ocean and brought back.

673
01:01:12.839 --> 01:01:19.839
And the final decision by the people that
were in the propulsion business in NASA was

674
01:01:20.170 --> 01:01:24.719
that the technology looked tough.

675
01:01:24.719 --> 01:01:26.319
It was new.

676
01:01:26.319 --> 01:01:29.549
We didn't have a background of pressure-fed
boosters.

677
01:01:29.549 --> 01:01:36.549
And the solids, as we will get to later, looked
like they were a better deal.

678
01:01:37.849 --> 01:01:42.209
So the design issues, as I saw them as the
head of Manned Space Flight, were that the

679
01:01:42.209 --> 01:01:45.289
delta wing was required for crossrange.

680
01:01:45.289 --> 01:01:50.789
External tanks were much lighter, the system
got to be about half the weight because of

681
01:01:50.789 --> 01:01:56.119
all the reduction in external configuration
when you took all the fuel out and put it

682
01:01:56.119 --> 01:01:59.579
separately in the tank.

683
01:01:59.579 --> 01:02:04.499
Thermal insulation, we bought off on the ceramic
tile, the carbon-carbon and fiber blankets,

684
01:02:04.499 --> 01:02:10.680
the same as we have today, solid or liquid
boosters.

685
01:02:10.680 --> 01:02:13.339
The solids looked more reliable at that time.

686
01:02:13.339 --> 01:02:20.339
There had been a history of solids on many
of the large military boosters, and they looked

687
01:02:21.969 --> 01:02:23.769
better.

688
01:02:23.769 --> 01:02:30.359
And, at that time, I thought we were going
to have a way to terminate the thrust of the

689
01:02:30.359 --> 01:02:33.449
solids.

690
01:02:33.449 --> 01:02:39.170
Engine location and type started on the ground
for safer, better performance and the stage

691
01:02:39.170 --> 01:02:42.829
combustion for better performance.

692
01:02:42.829 --> 01:02:45.880
We had, under our study, retractable turbojets.

693
01:02:45.880 --> 01:02:50.559
Once you got into the atmosphere, you would
pop these turbojets out and flew home.

694
01:02:50.559 --> 01:02:52.529
And we decided we couldn't handle it.

695
01:02:52.529 --> 01:02:58.689
Thank God we had had all this lifting body
experience where the guys that landed these

696
01:02:58.689 --> 01:03:00.839
very low elevatory devices.

697
01:03:00.839 --> 01:03:07.839
Actually, the orbiter had a little better
elevatory than some of the HL-10s and X-24s,

698
01:03:08.329 --> 01:03:11.289
so we dropped the turbojets out of the system.

699
01:03:11.289 --> 01:03:17.650
Series versus parallel boosters, series was
heavier and had less performance with a lot

700
01:03:17.650 --> 01:03:19.390
more bending loads in the system.

701
01:03:19.390 --> 01:03:23.529
When we go up, we go max Q.

702
01:03:23.529 --> 01:03:26.199
And with crosswinds we get big loads on that
wing.

703
01:03:26.199 --> 01:03:33.199
And so this turned out to be a heavier way
to do it.

704
01:03:33.719 --> 01:03:40.410
Well, a little more on solids versus liquids.

705
01:03:40.410 --> 01:03:47.410
I always like to tell this story about solids
could be shipped by rail.

706
01:03:47.699 --> 01:03:49.469
I can say it another way.

707
01:03:49.469 --> 01:03:56.469
The diameter of the solids was set by rail
shipment.

708
01:03:56.579 --> 01:04:03.579
And there is a story which I am sure some
of you have heard that the rails of the American

709
01:04:05.479 --> 01:04:11.249
rails were set first by the British who brought
the British rail system to the United States.

710
01:04:11.249 --> 01:04:16.479
The British rail system was set by the width
of the wheels on the carts that they used

711
01:04:16.479 --> 01:04:17.339
to have.

712
01:04:17.339 --> 01:04:24.339
And the cart's width was set by the Roman
chariots that used to be on the roads because

713
01:04:26.499 --> 01:04:31.239
they made grooves in the tiles.

714
01:04:31.239 --> 01:04:36.869
So that set the diameter of the shuttle.

715
01:04:36.869 --> 01:04:43.869
And the Roman chariot's wheel width was set
by two horses in front of them.

716
01:04:46.199 --> 01:04:53.199
So there are some who say that the diameter
of the shuttle rocket engines was designed

717
01:04:55.170 --> 01:04:57.279
by two horses' asses.

718
01:04:57.279 --> 01:05:01.069
Those were the guys that wanted to use liquid.

719
01:05:01.069 --> 01:05:07.430
They can be shipped by rail.

720
01:05:07.430 --> 01:05:09.799
They had a better reliability record at the
time.

721
01:05:09.799 --> 01:05:12.140
Solids could be recovered.

722
01:05:12.140 --> 01:05:15.479
Industry studied pressure fed to recover them,
too, but we didn't buy that.

723
01:05:15.479 --> 01:05:20.949
The designers thought they could turn off
the solids but later found out they couldn't

724
01:05:20.949 --> 01:05:26.959
turn them off uniformly and that the thrust
variance that would be involved between the

725
01:05:26.959 --> 01:05:32.829
two would be totally beyond the capability
of the vehicle to sustain it.

726
01:05:32.829 --> 01:05:36.539
So we dropped it.

727
01:05:36.539 --> 01:05:38.349
Thermal insulation, we talked about it.

728
01:05:38.349 --> 01:05:44.789
They were all new developments that had been
experimentally tested, they looked like they

729
01:05:44.789 --> 01:05:47.109
were going to work, but we had a lot of work
to do.

730
01:05:47.109 --> 01:05:52.609
And the ceramic tiles really turned out to
be one of the toughest new technologies that

731
01:05:52.609 --> 01:05:54.479
we got into.

732
01:05:54.479 --> 01:05:58.890
High-pressure stage combustion engine, we
knew that was a big new development.

733
01:05:58.890 --> 01:06:02.489
And so, as I said, that was started early.

734
01:06:02.489 --> 01:06:08.599
And design crew escape, well, the idea was
we were going to be able to terminate the

735
01:06:08.599 --> 01:06:10.709
thrust on the rocket engines.

736
01:06:10.709 --> 01:06:17.709
And we looked at these rockets to pull away
the cabin, we looked at all that stuff, and

737
01:06:21.189 --> 01:06:25.069
none of them had a broad application.

738
01:06:25.069 --> 01:06:28.189
You had the question of safety.

739
01:06:28.189 --> 01:06:31.839
If you took it off at the launch site, if
you took the whole front end off the vehicle

740
01:06:31.839 --> 01:06:38.839
at the launch site, it had big questions of
the reliability of the system.

741
01:06:39.189 --> 01:06:45.589
We went through a lot of studies to try to
find a way to capture the crew in case of

742
01:06:45.589 --> 01:06:52.589
a problem and never found a system that fit
into the program.

743
01:06:53.380 --> 01:06:57.660
So we ended up with crew escape only with
a complete structure.

744
01:06:57.660 --> 01:07:00.920
And that, of course, was the problem in Challenger.

745
01:07:00.920 --> 01:07:07.920
We ended up wrecking the structure to where
we did not have a recovery capability, but

746
01:07:09.069 --> 01:07:16.069
we put in a system where if the vehicle were
complete and structurally sound and was gliding

747
01:07:17.279 --> 01:07:18.769
the guys could get out.

748
01:07:18.769 --> 01:07:22.670
But that was the only escape system that we
had.

749
01:07:22.670 --> 01:07:29.670
I wanted to touch operation costs a little
bit.

750
01:07:31.299 --> 01:07:36.299
We had built enormous confidence from the
Apollo program.

751
01:07:36.299 --> 01:07:43.299
In spite of the Apollo 13 problem, the rest
of the vehicles had worked beautifully.

752
01:07:46.420 --> 01:07:52.829
I used to say that every flight always had
man in the loop some place during the flight

753
01:07:52.829 --> 01:07:55.369
that was important to the success of the program.

754
01:07:55.369 --> 01:07:57.959
Many times it was a minor thing.

755
01:07:57.959 --> 01:08:04.959
Like when Apollo 12 got struck by lightning
when it was launched, the guys were able to

756
01:08:05.519 --> 01:08:10.219
reconfigure switches to get the power back
on, get everything back to normal and had

757
01:08:10.219 --> 01:08:16.310
a nice flight to the moon and hit a few golf
balls.

758
01:08:16.310 --> 01:08:23.309
Every flight had man involved, but every flight
was a tremendous success, except Apollo 13.

759
01:08:23.309 --> 01:08:29.000
And, at the time, we were dealing here in
the 1970 time period.

760
01:08:29.000 --> 01:08:36.000
Well, April of 1970 was when we launched Apollo
13.

761
01:08:36.630 --> 01:08:40.290
Anyway, we had tremendous confidence.

762
01:08:40.290 --> 01:08:45.239
And we thought we had tremendous support from
the industry and we thought we had tremendous

763
01:08:45.239 --> 01:08:52.239
support from the public, but we still were
concerned about the operational costs so we

764
01:08:55.719 --> 01:09:01.400
hired American Airlines, for one, to work
with us on what the costs would be and how

765
01:09:01.400 --> 01:09:08.400
would you design the system to give you the
least operational costs? The military, because

766
01:09:10.719 --> 01:09:16.319
they were committing to put their payloads
on the shuttle, had studies done by the Aerospace

767
01:09:16.319 --> 01:09:18.839
Corporation about the operation costs.

768
01:09:18.839 --> 01:09:25.839
There was a study done by IDA, Institute of
Defense Analysis.

769
01:09:28.799 --> 01:09:32.969
All three of them agreed that we were going
to have tremendous reductions in the cost

770
01:09:32.969 --> 01:09:33.880
of operations.

771
01:09:33.880 --> 01:09:39.299
They didn't quite come down to the same levels
that NASA had estimated but they were close.

772
01:09:39.299 --> 01:09:42.900
It was kind of interesting that we all thought
it could be done.

773
01:09:42.900 --> 01:09:48.199
We all thought there could be be enormous
reductions in the cost of operations with

774
01:09:48.199 --> 01:09:51.099
the shuttle.

775
01:09:51.099 --> 01:09:58.099
We thought we had enough space-based hardware
that we could do quick turnarounds and handle

776
01:10:00.969 --> 01:10:04.130
it more like an airplane.

777
01:10:04.130 --> 01:10:11.130
But NASA and these groups didn't really properly
account for the costs associated with post-flight

778
01:10:13.780 --> 01:10:20.050
maintenance, the rocket engine.

779
01:10:20.050 --> 01:10:25.130
When IDA and Aerospace did the studies, we
told them the rocket engine was going to be

780
01:10:25.130 --> 01:10:27.199
reusable for at least 20 flights.

781
01:10:27.199 --> 01:10:29.570
Well, it turned out it wasn't.

782
01:10:29.570 --> 01:10:36.170
And it was such an enormous new development
that in the early flights of the shuttle it

783
01:10:36.170 --> 01:10:41.380
took a lot of time and a lot of effort to
replace engines and refurbish engines.

784
01:10:41.380 --> 01:10:48.380
Assuring the safety of flight in a hostile
environment, and space is hostile, and we

785
01:10:50.690 --> 01:10:57.690
are dealing here with what amounts to a short
amount of R&D development testing when you

786
01:10:58.980 --> 01:11:00.730
get into these flights.

787
01:11:00.730 --> 01:11:02.650
Difficult cutting-edge technologies.

788
01:11:02.650 --> 01:11:09.650
The engine in the thermal program, the tiles
worked but they often got chips outs of the

789
01:11:11.219 --> 01:11:13.840
tiles so we had to replace tiles between flights.

790
01:11:13.840 --> 01:11:20.500
And this is fail operation, fail operation,
fail safe.

791
01:11:20.500 --> 01:11:23.630
The airplanes have fail operation, fail safe.

792
01:11:23.630 --> 01:11:29.020
They took the attitude that if you had three
computers that was plenty, and if one went

793
01:11:29.020 --> 01:11:32.020
bad during a checkout you launched anyway.

794
01:11:32.020 --> 01:11:39.020
You don't know that but that is what is happening
to you on commercial airplanes today.

795
01:11:39.110 --> 01:11:39.969
We went one more.

796
01:11:39.969 --> 01:11:42.380
We went fail operation, fail operation, fail
safe.

797
01:11:42.380 --> 01:11:47.730
We have four computers in the shuttle, but
we cannot fly without all four in perfect

798
01:11:47.730 --> 01:11:48.780
condition.

799
01:11:48.780 --> 01:11:52.739
So those things add cost when you do that.

800
01:11:52.739 --> 01:11:58.570
And then cost tradeoffs between R&D and operations,
people have argued with me many times that

801
01:11:58.570 --> 01:12:02.829
our decision to put the tank externally was
a bad deal.

802
01:12:02.829 --> 01:12:07.409
It turns out that it was certainly a bad deal
on Columbia.

803
01:12:07.409 --> 01:12:14.409
The foam on that tank came off and hit the
carbon-carbon leading-edge of the wing and

804
01:12:14.829 --> 01:12:21.829
broke a hole in it and caused thermal excesses
in the re-entry.

805
01:12:22.170 --> 01:12:28.690
So you could argue, yeah, we should have had
a two-stage fully recoverable system.

806
01:12:28.690 --> 01:12:35.690
But 
those were the cost tradeoffs that were involved
in getting a system that would be accepted

807
01:12:42.829 --> 01:12:47.719
and bought off on by the administration.

808
01:12:47.719 --> 01:12:52.679
I want to talk a little bit about operation
costs.

809
01:12:52.679 --> 01:12:55.770
That has been the big miss that we made in
this program.

810
01:12:55.770 --> 01:13:00.150
As I said, cost of operations never got down
to what it should have been.

811
01:13:00.150 --> 01:13:02.250
Well, it never got down there for a couple
of reasons.

812
01:13:02.250 --> 01:13:09.250
We were never able to get up to a flight rate
that would favor a reusable vehicle.

813
01:13:10.420 --> 01:13:17.420
I think we got up to 26 flights in one year,
but most of them were down around eight or

814
01:13:21.710 --> 01:13:22.230
ten.

815
01:13:22.230 --> 01:13:29.230
And so we weren't up far enough to offset
the cost of the research and development costs

816
01:13:29.840 --> 01:13:32.809
to get the operational costs down low.

817
01:13:32.809 --> 01:13:34.739
But I have an interesting little summary.

818
01:13:34.739 --> 01:13:40.409
It is not an exact thing at all but it gives
you a little feeling for what I have seen

819
01:13:40.409 --> 01:13:41.389
out in this program.

820
01:13:41.389 --> 01:13:47.489
In 1970, the $10 million flight price was
based on the same accounting system that we

821
01:13:47.489 --> 01:13:49.199
used for the Apollo.

822
01:13:49.199 --> 01:13:53.639
Now, when you go down to Cape Canaveral we
had a lot of other things going on besides

823
01:13:53.639 --> 01:13:54.699
Apollo.

824
01:13:54.699 --> 01:14:01.699
And so we had the common support activities
like the medical department and the mail system

825
01:14:04.469 --> 01:14:11.469
and all that sort of stuff as a common separate
accounting.

826
01:14:12.260 --> 01:14:17.360
And all the costs for the Apollo were those
that we called hands-on, things associated

827
01:14:17.360 --> 01:14:22.929
with buying parts, bringing in spares, putting
on spares, checking out the vehicle and launching

828
01:14:22.929 --> 01:14:23.670
it.

829
01:14:23.670 --> 01:14:29.110
So we had two different pieces of money involved
in the Apollo program, and one of them never

830
01:14:29.110 --> 01:14:31.710
even was charged to the Apollo program.

831
01:14:31.710 --> 01:14:36.760
So we used that same system, it seemed logical
to go ahead with the same accounting system

832
01:14:36.760 --> 01:14:40.750
for the shuttle as we did for the Apollo.

833
01:14:40.750 --> 01:14:45.980
Well, it turned out that these separate items
were a pretty big chunk of money.

834
01:14:45.980 --> 01:14:49.969
And I have assumed that it was about $400
million a year.

835
01:14:49.969 --> 01:14:54.300
I am not sure that is right, but I wanted
to do it just to give you an idea of what

836
01:14:54.300 --> 01:14:56.530
happens with inflation.

837
01:14:56.530 --> 01:15:03.530
Remember we said we would do this job using
1970 dollars and we said that the costs would

838
01:15:04.070 --> 01:15:11.070
be $10 million of 1970 dollars? With $400
million in overhead and inflation, according

839
01:15:11.090 --> 01:15:16.960
to the Consumer's Price Index, which I looked
up on Google, by the way, they have a nice

840
01:15:16.960 --> 01:15:23.960
little calculator for inflation, 40 flights
a year, no overhead, in other words, like

841
01:15:26.500 --> 01:15:33.500
Apollo, a $10 million price in 1970 would
be $23 million by first flight and would be

842
01:15:35.829 --> 01:15:41.119
$50 million now.

843
01:15:41.119 --> 01:15:48.119
Same 40 flights but including overhead would
make the flight cost $20 million in 1970,

844
01:15:48.130 --> 01:15:55.130
$45 million in 1981 and $101 million per flight
for 40 flights in 2005.

845
01:15:56.190 --> 01:16:03.190
A huge increased price because of the inflation
that occurred in the 1980 to 1982 time period.

846
01:16:04.909 --> 01:16:11.909
Eight flights per year, including overhead,
runs it up to $60 million in 1970 dollars.

847
01:16:12.889 --> 01:16:16.699
And eight flights per year is sort of what
we have been running here recently.

848
01:16:16.699 --> 01:16:23.699
$135 million at time of first flight and $302
million a flight in 2005.

849
01:16:29.520 --> 01:16:32.920
Now, the cost per flight on the shuttle, I
don't know.

850
01:16:32.920 --> 01:16:37.800
I know that it is up in that $400 million
or $500 million price.

851
01:16:37.800 --> 01:16:43.070
I use this only to give you kind of a rough
feeling that, although we missed operational

852
01:16:43.070 --> 01:16:50.070
costs badly, we didn't really just be totally
out of the ballpark on them.

853
01:16:52.210 --> 01:16:54.110
Shuttle performance is great.

854
01:16:54.110 --> 01:16:58.139
The shuttle has done everything it was designed
to do, and probably a few more things we didn't

855
01:16:58.139 --> 01:16:59.520
think of at the time.

856
01:16:59.520 --> 01:17:06.380
It has put military devices in orbit, commercial
devices in orbit, scientific payloads all

857
01:17:06.380 --> 01:17:13.380
to LEO with solids we brought along, and it
has taken stuff to GEO, geosynchronous orbits.

858
01:17:15.989 --> 01:17:18.449
It has retrieved and replaced satellites.

859
01:17:18.449 --> 01:17:21.800
It has retrieved satellites and brought them
down to the ground and repaired them and brought

860
01:17:21.800 --> 01:17:23.300
them back into orbit.

861
01:17:23.300 --> 01:17:29.070
It has repaired satellites in orbit and it
has launched elements to the space station.

862
01:17:29.070 --> 01:17:36.070
In the 1980s, the shuttle had only 4% of all
the launches in the country but carried 41%

863
01:17:37.320 --> 01:17:39.929
of the mass launched.

864
01:17:39.929 --> 01:17:46.929
Shuttle R&D was well within what Nixon and
Fletcher agreed to, $5.2 billion plus 20%

865
01:17:47.230 --> 01:17:52.030
in 1970 dollars.

866
01:17:52.030 --> 01:17:54.340
And I mean quite a lot of it.

867
01:17:54.340 --> 01:18:00.929
Probably the 20%, only about 5% to 10% of
that was actually used.

868
01:18:00.929 --> 01:18:07.400
In that sense, they overran what the OMB said
we were to develop it for where they didn't

869
01:18:07.400 --> 01:18:09.440
give us the 20% reserve.

870
01:18:09.440 --> 01:18:13.960
We overran it by 5% or 10%.

871
01:18:13.960 --> 01:18:16.639
Missed two key design issues.

872
01:18:16.639 --> 01:18:20.030
Call them system engineering issues.

873
01:18:20.030 --> 01:18:23.480
Cold O rings in the Challenger.

874
01:18:23.480 --> 01:18:30.159
We had O rings in that vehicle which when
they were cold they lost their flexibility.

875
01:18:30.159 --> 01:18:35.110
And when they were cold in a design that was
opened a little bit when the pressure came

876
01:18:35.110 --> 01:18:39.179
on internally, that was a disaster waiting
to happen.

877
01:18:39.179 --> 01:18:45.320
So that was a bad design of the way the O
rings were designed into the vehicle.

878
01:18:45.320 --> 01:18:50.590
The second one is the foam shedding.

879
01:18:50.590 --> 01:18:57.590
We knew that we were going to have ice and/or
foam on that tank, and we really pressed the

880
01:18:58.989 --> 01:19:03.050
industry to make sure that that foam was going
to stay on.

881
01:19:03.050 --> 01:19:08.150
We had foam enough that we didn't get a lot
of icing, but we had foam that had to stay

882
01:19:08.150 --> 01:19:08.829
on.

883
01:19:08.829 --> 01:19:15.349
Because we know that as it shed, we didn't
think so much of the carbon-carbon as the

884
01:19:15.349 --> 01:19:19.690
tiles, these brittle tiles that we had on
the bottom of the shuttle.

885
01:19:19.690 --> 01:19:26.510
So foam shedding was known to be a problem
all the way through this arm of the development

886
01:19:26.510 --> 01:19:29.599
but just has not been able to solved.

887
01:19:29.599 --> 01:19:36.119
And after the Columbia accident, the Martin
company, I assume, worked for two years trying

888
01:19:36.119 --> 01:19:38.219
to make that foam stick better.

889
01:19:38.219 --> 01:19:41.429
And it did stick better but pieces still came
off.

890
01:19:41.429 --> 01:19:47.329
So the fleet has been grounded and they got
to get that fixed.

891
01:19:47.329 --> 01:19:51.389
And, of course, we missed the operational
cost.

892
01:19:51.389 --> 01:19:58.389
Two-stage reusable vehicle would have missed
worse, I am sure of that, because of the size

893
01:19:58.409 --> 01:20:05.409
of that first-stage booster and the mach numbers
it had to go to.

894
01:20:05.760 --> 01:20:09.780
I guess I have concluded that spacecraft are
not like airplanes.

895
01:20:09.780 --> 01:20:12.090
Every flight is a structural dive demonstration.

896
01:20:12.090 --> 01:20:19.090
You know, you develop an airplane and you
fly it many times before you fly it to the

897
01:20:19.300 --> 01:20:21.780
corner of a VG diagram.

898
01:20:21.780 --> 01:20:25.900
And I can only think of one exception.

899
01:20:25.900 --> 01:20:32.900
A guy named Weese Welch, one of the greatest
test pilots North America every had flew the

900
01:20:32.980 --> 01:20:38.760
first flight of the F-86 which is the fancy
new jet that we brought in just before the

901
01:20:38.760 --> 01:20:40.460
Korean War.

902
01:20:40.460 --> 01:20:47.329
And, on his first flight, it flew so well
that he took it into a little dive and the

903
01:20:47.329 --> 01:20:49.590
mach meter went up to one.

904
01:20:49.590 --> 01:20:56.590
And, actually, the ground data showed that
he probably went to 1.04.

905
01:20:57.340 --> 01:20:59.230
Some say they heard a sonic boom.

906
01:20:59.230 --> 01:21:01.440
I am not sure of that.

907
01:21:01.440 --> 01:21:08.440
But that was about a month before the X1 went
supersonic.

908
01:21:10.590 --> 01:21:15.070
In those days, test pilots were kind of innovative
and they did things that they were told not

909
01:21:15.070 --> 01:21:15.570
to do.

910
01:21:15.570 --> 01:21:17.079
And he did it.

911
01:21:17.079 --> 01:21:20.179
But every flight is a structural dive demonstration.

912
01:21:20.179 --> 01:21:23.360
We go right up to max Q every time we fly.

913
01:21:23.360 --> 01:21:28.320
We go through wind shears and take it up to
high Gs.

914
01:21:28.320 --> 01:21:33.460
We go to high Gs on the way up, we go to high
Gs on the way down, we go max thermal every

915
01:21:33.460 --> 01:21:34.550
flight.

916
01:21:34.550 --> 01:21:41.550
So we are dealing with a tough set of activities
when we do this.

917
01:21:42.530 --> 01:21:47.429
No reusable space system ever gets the millions
of hours of stressed operation that airplanes

918
01:21:47.429 --> 01:21:48.130
get.

919
01:21:48.130 --> 01:21:52.949
Once an airplane gets through development,
it starts getting millions of hours of test

920
01:21:52.949 --> 01:21:57.270
data or information where if you have a problem
you fix it.

921
01:21:57.270 --> 01:21:59.570
And you just don't get that in these systems.

922
01:21:59.570 --> 01:22:06.570
The space system has decades of evolutionary
model development.

923
01:22:08.420 --> 01:22:15.420
In other words, the airplane business has
been so dramatically economical that you could

924
01:22:15.710 --> 01:22:19.360
build new airplanes every ten years or so.

925
01:22:19.360 --> 01:22:25.000
And each new airplane took advantage of all
the things known from the past airplane and

926
01:22:25.000 --> 01:22:27.449
designed into it.

927
01:22:27.449 --> 01:22:33.889
As I said, every reusable system is exposed
to enormous environmental variations every

928
01:22:33.889 --> 01:22:34.579
time.

929
01:22:34.579 --> 01:22:40.210
Thermal, vibration, pressure, mach number,
all these things happen every time.

930
01:22:40.210 --> 01:22:47.210
And so I look at the shuttle as being an amazing
piece of machinery which is done extremely

931
01:22:47.929 --> 01:22:52.150
well in what I consider a continuing R&D environment.

932
01:22:52.150 --> 01:22:59.150
We just don't have yet an operational system.

933
01:23:01.570 --> 01:23:05.369
So my view of the next program, keep it simple.

934
01:23:05.369 --> 01:23:12.369
It has sort of been a prime view that I have
had of design every since I have been in the

935
01:23:13.079 --> 01:23:14.820
airplane business.

936
01:23:14.820 --> 01:23:17.920
Don't stretch the technology.

937
01:23:17.920 --> 01:23:24.510
Use really good margins of safety because
we are dealing here with, as I said, maximum

938
01:23:24.510 --> 01:23:25.949
conditions on every flight.

939
01:23:25.949 --> 01:23:29.690
You better play it safe.

940
01:23:29.690 --> 01:23:30.869
Keep it small.

941
01:23:30.869 --> 01:23:33.599
Carry as few passengers as possible.

942
01:23:33.599 --> 01:23:36.219
Carry people or cargo but not both.

943
01:23:36.219 --> 01:23:38.679
Keep the requirements to a minimum.

944
01:23:38.679 --> 01:23:42.730
Use as many past components and systems as
have been proven to be reliable.

945
01:23:42.730 --> 01:23:49.420
Design for operations, very important.

946
01:23:49.420 --> 01:23:50.760
Easy access.

947
01:23:50.760 --> 01:23:52.670
One man can replace a black box.

948
01:23:52.670 --> 01:23:59.670
You don't have to run a big pickup machine
to take something out of it.

949
01:24:02.429 --> 01:24:07.469
And keep the design reserved while you are
designing it so that when operational issues

950
01:24:07.469 --> 01:24:14.469
come up you can design for the operational
issue and keep reducing the cost of operations.

951
01:24:15.409 --> 01:24:16.550
I don't know what all that means.

952
01:24:16.550 --> 01:24:22.429
I think it means that if we had it to do over
again it would have been great to be able

953
01:24:22.429 --> 01:24:29.429
to contain the requirements within NASA, probably
build a much smaller system that you could

954
01:24:30.420 --> 01:24:37.420
get many more test flights at lower cost,
but we didn't have that opportunity, as you

955
01:24:39.000 --> 01:24:41.349
now know.

956
01:24:41.349 --> 01:24:48.349
So we have the shuttle disappearing into the
distance.

957
01:24:49.739 --> 01:24:54.670
Decision has been made that the shuttle be
phased out in 2010.

958
01:24:54.670 --> 01:25:01.670
And it is going to be a tough issue because
now the shuttle is down in between flights

959
01:25:02.039 --> 01:25:04.300
because we lost foam on the last flight.

960
01:25:04.300 --> 01:25:09.940
They grounded the fleet until we can figure
out what to do about that foam problem.

961
01:25:09.940 --> 01:25:16.940
And then Hurricane Katrina knocked off the
top of the VAB, which isn't a big deal, but

962
01:25:19.320 --> 01:25:25.070
it really messed up some of the tank facilities
and tank access.

963
01:25:25.070 --> 01:25:30.179
And people's lives have been affected with
losses of homes.

964
01:25:30.179 --> 01:25:35.550
So there is a whole bunch of new issues involved
in the shuttle that I read in the paper this

965
01:25:35.550 --> 01:25:41.139
morning which may mean another delay in the
next launch of the shuttle.

966
01:25:41.139 --> 01:25:46.489
And that means a compression of the time between
now and 2010 when they are trying to use the

967
01:25:46.489 --> 01:25:52.110
shuttle to meet the commitments that we have
with the Europeans and the Japanese about

968
01:25:52.110 --> 01:25:57.670
putting pieces of the space station up into
space.

969
01:25:57.670 --> 01:25:59.639
An interesting new problem for the shuttle.

970
01:25:59.639 --> 01:26:06.639
OK? [APPLAUSE] HOFFMAN: Let's take a 
one-minute stretch break.

971
01:26:11.329 --> 01:26:18.329
Stand up if you'd like, turn around in a few
circles, and then we will have a half an hour

972
01:26:21.630 --> 01:26:26.380
for some questions, answers and general comments.

973
01:26:26.380 --> 01:26:32.670
The external environment, the background,
what went into the design of the shuttle.

974
01:26:32.670 --> 01:26:39.670
And I think what Dale alluded to at the end
is very much to the point, and we will be

975
01:26:40.340 --> 01:26:46.539
talking about this with the people when they
talk about the individual systems.

976
01:26:46.539 --> 01:26:50.270
In terms of the actual performance, which
we have gotten out of the shuttle, despite

977
01:26:50.270 --> 01:26:57.270
the fact that we have had two catastrophic
accidents which, by the way, involved not

978
01:26:57.579 --> 01:27:02.849
only the design of the shuttle but the way
we operated the shuttle.

979
01:27:02.849 --> 01:27:09.150
And that is an important thing that we will
spend time talking about.

980
01:27:09.150 --> 01:27:16.010
Had we not made the decision to launch Challenger
on that cold day, who knows what would have

981
01:27:16.010 --> 01:27:22.139
happened? And, similarly, we accepted the
fact that foam was continually falling off

982
01:27:22.139 --> 01:27:29.139
of the tank, even though that was incompatible
with the design specifications on the thermal

983
01:27:32.929 --> 01:27:34.139
insulation for the shuttle.

984
01:27:34.139 --> 01:27:40.489
So we had basically two parts of the shuttle
system and we had design incompatibilities,

985
01:27:40.489 --> 01:27:45.500
but we chose to keep on flying.

986
01:27:45.500 --> 01:27:51.159
But, as a whole, the shuttle has been remarkably
successful from a technical point of view

987
01:27:51.159 --> 01:27:58.159
in terms of what we have been able to do in
near earth space, has been I think, compared

988
01:28:01.179 --> 01:28:08.179
to what you could do working out of an Apollo
capsule, was absolutely phenomenal.

989
01:28:13.179 --> 01:28:19.630
And, in fact, I think in terms of near earth
operations, the shuttle will be sorely missed

990
01:28:19.630 --> 01:28:25.530
when we retire it and there will be a lot
of capabilities that we will be giving up.

991
01:28:25.530 --> 01:28:32.349
But, on the other hand, where we really got
it wrong, by orders of magnitude, was in the

992
01:28:32.349 --> 01:28:35.630
cost and reusability of the shuttle.

993
01:28:35.630 --> 01:28:41.070
Now, perhaps that goes back to the requirements
because, again, we were trying to do an awful

994
01:28:41.070 --> 01:28:47.000
lot of things for the very first time and,
yet, we were being told by the Office of Management

995
01:28:47.000 --> 01:28:50.800
and Budget that you said it had to be cost-effective.

996
01:28:50.800 --> 01:28:56.730
I mean, in a sense, NASA was being asked to
operate the shuttle almost as a commercial

997
01:28:56.730 --> 01:28:58.820
enterprise and to make money on it.

998
01:28:58.820 --> 01:29:05.510
This is like you build a test vehicle for
the first time and you are being asked, at

999
01:29:05.510 --> 01:29:09.829
the same time, to operate it at a profit.

1000
01:29:09.829 --> 01:29:16.829
And, as you know, one of the systems engineering
principles is you have this triangle.

1001
01:29:17.199 --> 01:29:24.199
I am sure you have all seen this.

1002
01:29:28.440 --> 01:29:35.440
Performance, cost, schedule, you have all
seen the triangle, right? And you cannot specify

1003
01:29:36.289 --> 01:29:37.349
all three.

1004
01:29:37.349 --> 01:29:41.820
They are not all independent parameters.

1005
01:29:41.820 --> 01:29:48.820
If you specify the performance and then you're
limiting the cost, you cannot control the

1006
01:29:50.869 --> 01:29:53.090
schedule.

1007
01:29:53.090 --> 01:30:00.090
Anyway, all three of those we, in a sense,
got specified when we accepted the requirements

1008
01:30:01.010 --> 01:30:03.750
to build the shuttle.

1009
01:30:03.750 --> 01:30:05.590
And something has to give.

1010
01:30:05.590 --> 01:30:08.929
And, in the end, it was the schedule and the
cost.

1011
01:30:08.929 --> 01:30:15.050
And we will have more to say about this in
the next couple of lectures, but now let's

1012
01:30:15.050 --> 01:30:22.050
take advantage of the last 20 minutes and
give you a chance to ask some questions about

1013
01:30:22.949 --> 01:30:27.539
the content of the lecture.

1014
01:30:27.539 --> 01:30:29.650
And Dale can try to answer them.

1015
01:30:29.650 --> 01:30:36.050
I will say, by the way, in terms of the schedule
of the class, when this was given as an aircraft

1016
01:30:36.050 --> 01:30:43.050
systems course, there were two lectures of
an hour and a half and then there was a laboratory

1017
01:30:44.079 --> 01:30:45.570
period scheduled on Wednesdays.

1018
01:30:45.570 --> 01:30:52.559
And the idea, I think, was that by scheduling
a lab everybody would have one period of time

1019
01:30:52.559 --> 01:30:58.949
at the same time so that it would make it
easier for you to work as teams on your project.

1020
01:30:58.949 --> 01:31:05.949
Because we have so many people coming from
out of town, I thought that it would be better

1021
01:31:07.270 --> 01:31:14.139
to make sure that they have full time to interact
with you.

1022
01:31:14.139 --> 01:31:20.409
And so we didn't schedule a laboratory period
for this course.

1023
01:31:20.409 --> 01:31:23.079
Instead, we have two two-hour lectures.

1024
01:31:23.079 --> 01:31:29.070
And I am assuming that all of you, once you
form teams, will be able to work out some

1025
01:31:29.070 --> 01:31:31.349
times when you can get together.

1026
01:31:31.349 --> 01:31:36.699
The only other thing I will mention, if you
look ahead for Tuesday, September the 20th,

1027
01:31:36.699 --> 01:31:43.699
that is the first deliverable regarding your
term project.

1028
01:31:46.400 --> 01:31:52.900
And all we want you to do there is just to
think about what subsystem you might be interested

1029
01:31:52.900 --> 01:31:59.900
in studying and write a paragraph about what
you think you might want to do with it.

1030
01:32:00.099 --> 01:32:03.800
And what we will do is we will be taking a
spiral approach to this project.

1031
01:32:03.800 --> 01:32:10.800
So, if you look ahead, you will see there
are various times when we ask for preliminary

1032
01:32:11.230 --> 01:32:12.469
results.

1033
01:32:12.469 --> 01:32:19.469
And then we will work with you, give you guidance
in how to deepen that so that then you can

1034
01:32:20.030 --> 01:32:20.469
go back.

1035
01:32:20.469 --> 01:32:26.000
And the next time you hand something in it
will be at a deeper level until the end when

1036
01:32:26.000 --> 01:32:27.429
you're finished with the project.

1037
01:32:27.429 --> 01:32:31.210
OK, let's move into the question and answer
period.

1038
01:32:31.210 --> 01:32:33.679
And there has been a lot of material presented.

1039
01:32:33.679 --> 01:32:38.300
And this is your chance to ask the guy who
was here when it all happened.

1040
01:32:38.300 --> 01:32:40.510
Dale, why don't you take center stage now?
MAN: Thanks so much for coming.

1041
01:32:40.510 --> 01:32:43.020
I was kind of intrigued by your talking about
the different phases of development.

1042
01:32:43.020 --> 01:32:45.710
You called it phase A, phase B and C/D.

1043
01:32:45.710 --> 01:32:52.710
And I was kind of wondering when, in those
phases, you kind of developed the high-level

1044
01:33:01.809 --> 01:33:03.409
requirements, when you developed kind of low-level
requirements, how much industry was involved

1045
01:33:03.409 --> 01:33:06.320
in different levels? What percent was industry
engineers and what percent was NASA engineers

1046
01:33:06.320 --> 01:33:09.219
in those studies? And I was just wondering
if you could expand on that.

1047
01:33:09.219 --> 01:33:09.650
MYERS: Yeah.

1048
01:33:09.650 --> 01:33:10.880
Good question.

1049
01:33:10.880 --> 01:33:17.880
The theory is that you do phase A as conceptual
activity and, when you have gotten your requirements

1050
01:33:18.780 --> 01:33:22.300
nailed down, you then do a phase B.

1051
01:33:22.300 --> 01:33:27.770
And that's what we thought we had done.

1052
01:33:27.770 --> 01:33:34.770
It turned out that 
military requirements came in after phase
B had been started, so we actually had to

1053
01:33:42.510 --> 01:33:49.510
change the contracts with the industry to
take into consideration those military requirements.

1054
01:33:50.230 --> 01:33:52.570
And they were a big change to the requirements.

1055
01:33:52.570 --> 01:33:58.780
So, in that sense, we had some inefficiency
in phase B.

1056
01:33:58.780 --> 01:34:05.780
And it was after we began to get the results
of phase B that we realized we didn't have

1057
01:34:07.809 --> 01:34:11.699
a system that was going to meet the requirements.

1058
01:34:11.699 --> 01:34:18.230
So, instead of canceling phase B, we finished
the phase B because we needed that basic understanding

1059
01:34:18.230 --> 01:34:23.630
of all of the systems and all of the elements
that made up the system.

1060
01:34:23.630 --> 01:34:30.309
We finished phase B but we started some additional
phase As, conceptual activities to try to

1061
01:34:30.309 --> 01:34:32.110
find a solution.

1062
01:34:32.110 --> 01:34:39.110
And I don't remember how we worked from the
recognition of the new configuration back

1063
01:34:41.059 --> 01:34:42.539
into the phase B guys.

1064
01:34:42.539 --> 01:34:49.059
Oh, we had a phase B extension to bring that
new configuration.

1065
01:34:49.059 --> 01:34:53.489
NASA's decision that we would go to an external
tank.

1066
01:34:53.489 --> 01:35:00.369
We modified the phase B studies again with
an extension that allowed the industry then

1067
01:35:00.369 --> 01:35:03.170
to catch up with what was going on.

1068
01:35:03.170 --> 01:35:08.760
And, by the time we finished that phase B
extension, we all the requirements in place,

1069
01:35:08.760 --> 01:35:15.760
we had all of the design understood well enough
to start phase C/D.

1070
01:35:17.570 --> 01:35:23.869
I think it is pretty amazing that a device
that was going to do what we wanted to do

1071
01:35:23.869 --> 01:35:29.110
with the shuttle, go into orbit, come back
in and land, the configuration really stayed

1072
01:35:29.110 --> 01:35:30.320
the same from that point on.

1073
01:35:30.320 --> 01:35:37.320
It is just amazing that we did that well,
I think, in definition so that when we really

1074
01:35:38.269 --> 01:35:44.329
started the C and D phase, which is the detailed
design, things stayed in place.

1075
01:35:44.329 --> 01:35:48.989
And that meant all the aerodynamic work that
had been done which was, by the way, the most

1076
01:35:48.989 --> 01:35:55.280
aerodynamic work, most wind tunnel testing
ever done on a new system, I think, logically

1077
01:35:55.280 --> 01:35:59.190
because we were working through the mach number
range.

1078
01:35:59.190 --> 01:36:06.190
And all of the other elemental testing that
had gone on all allowed us to keep the configuration

1079
01:36:06.840 --> 01:36:09.849
identical from that point.

1080
01:36:09.849 --> 01:36:16.849
MAN: I know there has been a lot of talk,
but it seems obvious now in hindsight that

1081
01:36:18.679 --> 01:36:25.679
the capsule, or the orbiter or what have you
should be on the top of the launcher to clear

1082
01:36:27.880 --> 01:36:32.469
it from the debris from the fuel tank or what
else.

1083
01:36:32.469 --> 01:36:37.739
What I'm wondering is at the time in the early
stages, was there ever any talk about safety

1084
01:36:37.739 --> 01:36:44.739
issues in putting the orbiter so low on the
hull on the side? MYERS: Yeah, there was a

1085
01:36:45.260 --> 01:36:50.260
lot of talk with Martin about foam shedding
at that time.

1086
01:36:50.260 --> 01:36:57.260
And, during the initial decision process for
putting it on the side, we had done studies

1087
01:37:02.170 --> 01:37:04.969
of stacking it in series.

1088
01:37:04.969 --> 01:37:11.380
And it was a weight problem.

1089
01:37:11.380 --> 01:37:17.190
It was literally an issue of the structural
weight of the orbiter mounted vertically because

1090
01:37:17.190 --> 01:37:22.119
of the terrific loads that you get separately
on that system.

1091
01:37:22.119 --> 01:37:29.119
And so we recognized that the side mounted
tank was going to be a much more economical

1092
01:37:33.769 --> 01:37:34.869
system.

1093
01:37:34.869 --> 01:37:38.579
So we had to worry about ice and foam.

1094
01:37:38.579 --> 01:37:42.110
And so we had a lot of discussion with Martin
Company at that time.

1095
01:37:42.110 --> 01:37:44.630
I think we did a lot of work down at Marshall,
too.

1096
01:37:44.630 --> 01:37:46.219
COHEN: That's a very good question.

1097
01:37:46.219 --> 01:37:52.210
In fact, I will try to develop some of that
thought process as we go along.

1098
01:37:52.210 --> 01:37:56.800
The key point to make is the following.

1099
01:37:56.800 --> 01:38:03.800
Should we have challenged the requirements?
Making the orbiter so big with the payload

1100
01:38:04.480 --> 01:38:08.539
base so big, it was very difficult to put
that on top.

1101
01:38:08.539 --> 01:38:10.849
If you made it smaller you could.

1102
01:38:10.849 --> 01:38:13.980
The real question, I think, and I was going
to ask Dale this question which is a follow-up

1103
01:38:13.980 --> 01:38:20.980
to yours, should NASA, once OMB and the White
House gave a cost constraint and once we had

1104
01:38:22.840 --> 01:38:26.679
the change in the Air Force requirements,
should NASA had said no, we don't want to

1105
01:38:26.679 --> 01:38:33.679
do it? And that is really a very fundamental
issue in terms of understanding your requirements,

1106
01:38:34.489 --> 01:38:39.179
because the requirements drove the 14-day
turnaround time, the fact that you wanted

1107
01:38:39.179 --> 01:38:44.269
large payloads, you wanted to get to the payloads,
put the orbiter where it was.

1108
01:38:44.269 --> 01:38:49.880
The fact that you needed a high-performance
engine and a lot of payload in orbit said

1109
01:38:49.880 --> 01:38:54.460
that you needed a liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen
engine to get the highest specific impulse

1110
01:38:54.460 --> 01:38:56.480
to get the engine at highest performance.

1111
01:38:56.480 --> 01:39:01.389
All that added together, the thermal protection
system was basically a glass house which was

1112
01:39:01.389 --> 01:39:05.130
incompatible with material coming off the
tank.

1113
01:39:05.130 --> 01:39:11.460
So there was some, you might say, incompatibilities
and requirements.

1114
01:39:11.460 --> 01:39:14.230
And the question is should we have challenged
those requirements more strongly? That's really

1115
01:39:14.230 --> 01:39:14.820
the fundamental question.

1116
01:39:14.820 --> 01:39:15.849
I don't think we should of.

1117
01:39:15.849 --> 01:39:19.539
But let me ask Dale because it would say what
you would have done with the orbiter.

1118
01:39:19.539 --> 01:39:21.170
MYERS: I did.

1119
01:39:21.170 --> 01:39:26.280
I challenged the requirements inside NASA.

1120
01:39:26.280 --> 01:39:31.730
I never challenged it with the military, but
I challenged it inside NASA with George Low

1121
01:39:31.730 --> 01:39:33.320
and with Jim Fletcher.

1122
01:39:33.320 --> 01:39:40.320
And their conclusion was that we would not
have a Manned Space Flight program if we challenged

1123
01:39:40.860 --> 01:39:43.980
the military requirements.

1124
01:39:43.980 --> 01:39:46.210
And then the rest of it followed.

1125
01:39:46.210 --> 01:39:48.280
HOFFMAN: But your question is a very, very
pertinent question.

1126
01:39:48.280 --> 01:39:48.739
MYERS: Yeah, it sure is.

1127
01:39:48.739 --> 01:39:51.150
HOFFMAN: It is a very key question in today's
environment.

1128
01:39:51.150 --> 01:39:53.519
Of course, you are infinitely smarter after
it happens, but your point is very well taken.

1129
01:39:53.519 --> 01:39:53.769
MAN: Do we have better systems engineering
tools now than we did in the `70s? And so,

1130
01:39:53.519 --> 01:40:00.519
if you used today's tools to design the shuttle
then it would be better? MYERS: I think.

1131
01:40:09.719 --> 01:40:10.610
Well, of course.

1132
01:40:10.610 --> 01:40:16.199
MAN: Would you have avoided cost overrun and
so on? MYERS: System engineering is better,

1133
01:40:16.199 --> 01:40:17.550
yes.

1134
01:40:17.550 --> 01:40:23.889
Cost estimation, I'm not so sure.

1135
01:40:23.889 --> 01:40:29.230
We had the best guys in the country doing
cost estimations on the shuttle, but we missed

1136
01:40:29.230 --> 01:40:35.300
it probably as much as anything else by just
not having those people understand the complexities

1137
01:40:35.300 --> 01:40:37.710
of operating in space.

1138
01:40:37.710 --> 01:40:43.940
And I think a lot more is known generally
now about the cost of operating in space.

1139
01:40:43.940 --> 01:40:50.940
I think that the next try at a reduction in
cost for getting into space will be a much

1140
01:40:52.909 --> 01:40:59.909
more significant activity, but I consider
cost estimation a part of system engineering.

1141
01:40:59.920 --> 01:41:06.920
A lot of it is much better, some of it is
not, I think.

1142
01:41:08.829 --> 01:41:11.929
COHEN: Well, just to follow-up a little bit.

1143
01:41:11.929 --> 01:41:17.329
When we designed the orbiter, we didn't have
CAD/CAM systems.

1144
01:41:17.329 --> 01:41:21.639
If you look in the aft end of the orbiter,
it is sort of like the hardest thing you have

1145
01:41:21.639 --> 01:41:24.170
ever seen because we didn't have a computer-aided
design.

1146
01:41:24.170 --> 01:41:28.739
If we had had that, we probably would have
done a much easier job in the aft end of the

1147
01:41:28.739 --> 01:41:32.340
orbiter and in the mid fuselage and in the
cockpit.

1148
01:41:32.340 --> 01:41:33.429
That is systems engineering.

1149
01:41:33.429 --> 01:41:39.599
You today have much more valuable tools than
we had during the Apollo program and during

1150
01:41:39.599 --> 01:41:43.699
the Shuttle program, but there still is a
lot of education you need in systems engineering.

1151
01:41:43.699 --> 01:41:46.340
And I think Dr.

1152
01:41:46.340 --> 01:41:51.659
Hoffman explained the famous triangle, cost,
schedule and performance.

1153
01:41:51.659 --> 01:41:56.599
And that is a continued work in systems engineering.

1154
01:41:56.599 --> 01:42:03.599
MYERS: And I always think of systems engineering
as the people who work across the system with

1155
01:42:05.920 --> 01:42:11.070
everybody in a real communication system.

1156
01:42:11.070 --> 01:42:16.789
And it is that kind of communication that
does good system engineering.

1157
01:42:16.789 --> 01:42:17.159
Tools are not.

1158
01:42:17.159 --> 01:42:20.269
OK? Anything else? MAN: Could you talk a little
bit about the Astronaut Office and what they

1159
01:42:20.269 --> 01:42:24.630
thought during these conversations? Were they
in favor of the recoverable fully piloted

1160
01:42:24.630 --> 01:42:31.630
booster and what were their input on the risk
conversations? MYERS: Yeah.

1161
01:42:36.619 --> 01:42:41.329
They were aware of it.

1162
01:42:41.329 --> 01:42:47.190
We kept in touch all the way through the development
program, including the decisions not to have

1163
01:42:47.190 --> 01:42:50.849
a launch abort system.

1164
01:42:50.849 --> 01:42:56.690
And they all recognized there was risk in
the program, no question about it.

1165
01:42:56.690 --> 01:42:57.340
Aaron, you were there.

1166
01:42:57.340 --> 01:42:59.300
What about it? HOFFMAN: Well, you said it
right.

1167
01:42:59.300 --> 01:42:59.880
I think that's right.

1168
01:42:59.880 --> 01:43:05.119
They were part of the design and development
team and the requirements team, so they were

1169
01:43:05.119 --> 01:43:06.179
very much in favor of it.

1170
01:43:06.179 --> 01:43:09.800
Of course the big issue, which we will talk
more about, is escape systems.

1171
01:43:09.800 --> 01:43:11.349
And we will go into that a little bit.

1172
01:43:11.349 --> 01:43:15.550
Why don't we have an escape system? And I'm
sure when Chris Kraft comes you can ask him

1173
01:43:15.550 --> 01:43:16.349
a lot of questions about that.

1174
01:43:16.349 --> 01:43:20.829
I'm sure he will have a lot to say about it,
but a lot of us will talk about that.

1175
01:43:20.829 --> 01:43:27.730
I think the astronauts were very much a part
of the design, the development, the requirements

1176
01:43:27.730 --> 01:43:28.699
in this phase of the program.

1177
01:43:28.699 --> 01:43:32.320
So they were very much a part of it.

1178
01:43:32.320 --> 01:43:36.739
MYERS: They weren't too much in favor of an
automatic landing system.

1179
01:43:36.739 --> 01:43:41.090
HOFFMAN: That's right.

1180
01:43:41.090 --> 01:43:48.090
MAN: That was my next question.

1181
01:43:49.800 --> 01:43:56.800
MAN: [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] When does it
appear clearly that the Space Shuttle was

1182
01:44:06.809 --> 01:44:13.809
not a low-cost access to space, or was it
already too late to change the program or

1183
01:44:15.480 --> 01:44:22.480
requirements? MYERS: I think the problem was
that we never got up to flight rate.

1184
01:44:28.750 --> 01:44:33.670
There were payloads waiting for us but we
never got to flight rate.

1185
01:44:33.670 --> 01:44:39.489
And, if we had gotten to a higher flight rate,
operational costs would have been lower.

1186
01:44:39.489 --> 01:44:44.579
Not enough lower because, no matter what we
would do, we never would have met our original

1187
01:44:44.579 --> 01:44:46.789
estimates on operational costs.

1188
01:44:46.789 --> 01:44:53.789
But, as you saw by that inflation story that
I had, costs today would be enormously higher

1189
01:44:58.360 --> 01:45:04.679
than that $10 million estimate that we had
in 1970 just because of inflation.

1190
01:45:04.679 --> 01:45:10.019
But we never got flight rate so we didn't
ever get to the lower cost.

1191
01:45:10.019 --> 01:45:17.019
And, in the early days, I wasn't there, but
it appears to me there was a lot of pressure

1192
01:45:17.280 --> 01:45:23.920
to get that flight rate up so that the cost
per flight would come down.

1193
01:45:23.920 --> 01:45:30.920
And that pressure got to be instilled into
the people at NASA and the industry to where

1194
01:45:31.800 --> 01:45:37.719
the decision made on that cold day in January,
or whatever it was, on the Challenger.

1195
01:45:37.719 --> 01:45:44.369
Even though there was evidence that those
O links had leaked in previous flights, the

1196
01:45:44.369 --> 01:45:46.179
decision was made to launch.

1197
01:45:46.179 --> 01:45:53.179
Now, that is a management policy issue associated
with trying to reduce the cost of flight.

1198
01:45:55.320 --> 01:45:59.039
And so that was a bad decision.

1199
01:45:59.039 --> 01:46:06.039
Anything else? HOFFMAN: I will say one other
thing on cost per flight.

1200
01:46:07.989 --> 01:46:14.989
You have to realize when you're dealing with
a reusable system it is hard to specify exactly

1201
01:46:15.400 --> 01:46:18.989
what you even mean by the cost of the flight.

1202
01:46:18.989 --> 01:46:24.829
You can take the total amount of money you
spend on the shuttle program every year and

1203
01:46:24.829 --> 01:46:26.429
divide that by the number of flights.

1204
01:46:26.429 --> 01:46:29.940
Well, this year we only had one flight which
came to a pretty high cost.

1205
01:46:29.940 --> 01:46:31.590
And last year the cost was infinite.

1206
01:46:31.590 --> 01:46:38.590
On the other hand, you can look at what is
the cost of flying six flights a year versus

1207
01:46:40.139 --> 01:46:43.099
what is the cost of flying seven flights a
year.

1208
01:46:43.099 --> 01:46:48.980
And that is what you would call in economics
the incremental cost of a flight.

1209
01:46:48.980 --> 01:46:53.750
Also, you have to realize that in the cost
of the flight there are an awful lot of things

1210
01:46:53.750 --> 01:46:54.920
that are wrapped up.

1211
01:46:54.920 --> 01:46:56.440
Not just the cost of the shuttle itself but
all of the mission operations, the flight

1212
01:46:56.440 --> 01:47:02.010
planning that has to be carried out.

1213
01:47:02.010 --> 01:47:09.010
There was one flight, a space lab flight I
think back in the `80s where they launched

1214
01:47:09.429 --> 01:47:13.869
the space lab mission, it was supposed to
be a two-week mission, but they had fuel cell

1215
01:47:13.869 --> 01:47:17.849
problem so they had to come back after four
days.

1216
01:47:17.849 --> 01:47:24.840
And, in order to give the scientists the opportunity
to get their flight data, they rescheduled

1217
01:47:24.840 --> 01:47:27.719
the flight for a few months later.

1218
01:47:27.719 --> 01:47:34.579
So they had the same crew, they had the same
flight plan so they didn't have all of the

1219
01:47:34.579 --> 01:47:41.550
expenses, the paperwork expenses, the training,
all of the re-planning and the experiments

1220
01:47:41.550 --> 01:47:43.110
were the same.

1221
01:47:43.110 --> 01:47:46.519
It was the least expensive flight that we
possibly could have run.

1222
01:47:46.519 --> 01:47:53.519
And, at the time, the estimates were that
that actually cost NASA probably about $120

1223
01:47:57.420 --> 01:47:58.840
million.

1224
01:47:58.840 --> 01:48:05.840
That was kind of the barebones estimate of
the incremental cost of a shuttle flight.

1225
01:48:07.159 --> 01:48:13.639
And then it can go from there all the way
up to billions of dollars if you just take

1226
01:48:13.639 --> 01:48:16.150
one flight a year like we have this year.

1227
01:48:16.150 --> 01:48:21.429
COHEN: Well, the other thought, too, I remember
going up to see Dale Myers when he was Associate

1228
01:48:21.429 --> 01:48:24.650
Administrator for Manned Space Flight and
I was the Orbiter Project Manager.

1229
01:48:24.650 --> 01:48:26.369
As he pointed out, we had four computers.

1230
01:48:26.369 --> 01:48:32.030
The original thought is if one computer went
out on the ground we would lift off with three

1231
01:48:32.030 --> 01:48:33.059
computers.

1232
01:48:33.059 --> 01:48:34.489
And that's what we talked about.

1233
01:48:34.489 --> 01:48:36.190
Well, of course, that never happened.

1234
01:48:36.190 --> 01:48:38.440
I mean, not only that, we have five computers
now.

1235
01:48:38.440 --> 01:48:42.739
We actually have a fifth computer which is
a backup computer.

1236
01:48:42.739 --> 01:48:49.739
So things change, environments change, and
we were going to do very routine payloads.

1237
01:48:50.320 --> 01:48:53.989
We were going to take it up, launch a payload
and come back down, just very routine payloads.

1238
01:48:53.989 --> 01:48:56.590
Almost every payload today is different.

1239
01:48:56.590 --> 01:49:02.099
And it does take that large amount of infrastructure
to get that.

1240
01:49:02.099 --> 01:49:08.980
MYERS: One of the cost elements in our cost-effectiveness
study was a reduction in the cost of scientific

1241
01:49:08.980 --> 01:49:14.679
payloads because we were going to have sort
of a boilerplate bus.

1242
01:49:14.679 --> 01:49:21.679
A heavy, rugged bus that had power and communications.

1243
01:49:22.769 --> 01:49:29.769
And the scientists would bring their experiments
to this bus, put it on this standard vehicle,

1244
01:49:29.880 --> 01:49:34.699
take it into orbit, launch or keep it, depending
on what the experiment was, then bring it

1245
01:49:34.699 --> 01:49:35.590
back.

1246
01:49:35.590 --> 01:49:40.550
And we were going to have this standard bus
that was going to be one of the big improvements

1247
01:49:40.550 --> 01:49:42.889
in cost of the science payloads.

1248
01:49:42.889 --> 01:49:48.519
So we showed a reduction in the cost of scientific
activity in our cost-effectiveness studies.

1249
01:49:48.519 --> 01:49:49.179
That never happened.

1250
01:49:49.179 --> 01:49:53.769
The science guys never could accept the idea
of an independent bus.

1251
01:49:53.769 --> 01:50:00.769
HOFFMAN: We could go on talking for a long
time, but it is the end of the class.

1252
01:50:01.159 --> 01:50:03.489
Let's thank Dale Myers again.

1253
01:50:03.489 --> 01:50:05.360
[APPLAUSE] MYERS: Thank you.

1254
01:50:05.360 --> 01:50:06.760
I enjoyed it.

1255
01:50:06.760 --> 01:50:11.219
HOFFMAN: So send me your bios and have a good
weekend and see you next Tuesday.