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NASA Johnson Space Center
Oral History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
William D.
Reeves
Interviewed by Rebecca Wright
Houston, Texas – 1 March 2010
Wright: Today is
March 1, 2010. This oral history with Bill Reeves is being conducted
for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas.
Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. Thanks
for coming in again today to visit with us and making this your third
session. We appreciate all the time you’re giving to the project.
We ended our last interview with your sharing experiences working with
the Shuttle Program. During that time you were also involved various
ways with the Space Station Program. I thought we could start today
with the focus on Station and ask if you’d share details of when
you served as one of the 13 members of the Source Evaluation Board to
select the contractor for Space Station Freedom.
Reeves: Okay. I
was selected as a flight director in 1983 and went over to the office
then and was in the training process and already into supporting flights
as a flight director when [Space Shuttle] Challenger [accident, STS
51-L] happened in 1986. When the Challenger accident happened, everything
stopped for about a year and a half while the agency recuperated from
the accident, did the investigation, and to get back on track. It was
during that period of time that those of us in operations that normally
supported Shuttle flights, since there weren’t any, were looking
for various things to do. Tommy [W.] Holloway was head of the Flight
Director’s Office at that time. It just happened that the Source
Selection Board for Work Package 2 for the Space Station Freedom Program
was about to start. They needed a representative for MOD [Mission Operations
Directorate] or for operations to be on that Source Board, so he asked
me if I would go over and do that.
It was [to] be a six-month job, which turned into an 18-month job, so
I went over. We were in an offsite building. It was a 13-member board
but then you have a whole lot of people involved, a lot of separate
technical panels and operations panels. The first task of the Source
Board is to write the RFP or the request for proposal, so you’re
pulling all of the requirements together for the Space Station and documenting
the requirements in the request for proposal that’s going to go
out for the contractors to bid on.
Now the way Space Station Freedom was set up, four Centers were the
main work packages, they called them, Work Package 1, 2, 3 and 4. Work
Package 1 was [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, MSFC, Huntsville,
Alabama], Work Package 2 was JSC, Work Package 3 was [NASA] Goddard
[Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland], and Work Package 4 was [NASA]
Kennedy Space Center [KSC, Florida]. Each of the four Centers that represented
a work package were to let a prime contract to a prime contractor to
do their part of the Space Station Program, with Kennedy, of course,
being the launch operations, JSC the operations part of it, and was
also the design Center for the Station.
I served on that Source Board and drew on the operations organization
to bring in people to help write requirements and document them in the
RFP. Then when the RFP went out, the contractors that wanted to bid
on the contract would bid on it and write their proposal. They would
respond to the requirements in the RFP, and then they would cost how
much they would do it for. It was the job of the Source Board to take
all of the proposers, the contractors that were proposing on the contract,
and go through their proposals and score it and rate it and make a selection
recommendation to the Source Selecting Official, who was in Washington
[D.C.] at [NASA] Headquarters. They would make the ultimate decision,
but it would be based on the Source Board’s recommendation. Seldom
does the Source Selecting Official ever go against the Source Board.
They’re basing their decision based on the Source Board.
The two contractors involved for Work Package 2, [North American] Rockwell
[Corporation] and McDonnell Douglas, were the two bidders. There were
several others that originally proposed, but they didn’t make
what’s called best and final, so it got down to just those two,
and we had two main proposals to evaluate. As I remember it they were
significantly different design concepts that Rockwell and McDonnell
came up with that they were proposing. There was a really broad spread
on cost between the two. I can’t go into a lot of details on it,
because I think even today a lot of that is restricted or proprietary
information, and I doubt if I could remember it anyway. At any rate
we went through the whole process and we wound up selecting McDonnell
Douglas as the Work Package 2 prime contractor.
So everything was off and running. We got through the Challenger down
period, we got back to return-to-flight [STS-26]. Once we finished the
Source Selection Board exercise I went back to the Flight Director’s
Office and started supporting Shuttle flights. The Space Station Program
was a totally separate program. It was headquartered at Reston, Virginia,
where they moved the Program Office. They were off designing and building
Space Station Freedom. We knew one of these days we were going to have
to start building it, but it takes years to do that.
I went back to the Flight Director’s Office and that was when
my first lead job was the Hubble Space Telescope deploy mission. I went
back to working on that and supported several other Shuttle flights.
Then in about 1990, when we successfully deployed the Hubble Space Telescope,
STS-31, we flew that mission and at the end of that mission I went back
to the Flight Director’s Office. I may have already covered this
in the prior session but I don’t know if I did or not, but I had
decided that it was time to go do something different. I’d been
a flight director already for seven or eight years. That’s usually
about the time that you like to stay in one job before you get the itch
to go do something different. I had an opportunity to go over to the
Space Shuttle Program Office. Leonard [S.] Nicholson was the Space Shuttle
Program Manager at the time, and he asked me to come over to the Space
Shuttle Program Office. I went over there and I started as a branch
chief in the Cargo Engineering Branch under Larry [E.] Bell, under Leonard
Nicholson. That was just to get my feet wet in the Program Office. Leonard
told me right up front, “I just want you to spend a short time
here and get the feel of the Program Office and learn the ropes.”
What he had in mind was they were creating a new office called the Space
Shuttle/Space Station Integration Program Office. He wanted me to go
to work in that. He wanted me to help set that office up. Jim [James
L.] Smotherman was over there, head of the nucleus of that office. It
was an office of one at that time basically, so after six [to] nine
months I went to work with Jim and we started trying to set up the Space
Shuttle/Space Station Integration Program Office. What that was all
about was everybody knew that coming down the road was the Space Station,
and all these pieces of Space Station, and assembly of the Space Station
[had to use] the Shuttle.
It was something totally new and totally different than anything we’d
ever done before, so we were trying to define the basic requirements
and the design changes that we would have to make to the Shuttle in
order to be able to build a Space Station off of it. So my experience
on the Source Board really paid off because I had intimate knowledge
of how the Space Station was going to be designed and how it was going
to be put together, and how many flights it took, and basically what
it really meant to go build this.
If you remember in some of the earlier exercises we went through, I
said several times it’s always amazing how you just constantly
keep building on your experience and your knowledge as you learn things.
The other thing that really paid off was my experience in the development
of the robotic arm for the Shuttle and all of the robotics because robotics
was a major player in building the Space Station.
The other thing that worked out really well was the fact that I had
started in cargo engineering under Larry Bell, and I learned a lot from
Larry Bell in a very short period of time. He was one of the greatest,
smartest engineers I’ve ever met. He’s an incredible guy.
I learned a lot from him real quick, and then we started looking at
the Shuttle payload bay and said, “How are we going to do this?”
There was one big issue that was unresolved, and that was how the Shuttle
was going to attach to the Space Station on each flight when it would
go back.
There were two camps. There was a camp that said we want to build a
docking interface on the Shuttle where we fly up to the Station and
we dock to it. There was another camp that wanted to fly up to proximity
to the Station and have the robotic arm reach out and grab the Station
and pull the two vehicles together. It was an engineering challenge
to figure out what was the best approach. I was working on the berthing
option, which was using the robotic arm to berth the Station and the
Shuttle together. The Engineering Directorate over here at JSC was championing
the docking interface, which was to use a Russian-derived docking mechanism
on a docking tunneled in the payload bay.
Each method had its own set of pros and cons. The people that were against
the robotic option said if the arm doesn’t work you’re out
of business. Well, you were out of business anyway because you had to
have the arm to pick up all the different pieces and put it on the Station,
so that argument didn’t stand up. The problems with the docking
approach was that you would have to take the airlock, which was at that
time in the crew cabin of the Shuttle, and you would have to move the
airlock into the payload bay into what was called the external airlock
and put the docking mechanism on top of it. But the problem with that
was it took up a significant portion of the payload bay that would no
longer be available for putting payloads in, so it would use up part
of the capacity of the Shuttle. If you went that approach, it influenced
the design of the segments of the Station, because they could only be
so big and so long or else they wouldn’t fit in the payload bay.
I’m going to get off on some tangents here but they’re all
relevant. It was during that process, since I was working the berthing
option, that we discovered a problem with the robotic arm in terms of
its original design. The original design of the arm requirements were
that it could handle a payload up to 60,000 pounds’ mass. Of course
in orbit it doesn’t weigh anything, but you still have to move
the mass around. That was the design requirements, and that’s
what it was designed to. That was the maximum size payload that a Shuttle
could carry.
But the problem was that as you built the Space Station and it started
getting bigger and bigger and bigger, once the Station exceeded 60,000
pounds, basically, or the size of the orbiter, which was around 240,000
pounds, when you got up and grabbed hold of the Station to berth the
two together you’re essentially handling up to a 240,000-pound
mass. If the Station is bigger than the Shuttle, instead of pulling
the Station to the Shuttle you’re pulling the Shuttle to the Station.
The whole point was the arm had to have the capability to handle a 240,000-pound
payload, which it wasn’t designed to do.
We started working with the Canadians and the Payload Deployment and
Retrieval System Program Office and found out that there was a way to
fix that problem, and a fairly simple fix to it. It just so happened
that the arm was starting to get old, if you can believe it, but this
is in the 1992, 1993 timeframe, so the robotic arm at that time was
already coming up on nine years old. The design itself was 10 or 15
years old. The technology that it used was old technology and already
starting to become a potential issue in the future. Since Station was
going to go out into 2010, 2015, who knew what time period at that point,
the robotic arm, which was absolutely necessary to build the Station,
was going to start becoming obsolete. You couldn’t even get spare
parts for it.
We worked up a joint program with the Canadians and I funded it out
of my budget in that Shuttle/Station Integration Office to go spend
a whole lot of money with the Canadians to bring the robotic arm up
to state of the art technologywise. We would send each arm back to Canada.
They would tear it apart and upgrade it. At the same time they would
upgrade its capability to handle larger and larger payloads, up to the
size of the orbiter.
It started out if the berthing technique was the way we decided to go
you would have to do this, but even if that wasn’t the way you
went, this was something you needed to do anyway, so we went ahead and
did it. It turns out it’s a really good thing we did, because
the arm has just been incredible through this whole thing. It hasn’t
had a single problem. It’s a single-point failure in the entire
assembly of the Station, and it’s just been a beautiful piece
of equipment. Not only that, they designed the Station arm off of the
upgraded Shuttle arm and took that same design technology into the new
arm for the Station, so it was a good deal all the way around.
We had several big meetings with all the powers that be on the berthing
versus docking issue and it was decided to go with the docking mechanism.
The primary reason was you had to have a tunnel anyway. Once you hooked
the two vehicles together the crews had to be able to crawl through
the tunnel and exchange between the two spacecraft. You had to carry
stuff through the tunnel from the Shuttle to the Station and vice versa,
so since you were going to have to have a tunnel anyway, just go ahead.
The engineers were able to solve all of the technical issues with docking
the two vehicles together. That was a concern. You [have] two massive
vehicles coming together, and the interface has to tolerate the loads
that are generated when the two vehicles come together. They figured
all that out.
We moved the airlock out of the mid-deck, which made the mid-deck bigger
for the crew. We moved it out into the payload bay, then we generated
all of the interface control documents that basically defined how much
of the payload bay and where the center of gravity had to be, and how
much mass, and how big a volume was available to Space Station to design
their Station off of. We fed all that information back to Station, and
that influenced their design.
Everything was off and running and all this stuff was working real good
and we were headed down that road when they canceled the Space Station
Freedom Program. There was a lot of politics involved, and I don’t
even know all the ins and outs, but there were budget issues, there
were technical issues. I can interject my own opinion in a lot of it,
but it is my own opinion. Part of the problem was the Freedom Program
never—up front when they did the four work packages, they never
put in place an integrating contractor or a mechanism to integrate the
four work packages. NASA was going to do that themselves at the Program
Office level at Reston, and they just didn’t have the capability
to do that.
They discovered late in the game that they needed an integrating contractor,
so they let an integration contract. Grumman [Corporation] won that
contract and came in as the integrating contractor, but unfortunately
it was too late. By then the four independent work packages with their
primes were off and running with their designs. The contracts were all
in place. There weren’t any hooks in those contracts for the prime
[contractors] at each of the four work packages to talk to this integrating
contractor because they didn’t even exist when their contracts
were signed. The whole thing just really came apart, so the agency decided
to cancel the Space Station Freedom Program. They went into this big
redesign effort where they were going to redesign the Space Station
and try to fix all of the brokes in the program and get it back under
control. That was all to take place up at Crystal City, [Virginia].
That was the center of control of all this. It was close to Reston,
which was where the Freedom Program Office was, and it was close to
Headquarters.
It was about that time several things happened that affected me personally
because I was in the [Shuttle] Program Office at that time. There was
an Assembly Office over in Mission Operations Directorate where I had
come from originally, that had been created to try to define the operational
assembly sequences and how you would operationally fly each flight and
put the Station together, which piece goes up when and what has to go
first and how do you put this thing together.
Phil [Philip L.] Engelauf was in MOD and he set up that office. Much
much later Phil became a flight director as well, but he set up that
office and then something happened. I don’t remember where Phil
went, but Bill [William H.] Gerstenmaier wound up taking over that office,
so he was managing the Assembly Office. Of course you know Bill Gerstenmaier
now is the deputy AA [Associate Administrator] at Headquarters, but
Gerstenmaier decided about the time of this Crystal City effort and
this redesign, he decided that he wanted to go back to Purdue [University,
West Lafayette, Indiana] and get his PhD, so he was going to take a
sabbatical and leave the agency for a while and go back to school.
The Program Office over where I was was reorganizing and doing a lot
of things. They needed this Assembly Office really bad to support the
Space Station redesign in Crystal City. Since Gerstenmaier was leaving
they needed somebody to head that office and to work with Crystal City
and all the folks up there to do this redesign. I told them I had the
experience. I was familiar because of my Source Board experience and
the Shuttle/Station Integration Office work that I had done. I was real
familiar with everything going on. I told them I would go back over
there and take Gerstenmaier’s job and I would manage that office,
and I would go to Crystal City and support the redesign, on one condition.
The condition was that as soon as the redesign effort was over I would
return back to the Flight Director’s Office and go back there.
They agreed to that and I agreed to all of that and so that’s
what I did.
I went over there and I headed that Assembly Office. I spent a lot of
time at Crystal City. As the designers would come up with the different
designs we would take their designs and we would say, “How do
you put this in the Shuttle, and how do you put it together, and how
does it affect us operationally, and what does this mean to EVAs [extravehicular
activities], and to robotics.” So our product was to provide the
assembly sequences and here’s what would go up on each flight
and here’s the primary task that you would accomplish on each
flight. Every time they would change something we would react to that
change and would change the assembly sequences, so that’s what
we did.
It was very interesting. When we were at Crystal City we were in one
tower of the building working on this. Astronaut Bill [William M.] Shepherd
was the lead person that was managing that for the work that we were
doing. We kept hearing rumors and knew just through the grapevine that
there was some activity going on in a different tower at Crystal City
with the Russians, but we didn’t know what it was all about.
So we came up with this design that we were going to present as the
design we were going forward with. In fact we had pretty much wrapped
it all up and had come back here to JSC, and we were putting the spit
and polish on the presentation, getting it ready to go forward to Headquarters,
when we got a late-breaking input that by the way, whatever design you
all come up with has to include the Russian FGB tug [functional cargo
block] as part of the design. We said, “What’s a Russian
FGB tug?” because we didn’t even know what it was.
They provided some information on it. We were up here one weekend, we
virtually redesigned the assembly sequence and the Station interfaces
based on this late input that we’d gotten. All this time they
were off negotiating with the Russians. The [NASA] Administrator was
trying to pull the Russians into the program, but all that stuff was
way above our level and we didn’t know anything about it, at least
I didn’t. Maybe I’m naive and maybe somebody did, but I
sure didn’t know anything about it.
We came up with a new design that was presented, and that’s what
we wound up doing. NASA wound up novating, which is buying out all of
the work package contracts that had been let. There’s a process
in the government called novation of contracts where the government
can terminate existing contracts if it’s to the advantage of the
government. They basically just buy out the contract, so they novated
all of those prime contracts for the work packages. They did away with
the work packages, and they brought Boeing in as a single sole source
prime contractor for the new Space Station design. They did away with
Reston, and they centered the Program Office here at JSC. They put it
all back under one Program Office under one lead Center under one prime
contractor, which was exactly the right thing to do. If they hadn’t
done that I don’t know if they’d have ever gotten there.
But they did, and it was very successful. We now have a Space Station
on orbit because of it. Boeing did an incredible job. When you look
at how well this has all gone together, it’s pretty amazing.
We came back from Crystal City. The Program Office got reorganized.
The contracts got reorganized, and I went back to the Flight Director’s
Office. It turned out fortuitous. Like I told you earlier, every move
I’ve ever made I really had nothing to do with, I just fell into
it. I went back to the Flight Director’s Office to get ready for
Station while the Station was being redesigned, and there was a gap
there before we’d actually start getting any hardware in the door
to start flying. Since they had brought the Russians into the program
they wanted to start working with the Russians, so this Phase 1 Program
got defined, which was flying the Shuttle to the Russian space station
Mir, which was already up there in existence.
I think we already covered this. I’m not sure.
Wright: You talked
about working with the Russians and setting that up.
Reeves: Okay, but
I had gotten in on that. We had several goals, the goals being fly the
Shuttle to the space station Mir to prove and to establish the relationships
and the procedures and everything we needed to do work with the Russians
in space, so I got to be the first flight director that went over to
Moscow with the first team of flight controllers the first time we flew
the Shuttle to the Mir. I went over early with this group to set up
operations in their control center. They gave us a couple of rooms and
we established the consoles over there that we were going to use. They
were Russian consoles. We started putting in place all the documentation
we needed and trying to define all the primary contacts on both sides
that we needed.
Then we came up with the concept that we wanted to have a small flight
control team in Moscow during the mission so that you had this face-to-face
because of the language barriers and the communication barriers and
everything else that we hadn’t established yet and were establishing
as we went. So I stayed over there during the first flight of the Shuttle
to the Mir and several flights after that and managed the flight control
team from over there, the little group we took. Of course the big flight
control team [was] over here.
Then the Russians decided this is a really good thing and a good idea,
so they put a few Russians over here in our [Mission] Control Center,
the same arrangement. All that evolved from those early days. That worked
out really well. That was just a lot of fun working that program. A
very successful program.
What we did in Phase 1 went a long way toward making Space Station as
successful as it has been, because I shudder to think how it would have
been had we not done that. Whoever came up with that concept was really
thinking straight, because that was the right thing to do.
So then we did the Phase 1 Program, then we got closer to Station. Station
hardware started coming in. The first flight of the Station was to fly
the FGB tug [Zarya].
Wright: Now you
knew what that was.
Reeves: Yes, now
I knew what that was. The first node. In fact Bill Shepherd was on that
first crew that went up and crewed it.
Wright: We found
it very interesting that you were there for the first flight for the
Shuttle-Mir Phase 1 Program and then yet you got to go back for the
first flight.
Reeves: Yes, I
was there for the first flight.
Wright: Of course
there were differences because you had all that set up, but tell us
about being there for that, because it’s such a historic time
of launching a whole new program with an international partner.
Reeves: Yes it
was. You knew you were starting something really big that was going
to last a long time. I had gotten to know the Russians so well, and
gotten so involved in their program, that it was almost like losing
a family member when they had to get rid of the Mir. The decision was
made to get rid of the Mir and we hated to see that go, but everybody
was on board with going ahead and building the Space Station. So I got
to go back over there and lead the flight control team for the first
Space Station flight. I was over there for the first couple.
Wright: Did you
have new members of your team?
Reeves: Yes, it
was constantly a different team. The very first team that I took over
there was in late 1994. The head of the Flight Director’s Office
told me just to take a team, put together a team and take it over there,
so I just tried to figure out how many I needed and what disciplines
I needed. I figured well, one of our biggest problems is going to be
timelines and flight plans and crew schedules and the stuff the flight
activities officers [FAO] do, which is put together the timelines and
orchestrate the operational timeline.
I said I [have] to have an FAO, so I picked an FAO, and then I said
if we’re going to have any problems technicalwise on the first
flight it’s going to be communications. So I took a communication
officer, somebody who understood all the different communication modes.
I said we’re liable to have some control problems docking to the
Mir. If we got into any kind of control issues between the two vehicles
fighting for control, or controlling the masses, I wanted an expert
in guidance, navigation and control [GNC], so I picked a GNC officer
to go with me. The team was only five people, four people and me. The
other one was a mechanical systems officer. If we had any problems with
the docking mechanisms or anything like that I wanted a mechanical person
there.
So that was the team that we took over there. I think of all of those
people the busiest was the FAOs. Gail [A.] Schneider was the FAO that
went over there on the first mission with me. She deserves a lot of
credit for laying a lot of the initial groundwork. She got to know her
counterparts over there extremely well, and on a personal basis, which
was something that we learned early on, that in order to be successful
with the Russians it all relied on personal relationships. Forget politics,
forget protocol, forget all that other nonsense, you had to develop
trust in certain individuals and they had to trust you or you wouldn’t
get anything done, so we learned that early on and we established some
really good relationships that still exist today and still benefit the
program today. Gail did a lot of that with the flight activities folks,
so that worked out good. It’s been nothing but a huge success.
Like I said, I think I already covered the Phase 1 Program and all the
ins and outs of it.
Wright: Were you
over there for Shepherd’s flight?
Reeves: Yes, I
was there for Shepherd’s flight.
Wright: What were
your thoughts about him going up in a Russian rocket?
Reeves: I knew
Bill very well and had gotten to know him over the years. It was great
to see Bill get that crew selection and go up. He was the right guy
to go up early on and get things started. It was a historic moment,
it really was. One of the things you look back on, I can go to my grave
and you start thinking about footprints you left behind, well, that’s
one of the footprints I left behind. I’m proud of what I did and
proud of that whole team. That was just a really good team effort.
It was the start of something really big. We got this thing built now.
This last flight just finished it. It’s hard to believe here it
is 2010 and all this was back in the 1990s when we started all this.
Wright: Before
you left the Flight Director’s Office you were able to serve as
a flight director for STS-97.
Reeves: Yes, that
was my last flight, which was also another significant event, because
that was the flight that took the first big solar arrays up to Space
Station. Up until that time the only power on Station was from the Russian
modules that had some small arrays and limited power, but before we
could start adding the bigger modules and the labs that consumed a lot
of power, we had to start getting some power systems up there. As part
of the assembly sequence we were to take up eventually four big sets
of arrays, but STS-97 was the very first set.
I had already decided from a career standpoint that—I don’t
know if I said this or not back in the very first session we had—that
when I was in college I had put together a career plan that said—before
I even accepted the first job at NASA when I got out of college—that
I was going to go get a government 30-year career job, and then retire
from the government. At that time I thought I was actually going to
teach and just get a teacher’s job to supplement my retirement
and work nine months out of the year and live happily ever after. Of
course now I wouldn’t teach. There’s not enough money in
the world to get me to teach. I had done my 30 years and I had a full
career with NASA, a full wonderful career with NASA. I had done just
about everything at NASA that I thought I could do. I’d been with
them 31 years, 32 years, somewhere in that timeframe. I was starting
to think about retiring from NASA and decide whether I wanted to do
anything else or just retire.
But I was working 97 as a lead flight director job, and I wanted to
go out on that flight. That’s a good flight to go out on. One
more major accomplishment; get the first set of arrays up there, then
call it a day. Well, 97 kept slipping. There were slips due to various
reasons. It slipped out, so I wound up staying probably almost two years
longer than I had intended to. I stayed with NASA for 34 years. I had
34 years’ civil service in when I retired in 2001. The last couple
of those years was getting ready for 97 following the slips.
So we did STS-97. The minute the flight was over I knew it was time
to hang it up. It turned out again just fate. I had become aware of
a really good job available over at USA, United Space Alliance, as a
Deputy Associate Program Manager for Orbiter, which was dealing with
the orbiter, which I was familiar with, but it was a hardware job. I
always had been a hardware person. It was just very appealing, the kind
of thing I’d really like to sink my teeth into. I’d spent
my whole career basically in operations. This was an engineering job.
This was hands-on engineering and hardware.
I thought that would really be fun, so I decided to retire and I retired
on a Friday and I went to work for USA the following Monday.
Wright: Not much
of a break.
Reeves: I took
the weekend off for retirement. I went over to USA as the Deputy Associate
Program Manager for Orbiter. I just couldn’t imagine how much
fun it was. Working over in that world was so different than what I
had always done, because in the operations world that’s a tough
job. I mean a really tough job, because you are operationally integrating
everything and you have to be knowledgeable of everything going on.
It’s like being a pilot or driving a car or operating a vehicle.
You know somebody built this vehicle, but you don’t know all the
ins and outs of how they built the vehicle and how they designed it
and what all they tested and what all to worry about, but you know how
to operate it. That’s the way we were in operations. We know how
to operate the Shuttle; we know how to fly the Shuttle. We know what
it takes for all of these different systems to integrate together and
operate. We have to understand its limitations and you really have to
know a lot about it.
But when you go over into the contractor side, into the hardware side
of it, all of a sudden you find out there’s people worrying about
things that you never knew people worried about. It’s unbelievable.
You’d run into M&P people, which are materials and processing.
These people are experts on the materials, the metals, the paints, the
solvents, the glues, everything that goes into building a Shuttle that
has any materials or processing involved. These are the experts on it.
You run into these guys that are just unbelievably smart in terms of
their very narrow little world, but they know everything there is to
know about what kind of glue to use for what and what its limitations
are and what kind of metal to use on this screw and what kind of metal
to use on this bracket. It’s just amazing. Then you find out there’s
people that worry about nuts and bolts and washers. Every little teeny
part of this monstrous vehicle. Just millions of parts. The specifications
and the requirements and the test requirements and everything that goes
along with all that stuff.
Then the integrated systems. There are specialists on each integrated
system. There’s testing constantly going on all over the world
on all of this. These people are the ones that are following and managing
all of that and keeping track of it. They’re the ones that tell
the Program Office and the operations guys—and I use guys as a
generic term—that tell them what to worry about and what not to
worry about and what you can do and what you can’t do. It’s
invaluable. It is a new world every day you come to work. You can’t
make this stuff up. It’s amazing.
You come in one day and all of a sudden the first thing you do, we’d
have a telecon every morning, and we’re tagging up with KSC and
with the Rockwell plant that built the Shuttles originally and with
all of the various vendors. I woke up this morning and went to work
and there’s a problem with an APU, auxiliary power unit, valve
or something that failed in some test somewhere in the world. Now all
of a sudden you [have] to worry about it. You [have] to figure out [if]
this [is] a generic problem, does it affect the entire fleet, is this
an isolated problem, it only happened to this one particular valve,
it doesn’t even affect the fleet, and then you’re off and
running. There’s a new topic every hour every day coming up. Very
very busy. Very busy time.
These are the folks that have to come in and certify the hardware is
ready to go fly every flight. You have to sign a COFR, certification
of flight readiness, for every single system and interface and environment
and all that.
Well, I did that for about three years and supported Orbiter. I could
still be doing it today and be the happiest person in the world. I still
am the happiest person in the world, but I would have been happy doing
that from then on, but within the company there was a series of events
that happened.
One of the associate program managers of one of the departments became
critically ill and terminal, and had health issues. Program integration
was headed by [H.] Neal Hammond as the Associate Program Manager at
the time, and the individual that was having the problem was over in
flight software. Neal Hammond’s deputy in program integration
had come from the software world and they had some immediate problem
they had to fix. In fact this happened over the Christmas holidays.
The Program Manager, Howard DeCastro, called me at home over the holidays
and said this problem had come up. They said that what they really needed
to do was move Neal Hammond’s deputy, who had software experience,
over to manage the software department. They wanted to know if I would
be willing to come over and be Neal’s deputy in program integration
and help out with program integration. I said, “Sure, whatever
you need.”
So after the holidays were over they moved me over there and I became
Neal’s deputy in program integration. Program integration was
again a totally different world. It’s a more analytical world
as opposed to a hardware world like Orbiter is. One of the biggest responsibilities
program integration had is systems engineering and integration, SE&I.
These are the people who define the environments that the vehicle has
to fly through and has to operate in, and then they have to certify
that the vehicle you’re going to fly and the vehicle you just
flew met all of its requirements and stayed within all its limits. You’re
talking about everything from the launch environment, the winds, the
weather at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida], the winds all the way up during
ascent, the loads on the vehicle, the thermal environments, the electromagnetic
field environments, the structural environments. When it docks to Space
Station the structural loads and environments between the two vehicles.
All that is what SE&I in program integration[PI] does.
Of course Boeing is the prime subcontractor supporting that office,
so you manage that subcontractor. That’s where a lot of the skills
exist, the hard-core engineering skills are in the subcontractor. Then
also in program integration we have configuration management which are
all of the people who take care of all the documentation on the Shuttle
Program and make sure all the requirements are updated, and support
all of the boards and panel meetings and get the presentations together,
the agendas, the minutes, the actions that come out of the board meetings,
and make sure they follow up on them. If any documents are supposed
to be updated you get those updated, so that’s a very busy world.
We also have a cargo engineering office, which is responsible for the
design, fabrication of all of the interface hardware for the payloads
that we fly on the Shuttle. That [is] under me in PI. Every flight is
different. There’s interface cables required--different kind of
cables—for each payload that plug into the Shuttle and then plug
into the payload while the payload is in the Shuttle. We design those
cables and get them built, and we even build some of them. We make sure
the payloads fit into the payload bay. We’re the ones that determine
what order to put payloads in the payload bay and where everything has
to fit.
Then we have a management and integration office that is in charge of
all of the master schedules for the Shuttle Program, for the manifests
and for all the master scheduling. We have a department under us that
is responsible for all the packing of everything that goes inside the
Shuttle for each launch in the crew cabin, and everything that goes
inside the MPLMs, the [multi-purpose] logistics modules that fly up
to Space Station, all the stuff that’s going to Station. We pack
all that and manifest it. [Everything] that goes in the Russian Soyuz
or Progress vehicles that goes up to Station, we pack that from the
US side and ship it over there. Everything that comes back from Space
Station on the Shuttle we’re responsible for demanifesting it
and making sure it gets to where it’s supposed to go.
We have another department under me that’s the IT [Information
Technology] office, where we do all of the sustaining engineering for
all of the software applications for the Shuttle Program. They’ve
got all these different applications that take care of PRACA, which
is the Problem Reporting [and Corrective Action] system, or just multiple
applications that it takes to run a program. They’re on different
machines and systems all over the world or all over the country. We
have a department that’s responsible for sustaining that software
and the equipment interfaces to keep those systems and applications
up and running so that the program can function. Have I left anybody
out? IT, CM, SE&I, cargo engineering.
I have an office in Huntsville [MSFC] and I have an office in KSC, and
then most of our people are here. After I was Deputy APM [Associate
Program Manager] for Neal Hammond for a few years, the company moved
Neal Hammond over to business development. I took over as Associate
Program Manager for PI about three years ago. That’s what I’m
doing now, so I still run that organization, and will until we run out
of Shuttles, so that’s my plan right now.
I was here when STS-1 flew and I’d really like to be here when
the last one flies.
Wright: Do you
have specific processes that you are following now to start to close
the program out?
Reeves: Yes, there’s
lots of discussions going on about how to do that and when. The course
we’re on right now is to fly the manifest out and terminate the
program in September of this year, which would be the end of fiscal
year 2010. Now that’s a really success-oriented schedule. To be
able to fly the remaining flights in the time we’ve got left is
going to require a lot of luck. That says we can’t have any major
systems problems that cause slips, we can’t have any hurricanes
at the Cape, or in Houston, that cause us to roll the vehicle back at
the Cape or cause us to have a lot of personal damage in the area that
affects the people to where we have to stand down for a while. There’s
just so many different things, external factors that could play into
that, that you just don’t know for sure how long the program is
going to last.
Fortunately Congress took the language out of all of the legislation
that had a termination date for the program and said when you complete
the manifest. We have contract options that allow us to renew the contracts
at the stroke of a pen, to exercise options to keep the program going
to the end. But the end is in sight. There’s no fuzz on that.
The limiting thing that determines how long you can fly the Shuttle
is how many external tanks you have. They’ve stopped production
on the external tanks. The last few tanks are going through assembly
at MAF [Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, Louisiana] right now,
and as soon as that last tank goes through assembly and gets shipped
to the Cape, that’s it. That’s all we’ve got to fly,
unless Congress were to turn everything back around and say go build
some more tanks and fly some more Shuttles. That could be done.
It would probably be an interruption, a small or some interruption,
until you got production back up and running and got things going again.
The longer you wait to make a decision like that, the longer the gap
is going to be, but it could be done. I have no idea what’s going
to come out of Washington. We have our marching orders with the budget
that’s been laid out. Congress is doing battle over the budget
now as to whether or not to go along with it. Constellation Program
is funded through fiscal year 2010, so they’re not shutting anything
down right now. They’re still pressing on, but the 2011 budget
and beyond says no Constellation money, so Constellation is dead unless
Congress turns that decision back around.
It’s a terrible time. Our challenge is to keep our workforce focused
on flying Shuttles and doing it safe, every flight has got to be as
safe as the last one. The last flight has to be as safe as any of the
flights. Keeping a workforce focused that knows the program is going
to be over is tough, but I’ll tell you everything we hear, you
talk to these people, they are so dedicated to this program that they
want to stay here right to the end, and they want to make sure that
it’s safe, so I think we’ll be able to do it just fine.
Wright: I know
their dedication was shown returning the space program back to flight
after [Space Shuttle] Columbia [accident, STS-107]. You were in a different
role, you were no longer a civil servant. You were at USA when it happened.
Can you share with us where you were when you learned about it and then
what you did to help?
Reeves: Yes, that
was when I was in Orbiter. Like I said, I was deputy APM or Associate
Program Manager for Orbiter with USA. We had learned during the flight,
from the imagery that a large piece of foam had struck the wing of the
Orbiter. We looked at it, but we didn’t have any test data or
any history or anything to fall back on and say here’s what kind
of damage a piece of foam this big could do to the RCC, the reinforced
carbon-carbon, leading edge of the wing, so we really didn’t know
what it could do to it. The feeling was that it couldn’t hurt
it too bad.
But we also knew that you couldn’t tolerate any damage on entry.
We worked it as best we could with the data we had, which was very little.
There was just not much we could do. And then the other part of the
issue is even if you had known there was a gaping hole in the wing,
there was nothing you could have done about it. The crew’s fate
and the fate of that vehicle was determined at liftoff, the minute that
piece of foam came off going uphill, the script was written for the
end of that flight.
I was at home on entry day. I didn’t come in. I learned a long
time ago if you don’t have a specific role in what’s going
on in the Control Center, the last place you want to be is in the Control
Center. Even though I was a manager, I had delegated the responsibility
to Doug White, who was one of my managers in Orbiter. He was over there.
I knew he was in the MER [Mission Evaluation Room]. He’s perfectly
capable of handling anything that comes up. I’m available by BlackBerry
and telephone. It’s just part of a manager’s job to learn
how to delegate, so I was at home. I didn’t come in for the entry.
I didn’t come in for a lot of the entries, I still don’t.
Number one, having been a flight director and been in the Control Center,
the last thing you want is lots of people in there that are extraneous
and they don’t have a role. It just makes the whole job harder.
So I stayed home.
Doug White called me at home. This was just right after it broke up.
He called me at home. “Bill,” he said, “we just lost
the vehicle and the crew.”
I said, “You can’t be serious.”
He said, “Yeah.” So that was tough. That was really tough.
Of course I immediately went in, because I knew it was just going to
be chaotic. I went in, and I went into the MER, the Mission Evaluation
Room. Everybody was really down and wringing their hands and it was
a pretty sad time. I remember going into a room with Ralph [R.] Roe,
who was the NASA Orbiter Vehicle Manager, and Jim [James] Wilder, who
was my boss, he was Associate Program Manager for Orbiter for USA, and
me. There were several others of us in that room. We just started talking
about where does this go. We’ve got to start putting a plan together
as to where we go.
So we started diagramming on the board. There’s going to be a
big investigation board. We’re going to need this kind of expertise.
We’re going to need a panel to go look at this. We’re going
to need imagery experts to go collect all of the imagery that you can
get and look at every camera view that you’ve got. We’re
going to have a test team. We’re going to have various teams to
go look at different things, so we started right then that day designing
the architecture of the investigation team, if you will.
Then I guess it was a couple days later before we started having some
meetings over at the Center with the program managers, and started trying
to put some meat on the bones of the skeleton we’d created. Of
course everybody was coming in with their own ideas of how to go do
things. Finally got some structure put together for the investigation
team, then we also knew that there was going to be a team required to
go out in the field and collect as much of the vehicle as you could
possibly get. What to do with the pieces, and how to reconstruct the
vehicle, and see what you could learn from that.
That was an amazing effort. Amazing effort. Large contingent from KSC
went up there. Some folks from here went up into the piney woods of
East Texas and started setting up all the contacts with all of the different
state and local governments and get their assistance and organize search
parties and volunteers and get them all together and manage them. They
just got help from everybody. Everybody wanted to help. There were people
bringing in meals and drinks and water and stuff for the teams so that
they wouldn’t have to worry about that.
We had to have a plan for how to handle all the pieces you find, how
to document them, how to package them, where to send them, how to ship
them, get them back to the Cape, set up a building down at the Cape
to start bringing the pieces in, start putting this thing together.
Wright: Were you
still a part of the team that helped design this? You said initially
that day that there were three of you mapping it out. Were you still
part of the team doing that?
Reeves: Yes, I
was sitting in all the meetings over at JSC along with a cast of hundreds.
There were managers from all over, from all of the different contractors,
from NASA and all the different departments that were involved. They
all had pieces of the problem. For Jim Wilder and myself, our main customer,
our NASA government customer, was Ralph Roe, in the Vehicle Systems
Office for Orbiter. So we basically were there to do what he wanted
us to do and help him any way we could. We’d make suggestions
to him and then he would direct us to go do what we did.
We actually figured out what had happened. Out of that is where we are
today with inspections and repair techniques and improvements to the
foam on the tank and redesign of a lot of the tank. The big piece of
foam that came off came off of what was called the PAL ramp or protuberance
air load ramp. It was a foam ramp to keep airflow off of some lines
that run down the outside of the tank. It was through the analysis and
work that SE&I along with our government counterparts did that convinced
everybody that you don’t even need this PAL ramp, so we took it
off. None of the tanks that have flown since have this ramp even on
there, so we decided if this foam wanted to come off so bad, just take
it off. You don’t need it.
We even found the original guys that designed it on there originally.
They had legitimate reasons for thinking that they needed this on there,
but a lot has to do with the technology that existed at the time. When
they designed the tank back in the early days the technology they had
for doing what today we call computational flow dynamics, CFD, where
you understand airflow over surfaces and at different Mach numbers and
different speeds, you do that with computers now. Back then you did
it with wind tunnels and slide rules and calculators.
With the technology they had back then, they had determined to err on
the side of being conservative and saying we don’t quite understand
this flutter phenomenon with these lines, so let’s build a foam
ramp here to block off the airflow and not have to worry about it. That
was the logic they used, which was sound logic at the time, then it
just turned out that you don’t need it and the foam couldn’t
take the loads and it broke off.
To this day, you look at it and you think all of the things that had
to line up to take that vehicle and crew out are just incredible. It
had to be exact size piece of foam come off at the exact right time
and it had to hit at exactly the right spot at exactly the right orientation.
All that had to line up to cause that problem, but that’s the
way all accidents are. It’s never one thing, it’s always
a whole series of things. You always go back to try to figure out where
you can break the chain and stop it before an accident happens.
Wright: There were
a number of recommendations from the Columbia Accident Investigation
Board that were pertaining directly to the Orbiter. Did you have any
that were more challenging than others to implement?
Reeves: We implemented
everything they told us to do. We wound up building the OBSS [Orbiter
Boom Sensor System], which is the new short stubby arm or rigid arm
for the other side of the payload bay that had a bunch of sensors on
the end of it where you could take the robotic arm of the Shuttle and
grapple that, and then you can inspect the bottom side of the Shuttle
and the leading edge of the wings and the nose. All that had to be designed
and integrated into the Shuttle.
We did a lot of work on eliminating every possible source of debris
on the Shuttle itself. There’re little ceramic plugs that go in
holes where you bolt stuff down through the tile and then you have to
plug the hole with a plug that can stand the heat. We had to do a lot
of work on those things. Seals around the windows. The edges of thermal
blankets. Redesigned a lot of that. The attach points. We were involved
in a lot of the testing that was done over at Southwest Research over
in San Antonio [Texas] where they had an air cannon over there and they
shot unbelievable number of shots of different materials at both tile
and RCC to build a damage map of what this material can and cannot tolerate.
Out of that, the program developed a document that documents what is
allowable and what isn’t. That’s what the whole program
works to today, is trying to keep any debris that’s released within
acceptable tolerances.
You’re always going to have something come off. It’s pretty
difficult to build a rocket this big and have it accelerate from zero
to roughly 18,000 miles an hour in eight minutes and not expect something
to come off somewhere. Your problem is making sure that whatever does
come off doesn’t come off in pieces big enough to hurt you, or
at times or in places big enough to hurt you.
Then you have ground debris. We were involved in that investigation
too, where as the main engines light up and then the exhaust goes in
the flame pit, and then the solids light up and it kicks up ground debris
and it gets caught up in the recirculation of the exhaust plumes. Can
any of that hit the vehicle before it clears the tower and gets far
enough away where you can’t hit it anymore? We had to do lots
of analysis along that line.
This is just a difficult business. That’s why some of this future
stuff about the commercial industry getting in there I personally, and
I’m not alone, worry about—I don’t think they know
what they don’t know. Because of the years of experience that
we’ve had to work our way through and lost a few crews in that
learning process and vehicles. They’re going to also. They’re
going to have their growing pains. This is not easy. This is not an
easy business.
Wright: Did you
have any issues transitioning from a longtime civil servant to a contractor
employee?
Reeves: Actually
no I didn’t. I was surprised. Of course my whole life as a civil
servant, including the first day I walked on the job until the last
day when I left, you’re working arm in arm with [contractors].
It is truly a badgeless community. You hardly know the difference. When
I went over to the contractor side, I did learn some things that I wish
I had known when I was a civil servant. I was so naive as a civil servant.
I had power as a civil servant I didn’t know I had, until I got
on the contractor side and found out how subservient you were to the
civil service side. I didn’t realize it when I was on the civil
service side, but it’s a team thing. Everybody’s trying
to get to the same goal line. I have never ever in my nine years now
with a contractor, I have never had anybody say don’t do that
because it affects the profit of the company or something like that,
or don’t do what the government is asking us to do because that’s
against our bottom line. Those kinds of conversations have never taken
place. I’m glad to see that. It’s all about accomplishing
what we’re trying to accomplish the best way we can.
NASA on the civil service side has limitations. They can only have a
certain number of civil servants. You can only be so big. You can only
have so much expertise. The government has to rely on the contractor
community and the expertise that the contractor community has. It has
to be a joint effort. The government can’t do it alone.
Now the pendulum is swinging in the direction of can the contractors
do it alone, can the commercial sector do it by themselves. Well, maybe
they can. Maybe it’s time to do that. I was philosophizing the
other day with a couple people. I told them when you think back to Charles
Lindbergh, Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the ocean was a privately
funded venture. It wasn’t government-sponsored, it was privately
funded. There was a government prize, just like today there’s
a government prize for launching vehicles, which back then was I think
$25,000 or something like that, which was a lot of money. But the venture
that he did was privately funded. What that did was it proved a concept.
It proved that humans could fly across the ocean, and it was within
our capability.
Then from that people started saying well, goodness gracious, there’s
all kinds of things you can do with this. You can fly people. You can
[fly] mail. So out of that developed a complete industry, and we have
what we have today.
NASA has proven all of the concepts for spaceflight, especially for
low Earth orbit, even going to the Moon. Maybe it is time for the commercial
sector to step up to the plate and do it. The thing that’s missing
is the profit motive for the commercial sector. Here in the beginning
a big part of the customer for the commercial sector is going to be
the government, but sooner or later the commercial—and you see
it now some. Ariane has been successful in launching commercial satellites
for commercial satellite companies and commercial communications companies.
The Russians have launched commercial stuff, so it’s a fledgling
industry but it’s off and running.
Exploration, to do that commercially, or scientific research on orbit
in a space station, there’s a lack of what’s in it for me
for the commercial sector. Where’s the return on the investment?
That’s the difficult part.
Wright: So you
don’t see yourself venturing off to another adventure.
Reeves: Well, never
say never.
Wright: You may
end up working a little bit more retirement on this one.
Reeves: Well, you
never say never. My entire life has been dedicated to the space program.
I still own a piece of it. If there’s anything I could do to influence
or help in the future I would probably have trouble saying no to something.
I would like to have a little longer than a weekend off for retirement,
just to do a few things, before I get too old to do it.
Wright: Looking
back on all the years that you spent with the space agency, is there
one in particular time or something you consider to be your greatest
contribution?
Reeves: Oh my goodness.
At a personal level I’ve contributed—if you talk about self-actualization
and self-satisfaction—I’ve contributed to me so much in
different areas. Maybe nobody else recognizes it, but I don’t
care. It makes me feel good. I was a small piece of the Apollo Program
and landing humans on the Moon. My experiences in flying in the high-altitude
airplanes, I contributed a great deal to the development of a lot of
the scientific capabilities we have today for studying weather and crops
and land surveys, because we developed a lot of those techniques, even
the sensors that are still used today, and proved a lot of concepts.
Shuttle, involvement in Shuttle from the get-go. The development of
the robotic arm, I was a major player in that. At least I consider myself
a major player in it. The involvement with the Russians. I even wrote
myself a note on my first trip over there. I remember sitting on the
airplane going over there. I thought here you are, a kid that grew up
in Arkansas, never went anywhere, never did anything. Now here you were
on an airplane going over to what used to be our bitter enemies to help
establish future relations in the human spaceflight program. I thought
this is pretty mind-boggling, so that’s a lot to take, but anyway,
that contribution, big contribution, and helped lay a lot of the groundwork
for Space Station that we’ve got today.
What I’m still waiting to see, and what I would be most happy
with now, is to see some major discovery from Space Station. That’s
missing right now. We’ve got the laboratory built. We’ve
got the laboratory staffed. Let’s see some results. That would
make it complete, it would complete the circle.
Wright: Well, we
hope to hear that soon. In the meantime we’ll keep you busy.
Reeves: I don’t
think I’ll live long enough to help get us back on the Moon or
Mars, but I sure would like to see Station produce something.
Wright: Before
we close today, I was going to ask Jennifer, did you have any questions
that you thought of to ask Bill?
Ross-Nazzal: I
was curious. I didn’t get to sit in on the interview where you
talked about the arm. How closely were you working with people from
the ’78 class who had that assignment like Sally [K.] Ride and
John [M.] Fabian? Stopped here. 1:30:10
Reeves: Oh, I was
right there with them. John Fabian and Sally Ride were the first two
astronauts that were assigned to that project that I remember. They
got involved about the same time I did. In fact John Fabian may have
been a little bit ahead of me and started working with the Canadians
before I got involved with the program, but I remember working with
Sally quite extensively, and Judy [Judith A.] Resnik. We did a lot of
work together on the arm. They were the pioneers. They were the first
crew folks.
Ross-Nazzal: What
was it like? Had you had much contact with other professional women
before you had a chance to work with Judy and Sally?
Reeves: Oh yes,
over the years. In fact when I was flying in the high-altitude aircraft
out at Ellington [Air Force Base, Houston, Texas] during the ’70s,
toward the end of my time out there in the late ’70s, George [W.
S.] Abbey wanted to get some of the new women astronauts, and new astronauts,
some experience in the pressure suits and flying high altitude, so Kathy
[Katherine D.] Sullivan came out there. We trained her and got her into
the airplane. That’s where I first met her and got to know her,
and then wound up working with her on the Hubble [Space Telescope] deploy
mission where she was one of the crew members. Kathy is great. In fact
I saw her not long ago. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. I worked
with Judy Resnik. We were dear friends, and I knew Sally really well.
I worked with a lot of the managers and engineers over in the Program
Office and MOD.
Ross-Nazzal: How
long in advance had you been working on the Hubble deploy mission? You
mentioned that you were the lead flight director for that flight.
Reeves: Well, when
you go into the Flight Director’s Office—and I got selected
in ’83—the first year you spend in a training program where
you’re learning everything about everything. Then after your first
year of training toward the end of that year as part of your training
you start sitting sidesaddle with some of the other flight directors
on missions. Then your first assignment, at least back then, I don’t
know how they do it now, but your first assignment for a shift, one
of the eight-hour shifts to manage the Control Center and the ops [operations]
team, is the planning shift, which is while the crew is asleep. Instead
of one of the high-activity periods while the crew is awake when everything’s
happening, they put the new people on the planning shift, which turns
out to be where most of the work is done, on the planning shift planning
the activities for the next day and all the changes. It’s a very
busy time, but at least you can focus on the plan and not have to deal
with the crew awake and changes as they’re happening real-time,
so that’s probably a good plan.
After you do that, you serve a few flights pulling shifts as a flight
director, and you’ve earned your wings, if you will, then they
assign you a lead job. Every flight has a lead flight director who is
the single point of contact for operationally integrating the flight.
It’s the single point of contact with the commander and the crew
and the Program Office to pull the operational part of the flight together.
I got assigned to Hubble probably around late ’84, early ’85,
somewhere around there was when I was told that I was going to be lead
on the Hubble deploy mission, start getting familiar with Hubble. At
that time Hubble was supposed to fly in around 1987 or somewhere around
there. Usually you get assigned a lead job about a year and a half to
two years before the flight. A year and a half I would say roughly,
so Hubble was supposed to fly around ’86ish, ’87ish.
But then Challenger happened and everything got put on hold for about
a year and a half, then Hubble started having problems. There were some
redesign issues. It kept bumping down the road, so it was 1990 before
we actually flew it, so I’d actually been working on it for five
years. In fact I said in the earlier interview that it was during that
downtime for Challenger that Bruce McCandless [II] and Kathy Sullivan
were the two EVA crew members on the deploy mission. They spent a lot
of time out on the west coast where the telescope was built, and influenced
design changes on that vehicle that had they not done that the servicing
missions would have never happened the way they happened. They forced
changes to the design based on their experience. They were major contributors
to the success of the telescope. To me, they never got their just desserts.
Ross-Nazzal: It’s
interesting you mention that. We’ve done a series of interviews
with Kathy, and we’re going to write an article with her about
that mission and her role with Bruce McCandless working out there in
California.
Reeves: They would
go in there and they would tell them all these clearances are too tight.
You’ve got to open this up, or these latches, it’ll never
work this way. You [have] to change these latches. It was just that
kind of stuff all the time. They took ownership of that telescope and
they made them make it like it ought to be made and did a great job.
Great job.
Ross-Nazzal: I
just have one other question for you. That’s Charlie [Charles
F.] Bolden [Jr.] was on that flight.
Reeves: Yes. Charlie
was on that flight. That’s where I first got to know Charlie,
one of the best human beings on the planet. Charlie is just a great
guy, a great guy to work with. Interesting to see how things happen.
Now he’s the [NASA] Administrator. I saw him about two or three
FRRs [Flight Readiness Review] ago. The first joint FRR we had down
at the Cape after he got named Administrator, I bumped into him in the
hallway. I was kidding him about you’ve really done it now.
Wright: He’s
a big-time commander now.
Reeves: Yes, he’s
got his hands full, that’s for sure. I’d be more than happy
to help Charlie any way I could. All he’s got to do is call or
ask.
Wright: I’m
sure he’d be glad to know that.
Reeves: Well, I
already told him that.
Wright: That’s
good. Is there anything else that you’d like to add? Is there
anything that we didn’t get to cover that you thought about?
Reeves: Gosh, I
can’t think of anything. I’ve pretty much told you my whole
life or all that I’m going to tell you.
Wright: [Share
with us] what you’re doing to help prepare the Shuttle [for retirement].
Reeves: Yes. Our
main focus is flying the program out. I have a deputy, Bill Hollister.
I basically divided the work with him. I said because of my experience,
I’ve been in the Shuttle Program forever, I will focus mostly
on trying to fly the Shuttles out. I’ve split the workload with
him to start focusing on the future, because he will be here in the
future and I won’t be. He’s working the new business aspects
and trying to figure out what new businesses we can get into and how
we can evolve into future work, so that’s how we’re preparing.
It’s going to be tough. We’ve told all of our people that
there’s a cliff out there. When the program ends, a bunch of people
are going to fall off the cliff, because right now we don’t have
the work. Until contracts get put in place, that’s the thing you
learn on the contractor side real fast, is no contract, no work.
Wright: No funding.
That’s right.
Reeves: That takes
time. Takes a long time. That’s the scariest part of this whole
upheaval, is the timing. They waited so late from the time this Administration
started to pick an Administrator, then to come out with what they wanted
to do with NASA. They waited so late now that there’s so little
time between now and the end of the program and the end of this fiscal
year, there’s not enough time to get redirected and get new contracts
in place. So there’s going to be a big disruption in the agency.
Wright: A lot of
challenges before you move on to your next adventure.
Reeves: There’s
a simple solution, but I don’t know that anybody’ll do it.
Wright: Do you
want to share that with us?
Reeves: My answer
is to stretch the current Shuttle manifest out. It would be real easy
to do, just to keep the workforce in place, and keep the expertise in
place, before you lose it. It would be a pretty simple matter to stretch
the manifest out for like another year and buy the time you need to
get this new vision focused and get contracts in place. It could be
done with the stroke of a pen by just extending the current contracts.
There’s mechanisms already in the contracts to do that. If I was
king for a day that’s what I’d do.
Wright: Well, we’ll
watch for that.
Reeves: But I’m
not king.
Wright: Yes, but
as you mentioned, you’ve had really good fate, so you just never
know what’s going to come around the next turn.
Reeves: Never know.
Never know. Yes, it’s true.
Wright: Well, thank
you so much for coming in as often as you have.
Reeves: Glad to
do it.
[End of interview]
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