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Travis Brice fulfilled multiple key roles for NASA during Phase 1. He was affiliated with the Russian language contract that covered all the interpretation, translation, and language training for the joint Russian-American programs. He was also associated with the contract between NASA and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (in Star City, Russia), that set up housing, language training, and other support for NASA's Directors of Operations in Russia.
Additionally, he was in charge of supporting the cosmonauts who trained at NASA, as well as the astronauts who travelled to Russia. In his Oral History, Brice elaborated on the many unknowns experienced by the first Americans arriving in Russia in the early days of the exchange program:
"We were set up into a situation where we had no idea what we were going to be putting our people into when we went to Russia. Norm [Thagard] and Bonnie [Dunbar] didn't have a clue. We tried to find out from the Russians what we could expect when our people got over there, and we were told it would be taken care of, so we had to trust them. This was kind of one of the early steps, where we had to step out and just trust the Russians to do what's right.
"And in most cases everything came out very well. I think the Russians, in all honesty, the Gagarin Center folks, did the very best they could and they did every effort they could to make our people just as comfortable as their people are, and in some cases I think they even went beyond what they would normally try to do for their own people," Brice said.
Travis Brice Oral History (PDF)
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Curator:
Kim Dismukes
Responsible NASA Official: John Ira Petty