[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And it was French then and the French were very suspicious. They didn't, they weren't sure they wanted an American satellite. For people, natives talking over an American satellite. So anyhow, I was climbing, had to climb around on the roofs there, raising and kind of waving a television antenna type thing, you know, see if I could get a signal, how good it was. So I did that a couple of different places. And then I went to the country of Niue and set up their, took along some tubes full of antennas that I had put together and receiver and stuff. And we set up their little teaching office, about the size of this room, with a table so the students can come in and sit around and talk to a tutor once a week for an hour.

[Assistant] That was pretty high tech for those days.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] And how did it work out?

[User] It worked pretty, it seemed to work pretty well. And they had, they got centers going in several countries. And when I went back this summer, I went on campus and everything was shut down when we were there. But they have a building now that's there, I guess like a communications building, they call it, with huge, I mean, it looks like a building here with the satellite dishes sticking out on it. So they still do, I imagine they have video now too. But and it said something about a gift from Japan. So. So as you mentioned, they've been big in putting, not only putting that kind of thing, but campuses on other countries. So you can. Different island countries, I guess, have different specialties. Some of them, I think maybe the law college is somewhere, and different cultural things are on other island countries.

[Assistant] Well, that's impressive. So you were a pioneer in distance learning.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] And how did it work out?

[User] It worked pretty, it seemed to work pretty well. And they had, they got centers going in several countries. And when I went back this summer, I went on campus and everything was shut down when we were there. But they have a building now that's there, I guess like a communications building, they call it, with huge, I mean, it looks like a building here with the satellite dishes sticking out on it. So they still do, I imagine they have video now too. But and it said something about a gift from Japan. So. So as you mentioned, they've been big in putting, not only putting that kind of thing, but campuses on other countries. So you can. Different island countries, I guess, have different specialties. Some of them, I think maybe the law college is somewhere, and different cultural things are on other island countries.

[Assistant] Well, that's impressive. So you were a pioneer in distance learning.

[User] I don't know pioneer. An enabler.

[Assistant] Yeah. So what did you enjoy most about living in Fiji and Suva?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] What I tried to do was, uh, like when I have a long weekend, probably say every two months or so, I would go back out to the village of Cautata. And it turned out that one of the guys from the village was a security guard at the university, and so I got to know him. So I'd go out with him, and they used to have a bus that went up. The village had a, owned a bus to bring people in and out. And so you could go down to the bus stop and get on the bus and go out there. And so about once every couple of months I'd go out. I'd tell them I'm coming out for the weekend. There was a lady that, I guess she was kind of my unofficial grandmother, and she would give me her bed and she'd go to sleep with her kids or something. So that's.

[Assistant] OK, so that training experience became a permanent connection for you.

[User] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when we went back this past summer, we made arrangements through Sala. And I asked her if she knew anyone from the village, in that village, and she came up with a name, and so we communicated on Facebook and he became my spokesman. And so he picked us up at the Grand Pacific and took us out to buy kava. And we went there and spent half a day in the village. And I took along prints of old pictures and gave it to him. So he gave them copies of old pictures I had.

[Assistant] Oh, old pictures you had?

[User] From 40 some years ago. Oh yeah, that's so-and-so.

[Assistant] Did they remember you? Anybody remember you in the village?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when we went back this past summer, we made arrangements through Sala. And I asked her if she knew anyone from the village, in that village, and she came up with a name, and so we communicated on Facebook and he became my spokesman. And so he picked us up at the Grand Pacific and took us out to buy kava. And we went there and spent half a day in the village. And I took along prints of old pictures and gave it to him. So he gave them copies of old pictures I had.

[Assistant] Oh, old pictures you had?

[User] From 40 some years ago. Oh yeah, that's so-and-so.

[Assistant] Did they remember you? Anybody remember you in the village?

[User] No, I didn't see that many people in the village. And the guy that was a security guard, he died a few years ago. And I mean, so I mean, I suppose some of the kids. I don't know. We all look alike, I think.

[Assistant] Well, it's been a long time.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] From 40 some years ago. Oh yeah, that's so-and-so.

[Assistant] Did they remember you? Anybody remember you in the village?

[User] No, I didn't see that many people in the village. And the guy that was a security guard, he died a few years ago. And I mean, so I mean, I suppose some of the kids. I don't know. We all look alike, I think.

[Assistant] Well, it's been a long time.

[User] Yeah, it's been a long time.

[Assistant] And people don't always stay in the village.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, I didn't see that many people in the village. And the guy that was a security guard, he died a few years ago. And I mean, so I mean, I suppose some of the kids. I don't know. We all look alike, I think.

[Assistant] Well, it's been a long time.

[User] Yeah, it's been a long time.

[Assistant] And people don't always stay in the village.

[User] But so I did go to, uh, went to Taveuni and Ovalau, other islands around there. And I went down to Kadavu. So essentially those were all, uh, staying with the volunteers who had essentially slept on my floor. I went to sleep on their floor, you know.

[Assistant] And so in those days did you go by boat or did you fly?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And so it pulls into the harbor there in Nuku'alofa. And sure enough, there's the local Tonga police paddy wagons there and their lights whipping around. And so all the guys get off the boat, get in the paddy wagons. I guess they go down to the station and they let them all go. So that's how you.

[Assistant] That's right. So they were hiding the entire trip.

[User] Yeah. Yeah. I never didn't even know they were there.

[Assistant] That's funny.

[User] And back then, I think it's probably still true today. Places, countries like Tonga made especially Suva seem like a hubbub of civilization.

[Assistant] Like Las Vegas or something.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. Yeah. I never didn't even know they were there.

[Assistant] That's funny.

[User] And back then, I think it's probably still true today. Places, countries like Tonga made especially Suva seem like a hubbub of civilization.

[Assistant] Like Las Vegas or something.

[User] Yeah. Bright lights and all that.

[Assistant] Yeah. So you were there at USP for two years.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And back then, I think it's probably still true today. Places, countries like Tonga made especially Suva seem like a hubbub of civilization.

[Assistant] Like Las Vegas or something.

[User] Yeah. Bright lights and all that.

[Assistant] Yeah. So you were there at USP for two years.

[User] Two years, yeah.

[Assistant] And since then. Well, did you consider extending at all or did they ask you to extend?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So after.

[User] So.

[Assistant] Oh, go ahead.

[User] OK. So then as I was coming up on July of '75, I guess was kind of the earliest. I mean, my two years were up and what I kind of thought was that maybe I would at least stay on to the end of the school year, which would have been like December, November. And but what happened was that this young lady, Polly, came down to visit me the winter of '74, and she, you know, I'd known her from back here in D.C., and so she came down and visited me. And one thing led to another, as it does in the South Pacific. So she came back here and then we had this long several months of the blue aerograms flying back and forth. And so then she came back to Fiji and we got married there in May of. She came back in May and got married in June of '75. And so because of that, I didn't extend. When my time was up, I left after two years rather than extending.

[Assistant] So you actually got married in Fiji?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So.

[Assistant] Oh, go ahead.

[User] OK. So then as I was coming up on July of '75, I guess was kind of the earliest. I mean, my two years were up and what I kind of thought was that maybe I would at least stay on to the end of the school year, which would have been like December, November. And but what happened was that this young lady, Polly, came down to visit me the winter of '74, and she, you know, I'd known her from back here in D.C., and so she came down and visited me. And one thing led to another, as it does in the South Pacific. So she came back here and then we had this long several months of the blue aerograms flying back and forth. And so then she came back to Fiji and we got married there in May of. She came back in May and got married in June of '75. And so because of that, I didn't extend. When my time was up, I left after two years rather than extending.

[Assistant] So you actually got married in Fiji?

[User] We got married in Fiji.

[Assistant] Where did that take place? Was it a church or?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] OK. So then as I was coming up on July of '75, I guess was kind of the earliest. I mean, my two years were up and what I kind of thought was that maybe I would at least stay on to the end of the school year, which would have been like December, November. And but what happened was that this young lady, Polly, came down to visit me the winter of '74, and she, you know, I'd known her from back here in D.C., and so she came down and visited me. And one thing led to another, as it does in the South Pacific. So she came back here and then we had this long several months of the blue aerograms flying back and forth. And so then she came back to Fiji and we got married there in May of. She came back in May and got married in June of '75. And so because of that, I didn't extend. When my time was up, I left after two years rather than extending.

[Assistant] So you actually got married in Fiji?

[User] We got married in Fiji.

[Assistant] Where did that take place? Was it a church or?

[User] We got married in the Catholic cathedral in Suva.

[Assistant] Oh, right downtown?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We got married in Fiji.

[Assistant] Where did that take place? Was it a church or?

[User] We got married in the Catholic cathedral in Suva.

[Assistant] Oh, right downtown?

[User] Yeah. And it's still there and we, they remodeled it, I guess, since we got married. And we tried to go in it this last summer, but it was locked. I mean, they locked the church, these black churches now. And they have guards around the, I mean, they have a compound around the Peace Corps office and they keep track of where the volunteers are at all times and all this kind of stuff that was.

[Assistant] It's changed quite a bit.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We got married in the Catholic cathedral in Suva.

[Assistant] Oh, right downtown?

[User] Yeah. And it's still there and we, they remodeled it, I guess, since we got married. And we tried to go in it this last summer, but it was locked. I mean, they locked the church, these black churches now. And they have guards around the, I mean, they have a compound around the Peace Corps office and they keep track of where the volunteers are at all times and all this kind of stuff that was.

[Assistant] It's changed quite a bit.

[User] Changed.

[Assistant] And you can't get in the embassy.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. And it's still there and we, they remodeled it, I guess, since we got married. And we tried to go in it this last summer, but it was locked. I mean, they locked the church, these black churches now. And they have guards around the, I mean, they have a compound around the Peace Corps office and they keep track of where the volunteers are at all times and all this kind of stuff that was.

[Assistant] It's changed quite a bit.

[User] Changed.

[Assistant] And you can't get in the embassy.

[User] Can't get in the embassy. Yeah, the embassy compound has nothing. Because it seemed to me that when we were in the Peace Corps, it's kind of that's what you did on Saturday mornings. You went down to the Peace Corps office and wandered in there to see if you got any mail and, you know, talk to people. And then you'd find these other people that were just into town from some outer island. And they'd said, you got a place to stay? You'd say, uh. But all that is by the wayside now, I guess. But to some extent it was easier back then in a lot of ways, I think.

[Assistant] Yeah. So how do you feel that that experience of being a Peace Corps volunteer impacted your post Peace Corps life in the past several years? I know you've remained connected through the Friends of Fiji.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Let's see. I think I've blasted through about everything. Well, I guess the other thing was that, I guess what. Kind of one of my generalizations is that people seem to have kind of hinge points in their life, you know, kind of high points. And then after that, at those points their lives kind of change or that that's the high point and everything's downhill after that. And for some people, it's high school football. It kind of goes on from there. It could be the military or college or, you know. But for me, you know, partly because of getting married there and stuff, but just the adventure of that period was to me a kind of a hinge point in my life.

[Assistant] A high point in your life.

[User] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, after that, you know, coming back here, I kind of would come back and went to work for Mitre Corporation and stuff and had a career as a nerd. But, you know, you kind of do things differently, I think, you know, like, you know, is that I don't want to be a manager. So I didn't become a manager and just, you know, didn't worry about not making the really big bucks. And, you know, a lot of the people that are in Friends of Fiji that, some of them like David Downes and Cynthia Grant, you know, I knew from back there. So it's kind of nice that that was kind of a big part of it.

[Assistant] Oh right, so some of the people that are your good friends now are people that you'd met because of Peace Corps.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Maybe not during your service but because they share that in common.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, well, they were there in Fiji when I was there and a lady who was a couple of miles from us, Carol Reeder. She was married and she went, we were in, she was part of the same group of four people that did the training together. And she was married then and her husband, Bob, was also in that group. And their marriage fell apart. Well, it was a complicated thing. But anyhow, she is around and we're very good friends with her. It seemed like there was something else I was going to say, but I. Nah, I think that's pretty much it. Oh, well, I guess the other thing I was going to say is I guess just a part of when I was talking about how I felt like my tape recorder was running and I felt alive and all this kind of stuff while I was a volunteer.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] The other thing that's happened that I've done that has made me feel kind of the same way is I went, I did a week with Habitat for Humanity down in New Orleans after, a year after Katrina. And I guess I would, anyone that's considering the Peace Corps, I would recommend do a week with Habitat for Humanity and see how you feel about it, because it's very much the same thing except compressed. You're thrown in with a bunch of new people and you kind of have goals, things to do, kind of, and you're assigned jobs and stuff and you sleep on cots and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, you really kind of use, it gives you very much the same, at least it gave me the same kind of feelings of connectedness with these people.

[Assistant] Yeah, camaraderie.

[User] And camaraderie and bitching about stuff. So that's my advice to someone who wants to join the Peace Corps. Do a week for Habitat for Humanity first.

[Assistant] All right. All right. Well, thanks very much, Jim.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Thank you for having me, and I hope I can provide some good information.

[Assistant] I think so. Steve [Steven R.] Nagel recommended you to us.

[User] I wondered where it came from.

[Assistant] I asked him for the people he thought were the best candidates. I thought we’d start out by asking you to just give us an overview of your career with the Air Force and then at NASA.

[User] I started my Air Force career in 1971 working on fighter airplanes, F-4s and 111s, and then became a flight engineer on C-141s. Did that for three years or so and then came to NASA in 1979. At NASA I flew on the C-130 Earth resources airplane, the old Super Guppy, the Shuttle Training Aircraft, and then got on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft [SCA] in 1989.

[Assistant] How’d you find out about the opportunity to work on the SCA?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I wondered where it came from.

[Assistant] I asked him for the people he thought were the best candidates. I thought we’d start out by asking you to just give us an overview of your career with the Air Force and then at NASA.

[User] I started my Air Force career in 1971 working on fighter airplanes, F-4s and 111s, and then became a flight engineer on C-141s. Did that for three years or so and then came to NASA in 1979. At NASA I flew on the C-130 Earth resources airplane, the old Super Guppy, the Shuttle Training Aircraft, and then got on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft [SCA] in 1989.

[Assistant] How’d you find out about the opportunity to work on the SCA?

[User] Well, I was already here. The guys that were in charge of our operation, as openings came up, they selected people that were qualified and available to fly, because of background experience. It was like just waiting your turn until somebody retired.

[Assistant] Was that one of the nice posts out of Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas], one of the coveted positions, I guess you might say?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I started my Air Force career in 1971 working on fighter airplanes, F-4s and 111s, and then became a flight engineer on C-141s. Did that for three years or so and then came to NASA in 1979. At NASA I flew on the C-130 Earth resources airplane, the old Super Guppy, the Shuttle Training Aircraft, and then got on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft [SCA] in 1989.

[Assistant] How’d you find out about the opportunity to work on the SCA?

[User] Well, I was already here. The guys that were in charge of our operation, as openings came up, they selected people that were qualified and available to fly, because of background experience. It was like just waiting your turn until somebody retired.

[Assistant] Was that one of the nice posts out of Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas], one of the coveted positions, I guess you might say?

[User] Yes it is, because it’s an interesting program. Back when I first started flying on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, more landings were at Edwards [Air Force Base, California]. So we got to do it more often. Later on in the program they tried to land at KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] much more than they did in the earlier days.

[Assistant] Tell us about the training that you had to take to become a flight engineer for the SCA.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I was already here. The guys that were in charge of our operation, as openings came up, they selected people that were qualified and available to fly, because of background experience. It was like just waiting your turn until somebody retired.

[Assistant] Was that one of the nice posts out of Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas], one of the coveted positions, I guess you might say?

[User] Yes it is, because it’s an interesting program. Back when I first started flying on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, more landings were at Edwards [Air Force Base, California]. So we got to do it more often. Later on in the program they tried to land at KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] much more than they did in the earlier days.

[Assistant] Tell us about the training that you had to take to become a flight engineer for the SCA.

[User] At NASA, when I was selected for the airplane, they sent me to two weeks of systems training, and then I went to the simulator for four, five sessions of practicing procedures, especially emergency procedures in the simulator. Every system on the airplane—it’s a very complicated airplane because it’s so involved—they would create malfunctions in the flight simulator of every system, and you’d have to learn how to perform procedures. So after that then I just started flying and took a couple training flights and then became qualified.

[Assistant] In that two-week training period were you out at Dryden [Flight Research Center, California]?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes it is, because it’s an interesting program. Back when I first started flying on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, more landings were at Edwards [Air Force Base, California]. So we got to do it more often. Later on in the program they tried to land at KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] much more than they did in the earlier days.

[Assistant] Tell us about the training that you had to take to become a flight engineer for the SCA.

[User] At NASA, when I was selected for the airplane, they sent me to two weeks of systems training, and then I went to the simulator for four, five sessions of practicing procedures, especially emergency procedures in the simulator. Every system on the airplane—it’s a very complicated airplane because it’s so involved—they would create malfunctions in the flight simulator of every system, and you’d have to learn how to perform procedures. So after that then I just started flying and took a couple training flights and then became qualified.

[Assistant] In that two-week training period were you out at Dryden [Flight Research Center, California]?

[User] No. Actually the ground school was done up in Dallas at a company called Dalfort which was part of Braniff Airlines back in the days. They had a simulator, and they had instructors that did ground school. In the simulator I had a United Airlines instructor who came and worked at the simulator. There was like five four-hour sessions in the simulator.

[Assistant] Tell us about being a flight engineer for the SCA. What do you do? What are your job responsibilities?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It’s because of seeing and avoiding weather. We can’t fly through thunderstorms. We can’t fly through clouds. We can’t fly within any more than light turbulence. Because the Pathfinder airplane, which is out in front of us by about 100 miles, is scoping out the route, they can tell us that we need to change our route or deviate or climb or descend. We’re limited on altitude with the Orbiter to eight psi [pounds per square inch] and minus nine degrees centigrade, which is 15 degrees Fahrenheit. So sometimes we have to deviate on our route. Seeing clouds at night is much more difficult when you’re flying. So unless it’s absolutely clear—we have got a couple waivers a couple times to complete a flight at night when we knew it was absolutely perfectly clear and there was no chance of any problems, but normally we only fly during the daytime.

[Assistant] Is that because of the thermal protection system [TPS]?

[User] The TPS system, the tiles on the Orbiter, any rain just erodes them like all get-out and causes significant damage, or can cause significant damage. So we don’t fly through rain, and we can’t be near thunderstorms. So it’s just much easier just to see and avoid during the day than at night.

[Assistant] When you’re working at these plans a month in advance, you have an idea what the Orbiter weighs. Does that weight ever change? Do you weigh the vehicle once it comes back in case they brought something else?

[User] No. They don’t weigh it at Edwards. What they do is the Orbiter mass properties folks keep track of what the Orbiter is weighing based on propellant uses during a mission and cargo offloaded. Before the mission they have a pretty good idea, approximately, what it’s going to weigh if they land at Edwards. Once it lands at Edwards they give us an updated weight that we can use for the final planning. This is just a best estimate of what it’s going to be when we do the meeting a month ahead of time.

[Assistant] Tell me where you sit during the ferry flight itself.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] There are four main, one center wing, and two reserve tanks. We normally only use fuel out of the mains and reserves. We don’t use fuel out of center wing mainly because the Orbiter just takes up too much weight. The airplane can only weigh 710,000 pounds at takeoff. So with a 200-and-something-thousand-pound Orbiter we can’t put a full load of fuel on. So we never get fuel in the center because you make it too heavy.

[Assistant] Tell me why you would burn fuel out of different tanks. How does that work?

[User] It’s just to manage the load on the wings, to keep the wing loaded right, a certain weight. Certain types are bigger than others. So you start out burning out of all the main tanks. Then you get down to a certain amount, and then you switch over, burn out of the inboards. When you get towards the end of the flight you get lower on fuel so you have to use the reserve fuel and dump it into the tanks to use.

[Assistant] Sounds like a lot of juggling.

[User] It is a little bit, but it’s not too bad.

[Assistant] What are some of the challenges that you might face when you’re flight engineer working on the SCA?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It’s just to manage the load on the wings, to keep the wing loaded right, a certain weight. Certain types are bigger than others. So you start out burning out of all the main tanks. Then you get down to a certain amount, and then you switch over, burn out of the inboards. When you get towards the end of the flight you get lower on fuel so you have to use the reserve fuel and dump it into the tanks to use.

[Assistant] Sounds like a lot of juggling.

[User] It is a little bit, but it’s not too bad.

[Assistant] What are some of the challenges that you might face when you’re flight engineer working on the SCA?

[User] Biggest thing is a lot of performance calculations: the balancing of flap setting for takeoff versus climb limit, because with more flaps for takeoff you’re limited by takeoff climb weight more than with the less flaps setting. But with less flaps you need more runway to get off. So it’s a balance between what can you climb with versus what can you get off the runway with. That’s the biggest pretakeoff challenge. In flight the main thing is just monitoring the systems, keeping track of what’s going on. During Orbiter ferry mission the SCA provides power to the Orbiter, and we have to keep track of that. Every 15 minutes we record the voltage and the amperage of the transformer rectifier [T/R] output to the Orbiter to make sure that the Orbiter doesn’t lose power. If part of the Orbiter loses power, then some of the circulation systems and coolant loops become affected. Depending on what the temperature is and where we are, if we lose too much power to the Orbiter, they will say, “Go land,” because we don’t want to damage the systems on the Orbiter.

[Assistant] That would damage avionics in the vehicle?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It is a little bit, but it’s not too bad.

[Assistant] What are some of the challenges that you might face when you’re flight engineer working on the SCA?

[User] Biggest thing is a lot of performance calculations: the balancing of flap setting for takeoff versus climb limit, because with more flaps for takeoff you’re limited by takeoff climb weight more than with the less flaps setting. But with less flaps you need more runway to get off. So it’s a balance between what can you climb with versus what can you get off the runway with. That’s the biggest pretakeoff challenge. In flight the main thing is just monitoring the systems, keeping track of what’s going on. During Orbiter ferry mission the SCA provides power to the Orbiter, and we have to keep track of that. Every 15 minutes we record the voltage and the amperage of the transformer rectifier [T/R] output to the Orbiter to make sure that the Orbiter doesn’t lose power. If part of the Orbiter loses power, then some of the circulation systems and coolant loops become affected. Depending on what the temperature is and where we are, if we lose too much power to the Orbiter, they will say, “Go land,” because we don’t want to damage the systems on the Orbiter.

[Assistant] That would damage avionics in the vehicle?

[User] I believe so, yes. We have two gauges. You can either select volts or amps. We have four T/Rs. So keep track of the volts and amps that they’re putting out. That tells us the Orbiter’s power being used. You can see over flight time. You can see the load on those going up as the Orbiter cold-soaks in altitude. Their systems have to work harder, their coolant loops and pumps work more. So you can see an increase in load.

[Assistant] How many people end up flying a ferrying flight? Is it just the two pilots and the one flight engineer?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Biggest thing is a lot of performance calculations: the balancing of flap setting for takeoff versus climb limit, because with more flaps for takeoff you’re limited by takeoff climb weight more than with the less flaps setting. But with less flaps you need more runway to get off. So it’s a balance between what can you climb with versus what can you get off the runway with. That’s the biggest pretakeoff challenge. In flight the main thing is just monitoring the systems, keeping track of what’s going on. During Orbiter ferry mission the SCA provides power to the Orbiter, and we have to keep track of that. Every 15 minutes we record the voltage and the amperage of the transformer rectifier [T/R] output to the Orbiter to make sure that the Orbiter doesn’t lose power. If part of the Orbiter loses power, then some of the circulation systems and coolant loops become affected. Depending on what the temperature is and where we are, if we lose too much power to the Orbiter, they will say, “Go land,” because we don’t want to damage the systems on the Orbiter.

[Assistant] That would damage avionics in the vehicle?

[User] I believe so, yes. We have two gauges. You can either select volts or amps. We have four T/Rs. So keep track of the volts and amps that they’re putting out. That tells us the Orbiter’s power being used. You can see over flight time. You can see the load on those going up as the Orbiter cold-soaks in altitude. Their systems have to work harder, their coolant loops and pumps work more. So you can see an increase in load.

[Assistant] How many people end up flying a ferrying flight? Is it just the two pilots and the one flight engineer?

[User] Normally during an active ferry mission, it’s two pilots and two flight engineers.

[Assistant] Do you switch off at some point during the flight?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I believe so, yes. We have two gauges. You can either select volts or amps. We have four T/Rs. So keep track of the volts and amps that they’re putting out. That tells us the Orbiter’s power being used. You can see over flight time. You can see the load on those going up as the Orbiter cold-soaks in altitude. Their systems have to work harder, their coolant loops and pumps work more. So you can see an increase in load.

[Assistant] How many people end up flying a ferrying flight? Is it just the two pilots and the one flight engineer?

[User] Normally during an active ferry mission, it’s two pilots and two flight engineers.

[Assistant] Do you switch off at some point during the flight?

[User] Sometimes we do. It depends how many legs we’re going to do. If there are enough legs so everybody’s going to get a chance at the seat then one flight engineer will take a leg from point A to point B. Then the other guy will take it from B to C. The pilots will do the same thing. They’ll switch legs. It depends on how many they’re going to get. If there’s a very limited number of legs, then sometimes people will switch in flight so that one guy will get the takeoff and one guy will get the landing.

[Assistant] I’ve been in the SCA, I think, once. If memory serves, there’s a lounge where there might typically have been seats in a 747.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Every six months we all go to the simulator and spend three or four days getting refresher training on systems and also practicing emergency procedures. They’ll give us a scenario where they’ll give us problems starting engines, systems fails, engine failures on takeoff, aborted takeoffs where you get up to where it’s time for takeoff, they fail an engine, then you have to stop and evacuate the airplane. Electrical problems, flap problems, gear problems. All the different problems that can occur on the airplane, we practice every six months.

[Assistant] Where’s the simulator located?

[User] We have been using the simulator at Denver [Colorado]. In the years that I’ve been on the airplane we went to Seattle [Washington], to Boeing, to the simulator. Went to Pan Am in Miami [Florida] to the simulator. We’ve been going to the United [Airlines] simulator in Denver. We’ve used the Evergreen simulator in Denver. Before I got on the airplane they’d use American Airlines simulator. So we’ve used different simulators. We now have a couple of guys who do all of our ground instruction and sim [simulator] instruction. They used to be United pilots and flight engineer instructors, and now they work for CSC, which is our contractor. They just lease the simulator for us to use.

[Assistant] For some reason I thought maybe there was a simulator on site or over at Ellington. You also fly the plane on a regular basis too, do you not?

[User] Yes, we fly the airplane about once a month, three weeks to a month. We go out and do a training flight so that everybody can get their landings and proficiency. We have to fly every 60 days to be current.

[Assistant] How do you simulate a Shuttle being on top of the SCA?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We have been using the simulator at Denver [Colorado]. In the years that I’ve been on the airplane we went to Seattle [Washington], to Boeing, to the simulator. Went to Pan Am in Miami [Florida] to the simulator. We’ve been going to the United [Airlines] simulator in Denver. We’ve used the Evergreen simulator in Denver. Before I got on the airplane they’d use American Airlines simulator. So we’ve used different simulators. We now have a couple of guys who do all of our ground instruction and sim [simulator] instruction. They used to be United pilots and flight engineer instructors, and now they work for CSC, which is our contractor. They just lease the simulator for us to use.

[Assistant] For some reason I thought maybe there was a simulator on site or over at Ellington. You also fly the plane on a regular basis too, do you not?

[User] Yes, we fly the airplane about once a month, three weeks to a month. We go out and do a training flight so that everybody can get their landings and proficiency. We have to fly every 60 days to be current.

[Assistant] How do you simulate a Shuttle being on top of the SCA?

[User] Through software, the simulator folks created the drag. You can adjust the weight in the simulator. You can change the weight and cg [center of gravity]. So we tell them what weight we want to be at, 710,000 or 600,000 or whatever weight we want to be. Through the software they can change the way the simulator responds because it simulates that we’re heavier or lighter. The Orbiter drag is a math model that was created back in the ’70s and passed from simulator to simulator. It’s a program that we own to create the drag simulation.

[Assistant] When you’re not flying an active ferry flight where do you normally take the SCA just to practice?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, we fly the airplane about once a month, three weeks to a month. We go out and do a training flight so that everybody can get their landings and proficiency. We have to fly every 60 days to be current.

[Assistant] How do you simulate a Shuttle being on top of the SCA?

[User] Through software, the simulator folks created the drag. You can adjust the weight in the simulator. You can change the weight and cg [center of gravity]. So we tell them what weight we want to be at, 710,000 or 600,000 or whatever weight we want to be. Through the software they can change the way the simulator responds because it simulates that we’re heavier or lighter. The Orbiter drag is a math model that was created back in the ’70s and passed from simulator to simulator. It’s a program that we own to create the drag simulation.

[Assistant] When you’re not flying an active ferry flight where do you normally take the SCA just to practice?

[User] Normally we take off from Edwards and sometimes we go up to altitude north of Edwards and just check the pressurization. It all depends on what’s been done to the airplane in the last month. A lot of times we just go over to Palmdale and just shoot touch-and-gos and full stops so that each pilot gets an instrument approach, a couple touch-and-gos, a full stop landing and a takeoff. Then they swap seats and we go do it some more. It depends. Sometimes we have just a couple pilots on the airplane, sometimes four or five. Because of people’s schedules everybody tries to fly whenever they get a chance.

[Assistant] It must be a dream job for a pilot or a flight engineer.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Through software, the simulator folks created the drag. You can adjust the weight in the simulator. You can change the weight and cg [center of gravity]. So we tell them what weight we want to be at, 710,000 or 600,000 or whatever weight we want to be. Through the software they can change the way the simulator responds because it simulates that we’re heavier or lighter. The Orbiter drag is a math model that was created back in the ’70s and passed from simulator to simulator. It’s a program that we own to create the drag simulation.

[Assistant] When you’re not flying an active ferry flight where do you normally take the SCA just to practice?

[User] Normally we take off from Edwards and sometimes we go up to altitude north of Edwards and just check the pressurization. It all depends on what’s been done to the airplane in the last month. A lot of times we just go over to Palmdale and just shoot touch-and-gos and full stops so that each pilot gets an instrument approach, a couple touch-and-gos, a full stop landing and a takeoff. Then they swap seats and we go do it some more. It depends. Sometimes we have just a couple pilots on the airplane, sometimes four or five. Because of people’s schedules everybody tries to fly whenever they get a chance.

[Assistant] It must be a dream job for a pilot or a flight engineer.

[User] Yes, after doing it for a long time, it gets windy and bumpy out there in California. So we try to fly early in the morning before it gets too hot and bumpy. As you can imagine, it’s the desert. In the summertime, it’s bumpy.

[Assistant] It’s hot out there all the time.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Normally we take off from Edwards and sometimes we go up to altitude north of Edwards and just check the pressurization. It all depends on what’s been done to the airplane in the last month. A lot of times we just go over to Palmdale and just shoot touch-and-gos and full stops so that each pilot gets an instrument approach, a couple touch-and-gos, a full stop landing and a takeoff. Then they swap seats and we go do it some more. It depends. Sometimes we have just a couple pilots on the airplane, sometimes four or five. Because of people’s schedules everybody tries to fly whenever they get a chance.

[Assistant] It must be a dream job for a pilot or a flight engineer.

[User] Yes, after doing it for a long time, it gets windy and bumpy out there in California. So we try to fly early in the morning before it gets too hot and bumpy. As you can imagine, it’s the desert. In the summertime, it’s bumpy.

[Assistant] It’s hot out there all the time.

[User] At lower altitude, because we’re just a couple thousand feet over the ground as we’re in our patterns.

[Assistant] Now that the program has ended, what’s happening with the SCA? Do you continue to practice and do simulations?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, after doing it for a long time, it gets windy and bumpy out there in California. So we try to fly early in the morning before it gets too hot and bumpy. As you can imagine, it’s the desert. In the summertime, it’s bumpy.

[Assistant] It’s hot out there all the time.

[User] At lower altitude, because we’re just a couple thousand feet over the ground as we’re in our patterns.

[Assistant] Now that the program has ended, what’s happening with the SCA? Do you continue to practice and do simulations?

[User] We continue to fly the airplane, and we will keep flying the airplane about once a month. Next spring in April is when Discovery is scheduled to go to the Air and Space Museum. Once it gets delivered to Dulles [National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Virginia], to the Air and Space Museum, we’ll pick up Enterprise and take it to New York. Now the equipment that they’re going to use at Dulles after it gets loaded has to be torn down and shipped to New York. So it’ll probably be four to six weeks with Enterprise sitting on the 747 in New York before that equipment gets there to take it off. After Enterprise gets taken off in New York, then the airplane will go back to Edwards. Then in the summer Endeavour will go. We’ll take the airplane back to Florida, pick up Endeavour, and then fly it out to LA to deliver it to California Science [Center]. That’s it. Then after the Shuttle Program is done delivering all the Orbiters to museums, the airplanes are scheduled to be transferred to the SOFIA [Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy] Program.

[Assistant] What is the SOFIA Program?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So we get calls from time to time, people wanting to do projects. As far as I know, unless something changes, after the Shuttle Program is done delivering, everybody says, “Yea verily we’re all done,” and [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] put out a memo a couple three years ago says the airplanes will be transferred to SOFIA to reduce their cost so they won’t have to go buy more engines or anything like that.

[Assistant] How many people used to work on the SCA as pilots and engineers? And how many have you retained now that you’re done?

[User] Right now we have two pilots at JSC [Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas]. We used to have six pilots and four flight engineers throughout many years, four pilots at Houston and two pilots at Dryden. All four flight engineers were in Houston. Now with retirements and this and that and the other there are two pilots at JSC that are civil servants, and there are two qualified flight engineers at JSC. There’s one ferry-qualified civil servant pilot at Dryden and one civil servant pilot who can fly the airplane but is not certified yet for ferry operations. We have one contract flight engineer who used to be a civil servant, and one guy in training. Within the last few months, they hired as a part-time contract pilot one of the former civil servant pilots from JSC, who’s now retired. He’s also going to be flying SOFIA part-time. Then we hired another guy part-time to be an SCA pilot.\n\n The one guy who used to work at JSC and retired, he was on the airplane for a number of years, probably 20 years before he retired. We had two people retire within the last year and a half or two years from JSC that cut into the pilot pool significantly.

[Assistant] You all work on other planes and other projects.

[User] Everybody flies something else and has multiple things that they do. So it’s not just the only thing to do.

[Assistant] You’re the chief flight engineer for the SCA. Can you tell us about that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right now we have two pilots at JSC [Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas]. We used to have six pilots and four flight engineers throughout many years, four pilots at Houston and two pilots at Dryden. All four flight engineers were in Houston. Now with retirements and this and that and the other there are two pilots at JSC that are civil servants, and there are two qualified flight engineers at JSC. There’s one ferry-qualified civil servant pilot at Dryden and one civil servant pilot who can fly the airplane but is not certified yet for ferry operations. We have one contract flight engineer who used to be a civil servant, and one guy in training. Within the last few months, they hired as a part-time contract pilot one of the former civil servant pilots from JSC, who’s now retired. He’s also going to be flying SOFIA part-time. Then we hired another guy part-time to be an SCA pilot.\n\n The one guy who used to work at JSC and retired, he was on the airplane for a number of years, probably 20 years before he retired. We had two people retire within the last year and a half or two years from JSC that cut into the pilot pool significantly.

[Assistant] You all work on other planes and other projects.

[User] Everybody flies something else and has multiple things that they do. So it’s not just the only thing to do.

[Assistant] You’re the chief flight engineer for the SCA. Can you tell us about that?

[User] Basically I provide the standardization for all the flight engineers. I administer the evaluations to determine when somebody’s qualified. I just manage the flight engineer part of the operation. I do just about all the performance planning for these ferry mission readiness reviews. Just a point of contact for all the FEs.

[Assistant] You had talked earlier about the ferry readiness reviews and how long in advance you had started working on those. Can you tell me who else is involved in those ferry readiness reviews besides the pilots and flight engineers?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Military bases, just about all the time.

[Assistant] Why is that the case?

[User] Security, support capability. There’s a lot of people on the Pathfinder. There’s probably a team of 30 people or something on the Pathfinder, or more. So if we spend the night, everybody’s got to get vehicles, hotels. The military provides security, because the Orbiter has to be roped off. It has an entry control point where they have armed guards, and nobody can get within 200 feet of the 747, unless they’re on the access list. The only people on the access list are the 747 crew and some of the ferry team members that have to do stuff with the airplane or the Orbiter.

[Assistant] Who is on the Pathfinder? Tell me a little bit about that.

[User] You’ll have weather officers. You’ll have a ferry manager. You’ll have all the KSC support personnel. You’ll have the 747 mechanics. You’ll have the Pathfinder flight crew and maintenance crew. You’ll have safety folks. You’ll have security folks. It’s a big crowd. It’s typically 30, 35 people on an active ferry mission on the Pathfinder.

[Assistant] As you’re coming into a landing, who needs to be there? What are your duties as you’re landing the vehicle?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Security, support capability. There’s a lot of people on the Pathfinder. There’s probably a team of 30 people or something on the Pathfinder, or more. So if we spend the night, everybody’s got to get vehicles, hotels. The military provides security, because the Orbiter has to be roped off. It has an entry control point where they have armed guards, and nobody can get within 200 feet of the 747, unless they’re on the access list. The only people on the access list are the 747 crew and some of the ferry team members that have to do stuff with the airplane or the Orbiter.

[Assistant] Who is on the Pathfinder? Tell me a little bit about that.

[User] You’ll have weather officers. You’ll have a ferry manager. You’ll have all the KSC support personnel. You’ll have the 747 mechanics. You’ll have the Pathfinder flight crew and maintenance crew. You’ll have safety folks. You’ll have security folks. It’s a big crowd. It’s typically 30, 35 people on an active ferry mission on the Pathfinder.

[Assistant] As you’re coming into a landing, who needs to be there? What are your duties as you’re landing the vehicle?

[User] The Pathfinder is there ahead of time, so they have things set up. The airport or the base knows where they’re going to put us, because it’s all been coordinated. When we land of course we have safety vehicles like fire trucks and ambulances standing by. We land, and we go to the spot where they’re going to check and make sure we’re safe with the sniff checks and then we go to our parking spot.\n\n The mechanics are there. They’re ready to marshal us into the parking spot and put chocks around the gears so that we know it’s secure and won’t roll once we park and shut down the engines. So we really don’t have anything to deal with, other than just getting to the spot.

[Assistant] Once you’ve landed are you greeted by press? Do the media want to do interviews?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] A couple years ago on the way from Fort Worth we did a flyover of the JSC area in December.

[Assistant] I remember that.

[User] But we couldn’t land because of the weight. We did a couple circuits around the JSC area and a couple flybys at Ellington. We did a flyby at Intercontinental Airport on the way to Louisiana. It just worked out to where we could route it that way. Any time we’re flying a ferry mission, we get lots of calls to try and do flybys. That has to be approved by the Shuttle Program, because they control the Orbiter.\n\n We don’t decide where to do flybys, the SCA crew. We get told we’d like to do a flyby here or there, because they manage that risk. We just fly it when they tell us to. Now with the JSC flight, we worked out a little route. They just say, “Do a flyby at JSC.”

[Assistant] That was neat. I do remember that, going out, getting that e-mail. How many missions have you flown from Edwards to KSC? Do you know offhand?

[User] I don’t know. I’d have to look, but I would think probably 40 or more just guessing. That includes some KSC to Palmdale flights too so probably 40 plus missions total since ’89.

[Assistant] What was your final ferry flight that you did?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But we couldn’t land because of the weight. We did a couple circuits around the JSC area and a couple flybys at Ellington. We did a flyby at Intercontinental Airport on the way to Louisiana. It just worked out to where we could route it that way. Any time we’re flying a ferry mission, we get lots of calls to try and do flybys. That has to be approved by the Shuttle Program, because they control the Orbiter.\n\n We don’t decide where to do flybys, the SCA crew. We get told we’d like to do a flyby here or there, because they manage that risk. We just fly it when they tell us to. Now with the JSC flight, we worked out a little route. They just say, “Do a flyby at JSC.”

[Assistant] That was neat. I do remember that, going out, getting that e-mail. How many missions have you flown from Edwards to KSC? Do you know offhand?

[User] I don’t know. I’d have to look, but I would think probably 40 or more just guessing. That includes some KSC to Palmdale flights too so probably 40 plus missions total since ’89.

[Assistant] What was your final ferry flight that you did?

[User] Last one, let’s see. I don’t have my records here to know the last one I did. When was the last time we landed at Edwards?

[Assistant] I was trying to think about that this morning.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don’t know. I’d have to look, but I would think probably 40 or more just guessing. That includes some KSC to Palmdale flights too so probably 40 plus missions total since ’89.

[Assistant] What was your final ferry flight that you did?

[User] Last one, let’s see. I don’t have my records here to know the last one I did. When was the last time we landed at Edwards?

[Assistant] I was trying to think about that this morning.

[User] 2009?

[Assistant] Probably, yes, it’s been a while, because they try to land at the Cape.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Last one, let’s see. I don’t have my records here to know the last one I did. When was the last time we landed at Edwards?

[Assistant] I was trying to think about that this morning.

[User] 2009?

[Assistant] Probably, yes, it’s been a while, because they try to land at the Cape.

[User] We did that Endeavour flyover in 2008, December ’08 I think it was. Then it was the following year. So it’s been a couple years.

[Assistant] What are some of the more memorable ferrying flights that stand out in your memory?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] 2009?

[Assistant] Probably, yes, it’s been a while, because they try to land at the Cape.

[User] We did that Endeavour flyover in 2008, December ’08 I think it was. Then it was the following year. So it’s been a couple years.

[Assistant] What are some of the more memorable ferrying flights that stand out in your memory?

[User] The first one that I did, when I walked out to do the preflight on the airplane at Kelly Air Force Base [Texas], I walked around and said, “Wow!” So to get to do the first one that you did. Then the one where we flew Endeavour flyover was special because of getting to show people. One time we went to Salt Lake City [Utah] on the way to Palmdale, and there were just thousands and thousands of people lining the roads. We got there a little late because of some Pathfinder issues. Military airplane had problems. It was late in the afternoon, and people were using their flashes as we flew over at 1,500 feet, trying to take a picture of this airplane flying over. We circled the area quite a bit. There was just thousands of people.\n\n Then the next day we delayed taking off for a while. They had a bunch of schoolkids come out, gave tours, TV and stuff. They’re all special. The first one, and then each one is unique, and each one has some special stuff to it. It can be very tiring because you’re getting up very early in the morning. You typically have a long duty day, because we show up for briefing two hours before takeoff, and that’s 20 minutes before sunrise. So when you leave Dryden, it’s 45 minutes from town to Edwards. So you’re looking at a pretty early getup.

[Assistant] That’s like 2:00 in the morning? If you’re on Houston time, that’s four. How long would your day typically be after you flew?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We did that Endeavour flyover in 2008, December ’08 I think it was. Then it was the following year. So it’s been a couple years.

[Assistant] What are some of the more memorable ferrying flights that stand out in your memory?

[User] The first one that I did, when I walked out to do the preflight on the airplane at Kelly Air Force Base [Texas], I walked around and said, “Wow!” So to get to do the first one that you did. Then the one where we flew Endeavour flyover was special because of getting to show people. One time we went to Salt Lake City [Utah] on the way to Palmdale, and there were just thousands and thousands of people lining the roads. We got there a little late because of some Pathfinder issues. Military airplane had problems. It was late in the afternoon, and people were using their flashes as we flew over at 1,500 feet, trying to take a picture of this airplane flying over. We circled the area quite a bit. There was just thousands of people.\n\n Then the next day we delayed taking off for a while. They had a bunch of schoolkids come out, gave tours, TV and stuff. They’re all special. The first one, and then each one is unique, and each one has some special stuff to it. It can be very tiring because you’re getting up very early in the morning. You typically have a long duty day, because we show up for briefing two hours before takeoff, and that’s 20 minutes before sunrise. So when you leave Dryden, it’s 45 minutes from town to Edwards. So you’re looking at a pretty early getup.

[Assistant] That’s like 2:00 in the morning? If you’re on Houston time, that’s four. How long would your day typically be after you flew?

[User] Our duty day is 14 hours. So from the time we show up to the time we leave the airplane can’t be more than 14 hours.

[Assistant] How many hours does it take to fly from Edwards to the Cape?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Our duty day is 14 hours. So from the time we show up to the time we leave the airplane can’t be more than 14 hours.

[Assistant] How many hours does it take to fly from Edwards to the Cape?

[User] Well, it depends on how many stops we’ll make. If you just make one stop, it’s about—I’m going to round it up—it’s about seven hours. It’s about three and a half hours from Edwards to Kelly, and then about three and a half more from Kelly to the Cape, depending on the tailwinds. So you got two, three hours on the ground at Kelly. You got a couple hours on the ground at Edwards. Then when you land you’ve got to stop on the runway. They got to do the safety check. Then they got to tow us in the mate/demate facility. We get off right before they tow us into the facility. So it can be two plus seven plus three plus an hour. So easily 12 hours, if the weather is good. Now that’s if we just land and refuel and go. If we have to spend the night, then you add a couple more hours onto that each way.

[Assistant] How many gallons of fuel does the SCA use typically on a flight?

[User] Depends on the weight of the Orbiter. The airplane, the lighter it is, the less fuel it uses. On a typical end-of-mission ferry weight it averages about 38,500 pounds per hour. Now divide that by 6.7. I’m not going to do that in my head with the recorder going. If you divide 38,500 by 6.7 that’ll give you the gallons per hour. It burns about 130 pounds per nautical mile of flight. So it’s burning 20 gallons every mile, something like that. Is that right? If it’s 130—I’d have to do the math.

[Assistant] That’s a lot of fuel. That adds a lot of weight too.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, it depends on how many stops we’ll make. If you just make one stop, it’s about—I’m going to round it up—it’s about seven hours. It’s about three and a half hours from Edwards to Kelly, and then about three and a half more from Kelly to the Cape, depending on the tailwinds. So you got two, three hours on the ground at Kelly. You got a couple hours on the ground at Edwards. Then when you land you’ve got to stop on the runway. They got to do the safety check. Then they got to tow us in the mate/demate facility. We get off right before they tow us into the facility. So it can be two plus seven plus three plus an hour. So easily 12 hours, if the weather is good. Now that’s if we just land and refuel and go. If we have to spend the night, then you add a couple more hours onto that each way.

[Assistant] How many gallons of fuel does the SCA use typically on a flight?

[User] Depends on the weight of the Orbiter. The airplane, the lighter it is, the less fuel it uses. On a typical end-of-mission ferry weight it averages about 38,500 pounds per hour. Now divide that by 6.7. I’m not going to do that in my head with the recorder going. If you divide 38,500 by 6.7 that’ll give you the gallons per hour. It burns about 130 pounds per nautical mile of flight. So it’s burning 20 gallons every mile, something like that. Is that right? If it’s 130—I’d have to do the math.

[Assistant] That’s a lot of fuel. That adds a lot of weight too.

[User] It’s not fuel-efficient. We’re flying low because the Orbiter has altitude temperature restriction. So if we could fly higher with the Orbiter we could use less fuel. Eastbound is 15,000 feet typically, and we average about 38,500 over a three-and-a-half-hour flight. That’s a good round number.

[Assistant] Tell me just in general how the 747 was modified.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Depends on the weight of the Orbiter. The airplane, the lighter it is, the less fuel it uses. On a typical end-of-mission ferry weight it averages about 38,500 pounds per hour. Now divide that by 6.7. I’m not going to do that in my head with the recorder going. If you divide 38,500 by 6.7 that’ll give you the gallons per hour. It burns about 130 pounds per nautical mile of flight. So it’s burning 20 gallons every mile, something like that. Is that right? If it’s 130—I’d have to do the math.

[Assistant] That’s a lot of fuel. That adds a lot of weight too.

[User] It’s not fuel-efficient. We’re flying low because the Orbiter has altitude temperature restriction. So if we could fly higher with the Orbiter we could use less fuel. Eastbound is 15,000 feet typically, and we average about 38,500 over a three-and-a-half-hour flight. That’s a good round number.

[Assistant] Tell me just in general how the 747 was modified.

[User] The airplanes were modified by Boeing. Inside the airplane, where the aft attach point is, there are two bulkheads that go down into the belly of the airplane that support the weight where the Orbiter is mounted, both in the vertical mounts, and then there’s a horizontal mount that goes forward of that. So there’s a bulkhead there. There’s also one for the front mount. There’s also extra layers of skin added in various stress points throughout the airplane. Two and three layers on the outside of the airplane in places where the engineering decided that’s where the stress is going to be.

[Assistant] That skin, is that extra aluminum?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It’s not fuel-efficient. We’re flying low because the Orbiter has altitude temperature restriction. So if we could fly higher with the Orbiter we could use less fuel. Eastbound is 15,000 feet typically, and we average about 38,500 over a three-and-a-half-hour flight. That’s a good round number.

[Assistant] Tell me just in general how the 747 was modified.

[User] The airplanes were modified by Boeing. Inside the airplane, where the aft attach point is, there are two bulkheads that go down into the belly of the airplane that support the weight where the Orbiter is mounted, both in the vertical mounts, and then there’s a horizontal mount that goes forward of that. So there’s a bulkhead there. There’s also one for the front mount. There’s also extra layers of skin added in various stress points throughout the airplane. Two and three layers on the outside of the airplane in places where the engineering decided that’s where the stress is going to be.

[Assistant] That skin, is that extra aluminum?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Now NASA has had two SCAs over the years. I think in your notes you had mentioned you went out to Wichita [Kansas] to oversee some of those mods [modifications].


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The airplanes were modified by Boeing. Inside the airplane, where the aft attach point is, there are two bulkheads that go down into the belly of the airplane that support the weight where the Orbiter is mounted, both in the vertical mounts, and then there’s a horizontal mount that goes forward of that. So there’s a bulkhead there. There’s also one for the front mount. There’s also extra layers of skin added in various stress points throughout the airplane. Two and three layers on the outside of the airplane in places where the engineering decided that’s where the stress is going to be.

[Assistant] That skin, is that extra aluminum?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Now NASA has had two SCAs over the years. I think in your notes you had mentioned you went out to Wichita [Kansas] to oversee some of those mods [modifications].

[User] The second airplane, the modification started in ’88. It was finished in late 1990. I was also working in quality assurance. So I spent some time at Wichita, as did other people, monitoring that contract, and looking at the work that was being done. Its first time carrying the Orbiter was when we carried Endeavour on its maiden flight out of Palmdale. I was on that first takeoff. So that was interesting. The first time we used that 747, and the first time that Orbiter had flown, that was a memorable flight too, that first time with that one.

[Assistant] Does NASA still maintain both of those SCAs?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Now NASA has had two SCAs over the years. I think in your notes you had mentioned you went out to Wichita [Kansas] to oversee some of those mods [modifications].

[User] The second airplane, the modification started in ’88. It was finished in late 1990. I was also working in quality assurance. So I spent some time at Wichita, as did other people, monitoring that contract, and looking at the work that was being done. Its first time carrying the Orbiter was when we carried Endeavour on its maiden flight out of Palmdale. I was on that first takeoff. So that was interesting. The first time we used that 747, and the first time that Orbiter had flown, that was a memorable flight too, that first time with that one.

[Assistant] Does NASA still maintain both of those SCAs?

[User] Both airplanes are currently maintained, although probably in the next few months we’re going to have one just in final storage because we just will need one to take Orbiters to museums.

[Assistant] Is the SCA used for anything else besides the SOFIA program and the Orbiters? Is there anything else that NASA uses the SCA for?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Both airplanes are currently maintained, although probably in the next few months we’re going to have one just in final storage because we just will need one to take Orbiters to museums.

[Assistant] Is the SCA used for anything else besides the SOFIA program and the Orbiters? Is there anything else that NASA uses the SCA for?

[User] It’s not currently used for SOFIA, but it’s supposed to be transferred to them for use. Now we a couple years ago, actually a year and a half ago, we carried an unmanned vehicle called a Phantom Ray from St. Louis [Missouri] to Edwards for Boeing. We did a flight test to determine how that vehicle would respond. Because it was unmanned, they were not allowed to fly it from St. Louis to California over the populated US on its first flight. They didn’t have the flight facilities in St. Louis where they could do it. They wanted to do it in California. So over a many-month period they designed an adapter to mate to our mounting points. Then they mated their vehicle to that adapter, and we flew it nonstop from St. Louis to Edwards for them.\n\n First of all we did an hour flight test with a photo-chase airplane to see how it would handle, because there’s some unknowns. Then we did some inspections to make sure it hadn’t caused any problems. Then the next day it was like a 5.8-hour flight from St. Louis to LA, because we did it low at altitude and reduced speed. You can Google that. It looks like a little mosquito on top of the airplane. It was like 30-something-foot wingspan. With the adapter it weighed like 30,000 pounds. But it’s an interesting picture.

[Assistant] I’ll have to go out and look at that.

[User] It made the national news on the day we did the flight test. Flying around St. Louis. It’s interesting-looking, it’s like a little bug.

[Assistant] Not quite as big or as heavy as the Shuttle.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It’s not currently used for SOFIA, but it’s supposed to be transferred to them for use. Now we a couple years ago, actually a year and a half ago, we carried an unmanned vehicle called a Phantom Ray from St. Louis [Missouri] to Edwards for Boeing. We did a flight test to determine how that vehicle would respond. Because it was unmanned, they were not allowed to fly it from St. Louis to California over the populated US on its first flight. They didn’t have the flight facilities in St. Louis where they could do it. They wanted to do it in California. So over a many-month period they designed an adapter to mate to our mounting points. Then they mated their vehicle to that adapter, and we flew it nonstop from St. Louis to Edwards for them.\n\n First of all we did an hour flight test with a photo-chase airplane to see how it would handle, because there’s some unknowns. Then we did some inspections to make sure it hadn’t caused any problems. Then the next day it was like a 5.8-hour flight from St. Louis to LA, because we did it low at altitude and reduced speed. You can Google that. It looks like a little mosquito on top of the airplane. It was like 30-something-foot wingspan. With the adapter it weighed like 30,000 pounds. But it’s an interesting picture.

[Assistant] I’ll have to go out and look at that.

[User] It made the national news on the day we did the flight test. Flying around St. Louis. It’s interesting-looking, it’s like a little bug.

[Assistant] Not quite as big or as heavy as the Shuttle.

[User] We’ve had requests to do other things with the airplane. Mostly it’s just been used for carrying Shuttles.

[Assistant] It’s been that workhorse for all these years.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It made the national news on the day we did the flight test. Flying around St. Louis. It’s interesting-looking, it’s like a little bug.

[Assistant] Not quite as big or as heavy as the Shuttle.

[User] We’ve had requests to do other things with the airplane. Mostly it’s just been used for carrying Shuttles.

[Assistant] It’s been that workhorse for all these years.

[User] That’s its job. Don’t want to take any chances on anything happening while doing something else. They agreed to use it for that Phantom Ray project, because we still had two airplanes. There was a time period where we could do that.

[Assistant] I guess I do have one other question that I hadn’t thought about. Obviously the Shuttle, you didn’t always know where you were going to land because of weather. So were you ever working on the possibility of it landing at Edwards, and it didn’t end up landing there, but you had to be prepared in case there was that contingency landing?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We’ve had requests to do other things with the airplane. Mostly it’s just been used for carrying Shuttles.

[Assistant] It’s been that workhorse for all these years.

[User] That’s its job. Don’t want to take any chances on anything happening while doing something else. They agreed to use it for that Phantom Ray project, because we still had two airplanes. There was a time period where we could do that.

[Assistant] I guess I do have one other question that I hadn’t thought about. Obviously the Shuttle, you didn’t always know where you were going to land because of weather. So were you ever working on the possibility of it landing at Edwards, and it didn’t end up landing there, but you had to be prepared in case there was that contingency landing?

[User] Right. Every mission we would put together a plan just in case. The Shuttle Program would be looking at the weather ahead of time and trying to decide whether to activate Edwards, to have it ready just in case, because the forecast at the Cape was bad. So we would be actively working on plans, especially sometimes during a Shuttle mission. To say it’s looking more and more like they might go to Edwards so we’ll sharpen our pencils.

[Assistant] How far in advance do you have to be out at California? Or do you wait a couple days?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, once we go there we stay there till we leave. I have gone out and spent anywhere from one or two days to a week waiting to leave. Once you get out there there’s no reason to turn around and come back. You just stay until you’re ready to leave.

[Assistant] Well, I tried to be pretty thorough. But is there something you think I may have overlooked about ferrying operations or the SCA or any anecdotes or stories that you would like to share?

[User] This is a personal one. It’s a very sad time for me, to see this come to an end. To me, it’s such a wonderful program. I just hate to see it come to an end. There has been a lot of discussion about as we take them to museums should we do any touring around, make several stops on the way to each museum. Yesterday there was a meeting at Headquarters, and they decided not to do any extra flying around for a variety of reasons although the White House may push back on that. I’m not sure how much I should really say about that, because the Headquarters, White House, there’s going to be going back and forth about that.\n\n What they call the Executive Council, which is the Administrator and all the wheels and all the Center Directors, they have this NASA team. They decided they didn’t want to expose the vehicles to any more hazards than necessary as they take them to museums. Plus there’s some cost issues which are not trivial. It’ll be great for people to see them in museums, but I don’t think it’s time. My personal opinion, not an official NASA opinion, my personal opinion is we shouldn’t have retired them this early. That’s how that goes. I sure wish they were still flying.

[Assistant] A lot of people we’ve interviewed for this project have talked about that.

[User] It’s bittersweet. It’s a sad time. I spent my whole life. I came to work a year and a half before the first Shuttle launch. I’ll be here probably for a year and a half after the last landing—it won’t be the same.

[Assistant] It’s changing the Center, that’s for sure.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] This is a personal one. It’s a very sad time for me, to see this come to an end. To me, it’s such a wonderful program. I just hate to see it come to an end. There has been a lot of discussion about as we take them to museums should we do any touring around, make several stops on the way to each museum. Yesterday there was a meeting at Headquarters, and they decided not to do any extra flying around for a variety of reasons although the White House may push back on that. I’m not sure how much I should really say about that, because the Headquarters, White House, there’s going to be going back and forth about that.\n\n What they call the Executive Council, which is the Administrator and all the wheels and all the Center Directors, they have this NASA team. They decided they didn’t want to expose the vehicles to any more hazards than necessary as they take them to museums. Plus there’s some cost issues which are not trivial. It’ll be great for people to see them in museums, but I don’t think it’s time. My personal opinion, not an official NASA opinion, my personal opinion is we shouldn’t have retired them this early. That’s how that goes. I sure wish they were still flying.

[Assistant] A lot of people we’ve interviewed for this project have talked about that.

[User] It’s bittersweet. It’s a sad time. I spent my whole life. I came to work a year and a half before the first Shuttle launch. I’ll be here probably for a year and a half after the last landing—it won’t be the same.

[Assistant] It’s changing the Center, that’s for sure.

[User] Well, it’s changing not just the Center but the agency.

[Assistant] Did you get a chance to see the launch of STS-1?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It’s bittersweet. It’s a sad time. I spent my whole life. I came to work a year and a half before the first Shuttle launch. I’ll be here probably for a year and a half after the last landing—it won’t be the same.

[Assistant] It’s changing the Center, that’s for sure.

[User] Well, it’s changing not just the Center but the agency.

[Assistant] Did you get a chance to see the launch of STS-1?

[User] First launch I went to was STS-3. First landing I watched was STS-4 at Edwards. Then I’ve been to a lot of launches and landings since then. One of the other airplanes I’ve flown is the Shuttle Training Aircraft, which is a modified Gulfstream II which has half the cockpit like the Orbiter, half like a regular airplane. We used it to train Shuttle pilots to land the Shuttle. So I started flying with it in 1981.

[Assistant] So you trained Steve Nagel, I guess.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Jean-Loup Chretien, who was the first person outside Russia or America to perform a space walk. He's a French cosmonaut. In fact, he's the chief of the Spationaut Office in France. They call them spacionauts. He flew with us. He had been on Mir before and had flown with Titov before, nine years earlier, and so here he was on Mir for the second time. And so they had some reminiscing to do when they got up on Mir. Jean-Loup did a great job with us.\n\n Titov, by the way, showed us the bunkroom that he spent a year off the planet and showed where he signed the wall with his signature, and you can still see it, you know, millions of, billions, maybe, of miles later, here's his name up there, so it was pretty interesting being on board the Mir with cosmonauts who had flown it when it first was up in space, so it was pretty interesting.

[Assistant] I really appreciate your time. What time we had scheduled with you is up, and we don't want to take any more unless you have more to give us, because it's certainly up to you and your schedule.

[User] Probably not.

[Assistant] All right. We thank you and wish you the best of luck. Your job may be finished with Shuttle-Mir, but I am sure that they are full every day doing more for whatever projects you're assigned to next.

[User] And I'd still love to get back there some day, because I'm not finished with the training part and the flying part. Hopefully, I'll get to go fly again. It's an awful lot of fun.

[Assistant] We wish you the best of luck. Hope you do, too.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I’m trained as a chemist—I have a PhD in theoretical physical chemistry—and as I was finishing that up, I realized I wanted to work in an area that utilized chemistry to solve problems as opposed to just investigating fundamental chemistry. I’d always been interested in environmental science, especially atmospheric science, and I was able to audit some classes when I was in graduate school. Got exposed to that. Through that, identified a post-doc—they let me change fields—and after that, I was able to get hired on to NASA following the post-doc, and been at NASA over 25 years now.

[Assistant] You started working at the [NASA] Goddard Space Flight Center [Greenbelt, Maryland]?

[User] My post-doc was at the U.S. Naval Research Lab [NRL, Potomac River, Washington D.C.], but then I joined a little northward migration of some people from the NRL to Goddard, and I started at Goddard in December ’83.

[Assistant] What sort of projects were you working on there?

[User] I worked in what’s now considered the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch. I was a chemist working mainly with a bunch of meteorologists and physicists, there really to bring chemical expertise to a multi-disciplinary project. It was called at the time SGCCM, the Stratospheric General Circulation with Chemistry Modeling project, because the idea was to build numerical models of the stratosphere that included chemistry and meteorology.

[Assistant] Was this a result of the Clean Air Act?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] My post-doc was at the U.S. Naval Research Lab [NRL, Potomac River, Washington D.C.], but then I joined a little northward migration of some people from the NRL to Goddard, and I started at Goddard in December ’83.

[Assistant] What sort of projects were you working on there?

[User] I worked in what’s now considered the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch. I was a chemist working mainly with a bunch of meteorologists and physicists, there really to bring chemical expertise to a multi-disciplinary project. It was called at the time SGCCM, the Stratospheric General Circulation with Chemistry Modeling project, because the idea was to build numerical models of the stratosphere that included chemistry and meteorology.

[Assistant] Was this a result of the Clean Air Act?

[User] Yes, I think it all went back to the fact that NASA had a mandate to study stratospheric ozone. We did a lot of observations, and we also had the modeling effort. So I got involved in looking at satellite observations and especially trying to interpret satellite observations of stratospheric composition and building models to simulate things, to look both ways, to use the models and use the data.

[Assistant] Was this what you were working on when you first heard about Earth System Science?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I worked in what’s now considered the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch. I was a chemist working mainly with a bunch of meteorologists and physicists, there really to bring chemical expertise to a multi-disciplinary project. It was called at the time SGCCM, the Stratospheric General Circulation with Chemistry Modeling project, because the idea was to build numerical models of the stratosphere that included chemistry and meteorology.

[Assistant] Was this a result of the Clean Air Act?

[User] Yes, I think it all went back to the fact that NASA had a mandate to study stratospheric ozone. We did a lot of observations, and we also had the modeling effort. So I got involved in looking at satellite observations and especially trying to interpret satellite observations of stratospheric composition and building models to simulate things, to look both ways, to use the models and use the data.

[Assistant] Was this what you were working on when you first heard about Earth System Science?

[User] Yes. That’s really how I got into it. I was working in atmospheric chemistry, which was a small discipline of its own or a poor step-cousin of meteorology. But it was a growing field, because the whole ozone issue had made it a moderately hot field. So there were a lot of interesting things to do.

[Assistant] What did you think when people started looking at the Earth as an entire system? What did you think of that idea, being a chemist?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, I think it all went back to the fact that NASA had a mandate to study stratospheric ozone. We did a lot of observations, and we also had the modeling effort. So I got involved in looking at satellite observations and especially trying to interpret satellite observations of stratospheric composition and building models to simulate things, to look both ways, to use the models and use the data.

[Assistant] Was this what you were working on when you first heard about Earth System Science?

[User] Yes. That’s really how I got into it. I was working in atmospheric chemistry, which was a small discipline of its own or a poor step-cousin of meteorology. But it was a growing field, because the whole ozone issue had made it a moderately hot field. So there were a lot of interesting things to do.

[Assistant] What did you think when people started looking at the Earth as an entire system? What did you think of that idea, being a chemist?

[User] For me, chemistry’s a pretty obvious entrée into that world because you can think at the molecular level, and a lot of the things that are of interest really involve chemical reactions that release and take up your trace gases, whether it’s how do things get into the atmosphere from the Earth’s surface; how do things get from the Earth’s atmosphere back into the surface; how are things transformed; how do things change phase? So those are all, in some sense, chemical questions. Then also, since a lot of what we do at NASA is remote sensing; you could sort of look at it as applied spectroscopy, which is also chemical. That’s still a yardstick that I bring to it, since I have really no formal training in disciplines like meteorology or oceanography or geology or anything else. So I tend to default to thinking at a molecular level, but I’ll think about it in terms of the big picture.

[Assistant] What did you expect would come of the Earth System Science program?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I'm doing good.

[Assistant] I should say ni sa bula vinaka. I got to get a little bit of Fijian in here. So we're in Seattle today, a beautiful day, and recording outside, so hopefully there won't be any distracting sounds. But if there were, it would be just another day in Fiji, wouldn't it?

[User] Yes, it would.

[Assistant] Yeah. So tell me about yourself, Steve. Where did you grow up?

[User] I grew up in Seattle, in west Seattle.

[Assistant] OK, around this area?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, it would.

[Assistant] Yeah. So tell me about yourself, Steve. Where did you grow up?

[User] I grew up in Seattle, in west Seattle.

[Assistant] OK, around this area?

[User] Actually very close to this area. It just happened when we were looking for a house many years later, when I was about 38 years old, my wife Leela, who I met and married in Fiji, liked this area. Right now where we're sitting, Jack, is about one mile from the Fauntleroy Ferry Dock where I grew up, three blocks from there.

[Assistant] Oh, that's interesting. So I'll bet you've seen this area grow as well. And you were in Fiji at a time between, I'll say, the technological age when they started getting TV and so on. We'll get into that a little bit. But for the moment, let me stay focused on your training. Where did you learn your health sciences?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I grew up in Seattle, in west Seattle.

[Assistant] OK, around this area?

[User] Actually very close to this area. It just happened when we were looking for a house many years later, when I was about 38 years old, my wife Leela, who I met and married in Fiji, liked this area. Right now where we're sitting, Jack, is about one mile from the Fauntleroy Ferry Dock where I grew up, three blocks from there.

[Assistant] Oh, that's interesting. So I'll bet you've seen this area grow as well. And you were in Fiji at a time between, I'll say, the technological age when they started getting TV and so on. We'll get into that a little bit. But for the moment, let me stay focused on your training. Where did you learn your health sciences?

[User] I learned my health sciences at basically Shoreline Community College and Seattle Community College. I took a course back in 1969, 1970, as a surgical technician, where I'd be passing instruments and sutures, either be sterile and work with the surgeons or be the circulate and essentially do what a circulating nurse does. And then a decade later, I was introduced to a program at Shoreline Community College for medical laboratory technicians, and I needed a year's college basic sciences to get in that program. That was very competitive. There were about 113 people looking at 13 openings, and so I managed to ace and get in the program.

[Assistant] So you had some experience under your belt. How old were you when you joined?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I learned my health sciences at basically Shoreline Community College and Seattle Community College. I took a course back in 1969, 1970, as a surgical technician, where I'd be passing instruments and sutures, either be sterile and work with the surgeons or be the circulate and essentially do what a circulating nurse does. And then a decade later, I was introduced to a program at Shoreline Community College for medical laboratory technicians, and I needed a year's college basic sciences to get in that program. That was very competitive. There were about 113 people looking at 13 openings, and so I managed to ace and get in the program.

[Assistant] So you had some experience under your belt. How old were you when you joined?

[User] Oh, when I joined Peace Corps, I was 35.

[Assistant] Oh, goodness.

[User] Just turned 35.

[Assistant] Yeah, that's a little bit older than the average volunteer. So you trained in science, health sciences, and how did you actually find out about the Peace Corps?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, when I joined Peace Corps, I was 35.

[Assistant] Oh, goodness.

[User] Just turned 35.

[Assistant] Yeah, that's a little bit older than the average volunteer. So you trained in science, health sciences, and how did you actually find out about the Peace Corps?

[User] Well, I had a friend that was a Dutch citizen that was living here in Seattle, and I was lamenting the fact that I just didn't know what was happening. After six years working as a medical technologist at Swedish Hospital here in Seattle, it didn't feel like that was what I wanted to do the rest of my life. I wanted to help people. I wanted to travel. I wanted to do something that would make a difference to somebody. And the Dutch friend said he knew somebody who'd been a Peace Corps volunteer, set me up with basically an interview with her, and went to a bar in North Seattle and talked to her. And she was very enthusiastic about her Peace Corps history.

[Assistant] Was she in Fiji?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Just turned 35.

[Assistant] Yeah, that's a little bit older than the average volunteer. So you trained in science, health sciences, and how did you actually find out about the Peace Corps?

[User] Well, I had a friend that was a Dutch citizen that was living here in Seattle, and I was lamenting the fact that I just didn't know what was happening. After six years working as a medical technologist at Swedish Hospital here in Seattle, it didn't feel like that was what I wanted to do the rest of my life. I wanted to help people. I wanted to travel. I wanted to do something that would make a difference to somebody. And the Dutch friend said he knew somebody who'd been a Peace Corps volunteer, set me up with basically an interview with her, and went to a bar in North Seattle and talked to her. And she was very enthusiastic about her Peace Corps history.

[Assistant] Was she in Fiji?

[User] And no, she was not in Fiji. I believe she was in an African country, but it's been a long time.

[Assistant] All right. So then you approached the Peace Corps and what kind of reaction did you get from them?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I had a friend that was a Dutch citizen that was living here in Seattle, and I was lamenting the fact that I just didn't know what was happening. After six years working as a medical technologist at Swedish Hospital here in Seattle, it didn't feel like that was what I wanted to do the rest of my life. I wanted to help people. I wanted to travel. I wanted to do something that would make a difference to somebody. And the Dutch friend said he knew somebody who'd been a Peace Corps volunteer, set me up with basically an interview with her, and went to a bar in North Seattle and talked to her. And she was very enthusiastic about her Peace Corps history.

[Assistant] Was she in Fiji?

[User] And no, she was not in Fiji. I believe she was in an African country, but it's been a long time.

[Assistant] All right. So then you approached the Peace Corps and what kind of reaction did you get from them?

[User] And it was positive reaction, at least comfortably positive, and it took me quite a while, although I understand it generally takes people a while. From the time I signed up for Peace Corps, it was just a little over a year before I was finally accepted.

[Assistant] And was Fiji your first offer?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And no, she was not in Fiji. I believe she was in an African country, but it's been a long time.

[Assistant] All right. So then you approached the Peace Corps and what kind of reaction did you get from them?

[User] And it was positive reaction, at least comfortably positive, and it took me quite a while, although I understand it generally takes people a while. From the time I signed up for Peace Corps, it was just a little over a year before I was finally accepted.

[Assistant] And was Fiji your first offer?

[User] And at the time I asked about where I'd go and they said, well, we're not a travel agency and Pacific, Asia, we have a lot of different, you could go to Africa. So I said Pacific and Asia would be my preferences and they seemed to focus on that, which included the Caribbean. So when it came down to it, after about nine months, I'd gotten all this stuff out of the way. I was legal, didn't have a criminal record, and had a bona fide divorce. I wasn't running away from any women here. And so they told me that they had three finalist countries. One was Jamaica, one was Belize in Central America, and one was Fiji. And about two months later, I still had heard virtually nothing from Peace Corps. And one day the phone rang and they said, we'd like to invite you to a position in Fiji.

[Assistant] Nice. And did you know anything about Fiji?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And it was positive reaction, at least comfortably positive, and it took me quite a while, although I understand it generally takes people a while. From the time I signed up for Peace Corps, it was just a little over a year before I was finally accepted.

[Assistant] And was Fiji your first offer?

[User] And at the time I asked about where I'd go and they said, well, we're not a travel agency and Pacific, Asia, we have a lot of different, you could go to Africa. So I said Pacific and Asia would be my preferences and they seemed to focus on that, which included the Caribbean. So when it came down to it, after about nine months, I'd gotten all this stuff out of the way. I was legal, didn't have a criminal record, and had a bona fide divorce. I wasn't running away from any women here. And so they told me that they had three finalist countries. One was Jamaica, one was Belize in Central America, and one was Fiji. And about two months later, I still had heard virtually nothing from Peace Corps. And one day the phone rang and they said, we'd like to invite you to a position in Fiji.

[Assistant] Nice. And did you know anything about Fiji?

[User] I really knew next to nothing about Fiji.

[Assistant] You knew where it was?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And at the time I asked about where I'd go and they said, well, we're not a travel agency and Pacific, Asia, we have a lot of different, you could go to Africa. So I said Pacific and Asia would be my preferences and they seemed to focus on that, which included the Caribbean. So when it came down to it, after about nine months, I'd gotten all this stuff out of the way. I was legal, didn't have a criminal record, and had a bona fide divorce. I wasn't running away from any women here. And so they told me that they had three finalist countries. One was Jamaica, one was Belize in Central America, and one was Fiji. And about two months later, I still had heard virtually nothing from Peace Corps. And one day the phone rang and they said, we'd like to invite you to a position in Fiji.

[Assistant] Nice. And did you know anything about Fiji?

[User] I really knew next to nothing about Fiji.

[Assistant] You knew where it was?

[User] I probably could not have found it very quickly on a map.

[Assistant] That's funny. I think everybody knows Fiji from Fiji Water probably.