Human Spaceflight: Apollo 50 Years On: Proceedings of a Forum (2020)

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HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

PROCEEDINGS OF A FORUM

Prepared by Steve Olson for the

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NOTICE: The subject of this publication is the forum titled Human Spaceflight: Apollo 50 Years On held during the 2019 annual meeting of the National Academy of Engineering.

Opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the forum participants and not necessarily the views of the National Academy of Engineering.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-67243-6 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-67243-0 Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/25697

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Suggested citation: National Academy of Engineering. 2020. Human Spaceflight: Apollo 50 Years On. Washington: National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25697.

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Preface

he 2019 meeting of the National Academy of Engineering celebrated not only the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission Tbut human spaceflight in general, from the first ventures beyond Earth’s atmosphere to future flights to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The two plenary speakers on Sunday afternoon represented both the origins of spaceflight and our continued presence and ambitions in space. Thomas Stafford, an NAE member and NASA astronaut with the Gemini and Apollo programs, conducted the first rendezvous in space on Gemini 6A and designated the first lunar landing site when he flew the Apollo 10 mission around the Moon. A distinguished pilot and advisor, he still holds the record for the highest speed ever attained by a human—Mach 36, as the Apollo 10 command module reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Charles Bolden Jr. was pilot and mission commander on four Space Shuttle flights and NASA administrator from 2009 to 2017. He oversaw the transition from the Space Shuttle system to the dawning era of commercial spaceflight as well as the continuing robotic exploration of Mars to prepare for the arrival of astronauts. Both men had their listeners alternately laughing and applauding as they recounted their adventures in space and in meetings of the Washington policymakers who oversaw the space program. The next day, in the annual forum, four speakers joined Generals Stafford and Bolden to fill out the story of human exploration of space. NAE member Robert Crippen piloted the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981 and commanded three other shuttle missions. Sandra Magnus flew on four Space Shuttle missions, including the shuttle’s final flight, and spent four and a half months on the International Space Station. After three shuttle flights, Christopher Ferguson became Boeing’s first

vi PREFACE

commercial test pilot astronaut and will be among the first to fly to space aboard the CST-100 Starliner. Hans Koenigsmann, at SpaceX, is responsible for the safe completion of the company’s missions into space. The forum was moderated by Deanne Bell, a mechanical engineer, entrepreneur, and television host, most recently of the CNBC show Make Me a Millionaire Inventor. She is also the founder and CEO of Future Engineers, an education technology company that engages students in online contests and will undoubtedly help produce some of the leading engineers of the 21st century. Virtually all the members of the NAE have spent their careers in the era of human spaceflight, including more than 60 who reported, in an informal poll, that they worked on the Apollo program. Many younger members say they were inspired to become engineers by Apollo, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station. I myself was a sophomore in high school when Alan Shepard became the first US astronaut to fly into space. Classes were canceled and we gathered in the auditorium to watch the flight on a 21-inch black-and-white television. Watching that achievement, I decided that an engineering future was for me. The mission of the NAE is twofold: to advance the engineering profession and to serve the nation. Human spaceflight serves both aspects of that mission, and has demonstrated how engineering can help realize the highest aspirations of the human mind and spirit. Advances since 1969 and current initiatives show that there is much to look forward to over the next 50 years.

John Anderson President National Academy of Engineering

Contents

1 The Apollo Experience 1 Apollo’s Origins, 2 Learning to Rendezvous, 3 Flying to the Moon, 4 The Legacy of Apollo, 6 A Half-Century of Inspiration, 7

2 The Space Shuttle and the International Space Station 8 From Skylab to the Space Shuttle, 9 Experiential Knowledge, 10 The Power of Diversity, 11 Renewed Appreciation for Planet Earth, 13

3 The Era of Commercial Spaceflight 14 Diverse U.S. and International Contributors, 15 Reusable Spacecraft, Reduced Costs, 17 Beyond Earth Orbit, 17 Collaboration versus Competition, 19 Speed versus Safety, 21 Humans versus Robots, 22

4 Inspiration and Challenges 23 Sources of Inspiration, 23 Challenges to Overcome, 24 Lessons from a Lifetime, 26

Appendixes

A Forum Agenda 28 B Panelists’ Biographies 30

vii

The Apollo Experience

uring the 1966 Gemini 9A mission, astronaut Eugene Cernan performed a spacewalk in one of the first suits designed to Dfunction in the vacuum of space. In the stiff and overheated suit, Cernan’s visor completely fogged over and movement was extremely difficult. As Cernan began climbing back into the capsule, command pilot Thomas Stafford had to hold onto his partner’s legs and feared that he could not get him back inside. “We could have lost him and even myself,” Stafford told the attendees of the 2019 annual meeting of the National Academy of Engineering. A combination of careful planning, unforeseen circumstances, improvisation, and pluck marked the entire Apollo program. “In the end,” said Stafford, “we were good, but we were lucky, too.”

2 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

APOLLO’S ORIGINS The decision to send astronauts to the moon was made in a politically charged atmosphere, Stafford recounted. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space aboard the Mercury spacecraft. But Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first person to fly into space three weeks before Shepard’s flight, and a few days after Gagarin’s flight the US-sponsored invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs failed. “It was a dynamic time,” said Stafford. President John Kennedy, inaugurated just four months earlier, saw the worldwide acclaim that both Shepard and Gagarin received. He directed his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, to figure out, over the following two weeks, what the United States could do in space that would produce scientific and economic benefits and demonstrate America’s superiority in science and technology. After consulting with NASA administrator James Webb, NASA engineers Robert Gilruth and Maxime Faget, rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, and others, Johnson told Kennedy that the Soviet Union had a significant lead in being able to fly a spacecraft around the Moon and back to Earth. He also said that the United States had even chances of beating the Soviets to orbiting the Moon. But if Americans could land astronauts on the Moon and bring them back to Earth, the benefits would be substantial and the United States would clearly demonstrate its leadership in space. Kennedy had also asked Johnson to determine the cost of a proposed program. The experts Johnson consulted estimated that a Moon landing would cost about $10 billion. But Webb had been the head of what is now the federal Office of Management and Budget, and he advised Johnson to double the estimate to $20 billion, Stafford said. Kennedy discussed the idea with several congressional leaders. Then, during a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, he announced the goal of sending Americans safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. “That’s how Apollo was started,” said Stafford. “There weren’t study groups and all that.” Stafford cited three developments that made the Apollo program possible. The first was the development of the F-1 rocket engine starting in the 1950s, five of which would eventually power the first stage of the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo spacecraft into orbit. The second was the choice of liquid hydrogen as a fuel in the upper stages of the Saturn V, which made it possible to put much more weight into low Earth orbit than was possible with other fuels. The third was adoption

THE APOLLO EXPERIENCE 3

of the lunar-orbit rendezvous mission profile, an innovative idea that called for orbiting a combined command and service module and a lunar module around the Moon and then sending just the lunar module to the Moon’s surface, after which the astronauts would return to the command module on the lunar module’s ascent stage. Before settling on that mission profile, two others were in the running, both of which called for landing a powerful rocket on the Moon that could return astronauts directly to Earth. But at a crucial July 1962 meeting in Huntsville, Alabama, the decision was made to develop the new technology. “We would go with the lunar-orbit rendezvous,” said Stafford.

LEARNING TO RENDEZVOUS The mission profile chosen for the Apollo program required that two spacecraft be able to rendezvous and dock in space, a procedure that had never been attempted. In the fall of 1965, as part of the Gemini 6 mission, Stafford and Walter Schirra Jr. set out to show that it could be done. They ran into problems even before leaving the launch pad. The original mission was for Stafford and Schirra to dock with an uncrewed Agena target vehicle launched by an Atlas rocket. However, as the two astronauts waited in the Gemini “You can fly formation at 17,400 capsule for the target vehicle to miles per hour. The main thing launch, the Agena succumbed to a is to get there.” fundamental problem. “In rocket science, you always lead with fuel and follow with oxidizer,” said Stafford. “Von Braun learned that back in Germany in the 1940s as he blew up V2s.” But the Agena led with the oxidizer rather than the fuel, causing it to explode as it separated from the Atlas booster a few minutes after launch. Stafford and Schirra were rescheduled to fly the renumbered Gemini 6A to rendezvous with the Gemini 7 spacecraft being flown by astronauts James Lovell and Frank Borman. But just as their Titan II launch rocket ignited, the engines abruptly shut down. Schirra made a snap decision not to activate the ejector seats, which could have injured or killed the two men and delayed the mission for months. Finally, three days later, Stafford and Schirra made it into space. They flew their Gemini 6A around Gemini 7 for about six hours, approaching within a foot of the other spacecraft. The two could not dock because they did not have docking mechanisms, but the procedure

4 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

was like “flying formation airplanes, very easy,” said Stafford. “You can fly formation at 17,400 miles per hour. The main thing is to get there.” Meanwhile, the Soviet program to send men around the Moon and back to Earth was experiencing severe setbacks. In one unmanned mission, a rocket exploded a few hundred feet off the launch pad, producing one of the largest nonnuclear explosions in the world— perhaps a fourth the size of the Hiroshima atomic bomb explosion, Stafford said. Von Braun, in contrast to his Soviet counterparts, insisted that each rocket involved in the Apollo program be fired on test stands to ensure their reliability, which produced an unprecedented record of success. The Saturn V rocket, for example, made 13 launches without a failure.

FLYING TO THE MOON Stafford was the commander of the Apollo 10 mission, which did everything the subsequent Moon landing would do except the landing. On that mission, he flew the lunar module to within 9 miles of the Moon’s surface, inspecting the future landing site for Apollo 11. For the astronauts and support personnel, the procedures were exactly the same as for a Moon landing—with the exception of the landing. That way, said Stafford, “when Apollo 11 came, it was like they’d been there before.”

Thomas Stafford and Robert Crippen.

THE APOLLO EXPERIENCE 5

The lunar module was a unique device, designed to fly only in the vacuum of space. The aluminum skin of the spacecraft “was so thin between the frames that, unpressurized, you could take your thumb and push and the aluminum would bow out,” Stafford said. When the lunar module was pressurized with 5 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen, the door, machined out of an aluminum slab, also would bow out. “It wasn’t meant to be used commercially,” Stafford quipped. By this time Stafford had been to space twice and he knew that seeing the Earth from space could “You never forget your first make a powerful impression. He Earthrise.” became convinced that the view should be shown on color television, even though existing color cameras were too heavy and delicate to take into space. He advocated in NASA for the creation of a lens with the proper characteristics for space and a camera based on an older and simpler technology: It would spin a wheel with red, yellow, and blue filters in front of the camera lens, producing images in each color that could then be recombined. “We got a small motor slightly bigger than your finger off a Minuteman missile, spun that, and they had Westinghouse build it for us…. It worked! We put it on the spacecraft one week before launch.” “You never forget your first Earthrise,” said Stafford. From the distance of the Moon, the Earth is about the size of an orange. “And with color TV, people here on the Earth saw it within a second and a half after we saw it.” As the three astronauts were taking the first color television images of the Earth from space, Stafford suggested to ground control that they call the British Flat Earth Society in London and tell its members that “you can see on live color TV that the Earth is round.” The next day the president of the society sent a message back to Stafford: “Yes, the Earth is round, but it’s a flat disk.” Two weeks after Apollo 10 returned to Earth, Stafford got a call from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in New York saying that he had been awarded an Emmy for his space telecasts. “I said, ‘What about John Young and Gene Cernan?’ They said, ‘Well, it was your idea, and you did all the pushing.’ I said, ‘That’s true, but on board the spacecraft I was busy coordinating things as commander. Cernan did about 50 percent of the work, John Young did 40, and I may have done 10.’ I said, ‘Either they get Emmys, or I refuse to take it.”

6 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

Finally, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences agreed. “Always keep your people out in front,” said Stafford.

THE LEGACY OF APOLLO Stafford went on to achieve many other firsts. He commanded the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which culminated in the historic first meeting in space between US astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts, on July 17, 1975. He helped the Space Shuttle return to flight after the 2003 Columbia accident. Over the course of his career, he flew four types of spacecraft and more than a hundred types of aircraft. Those missions yielded lessons that proved invaluable. During the “Get excited about your space launch of Apollo 10, the spacecraft program and Mars, because we’re going.” began vibrating like a pogo stick, so much so that Stafford could no longer read the instrument panel. “I thought the thing was going to blow apart.” He had the choice to abort but realized how much it would delay the program. “This is why you have test pilots as commanders. I said, ‘If it blows, it blows.’” Von Braun later apologized to him personally. A tank pressurization valve was too close to a vent valve, causing the two to resonate, and a stabilizing bar had not been disconnected before launch. “We fixed that one real easy,” Stafford recounted. “Two people check it now.” A near disaster during Apollo 13 was an important reminder of a lesson that “you learn back in high school chemistry,” Stafford said. “When you mix acid and water, you always pour acid into water. You do not pour water into acid, because you have some bad results.” During the Apollo 13 mission, a carbon-containing combustible material was in a tank that also contained liquid oxygen. “You have all probably seen the pictures. It blew that double wall of steel tank to pieces, and also a square of the service module.” Getting the Apollo 13 spacecraft back to Earth was one of the program’s best days, Stafford said. The famous author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that a thousand years from now, when historians look back on the 20th century, they will note that the leading nations of the time fought two major wars among themselves. “But the one item that they will note most of all,” said Stafford, “was Project Apollo and the lunar landings.”

THE APOLLO EXPERIENCE 7

A HALF-CENTURY OF INSPIRATION The other plenary speaker, former astronaut and NASA administrator Charles Bolden (whose presentation is summarized later in this report), made a point on which all the speakers at the meeting agreed: The Apollo program inspired a half-century of engineering creativity and achievement, and it continues to point the way into space. “Get excited about your space program and Mars,” he said, “because we’re going.”

The Space Shuttle and the International Space Station

obert Crippen joined NASA right after the Apollo 11 landing. He had been working on a classified Department of Defense R program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, which was designed to take high-resolution photographs of the Soviet Union. When that program was cancelled, seven of the crew members were transferred to the NASA astronaut office. “We didn’t do any training, didn’t go through a selection process with NASA. We just walked in the door and they put us to work,” Crippen recalled.

THE SPACE SHUTTLE AND THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION 9

FROM SKYLAB TO THE SPACE SHUTTLE Crippen’s first assignment was to oversee the crew interfaces of Skylab, an orbiting space station that hosted US astronauts from May 1973 to February 1974. He was also a member of the support crew for the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, and he and Stafford were among the first Americans to visit Star City and its Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in the Soviet Union. “I had the pleasure of tucking Tom and the “When you look at the 30 rest of his crew into the command years that the Space Shuttle module for their launch on Apollo- was flying,…it will be a long Soyuz, so we go back a long ways.” time before we see a vehicle that is anywhere near as Crippen then worked on the capable as that.” development of the Space Shuttle, which first flew into space in 1981. Many people think of the job of being an astronaut as mostly training, he said, but most of his career with NASA involved engineering work. “I would imagine the current astronaut office is doing the same thing with the vehicles that are being developed today by Lockheed, Boeing, and SpaceX.” John Young, the most experienced astronaut at the time, selected Crippen to be his crewmate for the first Space Shuttle flight. “It was great training with John and flying that mission,” said Crippen, “certainly one of the highlights of my life.” He went on to command three other flights in 1983 and 1984, much of which involved engineering work to “make sure the Space Shuttle would do what we had designed it to do.” “Looking back, I am very proud of the Space Shuttle program,” Crippen recalled. “Yes, we had two terrible accidents. I lost some very close friends. But when you look at the sum of the 30 years that it was flying,…it will be a long time before we see a vehicle that is anywhere near as capable as that.” He reported that the Space Shuttle performed several missions for the Department of Defense that contributed significantly to winning the Cold War. It flew payloads like the Hubble Space Telescope and other space observatories that have revolutionized knowledge of the universe. It made possible the building of the International Space Station, “an engineering marvel that is still up there today doing its job.” The termination of the shuttle program in 2011 was a great disappointment, primarily because the United States did not have another way of putting its crews in space and would have to depend on Russia for transport to and from the International Space Station,

10 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

Crippen observed. But he assured the audience that “the Starliner and the Dragon capsules are going to correct that problem very soon.”

EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE Sandra Magnus was selected to the NASA astronaut corps in 1996 and flew on four shuttle missions, including the final shuttle flight in 2011. In November 2008 she traveled to the International Space Station (ISS), where she spent four and a half months as flight engineering and science officer. “When you are up there and you are experiencing it, it changes your perspective.” “There is a big difference…between intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge,” said Magnus, “between book learning and going into a lab and actually touching something. That is when you really understand things.” She explained, for example, that astronauts who fly on the ISS adapt to weightlessness at a completely different level than do astronauts who are in space for just a few days. When a crew came to pick her up, she was surprised to see how awkward and unsure of their motions they were as they moved through the spacecraft. In contrast, she was able to bounce from object to object in the station as if she had been born there. “That’s when I realized I had adapted to a whole new level.” One of her most remarkable experiences was coming back to Earth. As she reentered Earth’s atmosphere and slowed down, she experienced

THE SPACE SHUTTLE AND THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION 11

gravity for the first time as an external force. Scientists and engineers understand gravity intellectually, she said; they can describe and quantify it. “But that is not the same thing as understanding it instinctively and internally” after becoming accustomed to its absence. “It makes you look at the world in a whole different way.” She adapted to other things as well. “I took it for granted, looking out the window, that there was an Earth floating by below me, and the beauty of it, and how amazing that was.” These kinds of experiences are why humans should go into space, she said. “It shifts our view of the world. We start thinking about questions that we should be asking but that we don’t think of because we take for granted the environment that we are already living in. It opens up our minds to new ways of looking at the universe.” And as people with different skills and perspectives go into space, they will ask new questions and arrive at new answers. “We are going to learn more from the questions that we learn to ask than from the answers we are getting.”

THE POWER OF DIVERSITY Charles Bolden, who also flew four shuttle missions and was NASA administrator from 2009 to 2017, expanded on the theme of new perspectives and diversity. A legacy of the Space Shuttle, he said, was its introduction of inclusion to NASA. It enabled “people to fly who could not fly before.”

12 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

Women astronauts were one part of that expansion. NASA is now “using the other 51 percent of society that we didn’t use before,” Bolden said. “We have women heavily involved in everything that we’re doing, [including] leadership roles at the very top…. That’s something we didn’t have in the days of Apollo or the early days of the shuttle.” Magnus is one of the women who benefited from this broadening. “Do not underestimate the She said that she first dreamed of power of role models.” being an astronaut when she was in middle school. “I had no idea how I was going to do it. I had no idea if it was even possible.” Then, in 1978, when she was entering high school, she saw an article on the front page of her small-town newspaper headlined, “Women Accepted into the NASA Astronaut Corps.” “I started crying,” she said. “At that moment, I realized that the dream that I had was possible. There was a path. There were people like me I could identify with doing the thing that I had always dreamed of doing.” Everyone can be a role model for some constituency, she said, whether that group is defined by gender, race, community, or age. The members of the NAE, she said, are particularly well suited to excite people about science and technology and to encourage more people to enter engineering. “Do not underestimate the power of role models.” International collaboration brings another measure of diversity, Bolden noted. About 20 nations collaborate to make life possible on the International Space Station, reflecting the view from the station’s windows. From space, “there are no borders and boundaries,” he said. “You can’t tell where one group of people lives and another group of people lives.” Attitudes were not always so open. When Bolden was asked in the early 1990s if he would fly a shuttle mission that included the first Russian cosmonaut, he was hesitant. But he had dinner with two cosmonauts, Sergei Krikalev and Vladimir Titov, “who are my dear friends to this day.” They talked not about technology but about their children. “We talked about what we wanted to do for the future. We became mission focused on figuring out how we could get our two teams together and successfully work on that mission. It became Shuttle-Mir, and now the International Space Station.” Stafford added that he had a similar experience with cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who “is just like a brother to me. In fact, his granddaughter is named after my daughter, [and my] grandson was named after Alexei.”

THE SPACE SHUTTLE AND THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION 13

RENEWED APPRECIATION FOR PLANET EARTH One thing that made an indelible impression on Bolden from space was the thinness of the atmosphere surrounding the planet. “We need to take care of that” atmosphere, he said. “There is no planet B…. We need to learn how to take care of this one so we don’t need to be dreaming of other places where we can go live.” “There is no planet B…. Many more people will soon be We need to learn how to take able to go into space, even if just care of this one.” for 20 minutes or so, Bolden said. “That will change your perspective on this planet. If you get an opportunity, find a rich friend, get him to foot the bill for you,… You need to [go into space].”

The Era of Commercial Spaceflight

hris Ferguson represents the dawning era of commercial spaceflight. He was pilot or commander of three Space Shuttle Cmissions, including the program’s final mission. At the time of the forum, he was a Boeing commercial test pilot astronaut scheduled to be on the first flight of the CST-100 Starliner. Commercial companies launching astronauts into space “is what the future of spaceflight holds,” he said.

THE ERA OF COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT 15

DIVERSE U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL CONTRIBUTORS After the Space Shuttle program ended, NASA let a large contract to return Americans to low Earth orbit aboard commercial spacecraft. Obtaining this service from a commercial company is allowing NASA to focus on exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit while also producing value for US taxpayers, Ferguson said. The CST-100 Starliner is designed to carry up to five astronauts to the ISS and remain docked to the station as a lifeboat should it be needed. It will launch on an Atlas V rocket, a proven technology that has made about 80 flights since the early 2000s. Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, which was previously an uncrewed-only facility, has been rebuilt for crewed launches. Flight support will come from a team in Houston composed of many of the mission controllers who serviced the Space Shuttle program. “We are going to leverage a lot of the capability that NASA had as a function of safely operating the Space Shuttle for 30 years,” said Ferguson. To return astronauts to Earth, the service module will be jettisoned just after the deorbit burn. The crew Reuse “allows you to gain module will then land at one of five experience in a much shorter West Coast landing sites: two at the time and to start iteratively White Sands Test Facility in New improving your spacecraft Mexico and one each near Wilcox, based on what you get back.” Arizona, at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Other companies are also developing commercial spacecraft. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo has taken nonastronauts to space and back, and NASA is using the spacecraft to do suborbital experimentation. The automated Cygnus spacecraft, which is now built and launched by Northrop Grumman, has transported supplies to the ISS and is “one of our tried and true deliverers of cargo to the station today,” Bolden said. In 2012 the Dragon spacecraft, developed by SpaceX, became the first commercial vehicle to dock with the ISS. The Dragon, which can be either crewed or autonomous, is sent into orbit atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, with mission control both in Hawthorne, California, and at Cape Canaveral. At the time of the forum, SpaceX had made 76 launches of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. “It is amazing how fast we ramped

16 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

up and how many launches we do currently,” said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of the Build and Flight Reliability Team at SpaceX. The Crew Dragon vehicle is very automated, like the inside of a Tesla, whereas the CST-100 looks more like a classic spacecraft or the cockpit of a Boeing 787. The Dream Chaser Cargo System being developed by the Sierra Nevada Corporation launches vertically on a rocket but lands horizontally like the Shuttle. “Tom and I, we’d love to fly this,” said Bolden. In terms of international involvement, the H-II Transfer Vehicle designed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency has transported materials to the ISS. NASA still works with Russia to get crews back and forth, but Congress has mandated that the agency not use Chinese spacecraft to reach the station, although the Chinese have flown astronauts into space and are partnering with other nations. The Chinese have built docking mechanisms that Bolden hopes comply with international standards, because then their vehicles could dock with the ISS and with other vehicles. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed that that’s what’s happened,” he said, because “one of these days we’ll fly with them.” All these efforts “are paving the way for us to get back to the Moon and then on to Mars,” said Bolden.

THE ERA OF COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT 17

REUSABLE SPACECRAFT, REDUCED COSTS SpaceX is reducing the cost of spaceflight by emphasizing reusability, Koenigsmann explained. The first stage of its boosters returns to Earth and lands softly on the ground. “Landing the boosters and reusing them is an incredible advantage if you want to fly over and over again and if you want to do this quickly,” he said. “It allows you to gain experience in a much shorter time and to start iteratively improving your spacecraft based on what you get back and what you see.” The boosters are currently designed to be used ten times, and the Crew Dragon will be used up to five times. “You don’t have to build something again. You have to inspect it and refurbish it.” The idea is to treat a spacecraft more like an aircraft, so that the cost of getting into space “becomes the cost of fuel, maintenance, and operations, basically. That is where The idea is to treat a we need to go.” Reusing hardware spacecraft more like an aircraft, so that the cost of also improves safety, because use getting into space “becomes provides information and reveals the cost of fuel, maintenance, problems, Koenigsmann said. “You and operations, basically.” see possible leaks. You get more data.”

BEYOND EARTH ORBIT Although current missions remain focused on low Earth orbit, the ultimate goal is to return to the Moon and travel on to Mars, said Bolden. From Earth, astronauts could travel to a space station in orbit around the Moon, which could serve as a platform for both experimentation and construction. From this Lunar Orbit Gateway, they could board either a lunar lander to go to the surface of the Moon or a transfer vehicle to go to Mars. A lunar lander could be “built by Blue Origin,” Bolden said, “or it may be a NASA-contracted government vehicle, or it may be something that the Europeans or the Japanese or the Israelis or somebody else did. But it’s going to be an international collaboration that’s going to help us.” Bolden said that a destination date for Mars could be in the 2030s. “I’m one who happens to believe firmly that, if we stay focused, we’re okay.” Such a mission will be expensive, as was the Apollo program, but “we’ll get there.”

18 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

Koenigsmann described SpaceX as a company based on the idea of making the human species multiplanetary, which means eventually going from the Earth to Mars. Like Bolden, he noted that the biggest problem is money: “Spaceflight is super expensive.” Magnus, too, noted that the largest current barrier to extending the human presence beyond low Earth orbit is the cost. Reusability is the key, she said, both to reduce costs and to increase the frequency of launches, and industry partners are working with NASA on the issue. Ferguson pointed out that one of the greatest assets in getting “We have to figure out how to Mars has been the ISS, where to recycle everything that we people have been learning to live take into space, and how we and work for long durations. The can use the materials on the planetary bodies where we station has shown that it is possible place humans.” to recycle 95 to 98 percent of the water on board, and is providing information on how to remove carbon dioxide from the air and add oxygen. It is revealing what will be needed to create a system that must function for the duration of time that it takes people to get to Mars and back. “We are perfecting those systems on the International Space Station today.” Recycling is important, Magnus agreed, but the problem extends beyond creating a 100 percent closed life support system. The logistics to support people on Mars are a massive undertaking. “We have to figure out how to recycle everything that we take into space, and how we can use the materials on the planetary bodies where we place humans.” Ultimately, this work will benefit people on Earth, she observed, because the Earth has finite resources, too. Crippen said that he firmly believes humans will visit Mars someday, but doing so will require living not just on the ISS but on another planetary body. “We are lucky enough to have the Moon, which is just a few days away as opposed to months going to Mars. It is a great test ground for learning how to live off of this Earth.” Many questions will need to be answered, and living on the Moon can help answer them. “The trips that we did make to the Moon were all little camping trips,” he said. “To live there is a totally different problem. We need to solve that.” Stafford mentioned the need for research and development on propulsion systems. Going to the Moon and on to Mars will require a big booster, not just combinations of small boosters, he said. And getting to Mars will require new technologies such as a nuclear thermal rocket. “There is a lot to be done.”

THE ERA OF COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT 19

COLLABORATION VERSUS COMPETITION The six forum speakers discussed what moderator Deanne Bell described as the “delicate balance” between collaboration and competition in the space industry, “and why we need both.” Magnus observed that simultaneous collaboration and competition create a productive dynamic because of the push and pull among different entities. “Competition is good because it makes everybody keep innovating. Collaboration is good because we learn from each other.” “Competition is good because Space remains a harsh and risky it makes everybody keep environment. Collaboration enables innovating. Collaboration is learning across the community, good because we learn from while competition spurs people and each other.” organizations to do better. The combination of collaboration and competition “works at the end of the day,” said Magnus, because everyone in the space program “is really passionate about the mission of flying in space, whether that is machines or people or both…. We can conquer all kinds of issues that might otherwise create fractionization and dysfunctionality. We still have some, but in general the whole community pulls together.”

Moderator Deanne Bell with panelists Thomas Stafford and Robert Crippen.

20 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

The ISS is one of the most complex and highly technological programs ever conceived, involving different countries with different agendas, different languages, and different political situations. But it was achieved because everyone involved in it believed in it. “There is no reason why we can’t solve any problem that is facing us as a global population if we take the same attitude,” said Magnus. Koenigsmann, too, pointed out that, on the launch pad, “everybody works for the mission.” The same applies when something goes wrong. People want their companies to succeed, “but there is an overarching level where people want things to go well and to be safe and reliable,” he said. “I find that refreshing.” Ferguson cited the economic benefits of combining collaboration “We have to teach young and competition. Developing the engineers and scientists how Space Shuttle took between $30 to think ethically and how to make the right decision, even billion and $40 billion in 2010 if it means the program is dollars, and the shuttle program slowed for a while.” cost about $3 billion per year for four or five flights annually. For the cost of operating the Space Shuttle program for two years, two commercial providers have been doing development of spacecraft, two test flights, and six service flights back and forth to the ISS. “Just looking at the dollar value, it will turn out to be a very good value for the American taxpayer,” he said. In turn, the savings can be reinvested to get back to the Moon and to Mars. Bolden elaborated on the benefits of the current partnership between the government and the private sector. NASA has never had its own facilities to build big rockets (a point also made by Stafford). Rather, it has contracted with private companies to do that job. However, in the past, NASA exercised oversight the way the Department of Defense does. “We hovered over the contractor and dictated everything that goes on.” Now NASA is working much more collaboratively. Using a management process called Insight, it has provided general guidance for contracts and then worked with companies to realize that guidance. “We’re going to have people in the plant. You can ask if you have questions. But we’re not going to tell you how to do it.” The process has worked extremely well, Bolden said, although the development process has taken more time than expected.

THE ERA OF COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT 21

SPEED VERSUS SAFETY The forum panelists addressed a question from an audience member about potential trade-offs between speed and safety. Bolden started with the basic point that “you need to have both. Speed does not mean you don’t operate safely.” Safety is a mindset, he said. The people involved in a project need to have the proper background, ethical grounding, and confidence to stop a launch when something does not feel right. Then “you go back and look at the program that you have in place and adjust it as necessary.” But, he acknowledged, taking longer does not guarantee safety. “It “We have never recovered gives you more time to do stupid from losing two shuttles…. It’s always a scar that you carry stuff.” with you. So get it right.” Engineers need ethics training during their education to help instill the proper mindset, he said. Engineers have to make life-and-death decisions, “so there are a lot of things that don’t have anything to do with math and science and engineering that we have to make sure the young people of today understand.” Similarly, when young engineers see older engineers allow things to happen that are not right, they can absorb the wrong message. “We, as engineers and scientists, have to teach them how to think ethically and how to make the right decision, even if it means the program is slowed for a while. Nothing will end a program like rushing to the end and having it blow up on you…. People get over being years late and dollars over [budget]. People don’t get over—we have never recovered from losing two shuttles. All of us who have been on spacecraft will say that. You don’t recover from that. It’s always a scar that you carry with you. So get it right.” Complacency is another fault that needs to be avoided, said Magnus. When cutting corners becomes normal operations, “you forget to question things.” Everyone working on a program needs to remain alert, to think about what they are doing, to question, to listen to the system, to make sure they have an environment where people can bring up questions, she said. That is the way “to create the right safety environment, whether you are moving fast or you are moving slow.” Stafford put the necessary balance succinctly: “The worst thing you can have is an on-time failure.” The safety mindset at NASA has carried over into the space industry, said Ferguson. The requirements that companies receive from NASA are

22 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

informed by “the experiences and the mistakes that NASA has made in the way it has run spaceflight operations in the past.” This has created an “appropriate transition” between a government-run and -managed program and a commercially run and managed program. Koenigsmann concisely conveyed this mindset: “Only the paranoid survive,” he said. “If that means stopping the launch and explaining to your customer why you stopped for three days, so be it. It is more important to get things right than to get them done on time.”

HUMANS VERSUS ROBOTS A final question from the audience involved the balance between sending humans and sending robots back to the Moon and on to Mars. Bolden noted that NASA has been pursuing both. For example, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, has been designed to demonstrate how future explorers to Mars might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellant and for breathing. And robotic missions could burrow into the surface of Mars and build out an infrastructure for future human occupants. He also shared a comment he has gotten from friends: that a single geologist on the surface of Mars could explore the whole planet in the time the Curiosity rover has been there. “There is an innate curiosity that humans have that we are not able yet to teach a robot,” he said. Humans also can do things in space that robots cannot, he continued. When the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope was found to have a spherical aberration, robots would not have been able to fix it—“the technology wasn’t there at the time.” Robots are needed to perform the mundane tasks of spaceflight, he said, but only humans can do many things in space. Magnus compared human and robotic capabilities to a toolbox. Humans have certain skills, machines have certain skills. “Just like the toolbox in your garage, you can’t do anything with all screwdrivers or all hammers. You need a mix.” The proper mix will depend on the mission, but both require an expensive infrastructure and both have their own fragility and limitations. “It is never going to be an ‘either-or.’ It is always going to be an ‘and.’” Stafford sealed the argument by pointing out that the Curiosity rover covered the same distance on Mars in three and a half years that astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt did on Apollo 17 in three days. “Again, you need both,” he said.

Inspiration and Challenges

ending humans back to the Moon and to Mars will require inspiring new generations of space program supporters and participants, Sthe forum speakers agreed. “The people who are going to land on Mars, the people who are going to be the final say-so of ‘yes, we’re going,’ they’re not sitting in this auditorium,” said Bolden. “We have to get kids excited.”

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION As a guide to inspiring future generations, Bell asked what inspired each of the six speakers at the forum. Stafford said that flying to the Moon was his inspiration. Only 24 humans have done that, he observed. “I thank God that I was there and had the opportunity to be there from nearly the first to the last.” Crippen said that he was inspired by the original astronauts, including Stafford. “I joined the program while Apollo was in progress,” he said. “It was the people in it who inspired me.” Magnus recalled that watching men step on the Moon “inspired the whole planet,” including the young people who were watching the event on television. She thought “if we can do that, then maybe there is something I can do in space.” Ferguson, too, remembered watching the landing on a black-and- white television as a child and making sketches of the lunar module, which his mother saved for him. Much more recently, he has been inspired by a book, Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight, which described on a technical level how humans got to the moon. “We invented guidance systems that didn’t exist. We invented docking

24 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

systems that nobody knew would work…. There are amazing discussions in there about how we really did it.” Koenigsmann said that he was six, nearsighted, and “in the wrong country” to watch the Moon landing. Nevertheless, the Apollo program has been “an incredible inspiration for everybody working at SpaceX,” he said. “To have the boldness of building a device and filling it with dangerous propellants and then putting fire under it and going to the Moon—that is an incredible thought.” Bolden admitted that he initially had little interest in going into space “We invented guidance when, in his last few months of flight systems that didn’t exist. We invented docking systems that training in Mississippi, he watched nobody knew would work.” Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the Moon. He thought, “They would never pick me.” Then a family friend reminded him of something his mother and father said when he was growing up in South Carolina: “You can do anything you want to do if you are willing to work and put your mind to it.” That reminder was a challenge, he said, and he rose to the challenge.

CHALLENGES TO OVERCOME Bell asked the panelists about the most important obstacles that still need to be overcome. Several speakers cited the need to continue lowering the costs of spaceflight. “Costs must come down dramatically in the next 25 years to make this work,” said Koenigsmann. “Otherwise, it might be too expensive.” Perhaps an innovative technology such as a space elevator might someday be developed, in which payloads travel into space along a cable tethered to the Earth. But such technologies do not appear to be imminent. An issue closely related to cost is the need for additional users for spaceflight. “We have capabilities that are going to be coming online, but we haven’t figured out yet how to develop the markets or how to develop the use cases for the broader private enterprise,” said Magnus. Once flights to space are routine, people will need to figure out ways to use that capability. Bolden added that the problem needs to be solved soon. The International Space Station is nearing the end of its time in space. “We don’t have a way to get enough pieces and parts there to refurbish it

INSPIRATION AND CHALLENGES 25

and make it new.” Once the ISS is deorbited, “we need to have smaller commercially operated places…where you can do your research, whether it’s biomedical engineering or pharmaceuticals development or materials processing or whatever it happens to be,” Bolden said. “Somebody has to come up with a business case that helps people understand that there is value in going into low Earth orbit and having a pharmaceutical laboratory [or] a materials processing laboratory.” One of the station’s missions was to demonstrate to the private sector that money can be made in space, Bolden continued, but companies need to be willing to take the risk that access to space “Somebody has to come up with a business case that enables. “You don’t make money if helps people understand that you are not willing to take a risk.” there is value in going into low Ferguson pointed out that Boeing, Earth orbit.” SpaceX, and other companies are developing the capability to get back and forth to low Earth orbit, but at the moment these companies have just a single customer—the International Space Station. “We need other markets to evolve,” he said. Koenigsmann appealed to the engineers in the audience to “pitch in here and help us.” He also cited the need to develop new facilities in space that can develop the capabilities to return to the Moon and go to Mars. Without commercial markets and such facilities, the drive to send humans into space could fade. Stafford, too, remarked on the need for customers, adding that the space program can be turned off quickly. When new presidents take office, they can reverse the direction of a program within a few weeks. “I can’t forecast who is going to be the chief executive over the next two or three cycles, but it can go on or it can go off,” he said. “That is a big risk.” Health risks to astronauts are another challenge, several of the speakers noted. Some of the drawbacks to spending extended periods in space are being overcome, for example by providing astronauts with exercise equipment to keep their bodies from deteriorating, but others remain daunting. Exposure to radiation is a particular concern for astronauts who spend long periods outside Earth’s protective atmosphere and the magnetic shield provided by the Van Allen radiation belt. “We have a lot of questions there, and we need to understand the answers to those questions and manage that problem,” said Magnus. Bolden said that he favored the idea of protecting astronauts on Mars

26 HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: APOLLO 50 YEARS ON

by having them live underground and using the soil as a radiation shield. Ferguson cited advances in polymers or the idea of creating magnetic fields to shield astronauts—“a Van Allen belt around a spacecraft”— though such fields would be very energy intensive. “Ultimately, we are going to have to beat the problem,” he said. Radiation emitted by the sun is a concern on Earth as well, Bolden noted. “We are very fortunate in that we have not had a major space weather occurrence that has knocked out satellite communications and the like, but that is a possibility. Long before we need to worry about what is the risk to a crew member flying in space, we have to have an ongoing, improving, technologically developing space weather capability to protect us here.”

LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME At the end of the forum, Bell asked each of the speakers for one sentence of advice. Stafford said, “Work hard. Crippen said, “Don’t screw up.” Magnus said, “Be a good role model for those around you. Ferguson said, “The next 12 months will be pivotal for human spaceflight.”

INSPIRATION AND CHALLENGES 27

Koenigsmann, from earlier in the forum, said, “Space needs users.” Bolden said, “Do all you can with what you have in the time that you have in the place that you are.” Bell closed by recounting a dinner she had with Eugene Cernan, the last person to walk on the Moon. During their dinner, Cernan observed that the program’s success was the product of American ingenuity. “It is not just the people in space—it is the scientists, the engineers, everyone, the entire community,” Bell recalled. “The space program has inspired our nation. It has inspired our world. It is competitive. It is collaborative. It has inspired adults. It has inspired kids. I can’t wait to see what the current generation and the next generation of scientists and engineers and astronauts will do in space over the next 50 years.”

Appendix A

Forum Agenda

NAE Annual Meeting Plenary Presentations and Forum

Human Spaceflight: Apollo 50 Years On

October 6, 2019, 3:30–4:45 pm October 7, 2019, 9:45–11:45 am Kavli Auditorium National Academy of Sciences Building Washington, DC

Plenary Presentations

Thomas P. Stafford (NAE) Former US Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff, Research, Development, and Acquisition, and Astronaut

Charles F. Bolden Jr. Former Administrator and Astronaut, NASA

Forum

The Apollo Experience Thomas P. Stafford (NAE) Former US Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff, Research, Development, and Acquisition, and Astronaut

APPENDIX A 29

The Shuttle Experience Robert L. Crippen (NAE) Captain, US Navy (ret.); Former President, Thiokol Propulsion

Commercial Space Exploration Christopher J. Ferguson Boeing Test Pilot Astronaut & CST-100 Starliner Director of Crew and Mission Systems; Commercial Crew Program, Boeing

Commercial Space Exploration Hans Koenigsmann Vice President, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX

The Space Station Experience Sandra H. Magnus Principal, AstroPlanetview

Humans Go to Mars Charles F. Bolden Jr. Former Administrator and Astronaut, NASA

Moderator Deanne Bell TV Host and Founder/CEO, FutureEngineers

Appendix B

Panelists’ Biographies

The Honorable CHARLES F. BOLDEN JR. was NASA administrator from 2009 to 2017, overseeing the transition from the Space Shuttle system to a new era of exploration focused on the International Space Station (ISS) and aeronautics technology development. He is now president and CEO of the Bolden Consulting Group LLC. During his 34-year career with the Marine Corps he worked in NASA’s Astronaut Office and traveled into orbit four times, logging over 680 hours in space. He piloted the Space Shuttles Columbia in 1986 (STS-61C) and, in 1990, Discovery (STS-31), the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope, and he was mission commander on Space Shuttles Atlantis in 1992 (STS-45) and Discovery in 1994 (STS-60). He also served as chief of NASA’s Safety Division in the wake of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2004 as a major general. As NASA administrator, Maj. Gen. Bolden oversaw the shift toward commercial space initiatives handling ISS resupply and created the Space Technology Mission Directorate, responsible for developing the technology to make future exploration missions successful. His tenure included the triumph of the Mars Curiosity Rover landing, the success of the Juno mission that is enhancing knowledge of the planet Jupiter, an increase in the number of Earth observation satellites, and progress toward the expected 2020 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

APPENDIX B 31

He was a US Department of State Science Envoy for Space (2018– 19) and is an independent director of the LORD Corporation, Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina. Maj. Gen. Bolden earned his BS in electrical science from the US Naval Academy and MS in systems management from the University of Southern California.

ROBERT L. CRIPPEN was the pilot of the first Space Shuttle flight in April 1981 and went on to command three other Space Shuttle missions. He has logged more than 565 hours in space and orbited the earth 374 times. During his 30 years in the US Navy, he was an attack pilot aboard the USS Independence and then a test pilot instructor at Edwards Air Force Base in California. In 1969 he was selected as a NASA astronaut and was on the support crew for the Skylab 2, 3, and 4 missions and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Captain Crippen became director of the Space Shuttle program at NASA Headquarters in Washington and then director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He entered the private sector as a vice president at Lockheed Martin in Orlando and then served as president of the Thiokol Propulsion Company in Brigham City, Utah. His numerous awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross from the US Navy, Defense Superior Service Medal, Federal Aviation Administration Award for Distinguished Service, Goddard Memorial Trophy, National Geographic Society Hubbard Medal, American Legion Distinguished Service Medal, Congressional Medal of Honor for Space, and Leadership and Service Medals from NASA. He has been inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame, Aerospace Walk of Fame, and National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2016. He is a fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and an honorary fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was elected to the NAE in 2012. Captain Crippen earned his BS in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

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As Boeing’s first commercial test pilot astronaut,CHRISTOPHER J. FERGUSON will be among the first to fly to space aboard the CST-100 Starliner. He has led the development of the spacecraft’s mission systems and crew interfaces. Since 2011 he has worked with NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Directorate; Johnson Space Center’s Engineering, Flight Crew, and Mission Operations organizations; and NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at Kennedy Space Center to ensure that Boeing’s design supports NASA’s human rating requirements. He was also a leader in the development and testing of system concepts and technologies for the spacecraft’s launch and ground systems. A retired US Navy captain and former NASA astronaut, he piloted STS-115 (Atlantis) and commanded STS-126 (Endeavour) and the final shuttle mission, STS-135 Atlantis( ), logging more than 40 days in space and 5,700 hours in high-performance aircraft. Capt. Ferguson also served as deputy chief of the NASA Astronaut Office and as spacecraft communicator for the STS-118, STS-120, STS- 128, and STS-129 missions. His service has been recognized with the Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Strike/Flight Air Medal, NASA Spaceflight Medal (three), Navy Commendation Medal (three), and Navy Achievement Medal. Capt. Ferguson holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Drexel University and an MS in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School.

HANS KOENIGSMANN, vice president of the Build and Flight Reliability Team at SpaceX, leads the company’s quality engineering and process development teams; oversees the launch readiness process during launch campaigns; and assesses launch risks, identifying and resolving anomalies during integration and launch. He has more than 25 years of experience designing, developing, and building complex avionics and guidance, navigation, and control

APPENDIX B 33

(GNC) systems for launch vehicles and satellites. At SpaceX since the company’s inception in 2002, he has built up the avionics, software, and GNC departments and developed the launch readiness process used during each launch campaign. He designed the company’s risk mitigation process and initiated the risk database, establishing a similar process for system-level changes to the vehicle and ground systems. He was the chief avionics architect of the Falcon 1 and early Falcon 9 efforts, and launch chief engineer for the last three Falcon 1 missions and most of the Falcon 9 flights. His experience includes the development of two suborbital and two orbital launchers as well as several satellite projects and attitude control systems. He headed the Space Technology Division of Germany’s Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, where he was responsible for the development and operation of the satellite BREM-SAT. He then worked for Microcosm as chief scientist and flight systems manager for their suborbital vehicles. Dr. Koenigsmann has an MS in aerospace engineering from the Technical University of Berlin and a PhD in aerospace engineering and production from the University of Bremen.

SANDRA H. MAGNUS is principal of AstroPlanetview, LLC and former executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Selected to the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1996, Dr. Magnus flew in space on the STS-112 shuttle mission in 2002 and on the final shuttle flight, STS-135, in 2011. She also flew to the International Space Station on STS-126 in 2008, served as flight engineer and science officer on Expedition 18, and returned home on STS-119 after 4½ months on board. She then served at NASA Headquarters in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. Her last duty at NASA, after STS-135, was as deputy chief of the Astronaut Office. At NASA Dr. Magnus worked extensively with the international community, including the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) as well as Brazil on facility- type payloads. She also spent time in Russia developing and integrating operational products and procedures for the ISS.

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She was previously a stealth engineer at McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company (1986–91), working on internal research and development and on the Navy’s A-12 Attack Aircraft program, studying the effectiveness of radar signature reduction techniques. Her service has been recognized with the NASA Space Flight Medal, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the 40 at 40 Award (given to former collegiate women athletes to recognize the impact of Title IX). Dr. Magnus earned her BS in physics and MS in electrical engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and her PhD from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech.

US Air Force Lieutenant General (ret.) and former NASA astronaut THOMAS P. STAFFORD has logged nearly 521 hours in space, flying six rendezvous on four types of spacecraft. In 1965 he piloted Gemini VI, the first rendezvous in space, and in 1966, commanding Gemini IX, he demonstrated a rendezvous used in the Apollo lunar missions. He headed the mission planning analysis and software development for Project Apollo, and as commander of Apollo 10 in 1969 he flew the first rendezvous around the moon and designated the first lunar landing site. He was cited in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest speed ever attained by a human, when Apollo 10 attained 27621.7 statute mph or Mach 36 during reentry. In 1975 he was commander of the Apollo- Soyuz Test Project mission, which culminated in the historic first meeting in space between US astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts, ending the international space race. As Commanding General at Edwards AFB he presided over the development of the B-1A, F-15, YF-16, A-10, YC-14, and YC-15, and as US Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Research, Development, and Acquisitions he conceived of and started the stealth aircraft programs the F-117A, B-2A, AGM-129, and the roadmap for the F-22 Raptor. He retired from the Air Force in 1979 and in 1982 cofounded the technical consulting firm of Stafford, Burke, and Hecker in Alexandria, VA. In 1990 in response to a request from Vice President Dan Quayle and Admiral Richard Truly, then NASA administrator, General Stafford assembled teams from the DOD, DOE, and NASA to prepare “America

APPENDIX B 35

at the Threshold,” a roadmap for the next 30 years of the US Manned Space Flight Program beyond low Earth orbit. He chaired the Operations Oversight Committee of the first Hubble Telescope Spacecraft Servicing and Repair Mission that corrected the instrument’s design and manufacturing defect, for which he received the NASA Public Service Award (1994), and also chaired the Shuttle Return to Flight Group to carry out the recommendations of the Spaceship Columbia Accident Board. He has received numerous other honors and medals from NASA and the Air Force, as well as the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, and AIAA Chanute Flight Award, to name just a few. In addition to his NAE membership, he is a fellow of the American Astronautical Society, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and Society of Experimental Test Pilots, and has been inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame and National Aviation Hall of Fame. General Stafford received his BS with honors, in electrical and mechanical engineering, from the US Naval Academy and graduated 1st in class at the USAF Test Pilot School in 1959.

DEANNE BELL is an engineer, television host, and entrepreneur. Her television hosting credits include PBS, ESPN, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, DIY Network, and most recently CNBC’s Make Me a Millionaire Inventor. She is also the founder and CEO of Future Engineers, an education technology company that engages students in online contests and challenges. Future Engineers’ inaugural competition, developed with the ASME Foundation and NASA, produced historic achievements including the first student-designed 3D print in space. Her company has since become a US Department of Education SBIR awardee, and was selected by NASA to host the Mars 2020 “Name the Rover” contest. Previously she worked at Raytheon for three years as an optomechanical engineer. She focused on packaging FLIR into a helicopter- mounted gimbal, involving the redesign of the afocal telescope and the packaging of the cryo-cooled imager and CCD camera. She then worked for other R&D programs at the company, including as head of the mechanical design and build of a synthetic aperture ladar (SALTI) optical test bench.

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She earned her BS in mechanical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and was selected by its McKelvey School of Engineering to receive the Young Alumni Award in 2019.