Good evening and welcome back to the Space Shuttle Control Room.
I have another one of our flight controllers with me the evening.
This is Bill Foster and he is with GC not GNC.
There's a difference.
He's with the ground control, so I'm going to talk with Bill this evening
and find out a little bit about him.
I actually kind of know a little bit about Bill,
because he's very active in the Public Affairs Office.
He does a lot of volunteer work, but we'll talk about that in a second.
Tell me Bill, what do you do for GC?
Good evening Lynnette.
Ground Controller is responsible for the building itself, for the Mission Control Center,
the complex and all of the network interfaces that we use to communicate with the space craft.
We support both the Space Shuttle and the Space Station and also support a lot
of the international with the Japanese HTV, the European ATV,
and all of our international partners.
So we' re involved in whatever it takes to communicate with the space craft
and to keep this center going so that we can watch the telemetry, we can send commands,
we can talk to our astronauts in space.
So what's the coolest part of your job,
because you've been telling me about all this good stuff?
Really it's just being part of history.
It's being part of this team.
When you've worked here in this room and you've dealt with people
that are just incredible trained.
A lot of people look at movies like Apollo 13 and they look at flight controllers
and see that these are incredibly intelligent people, and we're not.
We're pretty much average people, obviously with some education.
I'm going to beg to differ on that one.
But we are incredibly well trained.
We do a lot of simulations, we work with procedures a lot,
we are constantly double thinking about what could go wrong and all the "what-if" scenarios
so that when we actually come in and sit on console we've done this time
after time in training practices.
We've had a team of trainers that have thrown failures at us time after time after time
after time and when I talk to the public a lot of times I
like to say we're sort of like Pavlov's dog.
We're so trained that they ring and bell and we drool.
So you've been doing this time after time, how many "time after times" have you done this?
The number of assent and entry related Sims has got to be in the hundreds.
I've been doing this since 1997.
I actually started out work here in an engineering position back in 1980,
but I've moved into the Ground Control office in 1997.
I've supported forty-three missions so far, forty-one of them as an Assent/ Entry position.
So you do you like Assent and Entry better than working on the planning?
There's a difference between the planning shift and Assent and Entry,
so tell me which one is your favorite?
Any shift on console is better than a great day in the office.
That's pretty interesting.
It doesn't matter which shift it is, it's always interesting,
there are always things that are going on.
This is my second of two relief shifts on the planning shift.
After tonight I go back off the mission until we get ready for entry late Monday night
for our landing minus one day shift and on Tuesday night I come in for the entry shift.
Obviously my favorite part is working on Assent and Entry.
The big joke among us at work is that we don't really understand what we do
in the orbit part of the mission.
We're just going around in circles, you know, you launch
and then you just wait for it to land.
Ok, so tell me a little bit about yourself now.
We know a little bit about your job, but are you from here?
Where are you from?
Originally from Beaumont, but I grew up in the Houston area.
Right now I live with my wife of twenty-five years and two of our kids
in La Porte about ten miles north of here.
We've been out there for just about twenty-five years.
Again, I grew up in Houston.
Where did you go to school?
I went to school, got my degree at the University of Houston, Clear Lake.
A physics degree in electrical optics.
That's a little bit different.
You said you were an engineer when you first came out here,
how did you go from physics to engineering?
Well when you get a degree in electrical optics in 1980, there are not a lot of places
in the country that actually did anything with it.
What's electrical optics anyway?
Explain that to us.
At the time it was dealing with anywhere from high powered lasers, researching laser theory.
Fiber optics was just really coming to be at the time, so it wasn't a big industry yet.
Really the good jobs were on the east and west coasts.
Fortunately the University of Houston, Clear Lake is right
out the back door of Johnson Space Center.
One of my co-students had gotten a job at Ford Aerospace,
one of the contractors responsible for Mission Control.
That was before the shuttle had started flying.
They were looking for almost any warm body with a degree,
so when I found out that he had gotten a job I called the person that he did and I came to work
as a data-communications engineer.
So you didn't start as a co-op student?
No. Straight out as an engineer, actually doing nothing related to my degree,
but the degree did get me my job.
So tell me again what you did because I interrupted you, I'm sorry.
As an engineer I was responsible for a lot of the terminal systems in the control center,
so I would write out engineering instructions, how these things had to be installed,
I would write out procurement specifications, what materials were needed to work at project
and then would work with the technicians in the control center
to actually get the equipment installed, tested, and then maintain it later.
So Bill is one of the folks that we see a lot in Public Affairs, he does a lot of volunteer work
for us, and tell our viewers exactly what you do for PAO.
You go out and volunteer, so tell me what you do.
Well I go out and do some speaking engagements, not a lot of them out in public,
but a lot of that is because I don't get asked a lot.
I do interact with the public as they come in on a regular basis.
I talk to the tourists from Space Center Houston.
They'll come up into the viewing room and I'll go chat with them on what we're doing
and it's really interesting hearing their perspectives.
You know, these are the people that pay our salaries, and it's neat that they're willing
to travel here to spend the amount of money that they spend
in some cases to come and see what we do.
Other things, you know, we have a lot of special visitors
that come here that your group escorts in.
Some very famous people.
He gets to talk to all of the really famous people and all of the VIPs.
What I generally do, because one of my parts at my position is that I control the front screens,
is I'll set up displays that welcome them into the control center.
When I first became a GC I had a trip out to the Goddard Space Flight Center
to their network control center, and when we walked into the room,
the network director had arraigned to have,
about four of us from JSC, have our names up on the screen.
As you walk in and you see your names up that's kind of a wow factor.
So ever since then, I try and do that for our visitors that come in.
Get up a nice graphic, have their names up, a "Welcome to the Control Center."
It's kind of funny every now and then when you'll later see stuff on the internet
where they've posted things, and that picture is frequently one of the things that they post.
So tell us somebody famous that you've seen here, and that you've talked with.
Joe Walsh from the Eagles was here.
I had a chance to meet him and give him a few mementos from the control center.
He gave me a cap.
He was here in town doing a concert.
I see a lot of baseball teams where the players will come in.
Former President Bush came in a couple of days after the Columbia accident.
I had a chance to talk with him and show him some
of our displays and things along those lines.
You occasionally get members of royalty here.
So is that a favorite part of your job?
Interacting with the public, whether they're the VIPs or just the people that come
through Space Center Houston, is one of the favorite things that I like to do.
It's energizing to talk to them.
One of the more interesting ones is there is a school from South Korea
that comes in on a regular basis.
Different kids with the same organizers bring them in
and when they come in, you're a rockie (?
8:38) over them.
They listen to you, it has to be translated for them, but they'll listen,
and then afterwards they want their picture taken with you, they want your autograph
and it's just neat to see the excitement and the enthusiasm.
Every now and then think that you're talking to people that you really hope are going
to be working with you some day in the future.
I think you're right Bill, it is very important that we do some outreach to the community.
Every time you talk to somebody that's not working at NASA and it doesn't matter
if you're a public affairs officer or a ground controller, or any of the positions here,
when you get to talk to the public, it's always very special
because this is a great place to work.
We all seem to really have a good time.
It's very serious work, but we enjoy it.
I absolutely agree.
It is very serious, but at the same time, it's part of history, it's just amazing to look
around sometime and realize that I'm actually working here.
Now our viewers can't see Bill's tie, but I've been admiring it, I was admiring it earlier.
Tell me a little bit about your tie.
You've got all of the different missions on it.
It's got a lot of mission emblems from the early missions, from the Apollo, Gemini missions.
It's more of a history tie and it's one of my favorite ties.
In many cases I make it my launch tie.
We have our superstitions here that, you know,
if we're not wearing the right thing then that's why we didn't launch if we didn't launch.
This tie has got about a fifty-fifty track record.
Well that's a pretty good track record.
Do you have anything else that you want to share with our viewers Bill?
Well, one I appreciate everyone watching this.
This is not always the most exciting program in the world and I know people
like Lynnette do everything they can to try and pass information on,
but in a lot of cases you're just staring at people, who are apparently doing nothing
or stuffing their faces although we do try and keep an eye on the TVs
and not eat when we know we're on.
But I do appreciate everyone that supports the Space Program , you know, we're hoping to fly
out the shuttle program very safely, and do it, in my case, as long as it takes.
Hopefully we're not finished too soon, but once that happens I'll also go over
and support our Space Station side of the house.
Well Bill is absolutely right.
This is a work environment, so when we invite you into the Space Shuttle Flight Control Room
or the International Space Station Control Room, this is our work environment.
So you may see people sitting at their desk and you think, "Well they're not doing anything,"
but if you're actually listening on these headsets,
you would know that there are lots of conversations going on.
Multitudes of conversations going on, sometimes at the same time,
so it can be kind of a daunting experience your first time.
Bill's a pro here because he's been doing it for quite some time.
I want to thank you again Bill for joining us.
Thank you for having me.