Courage to Leap & Lead with Paul Sean Hill, Episode 135 - part 1

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold.

Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello everybody, this is CB Live. Okay, so you know today is Tuesday and we always do our show on Tuesday on Courage to Leap and Lead. Although I have to tell you, I have a special guest coming up, Stephen R. Covey, and we're actually going to record that on a different day. But that's news to come. So I'm so happy to be back again today. We have another wonderful guest. I, I'm like, you know what I said to him? Your background is so complex.

Yes.

I don't think I understand it. And for CB not to understand it, oh my gosh, this guy, we're going to spend some time about his background. And then we're going to find out about what failures did he have that he was able to turn into success and then develop a winning story following that. So I can't wait to get started. Hope you guys are good today. Let's start with Paul Hill. Paul, I know Paul from, of course, my wonderful group. Not mine, but the group that I'm in, MG100, and that's how we met. Gosh, what a wonderful experience to meet somebody that's— okay, I'll let the cat out of the bag— involved with NASA. Can you believe? Okay, so let's roll. Paul, thank you so much for being on today.

Oh, don't worry, it's my pleasure.

How are you?

Oh, I'm doing well. I'm doing really well. Good.

Now, I know that you've written a book, and so do you have it in front of you?

You know, I have a copy of it back, back on that shelf right there, as a matter of fact.

Okay, we can't see that. So you're gonna have to bring it forward.

All right.

So guys, you could tell that this guy is just a humble person, which I love. Okay. Leadership: Mission Control Room to the Boardroom. This sounds fantastic. How many pages is it?

About 300, 325, somewhere in there.

You know what? I'm writing a book. I'm almost at the tail end, and I'm telling you, It's a heavy lift, especially a book that, you know, long.

You know, it was, it was much harder than I thought it was going to be because I had the whole thing in my head. I knew I could just sit down and say it. I thought it would take me maybe 3 weeks to type it all out, and it was about a year. And I realized, you know, as I started getting into it, you know, a paragraph at a time or maybe a section at a time, I realized It's easy to think the idea. It's much more difficult to write it in a way that anybody can read it and understand it and apply it in their situation. That's what took me the year to do.

That's what's taken me forever to do, you know, with some other mistakes that I made, which we won't go into right now. Well, first tell us, why did you want to be on the show?

Well, you know, it's funny. I call myself a leadership evangelist now. I spent my NASA career in mission control, but by the time I finished my NASA career, I realized that I was significantly more valuable in almost all the work I did, not as a rocket scientist or as an engineer, but it was in how I led teams to do difficult things, which, you know, the people that were in mission control before me, they made a science out of how to do that very thing, how to lead a team to do something that looks really difficult and scary. And having grown up in that environment and seen the difference that, that positive leadership can make in the team performing at a higher level, in fact, performing at a higher level than many of us think we're capable of performing at individually, seeing that in example after example finally made me realize I need to write this down. Because much of our leadership model, the way we developed people from junior engineers up to leaders, much of it was handed down kind of word to mouth. You know, it was tribal knowledge. And we would say things like, well, I might know— might not know how to say this, but I know a good leader when I see them.

Yeah.

And yeah, what got to us in about the 2007, 2008 timeframe was that's not good enough. I mean, As focused an organization as Mission Control has always been, the fact that 40 years into our existence, we couldn't actually articulate our leadership model, that was a shocker to me as one of the senior executives in the organization by then. And I was not any better able to articulate it when we made this realization than anybody else. But I was definitely part of the leadership team that finally said, we can't go on any further. We have to learn. how to say this so that we can teach it to next generations intentionally, not just hope that they catch on culturally or through tribal knowledge. We pulled that off, and the way we figured out how to say those things that had always been true, even if we hadn't said them, that's what made their way into my book. And including how did that actually make us better as a leadership team, not just doing rocket science, but in any of the management functions that we had. How did finally learning to articulate those values, how did it make us lead better? How did it make us succeed better? And answering those questions had a very profound impact on me as a leader, which, which, I mean, I, I probably went months not able to sleep at night while I had this story building in my head and how we could write this in a way that we could give to our next generation of leaders and to leaders in other, other industries, other businesses that they could apply. Well, over time it all came together.

Let's start out with you as a young child, and how did you get to this personal values, mission, information that you normally— that you have now? I mean, you're clearly not the average person walking the street.

So I was told by an executive coach once that 75% of the human population doesn't know how to say hello to me.

That sounds pretty accurate to me.

Yeah, well, so to answer your question, you know, I was raised for the most part by a single mother. My parents divorced when I was about 4 years old, and my mother was a nurse, and she raised my older brother and me pretty much by herself. And it was— she was and is a tough gal and didn't put up with anything from her 2 growing sons who created all kinds of trouble for her. So obviously, you know, the first big part of it was her instilling in us that what you do, what you say matters, and you are responsible for it, good or bad. So make the right choices. And I went from that to, to Texas A&M where I was in the Corps, and I got a couple of engineering degrees, and they reinforced those same ideas. I went from that into the Air Force and had the great luck, uh, to work for a, a major who then became a lieutenant colonel. And I just got assigned to this guy randomly, and he was one of those Uh, you know, powers of nature, the effect that this guy had on me and everything he did, from how his uniform looked to the way he conducted himself in casual conversations to how he conducted himself in very serious professional things. Everything he did, he did as well as he could, and he was trying to demonstrate this is what, uh, this is what goodness looks like, or this is what it looks like to be technically excellent or professional in everything that you do. I mean, even the way he raised his children, the way he engaged with his kids, I looked at and thought, oh my God, I don't think I'm ever going to be as good as this guy in all things. And it had a profound effect on me. That was 40 years ago, and I still compare myself to John Pretz.

I, I'm very curious to know when people like yourself meet— how should I say it— the turning point in their lives, aside from your mom. This guy, John?

John Pretz, right.

How did you— how did you know this was a person that you can model yourself after? What were the sparks that happened?

You know, part of it became easy for me because, so, you know, here I am, a junior officer, a lieutenant, and then a brand new captain. And a lot of the junior officers that were in the squadron I was assigned to in the Air Force were bitter. These were guys who had originally gone to pilot training And washed out. So they didn't make it, didn't get to be pilots. And they assigned a lot of them to do this space job that I was in. I, I, now I hadn't gone to pilot training. I, I went there right out of school. The, the reason I bring that up though is a lot of them were bitter, right? So I'm surrounded by a lot of really bitter peers, and then here comes this guy.

Okay, stop. Wait one second. How did you recognize the bitterness? And you know, the reason why I'm asking you these questions is You know, my focus is on courage. And so, and in fact, the book is called Courage to Leap and Lead. So I want to dive into knowing part of courage is to be able to select the right team to immerse yourself in as a learning point. Then the next part is taking that knowledge, and then you're leading. So How did you recognize people that were bitter? Was it in their tone? Was it in what they said? How did you recognize the difference?

It was interesting that it affected almost all parts. Now, this wasn't every other junior officer in the squadron, but it was a lot of them. And it affected almost all things about how they conducted themselves. I mean, their uniforms always looked sloppy, the way they talked, their posture. I mean, you could just tell these guys had given up on things. And when they talked about anything, whether it was the mission that we had for the Air Force or it was, you know, their outside private life, it was always in, you know, the clouds are hanging over their heads. There's nothing good in life. I mean, that was just everything that they did exuded that. And then we're talking 20, 30 different officers all in their own way demonstrating those types of behaviors. And we would go out and do this, this, uh, Air Force job where we essentially took satellite equipment out into the desert and set it up and talk to military satellites. And I was fascinated how these officers who were the most senior people out there, you know, you have the enlisted troops, you know, the airmen and the sergeants that are turning the wrenches and doing all the heavy lifting. And these officers talking in front of them about how, well, nothing really matters. You shouldn't, you shouldn't try very hard. And, and I'm looking at it like, hey, our job is to set an example for these guys. We want them to look up to us. We need to give them something to look up to. And it was after a year or two of doing that job, surrounded by a lot of guys like that, that in comes this— then Major John Pretz, who was the exact opposite of all of them. Everything he did. I mean, it didn't matter what he— what you were talking about, again, whether it was professional or personal. He was— you could tell he was trying to make a difference. He was setting an example in everything he did, and he didn't do it in a way that it was in your face and he's preaching at you, here's what you should do. He just conducted himself in a very positive, very focused way, um, in everything that he did. And so, I mean, it was— he was definitely like a light in the darkness.

Mm-hmm.

And so it became easy for me then to say, now that is somebody to look up to. And I remember very early on thinking, I'm going to know I made it when someday I have people who have worked for me or worked with me that look at me that way or say those things about me. Now, that's my goal. That's my challenge for myself now professionally is 30 years from now, I better have some people saying that about me or I underachieved. And I know it was John Pretz that put that in my head years ago.

So I'm just curious. You mentioned that he conducted himself in this stellar manner, both professionally and personally. Were you able to identify the difference between his talking to somebody professionally versus personally? And the reason why I'm asking this is I'm an Army brat. And, you know, my dad is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Army. And I remember talking to other Army brats, and our conversation was always about how our parents seemed the same on the field as they did in the house. You know, it's like they didn't know how to turn the spigot off.

Yeah, I would say he was the same. He conducted himself the same, whether it was in the military environment or with the family, but not like the great Santini, you know. He wasn't, he wasn't at home chewing the family out. Now, there were rules at the house. In fact, I remember, you know, when my wife and I were raising our daughters, I was surprised at how few parents of our generation actually had rules, and they let their kids just do anything. And my wife and I, you know, we had boundaries for our kids, just as John and his wife Joanne had for their kids. But he wasn't— I guess the better way of saying this is, when it came to the professional, he wasn't a severe, in-your-face, you know, Patton-esque-like character. You know, he was very human on the job. He just was good at everything that he touched. And everything he touched meant something to him, or he wasn't going to do it anyway.

Can you give us an example of how he led by example?

Well, you know, one of them was, uh, he was very big on, as the boss, uh, he was first in the office every day and he was last to leave. And, and he had a— especially by the time he left, he had a senior position in the squadron, so he had a separate private office, and he made it a point to not be in that office very often and to be out walking around the troops, maintaining that relationship and making sure he understood what's bothering the guys who work for me. Is there something that I can do to help them? In fact, I learned the hard way what a value it was to him to be first in and last out. After a couple of weeks of working for him and him coming in and finding me at the— at my desk. And then the next day I came in and he was there before me. And I'm interpreting this as I'm coming in too late if the boss is there before me. So he and I were competing to be first in the office. And then I would stay until I knew he had left because I didn't want to let him down and quit for the day before the boss had. And he finally came to talk to me about it and said, what are you doing? You're killing me. We can't keep working these hours.

Story. Now, that's a great guy. That's a great guy right there. So, okay, so tell us then, after you went to school, what happened next?

Well, I went active duty in the Air Force for, for a number of years, and then I left the Air Force and went from there right to NASA, right to Mission Control. And that was in 1990. And, and I spent— I just actually, I got— I will admit I got assigned serendipitously to Mission Control, very similar, same way I, I met John Pretz in the Air Force and was exposed to one of the greatest mentors of my career. I got assigned— I mean, I got hired and given this job at Mission Control without knowing enough about where I was going and what I was applying for. And I happened to land right in an organization that Spoke my language, spoke John on John Pretz's language. They were very focused on doing the right thing, making sure you understand all of the data, and that that you understand truth of the situation, that you have the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said to influence the decision. And and you know very quickly I I moved up and became a an engineering leader, first level leader. But in no small part because most of my peers, even if they were my same age, hadn't had the experience I had in the military. They certainly hadn't worked for John Pretz. And so I showed up with a certain amount of gravitas and leadership ability just from that experience that I would tell you I was not all that aware of then as I would become a few years later. But it served me well and I moved up into a leadership role leading engineering projects that were preparing us to build the International Space Station in orbit. And then after 6 years, I got picked to be a flight director and put in charge of doing that very thing.

I want to go back. For us who are novice in your speak, what exactly is mission control? Are you sitting behind a panel and turning knobs, or what, what are you doing?

But, you know, the thing that comes to mind for most people is sitting on console in that room full of computers with a bunch of other rocket scientist geeks.

Yes.

And you are looking at the data and you are making decisions. In some cases, you are not literally turning knobs, but sending commands through a computer to the spacecraft to turn on lights, turn on fans, turn off lights, turn on engines, that kind of thing. Uh, a large part of it is reviewing the data and then talking to the astronauts that are on board saying, here's what we see is going on. This is what we need you to do next.

Okay, so stop, stop. What data are you reviewing and why are you telling them to turn on and off the lights? And what are you seeing that they're not seeing? I mean, they're actually in the plane, right? Right. So can't they see what you're seeing?

They can see some. The problem though is, you know, space shuttle and space station in particular, there is so much data, there are so many active systems, there's so many sensors, there's too much data, especially for space station, to present all of that data to somebody on board. So we had a team of, depending on the year, between 13 and 20 or 25 engineers on the ground. that are getting all of that data. And then we have divided the data up. So you have a life support expert and a trajectory expert, electrical power system expert, you know, all the different parts of the spaceship divided up. And then you have 1 or 2 engineers and maybe a few others in another room helping them, looking at all of that data in great detail and making sure the system is operating the way it's designed. Or Seeing that this system is starting to fail, it's starting to get hot, it's starting to use, uh, too much electricity, whatever that is, and then intervene and keep something from breaking. Or if we're not able to do that, help make that system safe and keep the astronauts safe that they— so that they can either continue the mission or return home if the failure becomes bad enough. Um, and there are many occasions where In order for us to make those decisions quickly enough, because, you know, bad things can happen really fast in space and they kind of snowball, then the big job of mission control is to see those things coming, pull all that data together with the more minds, more eyeballs we can put on the data on the ground, and then give the astronauts good, good advice, good guidance so that they can then take right actions without having to take much longer and review all of that data. And so that was, that was the job I fell into, was working in teams of people that did those kind of things.

What happened with Challenger then?

Challenger? Well, Challenger and Columbia both were, were mistakes that had been made before we lit the rocket engine, before the astronauts were hurtling into the sky. They were oversights, things that the community missed. In the case of Challenger, there was a problem with a seal on those big white solid rocket boosters on the side of the space shuttle that they were very sensitive to cold temperatures. And at those cold temperatures, they tended to leak, which meant fire shot out of the side of the rocket, which is what happened to Challenger. And it caused that big orange tank full of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to explode. But NASA had indications of that cold sensitivity for more than a year in previous shuttle launches and in tests. And they weren't paying attention to them like they should have. And they ignored the manufacturer's warning leading up to that last Challenger launch that cost us the Challenger crew on January 28th, 1986. And it very quickly became clear in the investigation that the data had been available and NASA pushed too hard to keep launching and ignored the data that was in front of them. And we repeated that mistake 17 years later with Space Shuttle Columbia.

Okay. I'm not sure where to take this because I want to know if this was a single-person mistake. How does something like this get ignored? Was it the pressure from the public to produce? Was it pressure from government to produce. I mean, lives are at stake. How do you— not you personally— how does whoever— I mean, how many people— you explained to me— I'm going because my mind is swirling. You explained to me that there are teams that support, and each team has a set responsibility. So who was the team that was responsible for this, and why was it ignored? Not only— not just once, but twice. How does that happen?

Well, yeah, I'll tell you, part of it happens because flying in space is a dangerous business, right? So when you're successful at it, it is easy to become cavalier at it. You know, Marshall Goldsmith calls it the paradox of success. And, and I am definitely an advocate of the idea that the more difficult your success is, the, the stronger that effect has on you, where you finally just realized we're just good, and we're good at this thing that terrifies most people. So there's certain things we learn we can ignore other people's fears about, and damn the torpedoes, we can keep going. And there's an element of that that you can't escape in a really dangerous business, not just flying in space, but anything that's really dangerous or really difficult. There's an element of that that That, yeah, some people are going to be nervous about this no matter how much information they have. They won't ever be comfortable making this decision. But it's easy to step across that line to the other side where now you're not being deliberate in evaluating all the data. Now you're just taking chances, not managing risk. In the case of Challenger, they had some early indications, but they didn't understand. So they saw a little bit of burn through on some of these seals in cold temperatures, but the engineers couldn't explain it. So the original pushback from a NASA executive, not at the very top, but a senior NASA executive at the Marshall Space Flight Center who was responsible for those, the solid rocket boosters, his pushback was, well, if you can't explain to us what's causing it, why do I need to believe you? Why do I have— why should I believe this is unsafe if you can't explain the physics? And the manufacturer, Morton Thiokol, they were desperate to understand it, but they definitely saw a correlation between low temperature and poor seal performance. To their credit, the engineering team at the Marshall Space Flight Center, where this executive was that essentially overruled them, they were adamantly in alignment with Morton Thiokol. They said, we don't understand this. We can't explain it either, but we do think it's not safe to launch at really cold temperatures, where really cold means below 53 degrees Fahrenheit. And the day they launched Challenger, that the, the temperature was 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Um, when Morton Thickeall gave the go to launch, which eventually they did— this is after they had been no-go for some time— the same NASA executive said, my God, Thickeall, what do you want us to do, stay on the ground until April? We have a schedule to keep. And the schedule had become important Because, you know, like a lot of government programs, the space shuttle program was over budget. Uh, the cost per mission was significantly higher than NASA advertised. The way we said this inside NASA is Congress is going to think we lied to them. If they think we lied to them, you know, there's a difference between being wrong and lying. If Congress thinks we snookered them, they'll take the money back. They'll cancel the space shuttle program. We'll stop flying shuttles. We'll never build space station. We'll lose human spaceflight. flight altogether, and it's our fault. We are letting down the people that put us on the moon by not being good enough to keep it going. Since we don't understand what this problem is and can't prove that it's a real problem, maybe we should keep going. The Morton-Thicke Hall senior leaders excused everybody from a private Morton-Thicke Hall meeting, and up until this point, they had all been in complete alignment that they were no-go to launch at this cold temperature. They excused everybody below the vice president level, turned to the senior vice president for engineering and said, we need you to take your engineering hat off and put your company hat on. A few hours later, they faxed a one-pager that said, we're go for launch. We expect performance to be similar to what we have seen in previous firings, which is technically accurate because on previous firings when it was cold, they saw some amount of burn-through. on these seals. Senior Vice President for Engineering at Thiokol would not sign. They, they went, went forward without, without his agreement, and it went exactly the way he was afraid it was going to go, unfortunately. And what's worse is the executives in Florida who made the final decision to be go for launch on that day were not told that the manufacturer had been no-go and had essentially been bullied into agreeing to go. All they were told is everybody is go. That changed significantly after the Challenger accident. When I say that, I mean the way things were communicated up the chain after January 1986 changed dramatically inside NASA, where it's no longer acceptable just to say everyone's go. You had to be able to say, well, we are go, but we have these dissents. These part— these parts of the organization are no-go, and here's why. And they have to be given the opportunity to stand up and say, what their no-go about, essentially like an automatic appeal. So the next level of leadership is given the, the opportunity to say, well, we disagree with your rationale to go forward. We understand their concern and we don't think we had a good enough reason to go forward. That awareness lasted inside NASA for the better part of the next decade. So that was 1986. Somewhere in the late '90s, we started going back to old behaviors. We, NASA, started going back to old behaviors because some of the pressures don't change. It's still a very hard business. It's still a lot of money with a lot of scrutiny from Congress on everything that we spent, a lot of scrutiny from the public. And you may remember the times when a rainstorm was passing through Florida and we were late launching a shuttle. In some cases, we tried 3 or 5 times to launch, and we were ridiculed in the press. And those things start affecting NASA leaders. Shouldn't, but does, right? Because everybody's human. So you start feeling more and more of this pressure. Plus, as things went on with building space station, the, the construction phase took longer than we thought it was going to take, which meant the price is now going up. So very familiar problem rears its head. We're now over budget. We're going long, guys. We gotta get going. And at the same time, a new idea came up inside NASA by a NASA administrator who wanted us to be faster, better, and cheaper. And over a course of 7 years or so, it became more and more normal for the budget to be reduced. And as we started working problems, to have the senior executives who were being flogged from the managers above them, you know, get— keep going faster, keep, keep going with less money. And it became more and more normal for— if you had a concern, but you didn't already have the data to prove your concern was a good one, your suggestion or your concern generally got tabled, and you moved on if it wasn't already on the priority list of the senior executives. And it was difficult to affect that priority list if you didn't already have test data to back up your concern. It was difficult to get the test data to back up your concern because we didn't have the money, to do it because of faster, better, cheaper. And we started shooting from the hip. We started saying things like, well, we don't have the data to back this up, but we've seen things like this before. It's in family with what's happened before. Not unlike some burn-throughs on those SRB or the solid rocket booster seals were in family. So maybe we can keep going with them. It's never hurt us before. Must be okay. We made very similar decisions in the 2003 timeframe about foam coming off the tank. The external tank and flying past the shuttle. It's been coming off for the life of the program. It's never caused a significant problem. And it's probably not capable of it anyway. Let's just keep launching even though we don't know why it's doing it. And unfortunately, we had no data to support the fact that it wasn't a risk. There was no data at all that supported the idea that foam coming off the tank couldn't hit the shuttle and do damage that, that was too severe. for the astronauts to survive. We had no data to back it up at all. That was just shooting from the hip. And we got there 17 years after Challenger because we'd become very successful again. Again, Marshall Goldsmith and the paradox of success. We had built up enough success that we'd forgotten a large part of the pain from Challenger and had started buying into the greatness that was us. And we kept getting away with it, so we must have been right. Versus we're really just getting lucky and getting away with it. Until on February 1st, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia came apart because of about a pound and a half of foam that came off the external tank during launch 2 weeks before and punched a hole in the front of one of the wings. And then as the space shuttle came down, that fireball that formed around the shuttle naturally came inside the wing and essentially melted the wing all the way off, and the space shuttle completely came apart. And we knew that piece of foam that struck the shuttle. We knew that piece of foam was a problem. We knew that it had been coming off on previous flights, and we did not do any engineering analysis at all to prove that it was acceptable for it to come off. And, and 7 people once again paid with their lives when NASA was either guessing or ignoring concerns that were right in front of us. To be fair, also, not that I still don't feel an immense amount of personal grief and guilt over that accident, because I was a, I was a senior leader at the time of Columbia. So, I mean, I, I will always feel that as well. But to put it in perspective, there were at least half a dozen major problems that we were working at the time with space shuttles, problems with engine controllers, cracks forming in the structure of the wings. Uh, and, and several of these major problems that we were working, each one of them, if we didn't understand it, was significant enough that it could cause us to lose a space shuttle. So the, the community was focused on real scary problems, and then up comes this foam thing. And, and we didn't take foam coming off the tank seriously enough when there's these other problems that could make the engines explode immediately as we were launching. That contributed to not paying attention to phone. Regardless, though, when you sit back, the right lesson that we learned again, and 7 more of our friends had to pay with their lives for this learning, was everything has to be deliberate. There is nothing that— no risk you can take just out of engineering judgment. You have to have a real rationale, and, and And at— in the best cases, you have to have real engineering analysis that's based on the physics, and a real-world test is even better than that. And if you don't have those, you— your rationale to keep going and take the risk has to be more than, but we really, really have to, or it costs us a whole lot of money and it's going to make us look bad if we don't. It's never good enough rationale, and we learned that yet again in 2008.

Now, coming out of it— My big question in all of this, and thank you for sharing because it enlightens us in terms of what actually happened. At the same time, and don't feel like I'm blaming or shaming, I have to ask myself, these, for the most part, Are military-minded people. So you might have some civilians in there, and these are people that are theoretically supposed to exemplify courage. And so what I'm hearing is that they forego the courage to say, no, we can't do this. for the sake of money or Congress or the public pressure. I mean, this is a group of people that we normally think of as above that fold. So why? Why did they not have the courage? I'm not talking about just money, Congress, and the public. I'm talking about mental fortitude to say— No, we're not ready.

So I would tell you— I would tell you it's, it's more complex. It's more insidious than, uh, the people that could have were afraid to speak up and didn't because, because they were afraid. That's an easy problem to, to see and a relatively easy problem to fix. Um, it's, it's more insidious. Again, going back to, to the paradox of success. What's hard to spot is we have— we're not being intellectually curious. We have increased our confidence so much, our swagger in being able to do this hard thing, that we're not asking the question. And none of us is courageous enough, or at least intellectually honest enough, to sit back and say, what are we doing? We don't actually have a good rationale for this. And most of it wasn't because people were afraid. We weren't even seeing it. That's a harder problem to spot and a harder, harder problem to fix than everybody is— everybody's afraid. Everybody's afraid.

Let me just push back a little bit. When you say we weren't seeing it, you had maybe not hardcore evidence, but you were told by the manufacturer— not you personally, the system was told, we've got a red flag here, or at least an Amber Alert, right? And the system says, eh, we've been successful before with the same scenario. Let's go for it. Where's the courage to say, no, let's not go for it, because even though we've been successful before with this, We still have an Amber Alert.

So I would tell you, in the case of Challenger, I think that is a stronger example of just what you're saying, because there were— there was a pretty large engineering community at the Marshall Space Flight Center and within Morton-Thicke Hall who all believed strongly it is wrong to go. And none of them, in a way that was— that would not have been understandable in the 2003 timeframe, None of them were willing to take personal risk and risk their own careers and throw their badge on the table and say no and misbehave in a public way where you're not supposed to in front of the big dogs.

Yes.

No, we don't have a good reason to say this. This entire group is no-go. Why are we not talking about that? That kind of thing would, would not have been possible like that in the 2003 time frame. NASA had definitely learned that. In the 2003 timeframe in Columbia, when we missed foam, in that case, it really was— foam had been coming off and the community was aware of it, and nobody was asking the difficult engineering question. Like, um, well, 2 flights before Columbia's last flight, the exact same piece of foam. We're talking about a piece of foam about the size of a loaf of bread. Came off the external tank and flew past the orbiter. You think, well, how bad of— how big of a deal could that be? You know, loaf of bread hits, hits the front of a spaceship. Surely it can't do any damage. Except that it hit Columbia at a relative velocity of about 700 miles an hour. I mean, imagine if somebody shot a loaf of bread at your chest at 700 miles an hour. I bet it would concern you. Even saying that, I will tell you The NASA community almost across the board didn't even ask that fundamental question because, in my opinion, we were so fixated on other things that were obvious to us could cause the space shuttle to blow up. And it had already been accepted as no risk. So after that flight— so again, 2 flights before Columbia, we knew that piece of foam came off. And we knew it because the astronauts took a picture of the external tank in space after the space shuttle came off. And they saw that piece of foam was missing. That's not supposed to happen. Because it's not supposed to happen, the NASA practice— and we had done this very, very well since even before Challenger— was if something happens that isn't part of the design, it's not supposed to happen, before we can launch again, we have to discuss that and decide, is it okay that it keeps happening? And if it's not okay, what do we do to fix it? The, the launch right before Columbia's last launch, there was a one-page summary about foam, and it was, foam has been coming off the tank for the life of the program. It's never done critical damage. It's not capable of hitting the shuttle and doing critical damage. We're go for launch. We recommend accepting this risk as is. And there was no better argument. Nobody in the room— and we're talking a room with hundreds of people in it— All sitting around nodding heads, not because they all knew something that wasn't being talked about, but yeah, let's get past this darn foam thing because we know it's not a big deal. It always comes off the tank. Let's go back to talking about problems that could cause the engines to blow up.

Okay, so I could, I could buy that. But if you're looking at— if you apply critical thinking to something like foam coming off, Don't you say to yours— and again, not blaming them, Shane. This is— I'm just curious, you know, don't you say, well, we have to look at the velocity in this situation. It's not just that it's a small piece of foam, it's the impact of it hitting the ship at any point. So where was the critical thinking there?

It was gone. And it was gone because the community was target fixated on other things, which I don't say to absolve any of us. of that. I, I guarantee you there are all kinds of senior NASA people to this day that still have that dream, uh, where we wake up in the morning wondering, why did I not speak up? Why did I not see this?