 When you're a little girl and you want to be an astronaut when you grow up, it's like wanting to be a policeman when you grow up. Or in some case, wanting to be a doctor when you grow up. You're told that's not an appropriate goal for a little girl. Why don't you want to be something else? Like be a nurse, don't be a doctor. Or if it's not put on you that this sexist trip, that this is an inappropriate goal for a little girl, what you might hear from a counselor at school is that what you're trying to do is something that is beyond your abilities. You're shooting too high. If I could give any advice to anybody, and I hate people who give advice, it would be not to let people tell you what you can't be. You have to decide for yourself what it is that you want. And if you want it, really want it badly enough, then you have to make it happen for yourself. Whenever you hear the name NASA, the first things you think about are space spectaculars, incredible inventions, and the mysteries of the universe. But the thing you have to keep in mind is that this place where dreams come true is made of just plain people, human beings like you and me. Rocky, go. Network, go. Tango, go. SRT minus 1. 9-0-5, copy. GPC-2 failure. That means flight control string 2 will be down, and the accelerometers will be disabled. Roger, we see the configuration now. Hey, Capcaro. What kind of person goes to work for NASA? When the space shuttle was first tested at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Southern California, a lot of people didn't know that the director of the shuttle operations was a soft-spoken, highly qualified, former Air Force test pilot. Isaac Gillam was born in Washington, DC. As a kid, he liked math, lots of math. He built model airplanes and dreamed of flying. As far as I'm concerned, what I did is I pursued an interest that I had a lot of enthusiasm about flying airplanes, rockets, and space as that evolved. And my joining NASA was relatively natural because I was interested in these types of things. Evolution within the organization has probably been as natural as anything might be black astronauts and female astronauts, which is indicative of the agency's concern and desire to provide opportunities to everyone who wishes to participate in these types of activities. We've offered our expertise and resources to them. Similar to Lunar Lander? Except that it's mobile. It would be similar to the Lunar Rover. And the airplane would come down in a capsule. It would deploy into its flight configuration and then fly several thousand feet above the Mars surface. And that way, we could explore about 4,000 miles of the Mars surface with instruments and penetometers drafted in the airplane and things of that nature. Our meeting started at about 8.30 this morning Over the years, there has been a steady increase in the number of minorities and women involved in NASA's many programs. The jobs they occupy range all the way from those of clerks, mechanics, electricians, safety inspectors, straight through to computer programmers, scientists, and engineers like Ming Tang, one of NASA's top aeronautical engineers. His inspired work with high-flying aircraft like the HL-10 and other lifting body vehicles contributed to the success of the early space shuttle landings. The headquarters of the new astronauts who will operate the space shuttle is the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Although the number of human beings venturing into outer space is steadily increasing, the quality of the individual who gains this opportunity remains exceedingly high, particularly so among that new breed of astronaut, the mission specialist. When the shuttle made it possible for scientists to be a part of the program as astronauts, then that was my break. I will be involved in payload operations, performing some of the experiments. If there's any extravehicular activity going on, then I will be the one performing that. So it's a multiplicity of duties. Let's chat with the people of NASA, people like Dr. Ronald McNair, a physics professor and one of NASA's newest astronauts. You are a PhD from MIT, aren't you? That's right. Isn't that kind of, that's kind of tough thing to get, isn't it? I have to agree. Why is it so tough? It's a very broad field involving, many times involving the abstract and things which aren't exactly intuitive. They violate our intuition and it violates the world as most people know it often. And you have to bring a lot of different disciplines together with physics, your electromagnetism, your thermodynamics, a lot of things you must pull together. But it's very challenging, but it's, again, one of those challenging efforts that's satisfying. Well, now I mean, well, for example, I mean, you don't come from mathematics or science background, do you? No, there are no scientists or math people in any of the sciences in my family. I didn't grow up around it. I think... Where did you grow up? Lake City, South Carolina. I think in my case, I was, had quite about an initiative type of student. I would, I found that something, well, I would put it this way, I was interested in just about every subject that came alone, but science was the one that gave, in mathematics, was the most challenging, gave me the most difficulty and it, I had to work a little harder to sort of understand and master the techniques and it fascinated me and I dug. When I'd run out of books or would get ahead of a course, I'd go out and find something else because I'd hear about something somewhere or glance at a new concept and I'd want to go and find out what it's all about. So I think in that case, it was an inner drive, a self-type of motivation, motivating thing. Has athletics had any value to you as an astronaut? In your job here at NASA? I'd say very definitely, especially in the developmental stage. I've always been involved in lots of athletics, like in high school, I was captain of football, track and baseball teams and I'm still involved in each of the sports to some extent, but for the most part now, I'm a karate instructor and that's where I spend most of my hours in physical activity. That's something I've been doing for the last 12 years and I've become quite involved in it. Now I think athletics helps develop a great deal of discipline I was talking about, that ability to do a job even when you don't feel like doing it, something that you do, something that you have to do and need to do, whether you feel like it or not. I think that's where I think it helped me a great deal on the football field, suffering and you have to take that next step and keep going and not giving up. Develops a great deal. Karate has been, in addition to keeping in shape, it's been very good for sustaining a discipline and for keeping a calm frame of mind and a positive outlook. I'd like to think that I've gotten into the space program at what, in 20 years, will turn out to have been the start of the space station era and 40 or 50 years from now, maybe I will be privileged enough to look back and realize that that was where I jumped into it and I've been very fortunate in having a part in that aspect, that period of the space program. I would hope that there'd be some further manned planetary exploration during the time that I'm in the program. I'd very much like to go to the moon or to Mars and participate in firsthand observations of another planet. A conversation with astronaut, Dr. Catherine Sullivan, geologist. What is a mission specialist? A mission specialist in 25 wars or less. A mission specialist is really the chief scientist aboard the space shuttle. There are two other people on board who have responsibility for getting the craft into orbit and maintaining its safety, keeping it at the right attitude and so forth and bringing it back, landing it safely. Now there's another group of people that want to make use of the fact that you're there. They want you to put a satellite out for them or they have a broken satellite. They want you to pick it up and bring it back or fix it. Maybe it's a scientist who wants you to operate a furnace for him and see if he can melt, make a new kind of metal alloy or do some kind of materials processing. Maybe it's a geologist who wants to look back at the earth or an astronomer who wants to look at the sun or ultraviolet radiation from the star. Those people need someone on board the shuttle who thoroughly understands the space shuttle systems and also understands their scientific priorities and who can make judgments about what to do at what point in time during the mission. You plan all of this out of course before you ever go up on the flight, but things happen during the flight that force you to change that plan on a moment to moment basis. So you need a number of people who are fully acquainted with the shuttle systems and their operation and fully acquainted with the scientific systems and the scientific priorities. Mission specialist stands at the middle between the flight crew and the scientists. I must say that's a marvelous explanation. Tell me, it sounds like an incredibly fascinating opportunity for a scientist, is it? I think it's the best there is. Just the tops. I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do more. The volcanoes on Mars are really spectacular. Viking has shown us that, the Mariner missions showed us that, and volcanoes are one of my strong geological interests. So I would be only too happy to be the first geologist to sample the farcest volcanoes any time. They have quite a stable of airplanes out there. All of them are T-38s. The 35 pilots and mission specialist chosen will all fly it. Most of the pilots will fly as aircraft commanders. Mission specialist will fly in the back seat of it. Astronaut Frederick Gregory tells us about his background. Well, I grew up in Washington, D.C. and, of course, went to high school in Washington. I had a couple of years at college because then I went to the Air Force Academy. I initially was helicopter flying, including a rescue tour in Vietnam. The Air Force then gave me the opportunity to cross-train the fixed wing. And we went immediately to jets, or I went immediately to jets. And that was in 1970. And I've been flying as a test pilot, as a research experimental test pilot, since about 1971 to 1977. I was able to accumulate many hours, perhaps 2,000 hours of actual testing. And I've flown probably 40 or more different kinds of airplanes. One morning I was going to school. I was at the Armed Forces Staff College at the time. I got to the school, opened up my mailbox, and there was a note that said, Call Houston. And I called down. And the director of operations, Mr. Abbey, asked me if I was still interested in the job down here. And so that's the way I was notified. It didn't take me long to think about that answer either. And what was your reaction? I was stunned. I guess I went into shock. We are now in the era of the space shuttle. And once again, the world will focus its attention on America's astronauts. How do the astronauts feel about being the center of so much attention? When I talk to people, I tell them that probably for every astronaut who, of course, gets all of the publicity, they're probably 1,000 support people behind him, behind the scenes that you never see. And those are really the essential people. Real numbers, 7342 on 3-0, 523 on 3-2, 7342 on 3-1. They're the ones who plan it, execute it, ensure that it's conducted in a safe way. They get us back. Of course, the only people that everybody sees is the astronaut, or the only person they see is the astronaut. But it takes so many different kinds of people, so many skills to make a mission, find a mission. And so it is one huge team. The astronauts, of course, are just the focal point. The crew on board the shuttle will just be the focal point. But it takes the entire crew to accomplish the mission. OK, we're going to start collecting baseline data now, are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. Interval timer's on, with a green light, and a decrease when you see the red light, all right? Dr. Patricia Cowings, a key figure in astronaut survival. What we found is that no matter how I make a subject sick, in the rotating chair and a vertical accelerator, in a near jet, an individual's symptoms are still the same. If he can control his symptoms under one condition, we assume he should be able to control them under another condition. What we plan on doing eventually is to test the treatment in space. Well, right now, there's a problem associated with the manned space flight programs coming up, wherein when people are initially exposed to zero gravity, they sometimes experience symptoms similar to motion sickness on the earth. The symptoms are similar, but the cause is quite different. The kind of stimulation your inner ear gets is totally alien to anything you could have experienced on the earth. I see. Now, what exactly is your area of concern? Well, I'm a psychophysiologist. And in my field is psychosomatic medicine, so I study the relationship between the mind and the body. What I'm doing here is using a variant of biofeedback research wherein I can train subjects to control several of their own autonomic responses, their own physiological responses simultaneously, and thereby suppress the symptoms that would normally occur in motion sickness. But you don't have to be a PhD to work at NASA or even an astronaut. Most of the people who work at NASA work in a wide variety of jobs, which on the surface seem far removed from science and outer space. Everyone is crucial to the success of the space shuttle program. A simple secretarial error can jeopardize the performance of a computer controlling a space probe millions of miles away. There are plenty of opportunities to learn and grow in a job at NASA. Also, there are educational programs which NASA sponsors in universities and colleges throughout the country for persons interested in careers in the space sciences. In many instances, NASA gives financial help to college students who are interested in joining NASA. I'll give you an analogy of basically what we're doing here. Let's assume you're going to the beach. OK, the wife is supposed to get the food. Maybe the husband takes the charcoals and the things like that, and the children get their toys. And when you get there, you're going to get there and have fun. And at a certain time, everybody's got a job to bring things back. You're back home and everybody's happy. You didn't forget the dog or car keys or anything else. Well, it's the same thing here, basically. We're processing payloads through the various facilities we have here, the Orbiter Processing Facility for Horizontal Payloads, the Vertical Processing Facility for Vertical Payloads. And in each one of these facilities, we've got to account for what we have to do from day one to the day that we launch. Roberto Reyes is one of those people in NASA who has worked his way up to a position of considerable responsibility. And it is our job to lay out a plan. And once that plan is agreed upon, then it is our job to implement it. We're the straw boss. We're the ones that are going to be getting on people if the job isn't done on time, because management is on us to get the job done on time. What made you want to come and work here? I guess it all started many, many years ago when I used to see the B-2 rockets take off from White Sands Proving Grounds at the time. My home is in El Paso, it was in El Paso, Texas. And after the war, we used to see the Germans assemble and launch their rocket ships. And the rocket ships used to be taken out of town on a little dirt road going out of East El Paso, West El Paso. And they used to have the V-2 rockets on sandbags on flatbed trucks. And we used to see them early in the morning go out. And we know what they were, because we'd see them in the movies. And then in the afternoon, about 3 o'clock, we'd see a vapor trail going up in the sky. And that was most unusual. And it looked rather fascinating. And some of us, I guess, we read the Wiley post stories and other things where we felt that eventually it would be going up. And when that happened and Ellen Shepard went up, I made my mind up that I was going to be in on it. I think NASA has an opportunity for people that want to do things. George Lowell once said that the greatest asset that NASA had was its people. And in my exposure to NASA, in my working elements and in the various working associations that I have, I find that NASA has and has had in the past some very dynamic and people that want to do things. The can-do attitude, they show me something and I'll get it done. And I think anybody, or a girl, person with the right attitude of a willingness to do a job, there's always a premium on a person that is able to accomplish a job wherever. Within NASA industry or anywhere else. OK, so this area is over here. Well, the reason I find it so exciting is because of the fact that due to the nature of NASA's work, I really feel that I am involved in an agency which is at the forefront of technology. I mean, we are doing things which have never before been done in the history of mankind and perhaps will never be done again. With a 10-watt transmitter, 10 watts is just slightly more power than a Christmas light uses up. With a 10-watt transmitter, we were able to communicate from the distance which Jupiter was at when we encountered, which is about 900 million kilometers. How did you get it transmitted of that size? It's such a small transmitter to communicate over such a large distance. I think that's the one thing that I was referring to, and that is that it's an indication of the type of technology that NASA has built up in order to be able to do these things. Tell me, Mr. Ramos, is there any opportunity for creativity in your job here at NASA? Definitely there is. I feel that I'm in a very unique situation. Like I said before, NASA is doing things that have never been done before, and therefore there is a lot of creativity. I think people can think back 20 years ago and perhaps laugh at some of the things that Buck Rogers and the other science fiction characters used to do, and we can see them coming into being now. Some of the things, one of the obvious ones, of course, is putting a man on the moon. But I think that's one of the things that NASA perhaps was a culmination of NASA's technological effort. Tranquility base here, the eagle has landed. Roger, Tranquility, we copy on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot. And did you, were you interested in outer space before you came into this area, or what? This might sound silly to you, but I've wanted to be an astronaut since I was about eight, if the truth be known. And I think I've come about as close to it as I might get, having been in that space shuttle simulation as a payload specialist. But I still have a chance, because now I'm the principal investigator on a series of flight experiments. And in the shuttle program, the plan is to choose one investigator from all the teams and all the experiments that have been accepted on the flights to go on board as a payload specialist. That's a one-shot astronaut. Why would you want to be an astronaut? That's a strange question. Why do you want to be a director? I want to be an astronaut, because I want to go outside the world and look down at it. I want to look out the window. I want to know what it feels like. It just struck me as something that I'd really like to do. It's like when you were a little kid, you thought that if you'd run far enough or fast enough and you spread your arms out, you could fly. In space, you can. It's the way people learn to look at these things. And those things are what makes things easy and what makes things difficult. Anything that you think is easy is easy. Anything that you think is difficult is difficult. The people who work at NASA are people who think positively, no matter how difficult or unique the challenge. As you know, Mr. Gregory, there was a time when there weren't any minorities or women involved in the space program. Tell me, at that time, did you feel there was any doubt in your mind that you wouldn't get in? I don't think so. I have been in this situation many, many times before. I was one of the first blacks in integrated schools in Washington, D.C. in 1955. I was the only one in my class at the academy. I was the only one here, the only one there. And I thought that if I really wanted to do it and I worked hard to do it and prepared myself that if there were a barrier, it would have to be a big one to stop me. The people who work at NASA are people who think positively, no matter how difficult or unique the challenge. That's sort of hard to answer in those terms. I never thought of, well, I rarely thought of whether the things I was trying to do were hard or simple. That doesn't seem to matter to me a whole lot. What matters more is whatever you do, do it well. And that can be any job, any class, at any level, whatever task you choose to do, do it well because you will only get a return from doing that if you have done it well. The people who work at NASA are people who think positively, no matter how difficult or unique the challenge. Effort, you identify what you want to do and go straightforward and sort of be willing to sacrifice and ignore these forces that try to limit you and divert your efforts. NASA, the people of NASA, with their many skills, disciplines, and interests, make it a place where dreams come true. Dr. Schneider is visiting to look at data acquisition and data systems facilities. People from all over, men and women of every color, race, and religion, a group of people who demonstrate daily the ability of human beings to work together closely, cooperatively. A group of people whose commitment and support of one another in their work is very high. A group of people who on this planet we call Earth reveal the human species at its very best.