 Maybe do it better, try it again, failed again, separated. And now we have enough gas left for one final rendezvous. And we decide, Mr. Control says, we're going to take 24-hour break here and put our heads together. And this is the God's truth. I wasn't involved in the fire. I did the early far out rendezvous step of in the final phase the commander was flying in close. And my job was just kind of sit up front and watch all the systems in case we had a failure. I'm watching the team just work their tail off to try to make this work. And it's not when. And I'm watching the gas go down. And so I was pretty relaxed, was my point. And after the second failure, as we drifted away from the satellite, I was just looking out the back window thinking, what can we do here when a class that I took at SOS came into my head. It was problem solving 101. I'm sure it's still taught. You go out to this place out here where they give you a task to do. And they give you a piece of rope that's too short and a ladder that's too long or whatever. And you've got to get the task done. And everybody gets a chance to be the leader. And I don't know why I thought of it, but I did. And we just kind of went through that process up there. It was a crew. First, what's the problem? Let's agree what the problem is. And it turns out not everybody had the same idea in mind. Write it down. Figure it out. And then what tools do you have at hand? And then brainstorming, which is probably the most important thing as a leader. The worst thing you can do in a brainstorming session as a leader is when someone throws out an idea and says, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. End of brainstorming session right then. Because no one else is going to put an idea out there and be called stupid. That's the worst thing a leader can do. You save that for when you start narrowing the options down. There are no bad ideas during brainstorming. And then we narrowed it down. And then over an eight hour period, we stayed up all night, we came up with a new and different way to do it that broke a lot of rules. And we came up with a lot of reasons why that would be OK to break those rules, to wave those rules. And the same kind of stuff was going on in the ground. And I could take up an hour talking about it. But they adopted the plan we suggested, which was to send three people out on a spacewalk through an airlock that was only designed for two people, was only done once in the history of the program. And to rather than put a guy in the end of the arm to grab the satellite, we flew the satellite up to within six feet of the cargo bay and had three people out there grab it by hand. We just broke so many rules, but they let us do it. And then later the ground had to break some rules during the final rendezvous to allow us to be successful to get even close to the satellite. And there wasn't a lot of time for cussing and discussing. And you had to have a team that you had built way before the crisis that had one very important attribute. And that was trust. You had to trust each other. You had to trust your superiors. You had to trust your subordinates. And I think that's so important. And if you wait till a crisis to build that trusting relationship amongst your subordinates or your peers or between you and your boss, it's too late. And that's something you work every day. And there's a lot of pieces to do that. Some of it's in the office, on the flight line, and some of it's after hours on Friday night. And I'm a big believer in socializing with the people you work with. That's where you learn about their families. You learn about their concerns. And you learn about people who aren't in your organization. And one of the biggest tragedies is the failure of the club system and broadly in the Air Force. The club on Friday night, just as at NASA, at the Outpost Tavern, which was our club right outside the gate. It's where engineers gathered. It's where doctors gathered. It's where astronauts gathered. It's where management gathered to have a long neck beer and talk about stuff. And oftentimes, more work got done in that social setting than got done in the entire week leading up to it. And relationships were built. And at the end of the day, trust was built between across organizations, which is really important. Sir, and you also had, that was the big one, was the capture bar and trying to affix the capture bar. But you also had some software issues in the journey to get the cargo bay doors closed as well. And that taught a lot about the ground team as well in building that trust. Right, no, we trusted the ground and they trusted us. I mean, it wasn't like aircrew versus ground crew. We were one team. We all wore the same patch. We all had the same goal. That was a successful and safe accomplishment of the mission. And learning that, I tried to bring that back in the Air Force as a leader, was that I didn't care whether you were a janitor in my wing or you were the best U2 driver in my wing. I needed you both. I needed you both. Because the ninth reconnaissance wing was what was important for that wing to be successful. And it took everybody to be successful. And I wanted that feeling that you were, didn't matter what you did, you owned a part of it. I learned that there was an occasion at NASA, I'll never forget, I was working down at the Cape. And we used to, it was in between flight assignments. You'd always had an additional duty job. My job was to take care of Atlantis, ironically enough. And when the crew was back in Houston training, we'd be down there when they were testing it, checking it out, pre-flight. We'd strap the crew in on launch day, which was really cool, be the last one to pat them on the head, close the hatch. And then when they'd land, we'd be the first ones in and take over the vehicle and get them out. Anyway, you spend a lot of time in and around the vehicle and the hardware and the workforce at the Kennedy Space Center. And one of my favorite things to do is to go over on third shift between midnight and six or seven in the morning and visit the people that are working there. Because no one ever did that. And so I'm walking around in the high bay there where Atlantis was. And I'm walking, actually walking in and there's this old gentleman, Janitor, who's mopping the floor, not a soul around. He's mopping this floor. And I stopped to visit with him. And we started chatting for a while, asking about his family and stuff. And then he kind of lowered his voice. It's three in the morning. There's nobody in sight, you know, abandoned hallway. And he says, you know, I want to tell you something. He says, the names of everybody in my family is on the moon. I said, what? He says, the names of all my family, they're all on the moon. I said, well, how'd you do that? And he said, well, in the Apollo program, I was just a simple janitor. I used to work out at the level on the pad where the capsule and stuff was. And we had to keep that area clean. And he said, one day I was out there by myself. And I had a piece of paper and a pen and some tape. And he says, I wrote the names of all my family and I took that piece of paper and I taped it up under one of the rungs of the ladder that the astronauts walked down when they stepped off on the moon. And I thought to myself, now, this is a guy who, he's part of this team. I mean, he was so proud of being part of Apollo and doing that. And then as I walked away, I started thinking, I wonder about when they did the weight calculations for the limb and how much fuel they needed and thrust. And I wonder how many other pieces of paper or things were attached to that vehicle when I went up there. But he was a janitor. But he went to the moon. And that's what I wanted everybody in my organization to feel like they were part of. And how did the, they're speaking of the lonely janitors on the team, the engineers in the back room that were helping you when you had calm outages on that mission. A lot of other challenges there. Can you speak to that experience on them? Well, again, I could talk for an hour about all the things that went wrong on SGS 49. One thing that went right was endeavor flew like a dream. Thank God we didn't have to spend any time doing maintenance on her. But a lot of things went bad. That's a story about some wires getting crossed. It was a safety engineer decided that some things needed to be rewired in the cargo bay. And unfortunately, that rewiring didn't get put into our procedures that we had on the vehicle or in mission control in the front room, but thank God the blueprint wiring diagrams were changed. So after we'd captured the satellite, we were getting ready to launch it. Finally, everything's looking really successful. It comes time to launch it. And Kathy Thornton was in charge of this. And very simple, the simplest system on the shuttle. Arm A, which would energize circuit A and fire A, would send an electric current down and blow up this set of explosive charge off in an aluminum ring that was holding the satellite in place against the spring, the rocket motor of the satellite. And Kathy goes, arm A, fire A, and nothing happens. I mean, this is mission failure. This is go pitch the thing overboard because we can't close the payload doors if we don't, payload bay doors. So the procedure is wait 30 seconds, check attitude, and do it again. So with the B system, because we're redundant. So Kathy goes, arm B, fire B, nothing happens. The most reliable system. You got to be kidding me. After all the problems we'd had, we're about to cry. The three guys are still in the airlock. And they're exhausted. They've been out for eight hours, just about out of coolant and air. And they've got to go back outside now, unlatch the cradle at the motor, and throw this thing overboard. When we get this call from the ground about a minute later, try arm A, fire B. Kathy has memorized the wiring diagrams for this. Turns out it's the wrong wiring diagrams. She goes, that'll never work. But what the heck? Arm A, fire B, boom! And the thing comes out of the cargo badge here. How'd that happen? Well, back on the ground, unbeknownst to us, some young engineer probably a year out of Texas A&M is sitting in the back room. And while we're having this problem, and he's listening, he's pulling out the drawings, and he goes, oh, they've cross-wired this. And he calls up to the flight director, the Gene Krantz guy on mission control, and says, tell the crew to go arm A, fire B. There is no discussion that's voiced up immediately, and it works. Because that flight director trusted that young engineer that he didn't even have eye contact with. Because he was on his team, and he had trained it. He trusted him. And it worked. Never did find that safety engineer out of Throttledon, you know? So in the audience tonight, we have over 60 international officers. What recommendations might you offer with working with different cultures as a commander of STS-76 and experience with the Russians? Our cultures are different, and it's not just international partners. All of you eventually are going to work in the joint world. There's different tribes between the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. As officers, we treat our enlisted people differently. We do. And there's just differences. And you're going to be in a position where you're going to be in charge of soldier, sailors, and Marines. And you need to understand their culture. You understand where they're coming from. And the same is with internationals. And I remember on the International Space Station program, I was in charge of, I was a deputy for operations, but I was in charge of all the negotiations on how we were going to train international careers. So I worked with the Japanese, the Canadians, the European Space Station, Agency of the Russians. We recruited, led delegations to recruit the Brazilians into the program for a while. So I had a lot of exposure to working with international partners. And my third flight on the shuttle was a rendezvous and docking with the Mir Space Station. And so we actually, I mean, this was surreal. I'm a cold warrior. These are my enemies. And I'm going to Star City, a once-secret base, where Yuri Gagarin trained to train with Russian cosmonauts on how to operate the Mir Space Station. And they're coming to the United States learning the space shuttle. And I'm studying Russian. And they're studying English. And eventually, we get up to the space station. We get docked. And we're doing a big logistics transfer. And we're going to leave Shannon Lucid out there, my crewmate. And there were some experiments on the Russian space station that we were supposed to bring down. And my payload commander, Ron Sega, comes up to me and says, boss, we're behind the timeline on transfer and these experiments. In NASA, it was like, you had a timeline. You stayed on the timeline, because you're only up there for a week, or 10 days, or whatever. They just packed our schedule. And so I went over to talk to Yuri, the commander who had become a friend. We had trained together. I said, Yuri, and he was working on something. I said, Yuri, we've got to get these experiments transferred over. And he says, I'll get to it. I thought, that wasn't really the answer I was expecting. So I pressed him a little bit. And he kind of looked at me very perturbed. And he said, don't worry. And I said, OK. So I just let it lie. Well, sure enough, the experiments got transferred. But what I learned was, there's a difference between living on a space station and living on a space shuttle. If you're up on the space station for six months, there's really not much you've got to get done right now, as opposed to on a space shuttle, where you've got a really short, finite mission. There was a cultural difference. We all both had the same end state in mind. We're both going to both desire to get that experiment on the shuttle and return it to Earth. He had a different timeline in mind. And so I began to get hints of add that on top of the Russian US cultural differences. There was a difference between our experiences operationally and how we reacted. And I get back to the Pentagon on a later assignment. And I'm doing Paul Mill in the J5. And I'm in charge of all of Asia Pacific and the Middle East. I'm drinking a lot of tea, drinking a lot of sake, going all around the world, traveling all the time, meeting with different cultures. And I think the time I spent at NASA really helped me there too, to appreciate that, one, it's incumbent on you to do your homework about these cultures before you go. There's a book called Kiss Shake or Bow. If you're going to do this in business, you ought to read it. And it's got a chapter for every country. It tells you whether you should kiss them, shake their hands, or bow when you approach them. It tells them what kind of gifts to bring to dinner. It tells them the cultural sensitivities. You should learn that. And if you do learn that, God, it just makes working with people so much easier. And like I said, it really applies to working with our brothers and sisters in the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Army too. I had a great privilege to work for three great Army generals when I was on the joint staff, and had three great Army bosses, an Army deputy, and an Army exec. And I learned a ton about the way they think. And it served me well. I think I even learned about how I thought, too. I think I don't think that was official. So you had 12 years, 12 years in NASA. And then you had several options. 11 years in NASA, yeah. And then you had several options. And usually, once you go to NASA, you typically stay in NASA, but you were able to come back. And you had options at the end of the 20 years of do I retire, do I stay, or do I pursue that retirement job or at a United Airlines? So what made you decide to go back to the Mainstream Air Force and why? Well, you're right, Chris. My career was 11 years line duty as a fighter pilot and test pilot, 11 years at NASA, and then 13 years back in the Air Force. And you're right. It was a decision point for the family. We were 20 years. I described that vision I had of my wife on my third flight. And after that, my boss offered me a fourth flight. It was a 20-year point. A buddy sent me a United Airlines application that I'd flown with. He was flying form already. And so there was a lot of options. And frankly, one of the things I like about being in the military is usually they tell you what to do. It's really scary when you get out and you have to decide on your own. And this was one of these moments. So Kathy and I talked a lot about it. My wife, she's third generation Air Force. So her grandfather enlisted in the Army in 1927. Graduated from West Point 32 in 1947, he joined the United States Air Force when it was birthed. His son, he commissioned into the United States Air Force. His granddaughter was commissioned by his son into the United States Air Force. And that was my wife. So the military tradition was on her side of the family, not mine. And she knew it was like to be a brat. And I had observed that I love living on base. I love that feeling of being in the military. I love the Air Force family. And we always think the grass is greener on the other side. I can honestly say to anybody, I've been on the other side of that fence, I've been in a different pasture. The pasture was called NASA. And it was fabulous. The grass was really tall and green over there. And I loved it. But it wasn't the same. And I missed it. I missed the Air Force. And Kathy missed it. And so there was no promises. When we got to NASA, that's when I found out you couldn't come back in the Air Force. But General Joe Ash, he took command of Air Force Space Command and unilaterally changed that. So I think it's a good idea if we'd let them come back because I'm trying to operationalize space. And as he said, best I can tell, these are the only guys in uniform that have been there. So surely they know something about operations. And he opened the door, didn't make us come back, didn't promise any promotions. And frankly, said, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. But I got this gut feeling we can use you. So we said, let's take a chance. If it doesn't work in a couple of years, United will probably still be hiring. So we came back on a whim, not a whim. It was intentional, but with no expectations other than let's start this adventure now as a family with a wife and four daughters. When I went to NASA, I was a single astronaut. So leaving the planet was not the life-changing experience. It's getting married and having four daughters. And that was the big change. And that was 10, 11 years at NASA. And just it was so fabulous. It was everything that I remembered and more. So great family decision, but it was a family decision. Sir, a lot of us move into command and also joint jobs. Do you have any recommendations or advice for us as we graduate here three June and move forward? Yeah. Command, so I remember I mentioned General Myers sent me off to command from Space Command there. And right before I left, he pulled me aside and I told you I had great mentors. He was one of them. He says, Chilly, you're going to go out to Beale. And you're going to have four colonels who are going to be your group commanders working for you. And he said, they've all been screened for this. They've all been squaring commanders. They've proven themselves as commanders. They've been selected to be group commanders competitively. He said, they're going to be good people. And he says, if you just let them do their job. He says, because you're going to have an ops group commander and you're going to want to do his job because you're a pilot and that's where your comfort zone is. He said, don't do his job. Let him do his job. He says, and if you let them do their job as a commander and support them, you'll have an excellent wing. He says, if you want an outstanding wing, you will figure out a way to get them to work each other's problems. And I filed that away. And that was my goal as a commander, was to build a team. And I'll never forget the day. I don't remember the issue, but it was in the morning staff meeting. And the ops group commander brought up an issue that he had, a problem that he was having. And before I could say anything, the medical group commander said, I think I can help. And I thought of what General Myers had said, and I said, I'm there. We're there. We're there as a team. And man, I'll tell you what, it was just magical that commanded Beale. And it wasn't me, it was them. My job was to enable them to be better and to encourage them and to give them as much rope, to be the Ken Habenank for them, to be the Bob Smith for them, to let them be creative and solve problems, and then let me carry their solutions with maybe my spin on it, up to headquarters and fight like hell for the resources we needed and the authorities we needed to do the mission better. The other thing, I think, as a commander, it's important to have a vision. You don't want to just, you've got to know the mission. And I spent a lot of time studying about the U2 and the mission and stuff, and every command I had after that, if you get thrown in like I did into a command that you know nothing about, you've got to learn it fast and become expert at it, as expert as you can be about it, because you won't know the right questions to ask if you don't. And then you've got to have a vision. You've got to know where you want the organization to go. It can't just be the status quo. My father taught me as a boy, he said, leave every job better than when you came in. And that means you have a vision for where it's going to go to at some point. And I'm not a vision guy. It's hard for me. And no matter I told you the story about going to Beale, I thought I was going to Patrick. And I show up and it seems the changing command happens. Actually, someone puts a microphone on my face says, what's your vision for this command? And I said, get back to me in about a month, because I don't have one. I was just too new. But a month later, I had a vision. And I knew where I wanted to take that wing or lead that wing. They were going to take us there. And that was, I think that's important. You need to have a vision. You need to know the business. And you need to trust your people and build a team and help them be successful. And how did you cultivate that, especially the Nites Reconnaissance Wing? You had a pretty good culture there. They were. I'll tell you what, these guys were. They were so good. But first, I wanted everybody, because there was a little bit of the, well, the pilots, they go off and do the mission. And we were just on the back end of the Kosovo fight. I showed up right after the Kosovo war, conflict. And the crews were just redeploying back from Ischus, France. And the commander of Air Combat Command, General Ed Aberhardt, great guy, a friend today, a great boss at the time. He sent out a check to everybody, to all the wings that had participated in the operation, a bunch of money to kind of MWR kind of money. And I thought, well, this isn't for the pilots. This is for the wing. So we had a wing picnic. And I said, this invitation is for all the families. I want all the families invited. And we got a bouncy, we took the money. We bought bouncy houses and rock climbing walls and the chief's group, my great command chief, chief Thompson says, sir, we'll burn burgers. And so the top three there, they're out there, burning burgers. Everybody brought their families. And everybody that was deployed got a ball cap that said operation, whatever it was then, I forget what the operation was called. But the point was, and my message when I addressed everybody was, these guys could not have been successful in their operations over Bosnia and Kosovo without every person in this wing doing their job. And every person did do their job. And the people who sacrificed were the families. And so this is about celebrating the families and celebrating the great successes of the entire Nite for Constance wing. And I think that resonated. And that was very early in my command. And I think that helped. The other thing I did was, Kathy and I, look, we remembered the Air Force of Old and it had changed in 11 years. The first Friday after I took command, we went to the bar because that's what we did in the fighter business and the test pilot business. And we got there and it was just the wing commander and his wife and the bartender. And I thought, what's going on? So the next Friday we went again. And it was just the wing commander and his wife and the bartender. So the next staff meeting, I asked all my group commanders. I said, do you guys all have squadron? Your squadrons all have bars in the squadron? And they say, yeah. And I said, great. I believe in that. I believe in having a lounge in every squadron. It's where the snack bar is. The coffee is in the morning. And on Fridays and Fridays only, that's a good place after flying's over to have a beer. But I also believe in getting people together. Kind of like the outpost tavern at NASA. I said, I'm not gonna order anybody to close any bars but I would like you as group commanders at say 5.30 on Friday. Maybe we knock off flying at 3.30. There's plenty of time to have a little social in the squadron. I said, I want you to do a little fighter sweep through all the bars. Logistic squadron, everybody, every group, medical group, everybody. And I want you to encourage them, not order them to come to the officers club and to bring their spouses. And Kathy got a DJ for the bar. And before all this I had an all officers call and I expressed my philosophy on how important it was to socialize with one another and to get to know each other and build trust. And why I thought the officers club was an important place to gather. And so I think maybe just a humor and a new commander and to throw a bone my way they all, just about everybody showed up on Friday night. Well, the key to success were the wives because there was a DJ there. And next thing, they're dragging us all out on the dance floor and making us dance. I mean, golly, I hate dancing. But they had a ball and they had so much fun when the next Friday I rolled around the wives were like going, what time are you coming by to pick me up to take me to the club on Friday? And the only rule I put on the guys and the gals there I said, look, when you go to the bar, do me a favor. Don't sit with your squatter mates. Go sit with somebody you don't know. If you're a pilot, go sit with somebody in the med group or a logistic squatter and go meet some people. Get to know them, find out what their lives is like, find out what they do for the Air Force on the 9th reconnaissance wing. You'll be surprised. That was part of my talk that I gave to the all officers call. And they did it. And it's hard to measure the success or failure of that intent, but they kept coming and they didn't have to. And I think we were a better wing, a better organization for that. And I'm sorry to say that that's generally not the case anymore. And I know I came with a deglamorization of alcohol, but nobody says you have to get drunk on Friday night. I think it's important to be together. Sir. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. We have some time for some questions from the audience. Sure. Anybody has any questions? General Jelton, thank you so much for coming. Sure. Major Van Thompson, I wanted to talk a little bit about since your experience in industry, especially with some of the recent comments from President Trump with his Japanese visit especially, his efforts to partnership in some of the new space and moon missions that are coming about. In your opinion, sir, which do you think is best for the United States and our allies? Is it a space force slash base corps? Or is it a concerted focus on a say multinational federation? I thought you were going to ask me if we should go back to the moon or Mars. I mean, I was ready for that. I'm already assuming we're going to go back to Mars and the moon, sir, so we'll be on that point next stage. How is it going to do for us? Yeah, I'm going to go back to the moon first guy, better Mars eventually. So your question is really about the space force, service, separate service. In your opinion, I don't want to throw you out there, but yeah. Space force, space corps, or should we do more of say the international effort to bring everybody along for the benefit of mankind? Or humankind? No, I think the United States needs to lead. That's what we do. We need to be leaders. I was so frustrated during the time period, post shuttle, particularly when the constellation program, which was going to take us back to the moon was canceled. And we just seem to kind of go to idle, idle power on the whole man space, human spaceflight program. And I started asking people, and particularly in talks I'd give, I said, you know, it's 2025, imagine that, and back in 2015, that seemed like a long way away. It's around the corner now. I said, suppose in 2025, a human being lands on the moon. Does it matter if that human being plants a Chinese flag or an American flag? Does it matter? I think the answer is yes, it matters. And I think it's a national security issue. It matters that much. Because whether we like it or not, you know, Americans say, yeah, we did that in 1969, big deal. And the rest of the world's going to say, yeah, but what have you done lately? I want to be on that guy's team. That's just human nature. And I don't want the rest of the world to say, and I want to be on the Chinese team or the Russians team. They are not our friends. They are our enemies. They are our enemies. We may not think it. They do. We're their enemies. They know it. And we need to wake up. That's, I digress here. I think we are waking up. So we need to lead. And we can bring the international community along with us. That's what we did on the International Space Station, but I guarantee you, it's the International Space Station, but the United States of America led that effort and it would not have happened without the United States of America. Because we have friends and allies. How many friends and allies do the Russians have? How many friends and allies do the Chinese have? You can count them on one hand, one finger for some of those guys. So, no, we got to lead. That's my view. Now in the space force or space service, I have a contrarian position than what you will hear mostly. And sadly, I believe the debate was cut off at the knees before it can be held by a decision, by the president, which he has every right to do. And I'm, you know, when I'm in the uniform, I'm absolutely loyal to the commander-in-chief. Whatever they say, aye aye, as long as in legal order, aye aye. But I think a separate service and an even core at this point in history, not saying never, would be a huge mistake. We're at a point in history where we need to move fast because we are behind. And we are not behind through any fault of the United States Air Force, which is the common theme. And it really irks me to hear that. We are behind because U.S. policy, both in the administration, successive administration, since 1982, and the United States Congress was you could not talk about warfighting in space. Couldn't do it. It was against the rules. If you did it, they cut your budget. And it wasn't until about two and a half years ago, three maybe now, that we woke up after the Chinese activity in space and what we know about the Russians are doing and realized while we're talking about maintaining a peaceful domain, which has never happened in the history of humanity, never have human beings not found a way to fight in a new domain, whether it's on the land, on water, underwater, or in the air, why we would think we would not one day fight in space, I do not know. We finally woke up to the fact that we're gonna have to fight up there. But every commander of Air Force Space Command since 1982 has talked about this and been told to stop talking about it. And I was one of them. Two and a half years ago, they said, okay, now we're behind in space. We gotta get ready to warfight. Air Force, what have you been doing? Just following orders what we were doing. And so this notion that the Air Force should be blamed for this is totally wrong. We need to create a whole new part of Air Force Space Command that does not just do the enabling stuff, which, oh by the way, the United States Air Force has done pretty well. Anybody having trouble with their GPS signal? Anybody having trouble with their missile warning? Anybody having trouble with their global communications, whether it's wideband or narrowband? Anybody having trouble getting the weather on the news tonight? That was all brought to you by the United States Air Force. So quit picking on the Air Force saying we haven't been taking care of space. But that is something we do very well. Yeah, we have cost overruns. Yeah, it takes too long to do stuff. Pick a weapons system, F-22, F-35, that doesn't have cost overruns, doesn't take too long to do. Space is not unique in this regard. But we do this enabling piece so well today and now we have to start brand new to fight in space, to warfight. Which means we need a whole different level of knowledge and understanding. The stuff I did and could do in my sleep, I was trained to do it in NASA, rendezvous and proximity operations was not being taught in the United States Air Force in 2006 and 2007. Why? Because why would you need to know how to do that? To fight in space, you're not allowed to. When I came back as the commander, I took the executive course that was being taught to SESs and general officers at Air Force Space Command. One day course, I took the course. Great course, great introductory, right level to teach generals what an orbit was, et cetera. When it finished, I said, okay, great, what are you teaching the other levels? Are you teaching rendezvous and proxops? No, sir. Well, you're gonna start. And I got the guy who taught me how to do it at NASA to send the books and start the curriculum in 2007. We didn't talk about it because I was definitely afraid they'd shut us down. We need to build that. Now, let's have a separate service. There are 12,000 people in the United States Air Force today in uniform doing space. 12,000. When I commanded 8th Air Force, I had 40,000 people working for me and I was a numbered Air Force. But on top of 12,000, 2,000 of which, only 2,000 of which have space wings, which means they're certified operators. On top of that, the proposal is to build a service with a secretary, an undersecretary, a general counsel, an inspector general, a chief, a vice chief, an S1 and S2 and S3 all the way through S8, who all have to be general officers to compete in the Pentagon for resources. We all have to have deputy general officers who all have to have staff officers to support them, to do organized training and equip for space and support their new chief, and his role as a member of the Joint Chiefs, which is a different job he has, and who's gonna populate that staff? Anybody who knows anything about space? No. Why? They don't exist. They don't exist. We're at ground zero here. We gotta build this force and grow this force and it's gonna take some time to do it. But if you do this separate service, I guarantee it will happen. You'll have a bunch of people putting these senior positions up there and know nothing about space because there's not enough of them. And the people who do know something about space are gonna spend all their time answering notes from above, what does this mean? What does this mean? What should I be doing here? At a time when we have no time to waste answering stupid questions, we need to move out. And we got great leadership at Air Force Space Command. Great leadership out there. And they can do this. You just gotta give them the resources. And we're seeing those resources flowing to budget. Another small point is, I built the Air Force Palm in support of the Chief and the Secretary for three years in the Pentagon. Not once did I ever see a single dollar transfer from the United States Army to the United States Air Force or to the United States Navy or the Marine Corps. You get what you get. Rarely do you get extra. And if there's extra money put in the department, everybody gets extra. I witnessed the Sibbers program and the AEHF programs as they went from schedule overruns to tremendous cost overruns. And how did we pay for those cost overruns? We paid for it with other Air Force program money. You create a separate space force. The next time you have a satellite overrun, you think you're gonna get money out of the F-35 program to fix it? Forget about it. The space service will have to fix those problems and will have to eat those bills within themselves. Today, if there's a problem in the space business, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and I've seen it happen, you can pull money out of other areas of the Air Force to fix those problems. It's about priorities. It's not about whether you love space more than you love airplanes or vice versa. It's about balancing shortages. That all goes away with a separate service. Again, it would slow us down. I just think it's absolutely the wrong thing to be doing at this time. There's changes that need to be made. There's money available out there. Most of the changes are in the A-1 about how we grow a professional space capability, cadre within the Air Force, to do this new mission. Don't wanna break what we're doing well already and to bring in new talent. And I'm sorry, I'm going on, I'm running over. You know, at the United States Naval Academy, thanks to Hyman Rickover, there's a requirement that 60% of the graduates every year must have a STEM degree. At the United States Air Force Academy, there's no requirement. Everybody can be an English major. Everybody. We need more people to study on astronautical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, because that's what you need to do space, to fight in space, to understand the space domain, to build the capability you need to fight and win a war in space. Maybe we ought to start right at the grassroots level about how we manage the talent we bring into the service, into our Air Force, and start building this cadre up. Now, 10, 12, 15 years from now when you got a bunch of kernels and a bunch of lieutenant kernels and a bunch of brigadier generals who grew up in the space business and the Air Force because we have the headroom for that now because we've grown the size, now we can maybe start talking about something separate. Maybe, but I'll remind you, there's 170,000 minimum by law Marines in the United States Marine Corps in uniform and they're not a separate service. We're talking 12,000 people you're gonna build a bureaucracy on top of. There's not a company, a corporation in America that would do that. They'd laugh you out the door. That's called an inverted pyramid. Five workers and 25 managers. You don't get anywhere. You don't get to the moon that way and you don't win a war that way. Thank you, sir. Okay, but not that I'm passionate about this. No. No. I'm just sad that that debate could never be had. Never was that. Once the commander chief says go, you go. But it's being debated in Congress now so we'll see how it works out. We have time for one quick question. Very cool. Sir, thank you for being here with us today. We appreciate your time. It's no secret to us in the room that you've had a long distinguished career and your wife did as well. You both went the distance professionally but also personally. There are a few of us in the audience that dual mill couple or member of a dual mill couple. And we're just wondering what advice would you have for those of us with that unique special challenge in making it all work, Air Force career, family, kids, and so on and so forth. Yeah, thanks. Well, first, marry up like I did. Man, that's so important. Actually, Kathy served 37 years. I was a slacker, I only served 34 and a half. And there's so many variables in that equation. Of course, if you come in at the same rank and y'all get promoted together and you're in the same AFSC, a lot of things can work out where the family can kind of stay together. But that's really rare. It's really rare. Kathy and I were not in the same AFSC. When I went to NASA, there was an Air Force space program at NASA, but after Challenger, that went away. So she was still at Eglin doing flight tests and when her commitment ran up is when we got married and she left the active duty, came to Houston and joined the reserve. So she did six years active duty in 31 years in the reserves. And that really worked well for us because the reserves are very cognizant. At least they were then. Now, the dynamics are a bit different since the global war on terror. Maybe we'll reset back to where we were in the 1990s. A little more predictable schedule, a little less to op tempo. But for years, while we were having children, she just, she did her minimum. One weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. We got a lot of help from Grandma and Grandpa and occasionally when I was free, I'd take a couple of weeks when she was gone and that was called Kathy Appreciation Time. We need to stay at home with the babies. And it was never easy, but it was obviously one impossible for us and we were able to balance that. Kathy, the big thing was when Kathy was a Lieutenant Colonel, I believe we were at Barksdale, she said, I'm gonna get out of the reserve. She says, I just, she's Taipei like me. She says, I just don't feel like the Air Force is getting their money's worth out of me. I'm just doing the minimum. And I said, well, honey, if that's the way you feel, I think you're valuable to the Air Force. And my Senior Reserve Advisor, John Bortalon, Major General John Bortalon, great guy, I was talking to him and he said, let me talk to Kathy. And he sat her down, he said, listen, Kathy, we get it in the reserves. You're at this stage of your life where you don't have time to do more than the minimum. But we want you to stay because you're good and we know there will be a stage in your life beyond your husband's retirement, likely, since you can serve till age 60 if you continue to be promoted, where you will give us more time and we will use you. Trust me. And so she hung in there and John was exactly right. And Kathy, on two occasions where we were, I was assigned and she was at her reserve job was on the same location once we were in the Pentagon. She got a job in the Pentagon and she went in and talked to him and said, look, I will work five days a week for you all year long if you'll let me to come in to work at nine in the morning and leave at two because I want to take my children to school and I want to pick them up. I mean, being a mom was so important to Kathy and being there for our kids. And she said, I'll only charge it for two and a half days even though I'm doing three days worth of work. So it was a good deal for the unit she was working for and she had continuity and she was such a superstar. She moved over to Missile Defense Agency. She was using the same model. She was so good, they actually gave her a satellite program to run the Enfire satellite. She was the program manager on this classified, part of it was classified mostly on satellite and which was successfully launched and deployed. I mean, it was like she was active duty but she was still being a mom. So the reserves for us really, really helped us out. There are tough choices to be made as a joint spouse. I just know, particularly with the deployment ops tempo and oftentimes you got to lean on other family members. But it also reminds me of the bit about balance. So I always used to believe I was in pretty good balance. No, you can't be, not in this business. And guess what, in the corporate world I found out leadership in the corporate world, they don't leave balanced lives either. You know, if they're gonna be successful, if their company's gonna be successful, they spend more time with the company than they do with their families. But just because you're out of balance, it doesn't mean you stop working the problem. And I think that is what's the most valuable thing to do. Recognize where you are on the scale of imbalance and make some commitments and decisions about how you're gonna live your life and how you're gonna support your mission and get the mission done but how you're gonna support your family too. And I didn't make every soccer game or every swim match but I made a lot of them. And the kids knew if I wasn't there, they knew I wanted to be there and couldn't. And that was really helpful for keeping a good, happy, healthy family going forward. And you know, I came back late. You know, there aren't many Brigadier Generals around the Air Force in those days that had a two-year-old, a four-year-old, a six-year-old, an eight-year-old in the house. In fact, those general officer houses weren't made for that. Little tiny bedrooms, never enough. And my oldest daughter went to four different high schools so we lived all that stuff too. But you know, they all turned out great. I'm so proud of them. They're all out of school, got jobs. They still love us. They still come home. You know, there's that old saying, that which does not kill you, makes you stronger. My children are strong and they're fabulous. Citizens and human beings, couldn't be prouder of them. And I put most of the blame for that on Kathy, not me. Arthur, I think there's one more question that we're gonna have. Can you tell us like, well, what zero gravity feels like? What's your name? My name is Jack. Thanks, Jack. That's a great question. Jack, first of all, it's the coolest thing about being in space. Because you don't walk anywhere while you're up there. You fly everywhere you go. You're Superman all day long. You know, you say, I wanna go over there? You just push off and you do the Superman thing and across the room you go. If I could turn gravity off in this room right now, you cannot imagine how much fun we would all be having. I'm not kidding. It would be, you know, I remember one night we ate dinner sitting on the ceiling. You know, you kind of looped your legs under a few straps and we sat upside down and I had dinner on the ceiling. And we would make games of, you know, Jack, I could have you roll up into a ball and we could throw you around the room. And you wouldn't get hurt. You'd be laughing so hard you'd have such a great time. So it's a really great feeling of freedom. And I think every pilot, and probably every pilot room would agree with this, has always dreamed of flying like a bird, but even, you know, or flying without the help of an airplane, just physically flying yourself as a human alone. And you get to do that out there. And it's just a fabulous, fabulous feeling. So I missed that part. And then I guess the other thing that you didn't ask, Jack, that was really cool about being in space was the view of the planet from up there. And it was just breathtaking. We never could spend enough time looking out the window. And whenever you had a free minute, you left a nose print on the window and watched the world go by. And I was just so fortunate to have had those experiences. I hope you can one day, if that's what you'd like to do, Jack. All right, General Chilton, we want to thank you for being with us today and for sharing your unique experiences and leadership insights. All right, thanks. Pleasure. Thank you. Thanks.