Gennaro Caliendo:We will ultimately make sure the vehicle is safe to fly crews. The difference is where we draw the line between us and the commercial partner.
Joshua Santora:Commercial and government partnerships and contracts might not sound that fascinating, but when we’re talking about certifying Boeing Starliner to carry humans to space, the challenges and complexities become a whole lot more interesting. Next on the Rocket Ranch.
Launch Countdown Sequence: EGS Program chief engineer verifying no constraints to launch. Three, two, one, and lift off. Welcome to space.
[ Music ]
Joshua Santora:We’ll hear from the certification lead for Starliner in a few minutes, who is responsible for something called burning down paper. But, first up, we have Steve Payne, his job is to think through pretty much anything that can go wrong on launch day and how to make sure we respond to keep everything and everyone safe.
All right. I’m in the booth now with Steve Payne. Steve, thank you for joining me today.
Steve Payne:Hey, good afternoon.
Joshua Santora:Steve, rumor has it that you are a big fan of model rockets, so you can’t get enough of rockets during your day job, you have to go home and do it as well, is that true?
Steve Payne:That is a true statement. I tend to get carried away with things you can put a rocket motor on.
Joshua Santora:Whoa, wait a second. So, things you can put a rocket motor on. So, I believe, technically, the answer to that question is you can put a rocket motor on anything.
Steve Payne:Pretty much.
Joshua Santora:Have you experimented with such things?
Steve Payne:Well, there is a room in my house with a boneyard of several things that I have put rocket motors on and flown, from Crayon, piggy banks to rolled up cardboard tubes from the middle of gift wrapping paper and anything that you can make pointy and put fins on, that’s around my house will fly.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughs ]
Steve Payne:I got — couple of years ago, I was — they asked me to build them a model rocket for display for an event at school. It was a fundraiser. And so, I said, “Well, what do you want?” They said, “Well, a big rocket. You know, about your height and whatnot.” So, I said, “Sure.” And, well, several weeks later, I showed up with a 15-foot tall, two-scaled Saturn 1B rocket. [ Chuckles ]
Joshua Santora:[ Laughs ] Oh, man.
Steve Payne:Yeah.
Joshua Santora:That’s awesome.
Steve Payne:Yeah. So, they — yeah, give me rocket, I get carried away.
Joshua Santora:So, Steve, I’ve — you’re the kind of guy that I just ran into you all the time. Like, I never know where I’m going to see you pop up but I see you all the time and it’s a pleasure every time. Can you tell me, kind of, what your background is because I’m not even sure, because I’ve seen you in so many different capacities here?
Steve Payne:Well, where do you want me to start?
Joshua Santora:Let’s just say, what’s your schooling been? What’s your — what are your degrees in or degree?
Steve Payne:All right. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Syracuse.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:Where I spent many freezing years.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughs ]
Steve Payne:After that, I joined the navy. I was a navy pilot for a while after the Tomcat, the F-14 supersonic fighter bomber, did that for several years. And then, after I finished my active duty career, I came out to Kennedy Space Center and I started to work for one of our support contractors here, Lockheed Space Operations Company doing payload operations. I used to load cargo into the shuttle’s payload bay.
Joshua Santora:Is that, like, you personally would be the one to, like—
Steve Payne:I was the–
Joshua Santora:–put things in?
Steve Payne:–operations person. No. I wasn’t the technicians. We have technicians–
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:–to do all the turning of wrenches. We have the engineers who develop the procedures and decide how much torque everything should have. And then, we have the operations folks, which is where my expertise lies primarily and it’s the person who makes sure that the people, the paper, the parts, the conditions, the schedules are all there so that it can gel and the operation can take place. And to grease the skids, make sure that if they have a hiccup of any sort, we’re the trouble shooters who make sure that we overcome that hiccup and press on.
Joshua Santora:That’s, kind of, a good segue point, I think, because we’re here today to talk about the Commercial Crew Program and specifically Boeing’s upcoming orbital flight test with our Starliner CST-100. And your role is actually, kind of, just that, of like, accounting for a day we hope never comes.
Steve Payne:That is–
Joshua Santora:Is that a fair assessment?
Steve Payne:That is a fair assessment. It is like an insurance policy.
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:It costs money and you resent having to pay it.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Steve Payne:And for most of the time, you’ll never need it, but the day that you do, you’re–
Joshua Santora:It’s worth every penny.
Steve Payne:Right. And–
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:And if you don’t have it, you’ll wish you had. So, my job and it is sometimes unpopular is to point out where we are unprotected and what kinds of things we would need to do to be able to mitigate whatever hazard there might be or respond to whatever emergency condition has taken place. And when things get ugly, I’m the guy that everybody looks at and says, “Steve, fix it.”
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Steve Payne:So, I have to have a way to fix it and it involves quite a bit of planning upfront and setting up of structures, and teams, and mechanisms, and communications, and procedures so that when you do need it, it works smoothly.
Joshua Santora:So, what’s your official title right now? Just — is it something cool like waste management specialist or is it like — is it more engineering than that?
Steve Payne:No. It’s, kind of, a prosaic term. I — I’m a Launch Integration Manager.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:Which is the — you know, that little fine print that says duties as assigned at the end of your job description?
Joshua Santora:Yeah. I think all of us have that somewhere in your job description and most of us know that it’s, kind of, a catchall for stuff.
Steve Payne:Yeah. Well, that’s 99.9% of my job is all that stuff because it doesn’t belong to anybody else. We have engineers who are experts in a particular system and we have folks that are focused on inflight stuff. We have folks that are focused on fueling the vehicle, folks that are focused on engines, or focused on avionics or other such systems. Somebody has to have a 10,000-foot view, see the combined picture, and put all the pieces together. That’s what the integration part of the title is. And if you start to think, if you were going to launch a rocket somewhere and you had — starting from a blank slate, what would you need?
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:Well, you will need a launch team. I mean, other than a rocket, you need a launch team.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:So, in the early days of the program here, I was helping put up together the, “Who’s going to be on our launch team?” “What are they going to do?” “What are their functions?” “How do we plug in to the commercial provider’s launch team?” “What communications go back and forth?” “What channels do we need?” “What infrastructure needs to be there?” “What control rooms are necessary?” So, all that had to be thought out and after much deliberation and back and forth, we came up with a plan. And so, we put all that in place. Some of it is what are the operations that take place when the crew arrives on the center? Well, the crew officers focus on health stabilization. For example, they arrive seven days prior to launch. We don’t want them getting sick before going up to the station, so there’s all these involved procedures for making sure they don’t get sick and take something up with them and make everybody on station sick. So, we have to come up with a procedure for that. Last time we looked at it, we had a space shuttle procedure from the 2011 timeframe and we had been using a procedure that worked in Russia, but we didn’t have one for now for this program.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:That incorporated all those changes and all the international pieces. So, we have to go create a new one. So, it was integrating again. “What do the Russians do?” “What do the Japanese want?” “What are our European partners need?” “What are our special situations here?” We rewrote a new procedure, got it all partnered in and then, we have to go execute that. So, somebody had to integrate that story and then it ended up in my duties as assigned bucket.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:Things like emergency management. If you’re at the pad and something goes wrong, how do you get off that pad? Well, we have Emergency Egress Systems. Somebody had to provide input as to this is what we need, this is how we’re going to get out, this is acceptable, this is not acceptable. And so, help the design of that. So, we influence the design of that. Okay. Once we get off the tower, then what? How do you get out of there? Well, we had to provide them with vehicles that were suitable. We procured armored vehicles and modified them so that the crew could get away safely. All right. Now, once you’ve left, what happens if you’re hurt? So, we had to come up with a medical team to go check them out and make sure that we can patch them if need be. If they have any propellants on them and they’re contaminated, we need a decontamination team to go make sure that they’re clean. If there–
Joshua Santora:So, are you the guy that’s thinking through all of these things? Like, is that really role that–
Steve Payne:That’s my role–
Joshua Santora:–obviously you can’t, like, do all these things on your own, the application of it but your job is to think through all of these minute detail. And, some of them are —
Steve Payne:Correct.
Joshua Santora:—not minute, but—
Steve Payne:Right.
Joshua Santora:—you’re the guy?
Steve Payne:Yeah. It’s — I’m the guy that points out, “Hey, you’re gonna need this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this.” And they say, “That’s great, Steve, go make it so.”
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Steve Payne:And I kick myself for opening my mouth so much. But I’ve — we’ve gone and we’ve made it so. We’ve worried about the medevac and we found helicopter support. We’ve configured helicopters. We worried about medical support. We’ve contracted with outside entities to provide us medical support. We worried about decontamination. We worked with our KSC and Cape Canaveral Fire Teams to provide decontamination. And so on, and so on, and so forth.
Joshua Santora:Yup. Are you writing the procedures for these kinds of things or you just — kind of, are you a part of a team that’s writing the procedure for these?
Steve Payne:I’m pulling together the team that’s–
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:–writing the procedures. We run our emergency escape and rescue working group where all the stuff is discussed. And I’m the coach here and–
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:–provide guidance and make sure that everything that needs to be in place is there.
Joshua Santora:And are you — or I have this picture of you all, this team you, kind of, gathered together just sitting in a room with a giant white board thinking of, like, “What things can go wrong?” And just, like, throw everything on a wall and then, go from there? Like, is that a fair picture or is there something more formal than that?
Steve Payne:There is a lot of what-iffing and–
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:And scenario development. If we have — there are so many things that could go wrong if you let your imagination run wild.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:And we do because–
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:–usually, life is more interesting than fiction.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughs ]
Steve Payne:If you imagine a scenario, “Well, we had to leave the pad because bad weather was coming and so we had to leave.” “Oh, okay.” How do you handle that? Or, “We had to leave the pad because something was starting to go wrong and we wanted to get out before it got bad.” “Okay.” That’s another response. Or, “We had to leave the pad because, hey, we’re leaking fuel somewhere and we need to get out of here.”
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:So, that’s another scenario. Or — then there’s a really bad day, something went kablooey and we have to go get people up there. So, we had to put together a team to go get them up there and procedures for that. So, all these things are waiting in the wings to be called upon on launch day–
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:–should we need them. And if anything goes wrong, we’ve got aces up our sleeve for all kinds of different scenario.
Joshua Santora:You, kind of, talked about the interestingness of fiction versus reality. Have you had any specific instances in the past that we’ve had a bad day or almost a really bad day and these kinds of — you’ve been able to use these kinds of applications? Or is this all still been, like, very theoretical for your world?
Steve Payne:Well, we have a — I’ve only really had issues during processing because, fortunately, we haven’t had this happened to us during a launch countdown but–
Joshua Santora:Cool.
Steve Payne:–I used to work daily process in the space shuttles and we every now and again would have a fuel spill issue. And we would find out that you can mechanize or make automatic all your response all you want but there’s people involve.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:And people respond differently than machinery. We had one case where technicians were working on some pipes that had contained hypergolic fuels, and they weren’t drained completely. We expect them to be but they weren’t. And so, one of the technicians got an amount of this fuel on them, and the procedure is you egress the facility. You go out the nearest exit door. You go out to the safety wash shower. You strip down completely and you wash yourself so that you don’t have chemicals on you. Well, if you consider human nature–
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:This shower is an open shower in the middle of the parking lot.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:People don’t want to strip down completely.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:We end up–
Joshua Santora:Well, and that’s what’s going through my head this time. I’m like, am I standing on the parking lot doing this right now?
Steve Payne:Right. So, he didn’t and we ended up — he was contaminated. The medical personnel that responded were contaminated. The ambulance–
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:–I put him in were contaminated.
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:When he got to the hospital, the hospital was contaminated.
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:So, with one of those things, you integrate this and so we started providing modesty garments.
Joshua Santora:Huh.
Steve Payne:So, that when you go out there and you strip down you have something to put on.
Joshua Santora:Huh.
Steve Payne:You’re not just standing out there…
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:And the human nature part is the part that most people forget.
Joshua Santora:Right. Ironically, I think you’re a hundred percent right.
Steve Payne:Yeah. So, when we try to design our systems and our responses that involve humans, we’re trying to make them as simple as intuitive as possible–
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:–so, that if you’re in a panic, kind of, situation, you don’t have to do much thinking. There’s one or two steps and you’re out of there. And that’s how we try to design all our stuff. We had a — when we have an escape vehicle that we parked at the base of the — or near the perimeter of the — of the launch pad, so that when the crew escape from the tower down a wire that’s hanging down, they’ll end up at this vehicle and they can hop in and leave. Now, we’ve done it so that the vehicles are running. We’ve done a checklist to make sure all the switches, and lights, and everything are the way they should be. All the sensor is on board or turned on.
Joshua Santora:Got you.
Steve Payne:Everything is ready. In theory, all you got to do is sit down, put it in drive and take off the parking brake. Two steps — three.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:Well, we’ve had people screw that up.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Steve Payne:So–
Joshua Santora:Because adrenaline does weird things–
Steve Payne:Adrenaline does–
Joshua Santora:–into our body.
Steve Payne:–weird things. You forget. You put it in gear, it’s not moving. Why is it not moving? Oh, yeah, the parking brake. Yeah. So, we tried to simplify things down to the minimalist steps we can.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:We put big placards on, do this, then do that, and we trained the crews so that they have that experience. So that if they can’t remember, their buddy next to them can tell them what to do.
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:So, there’s a lot of that simplify, simplify, simplify. So, that it’s human — it’s a second nature instead of allowing for people to mess it up because people mess things up. They forget. So, that’s a big piece of the gap.
Joshua Santora:Yeah. As I think about, kind of, the launch day, typically, we have a launch manager, launch conductor, launch director, something like that. So, assuming that, kind of, this bad day gets triggered. Obviously, that’s, kind of, a broad statement of–
Steve Payne:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:There’s lots of things that I could mean. Is it — does control, kind of, switch over to you at that point or does that person, kind of, maintain the conducting role through that procedure?
Steve Payne:Well, we are plugged into the commercial provider’s launch team. They run the launch countdown because it’s their rocket, their pad–
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:–their procedure–
Joshua Santora:An important distinction.
Steve Payne:Right. And it’s different than what it was for the old days when NASA ran everything. But we are plugged in as a part of the team. When they call for the pad — for the crew or even the pad personnel who are out there that tell them get off the tower, it’s dangerous, go escape. At that point, we go into gear and we deploy our team. We tell our medical folks to start rolling forward. We tell our decontamination teams to go. We scramble our medevac helicopter so that they get in the air and start making their way out there. We coordinate with the launch conductor or launch director from the provider to count heads, make sure we got everybody. If not everybody got out, then we go send in pad rescue teams and recover whoever was left. Then, we got to go treat all those people and we got to package them and do all that, and then report back we got everybody. And pass the information to their companies because it’s not just NASA now.
Joshua Santora:Right.
Steve Payne:I have to tell them, “Hey, person from company A, your employee ended up in this hospital because he was hurt.”
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Steve Payne:So, those, kind of, things are how we plug into their team. And we coordinate in advance. Where are we going to send them once they get out of the rocket, what’s going on, what’s the weather, what are the conditions, can we go back in or can’t we go back in? All those kind of things are discussed as part of the team and that’s one aspect. Also on — in my job bucket is if we have what we call a pad abort or SpaceX calls it a pad escape, where you have to essentially jettison the capsule. It’s like an ejection seat but the whole capsule goes with you.
Joshua Santora:Right.
Steve Payne:So, on a day like that and the capsule ends up out over the water, floating in the ocean off the coast, it’s up to us to deploy rescue forces. We work with the Department of Defense and we send out helicopters with a pair of rescue jumpers to jump out, open the hatch, get the crew out of there. And if they’re injured in some fashion, they take them off to hospitals and medevac come out. So, that part of the rescue responses are us, too. So, that’s where the title. Right now, I’m the — that function on launch day is called the Launch Rescue Director. And so that is my function on the day of launch.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:It’s an interesting job.
Joshua Santora:A few minutes ago, you, kind of, mentioned the fact that this is a very different process than back with shuttle, when it was just, kind of, NASA doing the space shuttle thing. Can you, kind of, give me a couple highlights of how is this different? Because ultimately we’re kind of working arm-and-arm with Boeing, is my understanding, whereas with the Space Shuttle program NASA — it was really NASA’s program that we owned. So, practically speaking, how is that playing out differently for you?
Steve Payne:Well, back in the day, when I was in the test director’s office, the test director ran the countdown. The test director was also the launch rescue — landing and recovery director, which was their alternate — one of the alternate jobs that we also had. And everything from running the count, to doing the evacuation, to handling the wounded, to medevac-ing them off to the hospitals, or if we ended up in the water, that was our launch rescue director back, then. If we ended up having to do a return to launch site because with a winged vehicle, we have that option, we could fly back, that was launch rescue director’s job to set that up. If we ended up landing overseas because our engine snuffed out, that was the launch rescue director’s job to do or the landing and recovery director at that time. And if we ended up anywhere we shouldn’t have ended up, in the middle of the woods somewhere where no vehicle–
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:It was their job to go pick all that up. Now, we share those duties with our–
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:–provider. For scenarios where we land, where we’re supposed to land, the provider is there to handle all of that, not NASA. If we land, maybe, not quite where we intended to land but near, well, the provider’s resources are there and we give them the lead on that. Although, we go assist because it’s off nominal.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Steve Payne:If we land in the middle of the ocean, though, not in the designated landing areas, then that becomes a rescue operation and NASA takes that into our own hands because we have the resources to do that. Where the providers don’t necessarily have that.
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm. And would you point to us being a federal agency as the primary thing there, because ultimately, like, we can, kind of, pull on the rest of the federal government to, kind of, jump in and help out, which I think is what we do ultimately.
Steve Payne:Precisely, yeah. We have the ability to go to pull on our Department of Defense or other law enforcement, and coast guard, and miscellaneous, other Federal or State resources to go provide rescue assistance. In fact if it lands overseas somewhere, we can call on the State Department and get foreign militaries forces–
Joshua Santora:Wow.
Steve Payne:–to help us out. So–
Joshua Santora:Are you thinking through that kind of stuff, too?
Steve Payne:That fortunately is another group but yes.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Steve Payne:Yeah. That’s a lot more.
Joshua Santora:Somebody else’s job, finally. [ Laughing ]
Steve Payne:Yes. That becomes somebody else’s job but we have — for example, we fly — our profile for the space station takes us, kind of, up the coast over Newfoundland and then over near Ireland.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:If we were to fall into the ocean for some reason near Ireland, we’d call on their Department of Defense to help us out, because they have rescue helicopters, and jets, and other such things. So, we go to the State Department — we’d go first to our Department of Defense. We would go to the State Department, ask for assistance. They’d contact our counterparts across the sea, they would go respond. If we end up in some middle of nowhere and there are no other foreign agencies, then, we’ll take what’s called the ship of opportunity. Who’s out there, who can go provide aid and rescue if need be.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:And we send them instructions. This is how you open the hatch.
Joshua Santora:Wow.
Steve Payne:This is what you have to be careful with. Please take care of my guys.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:So, there’s all that planning and scenario. We do have also aircrafts staged out of South Carolina and Hawaii, so that if we end up anywhere in the Atlantic, we can fly a large transport aircraft to where they are within a couple hours. Drop rescue jumpers out the back, drop inflatable boats, and other miscellaneous things to have at least a floating island–
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:–of aid.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:And then, we send whichever the nearest ship is to go help them out. The same in the Pacific, if we end up out there, we do the same thing. There’s an aircraft staged out there. So, there’s a lot of planning–
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:–and it’s a lot of coordination in advance.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:And hopefully, you’ll never ever, ever need this.
Joshua Santora:Yes.
Steve Payne:But you still got to practice, and you still got to have the resources in place, and you have to convince people that they need this.
Joshua Santora:Steve, the commercial crew program has been in motion for about eight years now, and it’s been a lot of hard work. What’s the feeling of the entire team, kind of, as you’re involved in this day-to-day — obviously, you haven’t flown the Starliner yet into space, and so that’s still coming. How’s the team — like, what’s that feeling? What’s that atmosphere like?
Steve Payne:Well, you know that feeling you get when you have a final the next day?
Joshua Santora:Stress, usually?
Steve Payne:Yeah.
Joshua Santora:Yeah?
Steve Payne:That feeling.
Joshua Santora:Urgency?
Steve Payne:Urgency, stress, am I ready, have we done everything, have I studied everything there is to study. That is looming over the horizon. You know, we know that we’re getting very close. We’ve done everything — we know everything behind us is complete. And all the T’s are crossed and the eyes are dotted, like they should be. There’s still a lot of work ahead of us that we have to get done in what appears to be a shorter and shorter time because the calendar doesn’t stop for us.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:It just keeps going whether we’re finish or not, and we’re shooting for a target date. That’s always been the case with the rockets, you pick a date and you say, we’re going to be ready then, you know, and sometimes you are–
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:–sometimes you’re not. But in this case, we have a pretty good feeling that we’re going to get there and it’s happening within the next months or so for us, a little over a month. There’s still a lot of wickets we have to jump through. It’s kind of difficult to keep the pace that we have been keeping because everything has to be finished.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:And we have to get comfortable with everything and everything has to work right between now and then, because if anything goes funny, then it inserts questions and uncertainty into the schedule and we don’t know.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Steve Payne:But if everything works as planned between now and then, and we knock out all our scheduled activities as we have, we’re going to get there. And it’s — we’re going to get across that finish line having not much left to give because we’re going to give it all we got getting there. It’s just like a runner, they say, “Don’t save it for after the race. Use it up while you’re there.”
Joshua Santora:Right.
Steve Payne:And get through the finish line.
Joshua Santora:Time for a final.
Steve Payne:It’s time for the sprint at the end. So, we’re getting ready for that last sprint and I’m very much looking forward to getting our launch in the air and seeing the results of all those years of hard work pay off.
Joshua Santora:And as we approach launch date, how are you feeling about it?
Steve Payne:I’m — it’s kind of interesting and I got mixed feelings. You know, yes, I’m nervous because, yeah, I’m going to have to perform. I might have to have a bad day and be there and be crisp and be right because there–
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Steve Payne:–are people in that ship who are counting on me or there are people on that pad who are counting on me to have their back. On the other side, we’ve been practicing this and developing these procedures for a couple of years now. And we think we got it down. Obviously, there’s always room for improvement. But we think we’re in the 90 some percent ready stage. So, I — if it were to happen, we could deal with it. Of course, the nervousness is still there.
Joshua Santora:As — again, kind of, factoring in the humanity of this whole thing. That’s perfectly understandable. So, this coming — upcoming flight, the Orbital Flight Test is un-crewed and then will be followed sometime thereafter by the Crewed Flight Test. And I believe, I heard you had a interesting story with one of the crew members, Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson. I’ve heard there’s some good stories. You guys have worked together in the past, is that true?
Steve Payne:Yes. He and I went to flight school together back in the Navy. We were in the same training squadron for F-14’s back in 1986. And we go way back. We have some embarrassing pictures of ourselves that every now and again, I’ll drag out and we get a chuckle out of. [ Chuckles ]
Joshua Santora:Very good. So, yeah, it seems like there — this is a big world. There’s a lot going on but it seems like it can be a pretty small world as well as this paths kind of come and go and across each other unexpectedly.
Steve Payne:That’s a true statement. I — the people who love this job as much as we do, tend to stick to around and they feel great ownership and responsibility for what they’re doing. I have never seen anywhere else that but here, that level of dedication and focus on the mission. I mean, I — I’ve had military background and I’ve had other such things but here, more than anywhere else, I see everybody pulling in the same direction and they don’t want to be the person that fails. They — and not because they don’t want to be seen as failing but because they don’t want to fail their buddies. They know that we have friends on those ships and everybody is counting on them and you don’t want to let your friends down. You find that in the best organizations and I’m sure you see that in your Navy Seals and other such folks like that. Where you know they’re counting on you and you will do your darndest not to let them down.
Joshua Santora:Yeah. As I look at the Commercial Crew Program from outside, that is what I continue to see time and time again of long hours, hard days, lots of effort, all kind of with that goal in my mind. So, Steve, appreciate you being here and I hope very much that on launch day, you are incredibly bored and have very little to do.
Steve Payne:I hope for the same. Thank you.
[ Music ]
Joshua Santora:The overall flight test is major step on the road certification. Here is Gennaro Caliendo with more.
I’m in the booth now with Gennaro Caliendo, who — let me see if I get this right here.
Gennaro Caliendo:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:The Certification Manager for the Boeing Starliner or I think, you might have said that there is more two than just Starliner.
Gennaro Caliendo:Correct. There’s two pieces of it or actually there’s more than two pieces but you’ve got the Starliner which sits on top of the Atlas V, which its launch vehicle. The two together form the whole part of the system. Of course, the system includes ground — the ground processing equipment, as well as the launch system and it’s all included and that’s what we certify. We don’t certify just the Starliner, we don’t just the Atlas V. It’s the entire system.
Joshua Santora:Yeah. And I think–
Gennaro Caliendo:From start to finish.
Joshua Santora:I think that’s a great point. And I appreciate you bringing that up just because people, when they think of a rocket launch, they typically only think of the rocket.
Gennaro Caliendo:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:But ultimately, there’s a ton of work on the ground to be able to fuel, and process, and handle, and support all the aspects–
Gennaro Caliendo:Correct.
Joshua Santora:–of launch and then, even the emergencies that are — that might be encountered.
Gennaro Caliendo:Right. Right. And for instance at Pad 41, where the Atlas V is going to launch from, we actually worked with the commercial provider and in this case, it was Boeing. Through their subcontractor, ULA, United Launch Alliance, which launches the Atlas V for Boeing, to create a system whereby we can access it. You know, the 41 has been there forever and it’s been used predominantly for unmanned satellites and interplanetary, kind of, missions, ULA’s used to over the years for commercial as well as NASA missions, as well as DOD missions. And so we have to—
Joshua Santora:Sure–
Gennaro Caliendo:So they had to actually modify it to support launching crews and that meant, building a big tower, so if anybody goes out there, you’ll see those big towers that allows the crews to actually climb up to the top and ingress the CST 100, which sits on top of the vehicle. As well as provide for any emergencies. Those are in our requirements and I guess, we can talk about requirements here to allow the crews to get off in emergency. For those who have seen the Shuttles fly, you may have seen some of the emergency systems that were out at the launch pad.
Joshua Santora:Right.
Gennaro Caliendo:They’re installing or have installed something very similar to that but it also has a kind of a flavor of if you’ve ever taken these — I’m trying to think of the word, this, sort of, rides.
Joshua Santora:The zip line?
Gennaro Caliendo:Zip lines.
Joshua Santora:Kind of rides, yeah.
Gennaro Caliendo:And things like that. Thank you.
Joshua Santora:Similar but different.
Gennaro Caliendo:Similar but different because their role is different, obviously.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:Again, in the way of an emergency, they actually put one of those zip line systems where people can escape in an emergency, that would mean the flight crews as well as ground crews that are out there and they can transport them very quickly from that level down to the ground and then into protective vehicles until the emergency passes or they can drive themselves out. Those emergency vehicles are ones that, actually, we provide to them as a government provided service or government provided equipment. It’s the same vehicles that we use for, I think, it’s Constellation — Exploration now, right. Not Constellation, it’s the old word.
Joshua Santora:Yeah, EGS?
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah, EGS.
Joshua Santora:Yeah. Yeah. So — and I want kind of back track because your title is Certification Manager.
Gennaro Caliendo:Correct.
Joshua Santora:And, so, I’ve heard the phrase thrown around burning down paper.
Gennaro Caliendo:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:When I first say that we’re not actually lighting paper on fire, right?
Gennaro Caliendo:Correct. Correct.
Joshua Santora:Okay. So we’re not–
Gennaro Caliendo:That’s absolutely correct.
Joshua Santora:We’re not burning paperwork here but this is a phrase—
Gennaro Caliendo: Right.
Joshua Santora:–we use. So, can you, kind of, talk about what does that mean and, kind of, as a Certification Manager, what’s your job?
Gennaro Caliendo:So, my job is to lead a small team on the NASA side. You know, the thing about certification is in the commercial world that has a slightly different flavor for us as NASA people. In the past, we had a set of requirements that we used to call level one or very high level requirements. And then, we would create sub tier requirements or level two, and three, and four.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:That would actually decompose a top level requirement. So, for instance if you said, which we do today, transport for people to the station and return them safely home, that would be your top level requirement.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:And then, what we would do, ordinarily, if it was a heritage NASA program, we would — we would take that top level requirement and we would decompose it down into components, pieces, parts of that. In this world, in commercial, we leave it at the high level and we let the provider actually decompose it. Now, that particular requirement it’s — in itself, we give them — we give the commercial providers some flavor of what we expect in there but we leave it up to the provider to actually decompose it. So, in that particular one, well, it sounds like transport crew and return them safely seems very, very generic. There are words within our requirements set that says this is what we expect it to be. In that case, it’s all about ascent trajectories, and entry trajectories, entry descent and landing, and rendezvous and docking. It’s all part of that. And so the commercial provider then provides the details behind all of that. When we say burning down paper, what we mean is the contractor, in this case Boeing, in my case Boeing will supply the evidence, the actual physical documentation. Now, you know, we’re living in a new, sort of, millennium and paper is an abstract kind of thing–
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:So–
Joshua Santora:Yeah, even paper is a fluid term–
Gennaro Caliendo:Even paper is, kind of, a fluid term. Right. So, they deliver a lot of this electronically to us.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:And we review it electronically and we look to see if meets the intent of what we were doing. So, in a test flight world where we are today, not all the requirements are active or required for a particular test flight. So–
Joshua Santora:Give me for instance. What does that mean?
Gennaro Caliendo:So, we have approximately — there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 280 requirements that we said these are safety in performance requirements that are out there for Boeing, in this case to meet.
Joshua Santora:Is that like the tier one level?
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah.
Joshua Santora:Two hundred and eighty of those?
Gennaro Caliendo:Two hundred and eighty of those. And then, they have–
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:–an additional somewhere in the neighborhood of close to 500 and change of performance from the safety requirements that are required to fly to the ISS. Those would be our international space station programs requirements.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:So, between the two, we have approximately, almost nearly 800 total requirements that they have to satisfy, which may sound like a lot to most people but when you think about it and you compare it to some of the other programs, they’re probably — those requirements are then decomposed into–
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:–thousands of smaller lower level requirements.
Joshua Santora:Right.
Gennaro Caliendo:We don’t necessarily require the decomposition at our level, but we do require them to decompose them and then roll them back up for us. All right?
Joshua Santora:So, when you talk about this because–
Gennaro Caliendo:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:–kind of, you made this point of, like, in a heritage program, which I think is a great way to describe it.
Gennaro Caliendo:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:You have, maybe, thousands more requirements as a part of it. So, does that really make our job easier or does it make our job harder because I could, kind of, see that going either way because we’re a little bit more hands off.
Gennaro Caliendo:Right. So, yeah, Josh, that’s a really good question. In some cases, it makes it easier and in some other cases, it does make it much more difficult because you leave it up to the provider to figure it out and then you have our people, which have a lot of heritage history, and so they have certain expectations of what needs to be delivered. So, there’s a lot of give and take that goes along with that–
Joshua Santora:Right.
Gennaro Caliendo:–of what we expected versus what they delivered. And so, sometimes those two aren’t very — they don’t flow very well together.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:So, it’s been a lot of back and forth between us and the commercial provider to figure out what the right level is. And once we get to that right level and we’re satisfied they meet the intent, then we’re good to go and we move on to the next one. Now, not all of those close to 800 requirements are required for each of these test flights. So, we have a sub-tear of those — subset of those that are required. What we call the minimum requirements. In the case of space station, that’s mostly all of them.
Joshua Santora:Yeah. [ Laughing ]
Gennaro Caliendo:Because in order to approach the, the spacecraft–
Joshua Santora:We take very good care of the space station.
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah, in the case of our requirements where you have an unmanned vehicle that’s going to fly here, OFT, Orbital Flight Test, there’s nobody onboard, there’s certain subsets of those that we don’t necessarily require to be completed, simply because you don’t have people onboard. For instance, the most obvious one is a requirement that we have for launch abort or abort systems, not just launch abort but abort systems.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Gennaro Caliendo:Since no one is onboard, we don’t necessarily require the abort system requirement to be satisfied.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:We leave that risk up to the commercial partner.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:In this particular case, I don’t know if a lot of people know, but Boeing will have the — they have an abort system onboard but they only have part of it actually functioning. And that’s on the launch vehicle. It’s the emergency detection system. It will follow along and it will record events in the event of an abort trigger getting — a red line getting triggered. It will record it and — but it won’t abort the vehicle.
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:The spacecraft itself won’t have the capability to abort. The big launch abort engines–
Joshua Santora:Okay.
Gennaro Caliendo:For those of you that saw the pad abort test here not too long ago.
Joshua Santora:Yeah, great test.
Gennaro Caliendo:Those big engines that you saw that lit to launch the vehicle off the top, they won’t be active on this flight. They — in fact, they won’t even be there for the simple reasons that it’s just not required.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:But when we get to CFT, that requirement will certainly be part of the next set of requirements for Crewed Flight Test.
Joshua Santora:Yeah, and before we start recording today, you made a comment to me–
Gennaro Caliendo:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:–which was really intriguing.
Gennaro Caliendo:Uh-hmm.
Joshua Santora:That ultimately, there are these things that have to meet before we’ll let you go try and fly the space station.
Gennaro Caliendo:Right.
Joshua Santora:But ultimately, those aren’t actually the certification that you’re really after. And that comes later down the road. Can you talk more about kind of what do — what’s the — really the end goal here?
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah, the end goal is to certify the entire system. All right? You’ve got a commercial crew transportation system, that’s the launch vehicle, the spacecraft, the ground systems, the personnel, the communications systems, the launch control centers, the mission control centers. They’re all part of the entire system, not one piece of it. And so, ultimately these requirements that we have out there have piece parts associated with all of those aspects of a system. And so, we wind up getting to a point where we want to certify the entire end product. And that’s done through what we call the certification review. And that’s typically done or in our case, it will be done post two test flights. And the two test flights, the first one here coming up here in December is the unmanned or un-crewed version of the vehicle. The next one would be the crewed version sometime early next year. And then, post that they’ll be a significant review where we look at all that data. We look at how the vehicles worked, and how it functioned, and how well it performed. And then, we’ll have the final sign off which is called certification review, which means the system is now certified to fly. And then, post that, we’ll have what we call a post certification missions, PCMs. And–
Joshua Santora:Awesome.
Gennaro Caliendo:We’ll be flying the crews on a fairly regular basis to station about once every six months or so.
Joshua Santora:Yeah. And one of the things we talked about in our office and I’m just kind of curious to get your thoughts on the challenges that this presents, is that at no point in history has anybody ever done what we’re trying to do.
Gennaro Caliendo:Correct.
Joshua Santora:Because we’re — people probably — they may not realize that we’re marrying commercial and government in a way that this has never happened before.
Gennaro Caliendo:Right.
Joshua Santora:Do you guys feel that? Is that something that’s like, feels like, an impossible hurdle? Is it just like, “Hey, like, this is a cool challenge to undertake?” What’s the feeling amongst you and your team?
Gennaro Caliendo:Oh, absolutely, it’s — some days, it’s really cool to be a part of it. Another day is it’s really, really challenging because of where a lot of us come from. You know, I’ve been in this business about 30 years, over 30 years. And a lot of the people I work with have a significant amount of time in this business. Some of us have background in shuttle, some of us had background in station, International Space Station. Others have background in the Launch Services Program. And then, someone like me who has a little bit of all of that, it becomes — it’s difficult because in all those other programs, with the exception of maybe the Launch Services Program because they did do some hybrid of the model we’re doing now. We’ve owned the hardware. We’ve owned the requirements.
Joshua Santora:Yeah.
Gennaro Caliendo:We’ve had taken all of the liability and responsibility to ensure the safety of this vehicle. Not to say that that’s not what’s going to happen here. That is absolutely 100% going to happen here. We will ultimately make sure the vehicle is safe to fly crews. The difference is is where we draw the line between us and the commercial partner. This is a true shared — what we call a shared accountability between ourselves and the commercial partner, where we allow them to kind of work a lot of the down and in details. And we looked at the primary safety and performance requirements at the top, which is what I was sort of alluding to before.
Joshua Santora:Right.
Gennaro Caliendo:All right. And so, we don’t dive down nearly as deep. So, some days it’s very challenging because of our expectations of what that is. And other days, it’s really a lot of fun to work with these partners to see how creative they can get.
Joshua Santora:Yeah, so, probably the last question for you here.
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah.
Joshua Santora:Where are you going to get to be on launch day? Are you working or are you just get to be a spectator?
Gennaro Caliendo:No. I’m probably going to help you guys out, I think.
Joshua Santora:Oh, good.
Gennaro Caliendo:I work for the systems engineering immigration office. Most of our work will be done before launch day.
Joshua Santora:Very good.
Gennaro Caliendo:In fact, all of it should be done before launch day.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Gennaro Caliendo:And so I don’t have an active role in the control centers. As a matter of fact, as part of the model we follow, NASA isn’t really actively working the countdowns.
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Gennaro Caliendo:They are there in a support role. We are certainly there in the go-no-go — final no–go-no-go role.
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:And then, we’ll have some technical expertise that will be listening in on the nets, on the voice nets, and the loops to hear for any kind of issues that might be occurring during countdown. That group of people is a very small number. It’s not very large. And they will be strategically positioned in the ASOC where ULA launches the vehicle from. We’ll have some people and believe it or not, mission control center Houston because the Boeing model is actually using our NASA people to, in sort of a sub-contractor role–
Joshua Santora:Sure.
Gennaro Caliendo:–to actually fly the vehicle for them. They are working directly for Boeing.
Joshua Santora:Uh-hmm.
Gennaro Caliendo:And so they don’t necessarily work directly for us. However–
Joshua Santora:Interesting.
Gennaro Caliendo:–in this interesting hybrid role–
Joshua Santora:Yeah, [ Laughs ]
Gennaro Caliendo:–they do have, and own, and contain NASA badges.
Joshua Santora:Huh.
Gennaro Caliendo:They are mostly NASA and NASA support contractors. This is kind of a unique approach for the Boeing model and it’s unique for us. But actually, you know, in some ways, it buys down a little bit of risk because they’re using heritage people to fly the vehicle for them in a sub-contractor role. Now, they ultimately answer directly to Boeing. And then–
Joshua Santora:Right.
Gennaro Caliendo:–we then provide through our commercial crew program the final go to actually fly to space station along with our ISS partners.
Joshua Santora:It seems like every time I talk to somebody about this program, there’s more complexities that kind of pop up.
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah. Yeah.
Joshua Santora:Which I love and again, it just shows the resolve of our people and the commercial companies were working alongside of to get the job done.
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah. Yes. So, then, it absolutely is. And so our role is, sort of, in a much smaller oversight sort of role. And we’re going to support the team involved from making that last minute go or final go to fly with a handful of people, as opposed to what you may have seen in the past with say the LCC over here. We had several hundred people and we were actively working the countdown not to say that Boeing/ULA won’t have a similar number of people. Although, I don’t think they’ll have as many. They’ll just be located here in ASOC. They’ll be located in Mission Control Center Houston. And then, we’ll have our people in various places looking over their shoulder and just making sure that everything goes as planned. Those people are going to be highly experienced people that have been working closely with Boeing over the last — in some cases, eight or nine years, so they understand the architecture very, very well. They understand — they’ve been working very closely. They understand any of the issues or concerns that have come up during the whole develop — design development and test program that Boeing’s gone through and we’ve been there side-by-side with them. It’s just not going to be a huge number. My role, even though, I’ve been there the last eight or nine years with them, will be mostly done since I’m mostly the paper guy.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Gennaro Caliendo:And I’ll be sitting there probably helping you guys, maybe, take some people around on launch day.
Joshua Santora:Great.
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah.
Joshua Santora:Good. Well, Gennaro, obviously, you have a busy couple of weeks ahead of you–
Gennaro Caliendo:Yeah. I sure do.
Joshua Santora:So I’m going to let you get out of here. But I appreciate your time and we’re looking forward to seeing this thing fly.
Gennaro Caliendo:All right. So am I, believe me.
Joshua Santora:[ Laughing ]
Gennaro Caliendo:And so are we. Thanks.
Joshua Santora:I’m Joshua Santora and that’s our show. Thanks for stopping by the Rocket Ranch. And special thanks to our guests, Steve Payne and Gennaro Caliendo. To learn more about the Commercial Crew Program visit NASA.gov/commercial crew. And to learn more about everything going on at the Kennedy Space Center go to NASA.gov/kennedy. Check out NASA’s other podcast to learn more about what’s happening at all of our centers at NASA.gov/podcast. A special shout out to our producer, John Sackman. Our sound engineers, Michelle Stone and Lorne Mathre. Editor, Chris Chamberlain. And special thanks to Marie Lewis, Tori Mclendon, and Jenn Wolfinger. And remember, on the Rocket Ranch, even the sky isn’t the limit.