NASA: Ellen Ochoa

This interview of Wisdom from the Top was recorded in 2019. From "Builted Productions" and "Luminary Media," it's Wisdom from the Top. Stories of crisis, failure, turn around, and triumph from some of the greatest leaders in the world. I'm Guy Ross, and on the show today, the story of Helen the Choa of NASA. The day turned extremely different. I'm pretty, you know, right at the end of the landing. So everybody, including me, was thrown into this situation. That's just, you know, really the worst possible thing that can happen if human space flight is your business. How a woman in a field dominated by men rose up through the ranks to become the first Hispanic woman to fly in space and help to lead NASA through one of the most tumultuous periods. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home in auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things you love, like those ice lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So switch your home in auto to progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states. In its history. On February 1, 2003, Ellen Achoa was inside mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. She just started her new job as Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations. And that day, she was looking forward to watching the Space Shuttle Columbia guided back onto Earth after more than two weeks in space. Ellen was a former astronaut herself. She'd already done four missions in space and she knew all seven astronauts aboard that shuttle. In fact, she'd flown with a few of them. But that day, something wasn't right. And by the end of the day, the scope of the tragedy would become clear all around the world. All seven of those astronauts died that day when the shuttle disintegrated upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere. It was one of the worst disasters in NASA's history. Over the next few years, NASA administrators, including Ellen, carried out one of the most detailed investigations into what happened and had to prevent it from happening again. Part of the conclusion reached by investigators was that NASA's culture didn't always encourage the right kind of collaboration and communication between different teams. And also, the dissenters weren't always given a chance to dissent. So when Ellen became the director of the Johnson Space Center, a few years later, she vowed to change NASA's culture and to build a space where people felt safe expressing unpopular points of view, especially when it came to safety. Now, you might imagine that Ellen Achoa grew up with dreams of flying into space and doing summer salts and zero gravity. But actually, she didn't. Very few girls imagined they could even go into space at that time. There weren't any role models for them. Even though Ellen's mom had very high expectations for her daughter. My mom was a homemaker and raised the kids. And she is probably the one that really showed us how much she loved learning. And I think that really rubbed off on me and all my brothers and sisters. Both your parents were children of immigrants, is that right? No, my dad. His parents were Mexican and had come to the US first Arizona and then California after they were married. My dad was actually the youngest of 12. So he was born in California. And my mom is from Oklahoma. Did you grow up with any Spanish in the house from your kid? Actually, very little. And the interesting thing is, my dad was the one who was reluctant to speak it around the house. And my mother, even though she wasn't Hispanic, was the one who was really pushing for us to speak Spanish around the house and to try to become bilingual. But I think because of the fact when my dad was growing up, there were just not very pleasant experiences if you spoke Spanish at that time. And there was just a real push to speak English and be part of the English-speaking community. And so he saw English as being important and Spanish as not something that we really needed to learn, which is unfortunate because it would have been so easy to grow up really quite bilingual. Yeah. In your home, did your parents encourage you to pursue academics in science or not? Well, absolutely, to pursue academics. But there wasn't a particular field. And so I don't remember that science was a whole lot of the conversation. But there was certainly an expectation that we were all going to go into college also when we left high school. And so I definitely thought of that as an expectation, although not a particular field. So you went on to San Diego State University to study physics after high school and clearly there was something there because you wanted to do a master's degree in a doctorate at Stanford in engineering. Tell me about being a graduate student at Stanford in the early 1980s doing engineering work. Were there many women in your program? Well, first, let me go back a little bit because when I went to San Diego State, I certainly wasn't in physics at all from the beginning. But I was interested in a lot of different things. And I remember the first semester there. I did take calculus. And it's a three semester course. I'd already done one semester in high school. So I took the second semester. I liked it. And ended up taking the third semester of calculus. And by the time I was in there, I was talking to other students and people were sharing, well, what are you majoring in and why are you in calculus? And I was there, well, I'm just here for fun. I like it. And everybody else there was majoring in some kind of physics or chemistry or engineering. And so that's really what initially gave me the idea of, maybe I should go talk to the engineering department or the physics department and learn a little bit more about it because I really had never considered those fields at all. And I didn't know very much about it. I'm curious, what was about calculus that you thought this is fun? What did you think? Did you feel that way? Well, I'm trying to remember. I mean, part of it was I was good at math. And that always helps. But I think once you do get into calculus, it shows you how you can solve all different kinds of problems. So at some point, I really wanted to understand where, well, in the real world, what are people using calculus for? And it didn't occur to me until I actually went and talked to a physics professor. Actually, what I should say is I went and talked to an electrical engineering professor who was kind of the advisor and said, I'm interested in learning a little bit more about this and potentially studying engineering. And unfortunately, as you said, this was about 1977. He wasn't very encouraging. He said, well, we had a woman come through this program once, but it's really difficult. And it was kind of going on and on like that. Well, I went and talked to a physics professor. And one of the first questions he asked me was, well, what's your math background? What have you taken? And I said, well, I'm finishing up the calculus series this semester. And he said, well, that's fantastic. He said, because calculus is the language of physics. And if you've already learned the language, then when you come and study, you'll really just be able to concentrate on the concepts where as most of the other people in the class will be sort of simultaneously learning the concepts and the language. And so he put it in a way that I had absolutely never really thought about before. And that really intrigued me. So you decided to go to Stanford to do your masters and then your doctorate. And this was in the early 1980s. Did you ever get the sense, either from your fellow graduate students or other colleagues at Stanford at the time, that did they ever give you the sense that women are not as strong at math and engineering? Or did anybody ever suggest that in any way to you? Well, I'll tell you one story. In the middle of my first year there, which is when I was getting my masters, there's a test to see who can get into the PhD program. And the way it was done in this particular department is every student would have 12 minutes with 10 different professors. And so the professor and the student were alone together in a room for these 12 minutes. Professor could ask anything and the student needed to answer. And then each professor graded all the students that they saw. At the end of this, they sort of added up all your scores. And the top third of people automatically made it into the PhD program. The bottom third didn't. And the middle third, they would sort of get together and talk about, oh, you could rank which professors you wanted to try to talk to. you didn't necessarily. get them in the order that you put them in. But there's so many different subfields of electrical engineering and I was really more of an applied physics person that allowed you at least to sort of list the professors who were working in an area that you were more familiar with and that you wanted to work in as a PhD student. So I was in the middle of trying to rank my list and send them in and one of my friends said, "Well, I just overheard a couple of professors and one of them said to the other, "Well, I've never passed a student in this particular test who was a woman and I don't plan to because I don't think women belong in engineering." So he told me and he's like, "You have got to put this professor like, you know, at the very bottom of your list because, you know, you've already lost if you go in and you're talking to a professor who thinks that way." And of course, there was no way to know if there were other professors that thought the same way. So that was just one thing that just sort of caught me off guard a little bit that because of the way this test was run, it was certainly very easy for professors to mark down people that they just didn't think should be there and nobody heard the students answers to the questions other than the professor in the room. Well, you were on obviously to earn your doctorate from Stanford. How did you, I guess it was 1985 when you decided to apply to be an astronaut with NASA? But first of all, where did that idea even come from? How were you, why were you even thinking about that? Well, so in 1981, this was sort of the end of my first year at Stanford. That was when the shuttle flew for the first time, April 1981. And that made huge news. I mean, the U.S. hadn't flown in space in a few years. And of course, this was just a completely different kind of spacecraft than it ever flown before. It wasn't a little capsule, you know, it was this sort of big, beautiful spacecraft that looked like an aircraft. And it had the capability of doing so many different kinds of things and a lot of what it was going to be doing in space was science research. And a couple years later, when I was right in the middle of my PhD, Sally Wright flew in space. And that was a huge deal. You know, people often ask, hey, did you want to be an astronaut from the time you were a little kid? And I said, well, you know, I grew up in the Apollo era, and of course everybody was talking about it, but nobody would ever ask a girl, do you want to grow up to be an astronaut? Or, you know, why don't you think about doing that? So, you know, it was a big deal in 78 when the first women astronauts were selected. And now finally, the first woman was flying. And of course, that was followed by other women in the class. And I could also relate a little bit to Sally also because she had gone to Stanford, which is where I was at the time. She had been a physics major, which had been my majors in undergrad. And really, those things made a huge amount of difference to me because if that hadn't been the case, I just don't think I could ever, ever have pictured myself doing something similar. So about that time NASA was talking about selecting another group of astronauts. And some of the other grad students were saying, oh, I'm going to fill in an application and send it into NASA. And I remember asking, is that how it works? You know, like you just fill out an application and send it in. I mean, I had no idea at the time how astronauts were selected or anything like that. And so that was really the first time that I actually wrote NASA and asked them to send me, you know, the information about how you apply. And a couple years later, an 85, when I actually got my degree, I sent in my application to NASA. But of course, knowing how many people actually apply, really, I never expected to hear anything back from NASA. So of course, I had looked for and interviewed other jobs for PhD researchers. And I had taken a job at Sandy and National Labs and livermore to join your research group there. Okay, so the first time you applied to NASA, you never heard back. And then I guess it was in in 1987, you sort of reactivated your application. What happened then? Did you get picked? No, I did not get picked. However, I did get the opportunity to go to Johnson Space Center and actually spend a week there and interview in person. And what I found out when I showed up was, you know, out of the original few thousand applications, they were only inviting a little over 100, maybe 120 people to actually come to Johnson Space Center. So I was pretty excited actually to have, you know, already made it that far in the process. And so anybody who gets invited to that part spends a week, you know, five days at Johnson Space Center. And one hour of that is the actual in-person interview. But there's also tours of some of the training facilities. You get a chance to talk to actual astronauts, which I had never had that opportunity before to really find out what the job is about. And then of course, there's extensive medical testing. That's actually what you're doing for most of the week. So I wasn't selected that year, but I was encouraged to keep my application active for whenever the next time it would be that they would do a selection. Were you disappointed or you sad? Do you remember how you felt when you didn't get it? Well, of course I was, I was hugely disappointed, but it wasn't that it was, I couldn't say I was expecting to be selected. I mean, so many people apply, so few are chosen, that I didn't see it as a failure because the odds seemed so great to begin with. Yeah. In fact, I kind of viewed myself as I'm a long shot. I seem so different than most people who, you know, you think of as astronauts, although I would, I would try to keep in mind people like Sally Wright and others who, you know, at least had some things in common with me. So as disappointed as I was, I can't say that I felt like I had failed. Yeah. I hadn't been selected. And I was encouraged to keep my application active for the next time. And so I did make a couple of decisions. I mean, one thing I learned while I was down there is, you know, almost everybody has a pilot's license, even though it's not a requirement. But what they really want to see, particularly from someone with my background, when you're a PhD researcher, and you spend a lot of time in a lab and writing papers and presenting them, is how do you operate in an operational environment? Yeah. Because that wasn't the environment, you know, that I had experience with. And if you go out and you get a pilot's license, now you're actually learning to operate an environment that's much more similar to what an astronaut would do. So I went back and, you know, took lessons out of the Livermore airport and got my private pilot's license. And I also made the decision, you know, I had been so excited about, you know, actually being at Johnson Space Center, which just seemed to like, you know, the most amazing place where all these human space flight milestones had happened. And I decided I really wanted to work for NASA, even if I wasn't selected as an astronaut. And there was a research facility in the Bay Area. And they actually had a group that was doing some things similar to what I was doing at India National Labs. And so I made the decision and ended up getting hired at NASA Ames Research Center. So 1990, you reactivate or you keep your application open and you're chosen, you're accepted into the astronaut program. The third time, third time to charm, I guess, what, do you remember how you felt when you found out? Oh, yeah. You never forget that moment. I mean, it's probably the most amazing moment of my life. I was actually, so I was working at Ames Research Center. I was a supervisor. I was actually off-site that day because I was in a sort of a management seminar. And I remember coming out sort of mid-morning. And, you know, we just took a 10-minute break or something. And as I was coming back in, I saw this note taped to the door. And it had my name on it. And it said Don Putty called give him a call back. And he was the person that headed up flight crew operations at Johnson Space Center. And he was the one that would be calling about the results of the astronaut selection. And I just about had a heart attack. I was like, I can't believe somebody didn't come inside and get me when this person called. Yeah, you can't, I just can't even describe that moment because I mean, it's a moment that I knew my life would change forever. Everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids. But what about protecting them? Outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates. Where do you even start? Well, protecting your home and auto is a great place to start. Progressive offers customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. They're basically the baby gates of insurance. Get a quote at progressive.com. So you get this in 1990. You move to the Johnson Space Center in Texas. and then begins a year-long or multi-year-long process to get you ready to go into space. - Yes, absolutely. So people are brought in in classes, right? So we were class 13, we had 23 people. And the first year, you really spend together as a group going through training. And you're learning a lot of different things. You're learning the basics of the shuttle systems. You're learning a little bit about quite a variety of different science topics, including just things like orbital mechanics, so that you understand a lot more about rendezvous and other things like that that you might end up doing. And you start to work in what they call single system trainers. So you may go into a trainer. It looks like the cockpit of a shuttle, but you're going to spend the next couple hours focusing just on the electrical system, for example, and learning where all the switches are, what they do when you use them, and as you get more and more into it, obviously, how you get around failures and all that kind of thing. So that's kind of the first year. And then the second year, you do more training, but you're also assigned jobs in the office that support the human space flight program. So my first job, for example, was to help represent the astronaut office in the shuttle program decisions about what software changes were going to be made to the shuttle. But in the meantime, we continue part-time training. And that's when we start to get a little bit more specialized. So mission specialists like me started training on the robot arm. And also, hopefully, sometime that year, start training on spacewalk training as well. I ended up doing a little bit of spacewalk training, but just as I was starting into it, it was sort of the end of my second year there. And I actually got assigned to a mission, which was usually exciting. But that's sort of what the first two years kind of looked like. So 1993, you get selected to take part in a shuttle mission. This was the discovery. It was going to be nine days, I think, in space. What do you remember about just walking up to that space craft and going up the elevator and getting into the cockpit and getting ready to go into space? Yeah, it was kind of a surreal experience. First of all, we were going to launch in the middle of the night. I think it was about at 1.30 AM launch time. And so as we were driving out to the launch pad, of course, it's dark. You do have these bright, xenon lights that are lighting up the shuttle. So as you're driving toward it, literally, that's about the only thing you can see out there. There's these huge lights lighting up the shuttle. You go up the elevator. You get to the 195 foot level. And of course, by the time we get there, they've already tanked the shuttle. And so it's kind of, it feels like it's alive because it's kind of hissing. And you see a little bit of fog here and there coming out of different places of the shuttle. What I think helped call me is when I actually crawled in and finally got all strapped in and stuff. We had spent, of course, a lot of time in simulators going through all different kinds of launch scenarios where you simulate all different kinds of failures. And so I just had to sit there. You kind of have to psych yourself up and just say, OK, we got this. We can do it. We're trained. So you had been in simulators and other simulated environments to give you a sense of what it would feel like. But then you are in the cockpit. It's counting down, three, two, and then you have a liftoff. And then you're propelled up vertically to the field differently than what you thought it would feel like. Well, there's definitely nothing quite like being there in that structure. I will say we do get one chance to ride in a centrifuge where they do simulate how the GeForce changes during launch. So we have at least one opportunity to feel that. And that was really helpful, because as you build up towards three Gs, which is the highest acceleration that we feel during the launch, and you get to that point at two different points during that phase, of course, you're on your back. And so the acceleration is through your chest. So it feels like somebody that weighs three times as much as you are sitting on your chest. And it's very hard to try to know your arms are pulled back. And if you hadn't ever felt that before, I think the big question would be like, how much worse is this going to get? Am I going to be able to breathe? To me, actually, the scariest part of the whole launch was right after the solid rocket booster separates. So that's about two minutes into the launch. You've built up to three Gs. So you're under all this pressure. And then they separate. And you basically go back to 1G, or just a hair over 1G, which you then, of course, build up again as the liquid engines are running. It felt like we had stopped. And that was a heck of a lot scarier than feeling like you were going really fast. Because you knew you had to keep accelerating. But when you dropped from three Gs to just a hair over 1, that to me was this scariest moment that I was-- It feels like you're falling, I guess. That was probably supposed to happen. For a few seconds there, that was really the most disconcerting I felt during the whole launch. How many minutes from lift off until you get to orbit? Eight and a half minutes. That is crazy. Eight and a half minutes from planet Earth. Crazy acceleration. And at that point, you're going 17,500 miles an hour. Yeah, it's definitely a physical sensation. And as I mentioned, it really changes during that eight and a half minutes. So what happens when you enter orbit? All of a sudden, just that whole feeling just evaporates? Yeah, you're essentially at 0G or very, very low G. We call it microgravity. So your arms and legs start to float up a little bit if there's anything loose in the cockpit, which there shouldn't be. But for example, I had a pen or a pencil, which was-- it was tethered to my knee board, but it just started to float up. And yeah, so you're all of a sudden in a very, very different environment. So you got nine days in the space. At what point were you able to just like-- I don't know-- from sort of sound like a zen master here-- but just to be aware of what you were experiencing and to just kind of take it in? You know, actually, that really happened on my second flight. I can tell you, I was just so focused on the job that I needed to do, that when I landed after the nine days and I went around, I was talking about my flight schools and things. And people would ask me all kinds of questions like, what did it feel like the moment the engine shut off? What did it feel like here? And I'd be thinking like, I don't know. I mean, I had been so focused on here is what I need to do and the next thing. So I was fortunate enough that I got to fly again a year and a half after my first flight. And I literally made a list of questions in my crew notebook, spend some time thinking about what it feels like when the main engine's got off. Make sure that you are experiencing X, Y, or Z. Is it even possible to describe in words or images how cool it is to be in space? Is it just impossible? Some people may be better at it than others, but I've found it really difficult. It's a very different environment. So you're always trying to draw analogies, but there really isn't a good analogy here on Earth. I mean, you can talk a little bit about if people have been scuba diving where you're just sort of floating and you're neutrally buoyant in the ocean, that it's a little bit like that. But of course, the differences are as big as the similarities. I mean, you still know which way is down and which way is up. When you're on the Earth, which you just don't have any sensation of that in space. So crazy. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to get it across. You would go on to do a total of four missions. And I guess you eventually decided to-- or were asked to move into management at NASA in 2002 to become a deputy director of flight crew operations, which I guess was a pretty big deal, right? I mean, that's a pretty significant job. Yeah. Flight crew operations is the organization at Johnson Space Center that manages both the astronaut office and the aircraft ops division. And we had a total at that time of 41 aircraft. So it was a position of management over all of that. And had you feel about that? I mean, you'd had leadership roles on the shuttles, of course, and as a commander here and a commander there. But this is different, right? You were now overseeing presumably a significant number of people. Yeah, so it was a big change. Now, before I had actually even gone to Johnson Space Center, I had been a manager at Ames Research Center. So I had at least a little bit of experience in that area. But of course, this was a very different environment. It was an operational organization. rather than a research group. - Yeah. - So I had a lot to learn. I didn't know very much at all about the budget, about various different kinds of policies, about how to work with and a lot of the other people that worked in many of the other groups around Johnson Space Center that supported us. You know, we kind of stay in our little training in Ops, Cocoon, right, and really focus on making missions happen. And there's so much more that actually goes into successful spaceflight. I would say as I look back on all the years that I spent in management and leadership, one of the things I really appreciate is that I got to understand, you know, everything that it takes to make a successful spaceflight happen, which is so much larger than just what we did in the astronaut office. - Yeah, because I mean, once you get into that kind of role, intelligence and achievement in your field is important, but not enough, like you have to really stretch and grow and kind of learn a whole new set of skills. - Yeah, absolutely. It's no longer about how good of an engineer you are or how well you can execute the procedures in space. It's about quite different skills, you're right. - Like managing people and working with totally different departments and inter-office politics, even NASA has that. (laughing) Any place that has people has that, right? - Yeah, so I want to ask you about 2003, which is a difficult year for NASA, like 1986. The year that many people remember was with the Columbia disaster, where all seven crew members died on board when that shuttle re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. What was your role at NASA? What was your role in that mission? - So it was just a few weeks after I'd gotten that first management role that you talked about, deputy flight crew operations. So that mission, STS-107, was really the first one I was supporting in my new management role. And that meant that on the morning that they were supposed to land, I was actually in mission control. - Well. - I was sitting at a console representing the flight crew. And in general, if it's a nominal landing, I don't really have anything I need to do, right? But the day turned extremely different, pretty right at the end of the landing. So everybody, including me, was thrown into this situation that's just really the worst possible thing that can happen if human space flight is your business. (upbeat music) - So it's February 2003, and Ella Choa has just started as deputy director of flight crew operations at NASA's Johnson Space Center. And was sitting in mission control when the Space Shuttle Columbia re-entered Earth's atmosphere. But pretty quickly, it became clear that something wasn't right. - Well, I think it depended on who you were. So there were people certainly in that room who became concerned several minutes probably before I did. I, of course, had known that there had been a hit on the underside of the shuttle. That was certainly pretty well known. What I didn't know and didn't really learn until NASA and the investigation team went through their full investigation was how worried some people were about that in a way that maybe the whole community wasn't, right? So it's really interesting because as there started to be some what we call off-nominal signatures coming from the spacecraft, I was listening in addition on a loop where we had an aircraft down at Kennedy Space Center that's flying around, looking at the weather, looking at the approaches on both ends of the runway. And the job of this aircraft and the astronaut flying it was to make a call on which end of the runway to send the shuttle to. So you're looking at winds, visibility, sun angle. And there was actually kind of an issue that day and it wasn't clear what was going to be the best choice. And so I was listening to this conversation and thinking, hey, we're going to have to make a decision here really soon. And we had to wrap this up. We got to get this decision made. Meanwhile, I was hearing this other conversation about these signatures that were coming in that were unexpected, although-- When you say signatures, you mean-- Tire temperatures. And there were some other things that one or more of the consoles were monitoring. And they seemed weird or anomalous? Yeah, they were anomalous. Yeah. Yeah, they were. So you were listening into that? So I heard that, but I was more focused initially on this other question of what runway we were going to send them to. But partly, that was because I didn't realize the significance initially of what they were saying, whereas some of the people in that room, as soon as they saw those signatures, just had a really bad feeling. So we know what happened as the Columbia re-entered Earth's atmosphere and all those astronauts lost their lives. You were right. This is an early job for you just transitioned out from the program. You must have known some of those astronauts, and if not all of them. Oh, I knew all the astronauts. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I flown with Rick Husband, who was the commander. So it's not just that I knew Rick. I knew everybody in his family. I knew his wife and kids. I knew his mom, his in-laws, his brother, because we had opportunity to meet and spend time together when I flew with him on SCS-96. So it's not only professionally a tragedy. It was very personally a tragedy as well. And there were people all over, not just Johnson Space Center, but the whole community who, of course, felt that as well. I hate to even ask you this question to trigger tough memories. But once it became clear about what happened, what was the atmosphere like in that room and mission control? Well, it was certainly a state of shock. And yet, we had things we needed to do. I mean, there are procedures that we have for when something like that happens. And so if you've seen any of the tape from that, the flight director says, "Well, I'll lock the doors," because we don't want people coming in and out. And one of the main jobs that we have to do initially is to collect an archive every single piece of data that might be available. So there's procedures that you actually have. And people have available at their desks. I mean, there was still sort of a feeling of disbelief. But that doesn't absolve you from, we've got to go do what we've got to go do. The shuttle program was shut down right after that, temporarily. So an investigation could take place. And many things came out about the investigation about different warning signs that may have been ignored. There were all kinds of information that came out. What did you observe about how the leaders around you handled that investigation and how they responded to it? Well, people wanted to understand what happened, absolutely. And I think there's kind of two aspects of wanting to understand. One is there's a very technical description, right? And so there was a need to understand how could we prevent that from happening again. But if you've read the actual cable report, there were other things that contributed to it as well. And they were just very sort of, I would say, human things like communications between different groups wasn't what it should have been. And maybe there was a little bit too much focus on this schedule of flights since we had already started into the assembly of the International Space Station and where we're trying to stay on track. So we had to really understand as a team, how can we do better as a team? How do you work more effectively so that when people have pieces of information that they're concerned about, you're able to bring it up to the whole team and appropriately deal with them? Did you look at that report and read it from your position? Because you were obviously had an important position, but you were not yet the official head or you weren't overseeing the whole thing. You were just one piece of it. But did you read that report and sort of think, I need to internalize this because I need to apply this to what I do now and what I do now. I may do later on. Oh absolutely. I think anyone involved in the shuttle program, everybody read through that report and tried to look for those areas of where does this really speak to me and what I can do in my role. And to this day, you know, we continue to emphasize the lessons learned from that. We continue to have talks and seminars from people that sort of live through that era to folks who work at NASA who maybe were hired after that since it's, you know, been quite some time now because you don't want to make those mistakes again. You know, honestly, a lot of it has to do with focusing on inclusion and respecting every single member of the team. And that's something that's important for any organization. At NASA, it actually even directly affects safety. Yeah. You were eventually promoted to be director of flight operations. What did you do to make sure that people did have an opportunity to weigh in? Did you? Because it, because sometimes it can mean longer meetings. It can mean more, you know, bureaucracy. I mean, collaboration is wonderful, but you can also slow things down. But did you just sort of say, you know, we're going to do it this way? Well, part of it was, you know, trying to actively solicit people's opinions. If there's a number of people in a room, oftentimes there's three or four people who are sort of either more senior or just more willing to talk. And so you know, you're going to hear from them. And so it was being very cognizant of who haven't I heard from yet in this meeting and maybe directly soliciting their opinion. And we also started a procedure across human space flight where particularly as we were preparing for flight and you're going through a flight readiness process of actively saying as you go through this process, do I have any different opinions? Do I have any dissenting opinions? Rather than just assuming if someone does have a dissenting opinion that they will have gotten up and already spoken. So there were a number of things like that that we tried to be very intentional about. And I specifically tried to be very intentional about as the head of flight crew operations. And I did really couch it as, this is our job. It's not just that you, we want you to speak up. We need you to speak up. And you need to feel that part of your job is speaking up because that's the only way that we can prevent another accident. I'm wondering though, how do you pull that out of people? Because it's a human instinct not to want to be wrong or to be on the wrong side of an argument. So oftentimes our default is to stay quiet. Even when we hear people say, you know, does anybody have any counter arguments or objections? It's like on a wedding. You know, does anybody here just be want to speak against it? No one stands up and says, yes, I oppose this marriage. It's a human instinct to stay silent. So even when you create an environment that allows collaboration or that allows people to speak up, it's still not foolproof, right? You're still going to get people who are too intimidated to speak. So how did you get around that if you did it all? Well, you try to make, you try to give people different opportunities. So you always let them know, like, if there's something that didn't get said in the meeting, please come see me afterwards or send an email or we even had, you know, anonymous boxes that you could put things in. We had essentially a safety mechanism where you could anonymously send a note to a particular email and just say, you know, here's my issue. And I would also say we didn't try to couch it as there's a right answer and there's a wrong answer. You know, what we do at NASA is we are considering risk and we are trying to understand the risk of doing something. And there's always a risk no matter which decision you make. So the question is, do you have some information or some thoughts about the discussion we're having on risk that might balance it more one way as opposed to the other way? And if the consensus in the room is leaning one way, you know, then if you feel like we haven't appropriately considered some points that would sort of lean the balance the other way. So it's not about a right answer or wrong answer, you know, it's about how are we considering risk? All right, in 2007, why you were the director of flight preparations. There was a NASA review committee. There was a review committee that I'm covered a series of incidents that we argued that NASA ignored warnings, for example, that astronauts were drunk when they reported for flights and there were a few other incidents. What do you remember about what happened and about the review report that came out? Also, first of all, there was never actually any documented incidents of that ever happened. A drunkenness. Right. It was more so there was a review that was set up and it was actually after an astronaut had been arrested for. And so there was a review set up to say, should we be doing something in terms of looking at astronaut behavior, maybe spending more time on behavioral health evaluations? This was after an astronaut was arrested for being under the influence of alcohol outside of. No, it had nothing to do with alcohol at all. However, one of the people on the review team mentioned something in their report about a concern. I see. But there was no actual documented incidents at all. However, once it shows up in a report, it comes a story. Now, of course, you've got to respond. In a crisis. And so, yeah, that's what we needed to do. But I mean, you know, your job is also to be an advocate for the men and women under your supervision, including the astronauts. And so I have to imagine that a part of you was maybe a little defensive. Like, hey, these are my people and I'm going to protect them. Well, we had to, first of all, we did have to understand, was there something there that we didn't know about? Because it sort of hit us out of the blue. Like, what are they even talking about? So, you know, there was just kind of this initial shock about why is anybody even talking about this? But, you know, once we got past that, it was, well, is there something we're missing? You know, and so we, I mean, we did a whole variety of things. We did some sort of anonymous surveys. And we tried to collect a lot of information. We looked at all of our policies. And it was kind of interesting because, you know, on the aircraft side, and of course, all astronauts fly an aircraft either as a front seat or as a back seat or we have some very specific policies as do all pilots. And you think about airline pilots about, you know, how many hours from when you took a drink till you can fly again. When we looked at our policies, we didn't have anything like that for space flight. But, you know, if you would have asked me, or, you know, basically any other astronaut, it was like, why would you even need a policy about that? I mean, it's, you know, it's just so obvious. But the fact that we didn't actually have anything in writing, that was one thing that we just rectified so that we actually would have a policy. But I can remember one of the things that I tried to explain. And I did end up needing to testify before Congress on this. And I had the opportunity, you know, to sort of give an opening statement. And I talked about one of my crew members, who was a very good athlete in college, used to compare preparing for flight, like preparing for the Olympics. And it's not just that you are learning about the systems and learning the procedures, but like literally everything that you're doing, what you're eating, how you're exercising, how much you're sleeping, what else is going on in your life. I mean, it all just narrows down to be focused on this one activity about going into space. And so I really tried to get across the responsibility that astronauts feel about accomplishing their mission. And you know, just how the last thing anybody would do would be to put something like that at risk. Whether it was a fair assessment or not, that committee's assessment, I have to assume, created a little bit of a crisis. Like, how did you, how did you decide to deal with that? Did you decide, I mean, were there moments where you were angry at the review committee or moments where you thought, okay, we've got to really address this or moments where you thought, okay, we, this is wrong. And we're going to push back. And then moments where, where you thought, well, let's, let's resolve this. Let's see what we can do to fix this. I mean, was it all those things? Well, it doesn't really matter if you're angry or not. You just, you have to address it. So that just, you kind of just got to shove that aside and say, okay, you know, first of all, we, we'd wanted to understand if there was something that we were missing. And there really was some kind of issue. We never did uncover anything that looked like there was an issue. But we, we had to take it seriously. And so we, we ended up working kind of with the flight Surgeon community with, you know, human resources community to say, you know, how do you go out, how do you survey a group, especially about a very sensitive topic like this and be able to get information that you think you can really use and you can really believe. So I learned a lot about survey techniques at that point. We were getting a lot of FOIA requests, so we had to work through our legal department. Right, because you got to release all your information, your government agency. Yeah, exactly. As I mentioned, we went and reviewed all our policies and said, is there something that we need to change? Is there something we need to strengthen? And we did, as I mentioned, we added a policy that dealt specifically with alcohol and spaceflight, which we had not had before. The astronaut office itself ended up deciding to come up with a code of conduct out of this whole thing. And so there was a small number of astronauts that kind of got together and just said, well, kind of previously we thought all of these things were just sort of known and implied, but maybe we should actually write them down about how we represent NASA to the rest of the country, the rest of the world. And what we do, you know, reflects on all of the agency and we always have to keep that in mind. You know, Alan, you talked about having encountered sexism early on in your academic career with professors like who just didn't feel that women belonged in engineering or the sciences. And I wonder if you, if you ever encountered anything like that or even professional jealousy as you rose up the ranks in NASA? You know, I would have to say I didn't feel that way. It's actually a very collegial group. I mean, you know, I think about my NASA career and the people that I worked with, people who were my peers, people who I reported to, people who reported to me. I mean, gosh, I just just so enjoyed working with them. And certainly the impression I got is that they enjoyed working with me. And, you know, being a woman or being a Hispanic heritage, I mean, at some point people just know me as Alan, right? Yeah. I mean, they're not really thinking about that. You know, people really do treat each other with respect. You know, I think one of the things we really have going for us at NASA is we have very much a mission-driven organization. And we are all there to advance human spaceflight and we all care deeply, deeply about doing that. And we want to make that happen. And that really helps us work together as a team. It really, you know, even when you have differences about exactly how you go about doing that. And of course, you can imagine in the whole return to flight time after Columbia, as a team, we had to make many, many decisions about, you know, what needed to change on the orbiter, what didn't need to change, you know, what was going to be good enough for us to fly again. And those discussions got very emotional because of the fact that they end up affecting life and death. And yet people, it actually brought, even though it was very emotional, people would be on different sides of a particular decision. It actually brought people closer together because in the end, we all wanted the exact same thing. Yeah. When you became the director, the person in charge of this whole operation, a huge job, the second woman in history to become the director, you had all these years of experience watching others, watching other leaders and supervisors, learning from their mistakes, learning from their successes, leadership positions you had. And then you finally, you get to the top of this organization and you are in charge. What did you, what was the priority for you? What kind of environment did you want to create? Or what was the change that you wanted to make? So I got named as director right at the end of 2012, really started into it at the beginning of 2013. And of course, we had shut down the shuttle program in 2011. So we were kind of in still in this transition phase. And we had one operational program, the International Space Station program, and then other programs in development, including the Orion spacecraft for beyond lower orbit, as well as the commercial crew program. And so one of the things that I really tried to focus on, and this was not just me, but people talking to me, including my supervisor and other smart leaders, is needing to find a way to both focus on the programs we were working on today, but also make sure that JSC was going to be a strong organization well equipped to lead human spaceflight well into the future. And that second part is actually a lot harder because we kind of know how to do the first part, because that's what we do day in and day out. But you know, of course, by this time we had new entrance like SpaceX and Blue Origin. And by definition, any organization that isn't changing as fast as its environment is falling behind. So you know, none of us, me included, wanted JSC to fall behind. We wanted to continue to lead human spaceflight in those areas that really don't make sense because there's no real commercial market. So as you look out beyond lower orbit in particular. And that really required everybody to think about how you do things differently. So I felt like one of my challenges was really a cultural challenge. So if you know anything at all about Johnson Space Center and human spaceflight, you know our culture is probably encapsulated by the phrase failure is not an option, right? I mean, that's how we view it, which is incredibly important when you are talking about human lives. Sure. The problem is sort of every procedure and every process we had was sort of all based on this failure is not an option, kind of culture. And we're known worldwide for that. And of course, that's absolutely what you want to be known for when you're dealing with life and death. But we'd really gotten into a situation where essentially all of our processes were built around that failure is not an option kind of thinking. And in many cases, that's really not what's required. And when you're trying to deal with a world that's changing, and you know that you've got to be evolving your processes, you've got to be bringing in new technologies, working with new partners, having different kinds of public private partnerships as a government organization. You know, the mantra of people who really focus on innovation is fail early, fail often. And that's what's-- Exactly. So we tried to do some things very specifically to say, look, you have to think very carefully about what it is that you're doing. And whether it really falls in that category where you've got to know every detail to the nth degree versus you have the ability to try something different, to try something new, to streamline procedures, streamline processes because if something doesn't work, it's not the end of the world. You retired as the director of the Johnson Space Center in 2018. I'm wondering when you look back on your career, did you always think of yourself as a leader or did that self image happen later on in your life and your career? It was definitely something that grew with time. No, I wouldn't have described myself at all that way, you know, many years ago, especially when I first started at NASA. You know, I was young, probably didn't feel very experienced, kind of naturally and introvert, and leaders, at least the kind of ones that I thought about maybe when I said that words seemed very different than me. I would credit a lot of what I learned just by being in the astronaut office because I had the chance to see at least leaders of small groups like crew commanders or, you know, leaders of missions just throughout everything that I did over the number of years that I was flying. And so you could pick up and understand how do they get us working together as a team? How do they make sure that, you know, they're taking advantage of all the talents that they have on their team? How do they figure out what talents, you know, are missing or are required? So I had the opportunity to watch lots of people, and I certainly learned from that. And even, you know, I would say throughout my whole career, whenever I took that next step, it didn't necessarily feel comfortable. I didn't necessarily feel completely ready, but I also knew that I could ask people who had had those jobs before. And I got much, much more comfortable about doing that as the years went by. So it was really a process, I would say, throughout my whole career. You can learn a lot. I don't think it's just something you're born with. You can grow into leadership roles. You really, it has to be like anything else you've got to be interested in that as a skill. That's Ellen Achoa. She's the former director of the Johnson Space Center. Ellen was the first Hispanic woman to ever fly into space. These days, she settles for flying single-engine prop planes. Thanks for listening to the show this week. Our music was composed and performed by Drop Electric. I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to Wisdom from the Top. from Delta Productions and Illuminaria Media. (upbeat music)