In this Redefining Society podcast episode, retired NASA engineer and astronaut Charles Camarda discusses the importance of a research culture and the dangers of normalization of deviance in space exploration, particularly in light of the Columbia accident. Camarda also highlights the need for psychological safety and encourages open communication to ensure a safer environment.
Guests: Dr. Charles Camarda Ph.D
Dr. Charles Camarda retired from NASA in May 2019 after 46 years of continuous service as a research engineer and technical manager at Langley Research Center (LaRC), an Astronaut and Senior Executive (Director of Engineering) at Johnson Space Center (JSC), and as the Senior Advisor for Innovation and Engineering Development at NASA LaRC.
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/dr-charlie-camarda
Host: Marco Ciappelli
Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
"In this Redefining Society podcast episode, retired NASA engineer and astronaut Charles Camarda discusses the importance of a research culture and the dangers of normalization of deviance in space exploration, particularly in light of the Columbia accident. Camarda also highlights the need for psychological safety and encourages open communication to ensure a safer environment."
Welcome to Redefining Society, a podcast that explores the intersection of technology and culture. Today's guest is astronaut Charles Camarda, who flew on STS-114 and worked as a research engineer at NASA Langley Research Center for 22 years. He is now retired from NASA but remains passionate about space exploration and NASA's culture.
In this episode, Charles and the host, Marco Ciappelli, discuss the normalization of deviance and the importance of a research culture in space exploration. They also touch on the importance of psychological safety in high-performing teams and the lessons that can be learned from the Columbia tragedy.
Charles introduces himself as the oldest rookie ever to fly in space at 53, but his past and present are so much more than that. Charles is passionate about innovation and safety in space exploration and believes that NASA's culture needs to change to return to its glory days of research and innovation.
The podcast delves into the normalization of deviance and how NASA's production culture led to a need for more focus on safety. The conversation also touches on the importance of psychological safety and having an environment where everyone's voice is heard.
The podcast ends on a positive note, with Charles emphasizing the need for a research culture at NASA and the importance of passionate individuals who want to make space exploration safer and better for humanity.
Overall, this episode of Redefining Society is a thought-provoking and informative discussion that will inspire anyone interested in space exploration, technology, and culture.
Dr. Charles Camarda retired from NASA in May 2019 after 46 years of continuous service as a research engineer and technical manager at Langley Research Center (LaRC), an Astronaut and Senior Executive (Director of Engineering) at Johnson Space Center (JSC), and as the Senior Advisor for Innovation and Engineering Development at NASA LaRC.
Immediately following the Columbia disaster, he was selected as an Astronaut Candidate in 1996 and flew as a Mission Specialist on STS-114, NASA's Return-to-Flight (RTF) mission. He invented the on-orbit, wing leading edge repair capability, which he flew and tested on his mission.
Stay tuned for more Redefining Society Episodes, and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast player to never miss one of our inspiring conversations.
Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/iMZVJSK2-BA
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Resources
Personal Website: http://charliecamarda.com/podcast.html
The Mentor Project: https://mentorproject.org
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording as errors may exist. At this time we provide it “as it is” and we hope it can be useful for our audience.
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SPEAKERS
Marco Ciappelli, Charles Camarda
Marco Ciappelli 00:01
Here we are, wow, this is going to be a good conversation. And not that the others are not. Because I have to be honest, I'm very selective in the people I bring on the show, especially on Redefining Society Podcast where I often run the show by myself without Sean, and we don't have, you know, the two of us supporting each other. So you know, you have to have a good guest to have a good conversation. And I have no dubs about that. It's a person I know. It's a co-mentor on The Mentor Project… I need to do a shout out for them. But you're also a former astronaut, although I don't think you can ever be a former astronaut. Once you're an astronaut. You're an astronaut. And a lot of other things is my friends. Charlie Camarda. is joining us from space. Or where are you? Are you in space?
Charles Camarda 00:56
I'm Virginia Beach, Marco.
Marco Ciappelli 00:57
All right, good. Earth on planet Earth. Good. Well, I'm so glad you're here. So I need to think about two different audience. One is the people that are listening to the podcast, and one is the people that are actually watching the podcasts. So those have already seen you and the others, they are going to need a little introduction, if we're showing some books, if we're showing some reference in the video, you're just kind of like a show and tell I'll have to explain what we're doing. And you know, maybe they can watch the video later. But, again, Charlie, we are on redefining society, which is connected with technology. And the reason why we're going to have this conversation here. And I thought this was the right container is because we're talking about culture. And in this case, about culture, in research in the way we use technology in the way maybe we analyze and take risks, and especially of course, in how we do that when we send people in, in space. So before we dig in into all of this, I like for you to say hello to the audience and to introduce yourself. I always like people to introduce themselves because they do such a much better job than when I do it.
Charles Camarda 02:16
Thank you. Thank you, Marco and yes, my name is Charlie Camarda. I flew on STS 114. I was a mission specialist on that Space Shuttle. It was the flight right after the first Columbia accident. Before that, I was a research engineer at NASA Langley Research Center for 22 years, I had a midlife crisis I saw when NASA was going and I said, Well, we're not doing as much research. Let me try something else. So Fredo hates claustrophobic and could barely swim. And I said, Well, why don't I rekindle my childhood desires to be an astronaut and apply what the heck and I was accepted. I was a fluid space shuttle with an amazing commander, amazing crew, Eileen Collins, we captured her podcast that we'll chat about a little bit on leading edge discovery. And after I flew, I was director of engineering, I went on to become deputy in the NASA engineering and Safety Center, and then Senior Advisor for engineering and innovation. And now I'm totally retired from NASA three years, and enjoying life sitting down and writing down my thoughts on a book on several books.
Marco Ciappelli 03:36
So you are retired, but your mind and your brain is still very active on the topic. Let's let's put it that way. You haven't really like, you know, left the path behind.
Charles Camarda 03:49
I haven't let it go. I haven't let it go, Marco.
Marco Ciappelli 03:52
Well, and this is actually going to be a conversation around i guess what you did not let go. Let's put it this way. So your experience and I have to mention if I'm not wrong, that you were the oldest rookie ever to fly in, in space. Right? You say you had a midlife crisis, right?
Charles Camarda 04:14
I think that could be my only claim to fame. Or is that I was the oldest rookie I was actually 53 years old when I flew in space, and very, very blessed to be able to have that opportunity.
Marco Ciappelli 04:30
Well, isn't that an inspiration for you know all us middle aged people here? And you touched on that also in the conversation on your first episode, by the way on how people get into STEM how people can contribute to the exploration of space coming from different angles, the psychological angle, the research, you don't need to be the pilot as it used to be. So we'll we'll talk about that. So the car Have the conversation for me rotates around your new show, which is on ITSPmagazine that we will talk about your first step is you had on the show with Commander alien Collins and I just really listened to that. Such an inspiration, such a wonderful person and some really important lesson on leadership there that I would like for you to, to reintroduce, to our audience, a tease maybe because they should then listen to the episode. And then an article that you wrote right before the 20th anniversary of the Columbia tragedy on the New York Post, and they all go around to what I said, that's why you're not really retired because you are on a mission. So what is the core? What is the reason why you're doing what you're doing now, and I know you're writing a book too. But, you know, you can think about that, if you like.
Charles Camarda 06:01
Thank you, Marco. And the whole reason for that article that came out in the New York Post in the technology section was because we were coming up on the 20th anniversary of the Columbia accident. And I lost seven friends. During that time I was training in Russia. And I'm watching on LinkedIn and other social media posts, these program managers from the Space Shuttle Program, pontificating and then speaking from on high as if they know what was wrong with the culture. And they changed the culture, when really they were the cause of a very, very dysfunctional culture. And I only touch on it because the article in The New York Post was very short. And what I want to eventually do is little by little post on social media and LinkedIn, all the ways that NASA failed, that the NASA engineering and Safety Center found how they never really were able to satisfy the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. And return us to what I believe with the glory days of NASA, the very early days of NASA during its inception in 1958, when it really had that research culture that research DNA that was transferred to it, encoded in the new NASA when it was born in 58, by these amazing research leaders from Langley and Glenn, that developed Johnson Space Flight Center, and develop the manned space program. And then how we lost that culture totally devastated that culture by not funding research, discretionary research for the past 28-35 years, actually, and how that's not only a NASA problem, but it's a United States problem when we're watching that play out.
Marco Ciappelli 08:05
So there is one thing that stuck in my head when I was listening to your conversation with with Eileen and is actually was related to someone that wrote a book, I want to start right there about the psychology of risk, but let's put it this way and how then in an organization, you could get to a point where from a psychological perspective, she she call it an I don't remember, they also show you can say that for me, normalization of deviance. And I think that's kind of like the the key factor here and how things were not right. But we will pretend they all pretend that they were right. They were no perfect, but they pretend that it was perfect. It was risking the what you were doing way too many risk. I know you stood up on a certain point for that, and you pay for it. But everybody just pretended like it's kind of like the little cartoon you see with the dogs drinking coffee and there's fires everything is fine. Right? Yeah. So it makes sense that it rotate around that the normalization of deviance because it's not normal. In my opinion. It's not normal. Yeah.
Charles Camarda 09:22
And you're absolutely right Marco in that author is an amazing woman named Diane Vaughan. And the title of her first book that you wrote was challenged a launch decision, and I'm showing it up for the audience, right here and you could see could see how I've read and reread this but you started. You started studying and that's what you really have to do. And that's typically when engineers and program managers will never do it, but that's what you have to do to immerse yourself and understand totally different culture, how these people analyze what they see. And they do it in a very objective way. They inborn was a sociologist, she worked for 10 years doing her PhD dissertation 10s of 1000s of lines of transcripts that she read interviews with hundreds of people in order to understand a culture, which was very foreign to her. And she did a very good job. coming very close to identifying this culture. She was also very gracious, and never pointed a finger at any one name, but blamed everything on the culture, I wouldn't have been as nice as my good friend, Diane Vaughan. She talks about normalization of deviance. And how these researchers in their quest in this production culture to constantly fly meet budget and schedule pressures have to come up with what they call a flight rationale, right? Or reason that we are safe to fly and back then it was supposed to be, you have to prove you are safe to fly. And right now, which you have to prove that we're unsafe to fly. And oh, by the way, the cards are stacked against you as a double standard. It's much harder for you to prove the case that we're not ready to fly. And that's another whole story. Diane Vaughan called something called normalization of deviance. In other words, shuttle was a very poor design. It's a very unsafe vehicle. Yeah, people touted as an amazing vehicle. It's totally unsafe. That probability of failure is one in 67. All right, that that would that you would die, you would lose your life. That's a pretty high risk. It's a pretty high risk. I don't think we're going to commercialize space and fly families on space vehicles. If we had that kind of risk, right? I wouldn't get so. And so what are the major problems was, shuttle was designed so that it was never supposed to shed external tank foam was supposed to come off the vehicle and potentially impact the orbital vehicle. And for those out there, this is what the orbital vehicle looks like. It's the little white ship with wings that the crew flies in, was never supposed to impact the vehicle. So from the very first day, we almost lost the first flight with Bob Crippen and John Young, serious damage to the very fragile thermal protection tiles on the belly of the vehicle. NASA had to come up with a plan, they started developing probabilistic risk assessment, which was really, in my mind, a strategy to help them come up with a number for risk that made them feel comfortable, and they could say we're okay to fly. But more importantly, the normalization happens because bad things happen. And the phone comes off, which is the deviant behavior. But the orbiter doesn't fail, we land safe. So the human mind is it success bias, we have a bias towards success. If we succeed, assess if the success, we think we understand the problem, we think we're going to be safe. And so that becomes less serious to us. And and so the normalization of deviance was one of I categorized about 30 or so terms that different sociologists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, started to coin you know, cognitive scientists, cognitive biases and things like that. And I could distill it down to a couple of very simple terms, arrogance, and what I call a research culture. Another very well known author from Harvard Business School, Amy Edmondson, talks about psychological safety. And psychological safety is so important for you to be able to be a learning organization for you to work together in a high performing team. It creates an environment where there's, you're allowed to take interpersonal risk without fear of recrimination, without fear of career, loss of dignity. And it's an environment where everyone has a voice everyone has to be listened to. And both of those ideas and many of these other terms that the these sociologists and psychologists coin are totally embodied by what I call a research culture.
Marco Ciappelli 14:26
I think we can connect here with first the fact that I was never thought about and I mean, I'm, I come from political science, sociology, but I always love space like as coloration maybe because I was born in 1969. So always connect with the moon landing, even if I was very, very little when that happened. So but but I was kind of never thought that the space shuttle actually was never tested on men. It the first was flight was actually let's put people on it. And I think that was kind of a first in the history of, of NASA because it kind of goes against the old principle of let's put men, women human race on the moon. And let's bring them back safely that that scent has always stuck in my head. But to do that you need to test and from your conversation with Eileen, which I would like you to kind of talk about that on your as you did on your first episode, do a little summary of that there is a difference in in the research and then prove it by analysis versus tested. Like physical testing. You spend a lot of time with Eileen on that, I think is like the core also of your research conversation. Right. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Charles Camarda 15:54
Absolutely, Marco. And that's why I thought this would be such a great episode to kick off the leading edge discovery podcast series on itsp. Because we're gonna dive into more and more of these researchers so that people understand the difference between a research engineer and a very good, very capable engineer. And so you touch upon something very important, because you're absolutely right. And I linked spoke about it in the first episode of the podcast series, about how John Young and Bob Crippen climbed onto that vehicle. And it had never been flown before. In space, we did some drop tests with just the Orbiter. But it had never been flown in space. These were the most courageous men that I will ever, ever meet. And if I can relate a quaint little story I have John Young is my hero. I've had the good fortune to fly back seat in the T 38. With John going to the Cape. And John was the ultimate engineer, he would he would not go through management, he would go directly to the shop floor in the orbiter processing facility with the orbiter vehicle up above your head, talk directly to the engineers working on that vehicle to find out what was wrong. And so yes, this was the first time we took that risk and did that right. And so the difference when we started losing our research DNA, right, it first started, when we develop the space agency Mercury and Gemini, Gemini, the minute we started building much more complex vehicles, like Apollo, and like the LEM and going to the moon, we had hundreds and 1000s more people involved complex systems. We had engineers from many, many different organizations building hardware. So those great German engineers, right, the Von Braun, when he started the army ballistic missile agency, which turned into Marshall Space Flight Center, they wanted to do testing in house, they wanted to do testing of components, which is how researchers do testing. It's, it's what we call a building block approach. You look hundreds and hundreds of tests, doing them rapidly, inexpensively quickly learning the knowledge you needed to know to understand how they would fail, they had to go away from that. And NASA in order to meet schedule and budget, we're doing full up test of Apollo something. The Germans, a rocket scientists and researchers at Langley, the max Vijay and Bob Gillroots totally did not want to do. And so we started gradually leaving that research culture and going into this production culture. And somehow we thought we understood this. And we could fly safe using this technique. And unfortunately, that's not the case.
Marco Ciappelli 19:04
But, in yet, space shuttle flow 135 missions. So it's kind of like luck or closing your eyes and hoping things go well, because another thing sorry. Like it was supposed to shut down the program in 2020, if I'm no wrong, but it did shut down in 2011. And, and it almost got shut down after the second accident because Columbia wasn't the first one either. Right. Right. And so how do you bring How do you keep going? Like, is that political? Is that economical? Has it become a business? I don't know. I mean,
Charles Camarda 19:45
it's it's political. It's a business, and NASA had to keep going to build the space station. So all that schedule and budget pressure that was there during the beginning of the Apollo program to beat the Russians. At that same schedule and budget pressure that was there for Colombia challenge it remained during Colombia. Because if we were to shut down after STS 107, Colombia, we would have not completed construction of the space station. Right. So NASA had to figure out a way how do you do this? And in my mind, you know, in the article, I say, you know, we never, you know, the words that stuck in my mouth when NASA didn't put it, NASA didn't put it Scott up it or let its guard down. In my mind, it never put its guard up. And really, the fight was fixed. Because they really brushed aside everything that the Diane Vaughn had said, the good people that were making these recommendations, and if the audience goes back and researches and pulls up an article entitled NASA revisited by Diane bone, what you will hear Diane Vaughan said in this article is that when these NASA researchers eight months after the Columbia accident, all had a meeting the top 40 senior people at NASA, at Y River in Maryland, right? And the administrator at that time, Sean O'Keefe commands the audience and says to the people, you know what, you have to read the Cabe Columbia accident investigation report with a grain of salt. There's a lot in there, that's not correct. And we have to determine not how we fully comply with the recommendations of the Cabe report, but how can we legally comply with the recommendations. So he's basically telling the senior leaders at NASA, you know what, we're gonna just barely minimally comply just to get us back up and flying. And sure enough, they really never did satisfy the key recommendations by the cape committee. The organization, Sean O'Keefe, put in place called the NASA engineering and Safety Center was not independent. And it was not a technical authority as recommended. As a matter of fact, half the time they fought and impeded people from identifying problems, and raising issues they prevented. They prevented their voices from being heard. And I know this for a fact, because I was in, I was the deputy in that organization. And I found a problem with the wing leading edge. And I basically had to go to FOIA Freedom of Information Act. And this is the letter I sent for the Freedom of Information Act, in order to get data to prove that we were flying and continuing to fly vehicles with defective wing leading edges. So these were this was the new organization. So NASA minimally complied with these recommendations in order to finish the construction of Space Station. And then STS 135, was the last mission we completed construction of Space Station reroute, we retired space shuttle, many people said we shouldn't they're absolutely out to lunch wrong, because the wing leading edges had a serious problem. That was a systemic problem caused by aging, and we didn't have enough wing leading edge panels to replace them. And we would have had more frequent accidents if we would have continued to fly the space shuttle.
Marco Ciappelli 23:37
So I want to go into your conversation with Eileen about the mindset that that crew went on, after all this happen. And I want to hear some of the teasing story that then people can hear on that. But one personal note. So I'm in LA and I went to see the Endeavor when it retired at the at the Space Science Museum. And you know, I'm like, starstruck, I'm like, That's the space shuttle, right. So I go underneath, I see the engines and I go underneath I see the panel and I'm like, Boy, those are burn like this thing has been used. Right? My impression. And then and then I saw on the return of their tummies a couple of months ago, a month ago, how the capsule that came back was so burned and um, I don't think we understand the kind of energy that you that you guys get coming back. So when you point that out, it's I mean, it's crazy
Charles Camarda 24:45
Yeah, we don't realize you know, challenge it happen and you have two very dynamic phases of flight which of which is a very critical the launch. Eight minutes during the launch, many things could go wrong. You have tremendous amount of energy. to millions of pounds of propellant being burned combusted, and very, very high performance engines, the spatial domain engines are operating at tremendous pressures, those turbo pumps and the materials in those. But one of the things that I was very interested in because that was, you know, 22 years of my life I studied was the thermal protection systems entry back through the Earth's atmosphere, the searing heat of entry, you basically in a fireball with the outside temperatures of about 6000 degrees Fahrenheit, maximum surface surface temperatures, if points on the wing leading edge, 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, a very small chip in the coating of that wing leading edge the size of a thumbnail, and you will burn a hole through the wing and you will burn up during entry. And so and you talk about the shuttle tiles, if 30,000 of them, the vehicle that you saw probably had pristine or near refurbish shuttle tiles on the bottom of the vehicle. Every time that vehicle comes back through space, it looks like it was hit with a shotgun blast, all divots hundreds of divots, pieces of fall of tile material taking out taken out from the underside, it looked like it went through a horrendous debris environment.
Marco Ciappelli 26:29
Correct? Yeah. So tell me tell me about that part where with Eileen, you talk about her role in putting together maintaining the energy and positivity in a team that is going up after that accident happened. And then stuff happen while you guys are up? And then you mentioned this crazy flip maneuver that I had to re listen to twice. Because I you know, I didn't remember it like that that happen, or I don't even remember if it was as publicized or they should decision made that there were not planned. People telling it you can do it. And you guys on board say no, we're going to do it because we got to know what's your know. And your belly flip the space shuttle under the Smiths pizza? I mean,
Charles Camarda 27:24
yeah, in a lot of people don't understand that. Marco, they don't realize that but it was truly an Apollo 13 moment. Yes, even more serious almost than Apollo 13 For us, because we very could very easily could have made another bad decision. And we would have been another failure coming in during Earth entry. But let me let me first praise Eileen, I know I do it during the broadcast. But Eileen Collins is she is he's the most amazing commander. She commanded STS 114. After the Columbia accident, she has a new book called through the glass ceiling to the stars. She has a lot of very good leadership tips. I highly recommend our viewers or listeners, get that book and listen to Eileen, she was the best choice for shuttle commander after that accident. And when you listen to that, to that podcast, and I believe because I was always a disrupter, I was always causing problems with the shuttle managers who wanted us to do experiments. That was the wrong experiments. I was always getting into trouble. And Eileen had to fight with the space shuttle program managers and flight directors and other people that wanted to have me taken off the flight. And she had my back. And the amazing thing she said, which was beautiful, which she said, Charlie, this was right at the Columbia accident. And if we learned anything after that Columbia accident, we had to listen to every voice. And every voice should be heard Amy Edmondson will be jumping up and down, saying yes, right on Eileen, she was one of the few people within that entire agency that understood had the call how the culture had to change. Now, okay, I want to talk about the amazing maneuver, right? Yes, this is for the viewers. I have a little miniature version of the space shuttle, were about 600 feet underneath the space station. We have a brand new maneuver, Eileen does a backflip and the people onboard the space station are looking at the belly of the vehicle. They're photographing it. And what they see are two pieces of this very small piece of felt sticking out about an inch right near the nose of the vehicle right about here. Right? And these really excellent researchers NASA Langley immediately said, this is a problem. They did the analysis, they wrote a report. And they said we have to do an emergency EBA because if they do not go under that vehicle with the robotic arm and a crew member during the spacewalk in poet, what will happen during Earth entry is we will trip the boundary layer, which is the thin layer of flow right next to the skin of the vehicle, it will shed these vortices and our wings would burn up. There was a lot of discussion on the ground as to whether or not we should do this. They sent the report up to us on audit. And in my I think I showed this once before in my crew notebook, I had the list of the Friends of Charley, of all the key researchers on the ground. One of them was the person who wrote that report. And I called them up on the software activated phone on Space Station, where we called them by satellite to Marshall Space Flight Center. It'll go directly to your cell phone, and I get the researcher at NASA Langley, Tom Horner, that, and we're gonna have him on the itsp podcast leading edge discovery. I don't want to take away from what he was thinking when he got this telephone call from me. But needless to say, I spoke to the man. And I told Eileen, we absolutely have to do this emergency spacewalk we did. So we Gina Gucci and Steve Robertson went out there, they saved the day, they took the two pieces of gap filler out. And if we didn't do that, it was proven on the very next flight that had a gap filler out that wouldn't have fallen out during entry. And we would have lost our vehicle mazing amazing story that not too many people know about.
Marco Ciappelli 31:57
No, no, no. I think there's so many things that, again, the you have been talking about on that episode that for me. It's like I mean, you even talk about it was the first time that you could connect directly to people on earth. I mean, you mentioned that they couldn't come through like people couldn't go, Hey, I'm gonna call charter sale is going right. But but you could write, right? Yes. And yeah. And then and the fact that that was also a new thing, like you before you had to go everything through command station control, mission control.
Charles Camarda 32:35
That's right. And the other thing we say on our podcast, we talked about how there was no trust, our crew had no trust with the decision making capability of the people on the ground mission control. I mean, we trusted our trainers, we had the most amazing training team that prepared us for anything we could imagine on orbit. And I want to give a shout out to all those amazing people want grega Jeff sugar, micro bois, and our whole training team, amazing, amazing job, but we had no trust. And so as a crew, we had an agreement, when before we flew that every night before we packed it in and went to bed, we would call down and talk to the head of the astronaut office Captain Ken Romegen. And only he would be on the comm loop. No flight directors, no one from Mission Control on that loop. totally unheard of. Because we did not trust the ground.
Marco Ciappelli 33:41
It's very, very, very hard to believe in a way. I mean, I, of course, I believe you. I mean, but in general, like, so. I'm thinking branding, right? I don't know, I'm gonna go on this on this labor. Now. So company decided to have a certain brand certain, you know, people get feelings when they hear I don't know, Apple or Nike, or you know, and it's built through advertisement, marketing messages, but also build through eventually, especially now more and more nowadays. Driven by your actions. So it's not just talk. It's actually walks right and exactly, but it seems to me that I say it's incredible as unbelievable, because you always is it regular font of NASA and space that when you guys go up there, everything is I mean, there is the risk idea, of course, I mean, there are risks, otherwise everybody would have already done it. But when you kind of discover this piece of information that you're sharing here and Eileen and all these other people it's kind of like God, it was like a big brand in In marketing maneuver, hear from from NASA to pretend that everything was perfect. Versus noise. Not so. No. Yeah. With that in mind, my question is, as you move forward as you've been shaken, and trying to bring this message for the safety of, you know, as your career has become after that, what do you think was then now that we improve? I mean, we're going back to, to the moon soon? How you feel about that?
Charles Camarda 35:35
No, that's, you know, people will say, Well, why did you fly if you didn't think you were safe? Well, I flew, because that was my job. And I worked with people on the ground, throughout the whole return to flight before I was even assigned. You know, we were developing the techniques and putting together the teams to actually understand what an impact would do rather than the terrible programs that people were using, thinking they understood impact and how to predict impact, we did it, we did it with a research team. To do that, we developed the repair technique that I flew in space. And so I felt on my mission, the odds were the same as they were for any other shuttle mission, at least one in 101, and 67. And those were the odds, we all signed up as astronauts, that we would take that risk. And our mission was really to test a lot of this new technology to make sure that we can make sure that the next every one of the successive shuttle flights would fly safe. So I, I took that on as a mission. I as a as an engineer or a researcher, this was an ideal mission to fly on with an amazing, amazing crew. So that's why I did it. What do I think? Where do I think NASA is now I think we are far worse than we were even right after the Columbia accident. And I say this because I was a member, I was a deputy in the NASA engineering and Safety Center. And I could tell you that the culture was severely worse within that organization than it was in the shuttle program before the Columbia accident. And so this independent technical authority, which was supposed to satisfy the recommendation of the cape was neither technically excellent, are independent. In fact, they were working hand in hand with the shuttle program to help the shuttle program provide flight rationale, rather than looking at every single anomaly. So I think the system is broken. And unfortunately, we're never going to be able to fix this problem within the within the agency, we need a totally independent, highly technical organization that is separate from all of NASA, just like the Aerospace Corporation, basically reviews the safety of every single DoD launch, and weighs in as to whether or not it's safe or not totally independent, totally independent stream of funding and governance than the Department of Defense. And they weigh in as to whether or not safe. Remember, at the end, the next mission right after our mission, I stood up with two other people. I was director of engineering, I stood up and said we shouldn't fly I was fired. The other two people basically relented and signed the certification for what flight readiness but with a caveat. And I recommend people go and look at why the chief engineer and head of Safety and Mission Assurance changed their mind. And so our agency is much worse than it was pre Colombia. And so yes, we are going to see accidents happen, because NASA is not. And I just learned this recently by reading a very good report by folks from Louisiana State notes college assessing the NASA safety culture, right. And NASA is not a high reliability organization. It's really not even a high reliability seeking organization. Because it really is not a learning organization. We are no looking no longer looking at what are the critical problems and how we solve them. Because we don't have that research culture. And so all the things that Diane Vaughan and Amy Edmondson talk about, on what a really good high performing team, what the attributes are of those teams and what they need to maintain. I was writing a book on high performing teams and I can tell you, NASA is very far from being able to put together high performing teams to solve problems right now. We were able to do some and I was fortunate enough to be able to do so. But by and large, the NASA engineering and Safety Center missed a lot of critical problems that they were never able to solve
Marco Ciappelli 40:12
lot to think about here. But one thing that I'm also thinking as we start wrapping this conversation, and always welcome to keep having this conversation, I know you will on your podcast, but also with me. And we talked about maybe having some panels and have this much open conversation. Yeah, I wanted to touch on, on on the stem on the people themselves. So the culture, sometimes it doesn't reflect the people, right, you'll find yourself in an organization. And you're kind of like, I'm either going to walk away, or if I want to keep a job and try to do my best here, I need to work by the rule of the organization. So that sometimes may be toxic, and many times it is. But I know you're doing a lot to mentor to inspire people to come into STEM to become explore and do science. So I want to kind of end on a positive term, which is, yeah, I'm hoping this can be fixed by people that really want to do things in the right way. Because I'm going to throw you another idea maybe so you can you can talk about that is when you you know, when you send people to space, we spend a lot of money. People always criticize, why are we going to space and say, Well, do you go to space? Because we make our humanity better? That's usually my answer. Right? So people believes in doing this things. So do you see a new generation, a new, creating possibly a much better culture so we can keep discovering people, and people like you take the risk for a much bigger vision and goal than than business?
Charles Camarda 42:15
Marco, thank you so much for getting me back on track. Because when people listen to me, they say this, they look at me and they think, Oh, this guy is a whistleblower. He's throwing stones. At No, I worked within the organization for 17 years after I was reassigned constantly trying to fix the system. And I think I have a methodology that will work. And I always tried to recommend ways to save this, save the culture, and bring them up the chain, even when I was a member of the NASA engineering and Safety Center. And so I do believe it's fixable. And I think it's a return, return to the future Back to the Future. Back to our core ideology, what made us great. And so the podcast series that I'm having, I'm the next series of episodes is going to be introducing the people to the great heroes that have that wealth of information that we're researches that helped us solve these problems, to show people what it takes. And really, it takes more people getting advanced degrees, and not just coming out of college. But you need an organization that allows them unfettered access to funding and technical mentors, 10 20 30 years, so they can become the experts that you're going to hear on our podcast. And that's what's wrong with the country if we don't do this. China is a very, very real threat, not only financially and economically to this country, but to the safety of this country. This is for us to solve these, these problems. And so it speaks a little bit about my epic Education Foundation and teaching young kids how to do this, and young engineers how to do this. We teach them how to work together in teams, how to develop psychologically safe teams, how to connect the right people, and to research and dive into and understand these problems, create these networks to come up and then use their imagination to solve these problems. Because I think this is very doable, and we have to fix the education system in this country. Why go to space? Because for exactly why Kennedy said we don't do this because it's easy. We do this because it's hard, because we are expanding that knowledge, which is what research is though, and that knowledge just like it did after Apollo feeds back into our economy, helps us fly safer, helps us to create new knowledge new technology that makes this country better makes this world better. makes us a safer place to live environmentally. I mean, I could go on and on and I really could, on the other side really praise NASA for why we need to do space, really. But let's do it right.
Marco Ciappelli 45:08
Absolutely. And to close this, I wanted to bring you back into the positive note, because at this point, I know you enough to know that the reason why you do this because you're extremely passionate, and you won't shut up in front of, you know, an issue that you need to… and taking your risks. And I think the basic lesson also, again, from the conversation on your first step is that when Eileen said, I would not allow somebody to just stay silent, everybody on the team had to speak. And I think that's exactly where we can wrap this conversation, talking about a silent safety culture, it's not gonna work. So we need people that are passionate, they want a better NASA, they want a better environment, safer, and everybody can participate. So I think is a good note, to end this conversation. And I invite again, to listen. And that's why we do all we do on ITSPmagazine. Because we want technology to serve humanity, and not the business like we want. Yeah, everything needs to have a vision and a mission that improve our quality of life. And I know going to space does exactly that.
Charles Camarda 46:31
And let me give a shout out to ITSPmagazine, you Marco and Sean, for allowing me this opportunity. Because hopefully we can create a series of dialogues to help address these really relevant problems and let everyone weigh in, on on what's good, what's not good, what will work, what will not work and have this discourse, this dialogue,
Marco Ciappelli 46:55
a very open constructive conversation, we don't have all to agree otherwise, we're not gonna go anywhere, but you need people that point the fingers,
Charles Camarda 47:05
you cannot silence you cannot cancel people that that's not, that's not the scientific way to say.
Marco Ciappelli 47:14
All right, so with that, Charlie, thank you so much for this 47 minutes of incredible conversation, I wish you the best of luck, I really appreciate that you choose ITSP to have your show on and I think we can do great things together. And I'm excited for everything that has to come in terms of the other conversation you're gonna have there. And again, as usual, I hope that people that listen to this walk away from this conversation with way more questions than answers, because only by question and things we can improve. And this is exactly the lesson probably here. So there'll be notes. There'll be links to Charlie's organization epic. And there'll be links to anything charter that you want to share resources. There'll be links to that as well. And, of course, to the first episode that I will encourage you to follow that podcast called Leading Edge discovery. And if you listen to the conversation, you understand why it's called Leading Edge discovery. You mentioned that a few times. Charlie, thank you so much. I really appreciate this time.
Charles Camarda 48:25
Thank you, my friend Marco. Thank you very much.