Unleashing Artemis with Rick LaBrode
Welcome to an exhilarating new episode of the podcast as Sandra and Sandy embark on a captivating journey behind the scenes of Mission Control with none other than Rick LaBrode, the distinguished Lead Flight Director of the groundbreaking Artemis One mission. Together, they unravel the multifaceted role of a flight director and the immense responsibilities that come with overseeing such momentous missions. Along the way, Rick unveils the intricate coordination of system consoles, the unwavering commitment to crew safety and vehicle integrity, the intricate world of pre-planning, and the creation of flight rules that facilitate real-time decision-making.
Rick also offers invaluable insights into the continuous learning experience for the flight control team during the groundbreaking Artemis One mission, and shares intimate details of the exhaustive planning and meticulous training that precede every mission. The necessity of risk assessment, where every conceivable failure is meticulously evaluated, and contingencies are strategically devised to mitigate potential perils, is explored as well. With the Artemis One mission as their compass, Sandra, Sandy, and Rick shed light on the realm of unexpected events and risk reduction strategies while highlighting the resilience and adaptability of the flight team. Sit back, buckle up, and brace yourself for today’s riveting expedition behind the scenes of historic space missions with Rick LaBrode as your guide extraordinaire.
Resources:
If you enjoyed this episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hit the subscribe button so you never miss another thrilling conversation, and be sure to leave a review to help get the word out to fellow adrenaline junkies.
Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: In November of 2022, the Artemis 1 mission launched out of the Cape Kennedy Center, headed to the moon for the first time in over 50 years. The Space Launch System rocket propelled the Orion capsule out of Earth's gravity well and on a trajectory away from Earth.
Sandy Winnefeld: The SLS, a rocket on par with the powerful Saturn V used in the Apollo missions, is the key to America's return to the lunar surface in the next few years.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So today, we talk with Artemis 1 Lead Flight Director, Rick LaBrode.
Sandy Winnefeld: We caught up with Rick late one afternoon at the Johnson Space Center.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We'd like to welcome Flight Director Rick LaBrode of the NASA Johnson Space Center to The Adrenaline Zone. Welcome, Rick.
Rick LaBrode: Hey. Well, thank you. I appreciate you all having me. I'm looking forward to this today.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, Rick, for a humble fighter pilot, it's really a privilege to be able to talk to somebody who's a flight director for something as ambitious as the Artemis mission, to say nothing of all the other things that you've done. So give us a picture. Everyone's seen pictures of Mission Control and consoles, all in one room with people staring intently at the screens. But not really. People like me don't really know what the flight director does. Can you tell our listeners what your role is for a national mission and where are you located for a flight?
Rick LaBrode: Sure. Absolutely. So, actually, the part you see on TV where we're in Mission Control, that's just one piece of it, and actually the smaller piece, it's probably 10% of the job. 90% of the work is done before we even get on the console. But before we get there, the part in Mission Control is you saw those other consoles. Each system on a vehicle, whether it's we started back in Apollo, we did it with the Space Shuttle, we do it with International Space Station, and we're doing it with Artemis. Each system on the vehicles has a single console that's actually responsible for monitoring, controlling the system, and configuring. So each of those consoles are looking at their system.
Now, just to do the nominal mission or to respond to anything that's off-nominal, they work that through the flight director. They have to basically go through the flight director to get the permission to go and do what they need to do, and we talk it out on the loops and figure out what the best course of action is. And then we give them a go and they go and execute that. They're the experts of their systems. The flight director just basically manages it all and pulls it all together. We actually are looking at the bigger picture, and we know what the puts and takes are. You may do something in your position that may be affecting somebody over in this other position. So we need to take all that, bring that big picture piece of the story to the council.
Sandy Winnefeld: So I guess you're responsible for sort of before there's a launch, all these different people who have safety inputs come to you and you've got to get an up from all of it. And that's hard enough. But while you're actually flying, if somebody needs to do something, you have to be able to recognize there may be an unintended consequence over here.
Rick LaBrode: Exactly.
Sandy Winnefeld: Let's bring the right people together.
Rick LaBrode: Okay, cool. Yeah. And the buck really stops at the flight director's console. We are ultimately responsible for the well-being of the crew, although we didn't have a crew on my Artemis 1 mission, but for any other crewed mission, we are responsible for their well-being, their safety, as well as the vehicle itself. Safety because that's a national asset for taxpayers. And we have the authority, we try to pre-plan and we think about all the what-if scenarios that could go wrong, and we build flight rules that make real-time decision-making easy. Because if we've already thought out that scenario and thought about what are the implications to it, and then we write it down, this is the action we're going to take. We put this in a flight rule so those make the real-time decisions easier. It's when we don't have a flight rule that covers that scenario where the flight director earns his paycheck and makes the decision as to what needs to be done in order to keep the crew, the vehicle safe and complete the mission.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We've had a few of those over the years in the ISS program. But you know what, Rick? I don't think people understand how highly competitive it is to become a flight director. And I would argue it's probably even more competitive to be a flight director than it is to be an astronaut. Congratulations.
Sandy Winnefeld: I agree with you when you think about it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, it is. No, it's more competitive because it's a smaller group of people and they have to go all the way through the training. I have to ask, and I don't know if we've ever talked about this before, but what made you want to become a flight director and what was your path?
Rick LaBrode: It's really a good question because it's actually interesting. Now, the aspiration to be a flight director, I think almost every flight controller who works in mission control, they aspire to be the person who's large and in charge in the room, and I was no different. I wanted to be the guy that people came to ask the questions and got permission to go and do stuff. But when I was first hired right out of college a long time ago in 1985, I was a shuttle flight controller and I was hired on as a contractor. So we have a mix of civil servants or federal employees and contractor personnel. And it's really a badgeless society for the most part. You can have a front-room contractor telling a back-room federal employee what to do. That's just the way it works, and it works perfectly. No change. But I aspired to be the flight director, but it wasn't even an option because back then, contractors couldn't even apply for a flight director position. Well, I just happened to be at the right point of my career at the right time when they decided to open it up for contractors to apply. And lo and behold, I was blessed when I got selected as the first contractor flight director. And when I was selected, I actually changed badges and became a federal employee.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What year was that? I don't remember.
Rick LaBrode: That was 1998.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: 1998. That was two years after I was there.
Rick LaBrode: Yeah. Routinely, we are hiring contractors because it just broadens the field of people that can apply. So it worked out really well. I was just, like I said, at the right spot at the right time of my career.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, you know, Rick, Sandra is always educating me on all things space, and something I didn't realize until recently when she told me was that the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center actually is in charge of the launch, the countdown and all that kind of stuff. And then when the vehicle clears the tower at that moment is when it switches over to Houston, which is odd to me as a fighter palace. Like, you mean, at the most critical, maybe dynamic part of the flight, we're handing off control to somebody else. Can you talk us through that process? And what is your role as part of that handover?
Rick LaBrode: Sure. First of all, let me make a minor correction. It actually doesn't happen at tower clear, although you hear that commonly, it actually happens at solid rocket booster ignition.
Sandy Winnefeld: So before it's even lifted off.
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, right.
Sandy Winnefeld: That makes more sense to me.
Rick LaBrode: Yeah. The reason being, as soon as those guys light and the umbilicals pop, at that point, the folks at Cape Canaveral, KSC, they don't have a connection to the vehicle. They don't have an RF link to the vehicle. They only have a hardline link. So immediately, we in Johnson Space Center here at Mission Control in Houston have control of the vehicle because we have the RF links that are established, and we're ready to command right away.
Sandy Winnefeld: Those RF links are active before the launch, obviously.
Rick LaBrode: Right. Exactly.
Sandy Winnefeld: And so you're in control of the whole process, though, right?
Rick LaBrode: Right.
Sandy Winnefeld: You own both the launch and the–
Rick LaBrode: Well, actually, they push the big red button to light the engine. Now we're working with them hand in hand leading up to the launch. They process the vehicle, they stack it, they test it, and we support a lot of those efforts. But on the day of launch, we have command windows where we actually send commands from Johnson Space Center Mission Control to configure the vehicle and get it ready for launch because there are things that the vehicle needs to do during ascent that we need to control, like what antennas to select to maintain communication. So we put these commands on board pre-launch.
Now, there's some commanding that the folks do from Cape Canaveral. So it's a combination. But one of the big things they're doing is monitoring what we call launch commit criteria. And essentially, we want to make sure when the vehicle launches that we don't inherit a vehicle that is already in a bad situation. As far as if you lose– For a lot of our systems, we have redundancy in pretty much everything. But if you lose one of your redundant boxes, it could potentially put you in an early return scenario. So we don't want to launch into that. We want to not launch on that day and go and replace the box and get us in full capability, full redundancy, and then we'll launch on another day. So we are monitoring those systems with the team at Cape Canaveral, the Launch Control team. So we work together, but they are the ones that are in charge. Like, if something did go wrong, they have pre-planned procedures that they're going to execute to try to recover the box while it's on the pad. We interface with them to kind of give them our piece, our two cents' worth on whatever the situation is. But they basically control the pre-launch phase of it. We support them, monitor them, and then as soon as they hit the button and the engine is lit, we take over control from there.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, you know, the lead-up to the Artemis Lunge launch was a lot of testing on the pad. They'd go out, they test, and then they'd stop and then they'd roll back and then they'd roll out. So you guys were involved in every stage of that. And the launch team was clearly learning a lot. I mean, first vehicle, monster vehicle, not unexpectedly, there were a lot of lessons that they were learning down there. What about on your side? Were you guys learning things as well?
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, absolutely. That's why we tried to tie in and support all those activities because it was a learning experience for us as well. Every time they power on the vehicle, we see something new just to see how it responds, it powers up. And that's not just with the Launch Control team. After the vehicle was stacked, we did it all through the development phase of Orion and through the SLS, the core stage, and the upper stage. We try to support every bit of testing they did because it was a great opportunity for the flight control team to gain experience and learn because it was the first time for us flying these vehicles, too. So we try to participate in those as much as possible.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, a couple of related questions since you're the flight director, but in terms of go-no-go criteria for an actual launch, if a system is broken, there's redundancy everywhere, but I'm sure you don't want to use any of that redundancy up on the pad. And are you responsible for that decision as an overall responsibility, or do you just own the flight part and somebody else is making we're going to go or not go?
Rick LaBrode: It's pretty much the flight part. But we work very closely with the launch control team to develop the launch commit criteria because we're the ones who have to operate the vehicle, so we know and we write the flight rules for– We have each section, and I was talking about each of the different consoles. Each of them have their own section of flight rules. And the very last rule in the flight rule in each section is an early return rule. So if they experience any particular failure in their system, depending on what the failure is, if it leaves the vehicle zero fault tolerant to a safe return, then we're going to call it an early return mission. So we're going to bring it back in hopes of getting it home safely before that next failure happens. Because if that next failure happens, we lose the vehicle.
And we leaned forward quite a bit on Artemis 1 because it was a test flight and there was no crew. So we were a little more lenient on what we did there. And I'll tell you, one of our primary mission objectives for Artemis 1 was to test the heat shield that was going to protect the crew module on reentry. And we wanted to test it at lunar return velocities and conditions. So we're talking like 11.6 km/second really fast. And once we did the trans-lunar injection, the big burn that basically sent Orion on the way to the moon, we basically will have achieved that objective. We could turn around right away and come back, and we're going to come in at over 11.6 km/second. So we leaned forward. If we had a system where if the crew was on board, we wouldn't even have done it and they would bring them home safely, we leaned forward and we would actually go. Our rule said we would actually burn TLI and then we'd pick an early return trajectory and bring it home safely.
Sandy Winnefeld: That's interesting because I was going to ask you if you did anything different for Artemis 1 than you will for Artemis 2 with a crew. And it sounds like it wasn't just like a total dress rehearsal, you were actually able to be a little more aggressive.
Rick LaBrode: Absolutely. Purposely, in order to be able to test that vehicle, to make sure it's going to be safe for us to put the crew on board.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, and we want to get into that a little bit later. All the stuff that you guys did test, but a little bit more about the planning because I don't think people realize how difficult flight planning is. I was shocked when I worked in the control room, the minutiae that you have to sort of balance. So can you just talk a little bit about that process?
Rick LaBrode: Sure. So earlier I told you that the console piece is really 10% of the job. The other 90% is actually getting ready for the mission. So it starts early on, and I'll give you the numbers here in a minute. But it starts early on where the programs and the enterprise, they give us their mission requirements and their priorities, what they want us to accomplish on the mission. And then we, as the flight ops team and myself as the lead flight director, we build a timeline that's going to achieve all their mission requirements and their priorities. And then we go and train that, so we go and do simulations and simulations, and we just train it and train it, train it. And then the console piece is the execution. So we do plan, train, fly, and the plan and the train take a long time.
It was interesting and Sandy knows about this. After each mission, we actually have a ceremony in Mission Control where the flight director's office selects one discipline or one individual to hang the mission plaque. And it's an honor. Typically, they've done something above and beyond the call of duty. They've done something to save the mission, what have you, but it's a really neat ceremony. It's a nice honor. Well, we were doing the one for Artemis 1, and I started talking about how hard it was because my lead team and I worked this mission for so long. I started looking at the numbers and we started building our flight products that's like procedures, flight rules, and documentation that we used for the mission. We started building those in 2018. Four years before the flight.
And then many of the leads, myself included, we actually worked the exploration test flight number 1, which was back under Constellation, but it was a test flight of Orion. It was really short. It was only two orbits around the Earth. It went up to 3100 miles, and it came screaming in. So it did test a lot of the systems, but we did that in December of 2014. And then every Wednesday leading up to the mission, I would have a team tag up with my lead team members, and they kind of would go through each one of them, and they'd give me the latest status of any issues they're working if they need help from me or anything like that. And I did my last one after the mission, and one of the guys sent me an email when he heard that it was going to be the last one, and he forwarded the email that I had sent early on in the planning phase when we were just starting up our team tag ups. It was dated 2009. How long have we been working this mission?
Sandy Winnefeld: Did we have email back in 2009?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yes, we do.
Rick LaBrode: Generally, it doesn't take that long, but we've been working it. It is every bit of three, four years to build the products to build the timeline, and then train for it.
Sandy Winnefeld: But you know what I'm thinking of what we call the NATOPS Manual for an F-14 is like this thick, and you have a classified version that's this thick, I imagine your manual is like–
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, we're all electronic, so everything's electronic now. We don't have paper, we're saving trees or something. I don't know.
Sandy Winnefeld: But I imagine during this plan train fly piece that the planning and training is a cycle where the training, the simulations, whatever, you're getting discoveries in there that you're having to fold back in planning.
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, absolutely. I think more of it, especially with the first time flight of a vehicle, we learned a lot about the software, the vehicle software. We would go and do something, run our procedures, and try to with the expectation that it's going to do this, and I'm like, “Whoa, that didn't work.” And we'd have to go dig into it and figure out, okay, is there a problem with our simulator or is there a problem with flight software? And in many cases, we had to go back to Orion and Lockheed Martin and say, "Hey, we got a flight software issue,” and we work it. And schedule is a big driver depending on what the fix was and what the impact would be to the schedule, we may defer that. We deferred a whole bunch to Artemis 2, and we had viable ops workarounds for these scenarios. But it's a continuous, never-ending process all the way up until launch.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And that’s actually where some of the risk management comes in is trying to figure out what risk posture you want to launch into and what system is–
Sandy Winnefeld: The Adrenaline Zone is about risk. And I was curious if you have a categorization process where probability and consequence multiply together to be like a tier 1 or a tier 2, or is it just like it's a risk and we deal with it?
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, I think it's more the latter. I mean, not all risks are created equal. Early on in the design phase, the safety community does what they call PRA probability risk assessments. And they look across the whole vehicle, all the subsystems, and they look for the high risk, the ones that poke out, and those typically are the ones that the program will actually throw money at to try to resolve to bring that risk down, right, to mitigate them. But once we get involved, we try to help drive some of those discussions because we're also looking out for the well-being of the crew and just the operability of the vehicle. But once we get a design vehicle and we're fixing a flight and we've got a plan, the real-time risk assessments are done by the flight director for the most part. I mean, if we have time, we go to a mission management team where you have a mission management, mission manager, you have the tech authorities, which are the engineering community, the health and medical community, the safety community then you have the various programs that are involved. So it's a collaborative type discussion to talk about any kind of risk and what's the best way to mitigate it, what options we should take. But when you're on console, if you don't have that luxury of that time, then that risk mitigation and decision happens at the flight director console.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So what kind of risks were you mitigating or what kind of contingencies were you planning for for this mission?
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, so we and Sandy can attest to this. We are really good here at Johnson Space Center and Mission Control. Really good about thinking about the what-if scenario. What would we do if this happened, what would we do if that happened? And we do this. That's what part of that huge planning period involves, is doing that. You build a plan and then you go through and you analyze it and say, what happens if this happens at this time? And we build procedures, malfunction procedures. We build flight rules that talk about what we're going to do in that situation, and then we trade them. Man, when we go into a simulation, an eight-hour sim, you figure I had 12 positions, depending on what phase of the mission was, and each of those positions are seeing three failures of sim. So you add that up, 27. I mean, it's a long day, let me tell you, and every simis like that. And we did close to 100 sims for Artemis 1. A lot of it was because our launch date slips added more.
But I mean, we are very methodical about thinking about the what-if scenario. And some of the big things that we were looking at, as soon as we launched and got on orbit, Orion deployed the solar ray wings. There are four of them. And we looked at what would happen if one of the four didn't fully deploy and latch. And bottom line is we did all the assessments and we could generate enough power with three arrays to actually do the full mission. So we were going to burn TLI with one array, not latched. And there was risk there. There's no question there's risk there. But without a crew and the fact that it's a test flight, we want to get the data, we were going to lean forward and we're going to go for it. So those are the kind of things that we looked at,
Sandy Winnefeld: I imagine at least similar to my own experience. It's the different combinations of things that can happen that you have to try to figure out. Did you ever wake up in the middle of the night and say, "Oh my God, I just thought of this"? And we haven't been looking at this particular combination or this particular risk. And then you got to write it down and think about it in the morning.
Rick LaBrode: I'm sure there were times where I had aha moments, but for the most part, I think because we worked it so long and my team was so good, they made my job really easy. And I'll tell you, this was my fifth lead flight. When I started as a flight director, it was right before we started assembly of the International Space Station, so I was first certified as an ISS flight director. So my first three flights were on the ISS side. For each of our assembly flights, we had a lead ISS flight director and a lead shuttle flight director. And the first three, I was an ISS lead. And I vividly remember, you can ask Sandy, I am a really laid-back kind of person. I would be considered type C, I would think. I mean, obviously, when the pressure situation arises, I can take care of business. But for the most part, I'm really relaxed and easy-going.
But I remember those first missions that I was late on, as we got close to the mission, I started having problems. I couldn't sleep. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and my mind would be going 1000 miles an hour trying to think about all the things I got to do. I got eczema on my hands. It was terrible. It was terrible. And that happened. It was a little bit less and really depended on what was going on with the mission at the very end, right before launch. But for the most part, I really stressed over it. But this mission, I didn't have any of that. And I really think it's because we worked it so long, I felt so comfortable. We were ready easily the year before to be able to fly this flight. Yeah, we were doing work all the way up to then because you fill the time with work. But I think because of that, my team was so good. I didn't have any of those moments where I woke up in the middle of the night and said, "Oh, I got to do this, I got to make sure I do that".
Sandy Winnefeld: So you can't fly something this complicated, as hard as you plan, as hard as you train, without having something unexpected happen that you have to deal with. Or was this just like tickety boo the whole way through? Was there anything that you didn't expect to happen that you had to deal with during your flight?
Rick LaBrode: For the most part, it was a flawless mission, really. The rocket put us right where we needed to go. Orion's performance was well better than expected. But there were things that happened. I'll tell you. That's what I just actually talked about at that meeting I just came from: I gave a status on it. It really wasn't a big deal, but we have what we call power conditioning and data units, the PCDUs. They're basically power boxes that do data also, and they have power switches. And these power switches are designed to assess for overcurrent situations and they pop open really quick to protect the downstream loads if you have a short somewhere. Well, we had like 24 cases where these things opened up uncommanded, and without an overcurrent, they just opened up on their own. In every case, we were able to close them. Now, the one that was kind of a big deal, I mean, generally all it did was take out redundancy to a system, but we closed them and everything was good.
The one thing that happened is– And this is right when we came back from a loss of signal and they have 120-volt power supply switches that some of the equipment receives. And we had four of these things open all simultaneously. And again, most of them were just taking out redundancy in some of the systems. But we had one that took out what we call a pressure regulation unit, which is used in the pressure control assembly for we have helium tanks that pressurize the prop and oxidizer tanks. That's what pushes the prop out, and that's how we fire our thrusters. We do translational burns. All of them use it. Well, one of the PRUs opened up on the fuel side. There are two of them, there are two branches. And if we couldn't reclose that, it would have been an early return scenario because if you lose that other one, then you basically lost your capability of doing translation because you can't push fuel to the thrusters. We operate in what Sandy probably recalls what we call blowdown where you basically are just using the pressure that takes at the time and depending on where the mission is, you may not get home.
So anyway, that happened like 24 times. So they're still trying to figure out what the root cause was. But in the meantime, Lockheed Martin is updating flight software to actually automatically close those things if it happens again. That's weird and long-winded. But I do have one other thing, so we went by the moon and we did what we called the first big burn as we go by the moon was the outbound powered flyby. I mean, we were only 60 miles off the surface of the moon. We could high-five it as we went by.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That’s cool. It was amazing.
Rick LaBrode: It’s unbelievable. But after that burn, our onboard state vector walked off significantly. I mean, we're talking hundreds of thousands of feet. Yeah, it was big and we didn't understand why. Well, we worked through it and figured out that it's interesting. We use a covariance to help generate the solution and the covariance is affected by the effects of gravity as you go by the moon. We use a sphere for the covariance for doing our burn solutions and the gravity stretches and changes the shape of the covariance and we weren't accounting for it so we just opened it up and it was perfect. On the way back on the return power flyby, no issues at all. But it took us a while, so that was a pretty big deal. That was a really big deal actually.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So Sandy, we were talking about some of the challenges of space traffic management earlier. This is exactly that. But it's funny because the gravity on the moon is so slight that you're like, "Why would I be worried about it"? But clearly, it's a factor. Hey, so you talked about the heat shield being the main test point. What other risk reduction activities were you doing during Artemis 1 to prepare for Artemis 2 when the crew is going to be on board?
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, so I told you about the requirements or the mission priorities that we received ahead of time. A lot of those included what we called flight test objectives or developmental flight test objectives and essentially, basically ringing out the systems, trying to see how they function in the environment. So our priorities, like I said, the first one was to test the heat shield, second one was to actually operate the vehicle in the environment and just test all the systems, cooling systems, the onboard computer systems, the guidance, navigation, and control, all those. And then the third one was actually recovery of the capsule. We want the recovery forces to be able to practice recovery to make sure they know how to do it before we put a crew on board. The mission went so well.
As I just alluded to, we actually added 21 additional developmental flight test objectives real-time during the mission. And they were things like let's plume the solar rays to see how that radiative heating is, to see if it really we had models what we thought it was going to do. We're going to get real data. We did that. We had constraints about how long a ride could go out of attitude and we had a limit of three hours continuously. But if you did that three hours, once you had to go back to tail to the sun, which is our normal attitude, we had to go back there for 10 hours. So we needed to see those assessments generally have a lot of conservatism in them. So we wanted to get the real data so we could actually update the models and relieve some of those constraints for future flights for when we fly the crew. We did a lot of that.
Sandy Winnefeld: So I'm going to ask a really dumb–
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, sorry, go ahead, Sandy.
Sandy Winnefeld: No, I was just going to say I'm not an astronaut so I can ask a really dumb question, right? I'm allowed to do that. I know we never did this during the Apollo program, but these are expensive vehicles. Is there any chance that you would ever reuse an Orion or is it a one-off?
Rick LaBrode: Absolutely. Most of the avionics were pulled out and already going to be used on Artemis 3 or 4.
Sandy Winnefeld: So the capsule itself will not be reused, but some of the systems would.
Rick LaBrode: Yes. Actually, the capsule is going to become Orion and Lockheed Martin's engineering test vehicle. They didn't complete all their certification. I don't know to what detail, but they didn't complete all the certifications before Artemis 2. Everything they needed for Artemis 1 was completed. But they're going to take this engineering test vehicle after they take all the avionics they want to reuse and they remove the heat shield. And I just found out is they're going to reuse the heat shield. At least that was the plan. They're going to take the F-code off of it and reuse the frame because it's monolithic blocks. So anyway, most of it is being reused. Apollo, they never reused them. I don't know if they plan on reflying them, but I kind of think they are if they don't sustain any damage. But I really don't know, Sandy.
Sandy Winnefeld: So for our listeners, when you do an engineering test vehicle, you strip out all the electronics and all that. We're talking about structural testing to see what the structure can take before it breaks, right?
Rick LaBrode: Yes, exactly.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I didn't think the structure was designed to be reused. So you think maybe the testing will show that you can reuse the structure?
Rick LaBrode: You know, I wouldn't go that far, to be honest. You’re talking above my level.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, I know some of the piece parts in there, especially the avionics, was designed to be reusable.
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, I was going to say one of the challenges is when you get in the water, some of them bring water in, and salt water doesn't go too well with avionics.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, that's bad.
Sandy Winnefeld: And the heat shield performed better than expected or as expected or what?
Rick LaBrode: Well, it did as expected. What we did to really test it is we did what we call a skip entry, where we came in and Orion boarded into the atmosphere for a while and then it popped back out, skipped. I think we went like 3100 nautical miles, and then we boarded back in. And so you had basically two dual heating regimes and it really got hot and it protected the capsule-like it was supposed to. What they did see is some charring that they didn't expect. So they're really analyzing that charring. And it's not going to prevent us from flying Artemis 2, but what it may ultimately do is limit the ranges that we can do those skips. We may have to do a more benign entry, if you will, through the atmosphere. The skip entry gives us more capability of hitting our landing sites, our splice-down sites, but we can do a direct, we can do a short, we can do a long. There's so much capability and we'll just wait till the analysis comes out. But we know that the shield will protect the astronauts coming back at lunar velocities.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So were you measuring the temperature inside the crew cabin during the duration of the mission and during the reentry?
Rick LaBrode: Yes. I don't have any of that data, but I know we had temperatures, so we knew what the temperatures. Well, we have the data. It's all developmental flight data that was ordered and I don't know where they are in playing with X, so I don't know where we got to. We also the heat shield also had temperature sensors–
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Thermal couples all over.
Rick LaBrode: DFI, Developmental Flight and Instrumentation that didn't come down real-time but they got a post-flight recording.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, they got to go check all their models and make sure their models are right.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Rick, what is next for you? They haven't announced yet, so I don't want to put you on the spot, but are you going to be the flight director for Artemis 2, or where is your personal next move?
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, now we have another flight director that's lead for Artemis 2, Jeff Radigan. He's actually out on rotation, so Zeb Scoville is filling in for him. I'm helping out because I have some knowledge from Artemis 1 that I could help with, but there's a whole team of Artemis 2 folks. I'll work that mission. My plan is to work that mission as one of the flight directors because we support around the clock, generally with three shifts, nine-hour shifts with an hour handover on each side. So we need a handful of them. It's only a ten-day-ish mission, I believe. So you could technically do it with three teams, but I think we're going to try and certify five teams and get folks in. So I plan on working on that. But we support ISS on a regular basis, too. There's a lot of ships that have to support the International Space Station. I'm lead for a cargo mission this fall, that's Northrop Grumman cargo mission this fall. And so I'll continue doing my ISS work, but also help follow along with them with Artemis 2 planning and then also getting a little bit involved in the gateway planning aspect of it. I got a lot to learn there, but I'm starting to follow along with some of those activities, too.
Sandy Winnefeld: So you've got to stay proficient in all these different systems. And obviously, you can buff yourself back up when it comes time to actually do the job. But it's more than just the average bear focusing on one type of airplane they're flying and switching over to a 767 or something. It's like this is a big deal, right?
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, it is. But that's part of the fun too, the variety. I've been a flight director a long time, in ‘98, so working for 25 years.
Sandy Winnefeld: Thinking about making it a career, right?
Rick LaBrode: Yeah, exactly. But if all I did was one program, I probably would have gotten kind of burnt out and left. But like I said, I started as an ISS flight director, and then about two-thirds through the assembly sequence, I got certified on the shuttle side. So I did my last mission, I was a shuttle lead. And it was kind of cool because that mission was Pam Melroy and she was the female commander. And when we docked to ISS, Peggy was the commander. So we had two women commanders in space, which was really cool.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I remember that.
Rick LaBrode: And then before the shuttle retired, I started working the Constellation and Exploration. So it's been something different all the time. Space ops is just the coolest thing you could ever imagine. You can't do it anywhere else. I mean, we do have centers around the country, around the world, but this is where the heart and soul of human spaceflight is. And it's just the coolest thing. But I tell you when people ask me about, “Hey, you seem so excited about Artemis 1.” I tell you, I was every bit as excited about Artemis 1 leaving low Earth orbit and heading out into deep space. I was excited as I was the very first day I walked into Mission Control right out of college, not really knowing anything. So it's just been a blessed journey for me, and I'm very fortunate.
Sandy Winnefeld: I just wish you were a little more enthusiastic about your job.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Well, you know, I have to say, second to flying in space is working in Mission Control. It's fun to work in Mission Control because you are right in the middle of action and there's a lot going on. And I really enjoyed the time I spent there. But I have to ask you, Rick, as we wind down, how does leading a mission like Artemis 1 compare to leading an ISS or shuttle mission? Because I'm sure Expedition 18 was your all-time favorite ISS mission.
Rick LaBrode: Well, so I didn't lead that one, Sandy, but I did work it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I know.
Rick LaBrode: They're both unbelievably cool. And the fact that I didn't have a crew on Artemis 1 really makes it different because you work so long with your crew and you build these relationships that are so close that will last forever, and you can't change that. So I really missed that part with Artemis 1. But it was probably just as good because Artemis 1 being the first time in this vehicle there's a lot less overhead right, when you don't have a crew on board. So I think it made it more manageable. But, yeah, it's all great. I can't deny it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It's hard. You love all your children equally. Can't pick a favorite.
Sandy Winnefeld: I don't want to be around either one of you guys on the day they bring down the ISS on a couch I think for that.
Rick LaBrode: I'll be in my easy chair with a cold libation watching.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That’s a big job to bring that thing down.
Sandy Winnefeld: It's been really exciting to talk to you. I think this is going to be a really cool episode for our listeners because you don't get behind the scenes, all you see is this countdown, and off goes the rocket, and you get a little bit. But getting behind the scenes of Mission Control, I think, is really going to be fun for our listeners to get.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: There's a lot going on that the camera views don't show. It's like, oh, these people just sitting in this room, it's like, no, they're actually doing lots of stuff while they're sitting in there.
Rick LaBrode: That's just a fact. Well, it's absolutely my pleasure to shed a little bit of that insight for you all, and hopefully, folks can get something out of it.
Sandy Winnefeld: Hey, well, thanks for what you do, and thanks for having a successful Artemis mission, which is going to take us to the next step. Artemis 2. Can't wait.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I know. Artemis 2. Looking forward to it.
That was the lead flight director in charge of the Artemis 1 Mission, Rick Lebrode. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Check us out on social media, including a short video of our interview with Rick on TikTok. Our handle is very simple: @TheAdrenalineZone.
