Atlantis STS-38 – Roundtrip Ticket

#20 by Ares67 on 15 Dec, 2016 19:11
#21 by Ares67 on 15 Dec, 2016 19:13
PLT Frank Lee Culbertson, Jr., Commander USN – was born May 15, 1949, in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1967 he attended the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering in 1971. Michael Cassutt, the author of Who’s Who in Space, wrote, “After graduation Culbertson served as an ensign aboard the USS Fox in the Gulf of Tonkin before reporting for pilot training in Beeville, Texas. He won his wings in May 1973 and following F-4 Phantom training served with Fighter Squadron 151 aboard the carrier USS Midway. From 1976 to 1978 he was an exchange pilot with the Air Force at Luke AFB, Arizona, where he served as an F-4 weapons and tactics instructor. He then served aboard the carrier USS America until May 1981, where he entered the Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland.”

“Following graduation from the school Culbertson was assigned to the Air Test Center as program manager for all F-4 testing, where he served until January 1984. At the time of his selection by NASA he was training as an F-14 pilot at Oceana, Virginia,” wrote Cassutt. By 1990, Culbertson had logged more than 3,700 hours flying time in 35 different types of aircraft, including 350 carrier landings.

Frank Culbertson was selected as astronaut candidate in May 1984. He first was assigned to the team which redesigned the shuttle for a greater safety margin during landing rollout, which included testing the brakes, tires, and nose-wheel steering. Culbertson was member of the launch support team at KSC for missions STS 61-A through 51-L. Following the Challenger accident, he assisted with the investigation at NASA Headquarters. Before his first trip into orbit aboard Atlantis, Culbertson served as CapCom for missions STS-27 through 32.
#22 by Ares67 on 15 Dec, 2016 19:15
MS1 Robert Clyde Springer, Colonel USMC – was born May 21, 1942, in St. Louis, Missouri. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in naval science from the United States Naval Academy in 1964 and a Master of Science in operations research and systems analysis from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1971. Springer completed 300 combat missions from Chu Lai in the Republic of Vietnam with F-4s, and in 1968 served as advisor to the Republic of Korea Marine Corps.

According to Michael Cassutt, Springer “flew 75 further combat missions in 01 Bird Dogs and UH1 Huey helicopters. Returning to the United States, Springer attended the Naval Postgraduate School, then served in a variety of assignments at El Toro and Camp Pendleton, California; Okinawa; and Beaufort, South Carolina. He attended the Navy Fighter Weapons School (better known as ‘Top Gun’) at Miramar, California, and, in 1975 the Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland, remaining there as a helicopter test pilot until 1977. He later attended the Armed Forces Staff College, and at the time of his selection by NASA was serving as aide-de-camp to the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic.”

Selected by NASA in May 1980, Springer completed astronaut training in June 1981. Springer’s technical assignments have included serving as a member of the support crew for STS-3, concept development studies for the Space Operations Center, and coordination of various aspects of the final development of the Remote Manipulator System for operational use. He also worked in the Mission Control Center as CapCom for seven flights in 1984 and 1985. Springer first flew as mission specialist aboard Discovery STS-29, launched in March 1989, which deployed the third Tracking and Data Relay Satellite – TDRS-D.
#23 by Ares67 on 15 Dec, 2016 19:17
MS2 Carl Joseph Meade, Lieutenant Colonel USAF – “An Air Force brat,” wrote Michael Cassutt, “Meade was born November 16, 1950, at Chanute AFB, Illinois, and graduated from high school at Randolph AFB, Texas, in 1968. He attended the University of Texas, receiving a B.S. (with honors) in electronics engineering in 1973, and in 1975 earned an M.S. in electronics engineering from the California Institute of Technology.”

“Prior to joining the Air Force, Meade worked as an electronics design engineer with Hughes Aircraft Company in Culver City, California. (While a graduate student at Cal Tech he had been a Hughes Fellow.) After becoming an Air Force pilot, Meade flew RF-4C reconnaissance aircraft at Shaw AFB, South Carolina, then attended the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, California, where he was the outstanding graduate of Class 80B. He remained at Edwards as a test pilot on the F-20 and F-16 aircraft. At the time of his selection by NASA he was an instructor at the test pilot school.”

Selected in June 1985, Meade completed astronaut training in July 1986. A qualified mission specialist, he was assigned to verify testing of flight software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). Meade assisted with crew escape flight tests, launch support duties, and ground egress tests. He also served as the astronaut representative to the SRB and SSME programs at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
#24 by Ares67 on 15 Dec, 2016 19:18
MS3 Charles Donald “Sam” Gemar, Major, USA – was born August 4, 1955, in Yankton, South Dakota. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1979. Michael Cassutt wrote, “He enlisted in the Army and was training in the 18th Airborne Corps when he earned an appointment to West Point. After graduation from the academy he became a helicopter and transport pilot. From 1980 to 1985 he was stationed at Hunter Army Airfield, Ft. Stewart, Georgia.”

Charles Gemar served as an Assistant Flight Operations Officer and Flight Platoon Leader for the 24th Combat Aviation Battalion. He was Commander and Chief, Operations Branch at Hunter Army Airfield, where he also completed the Army Parachutist Course and Ranger School.

Gemar became a member of the Army Aviation Association of America. Selected by NASA in June 1985, he qualified as mission specialist in July 1986. His first assignments included testing flight software in the SAIL, and launch support duties at Kennedy Space Center prior to being named to the STS-38 crew. Just before his first spaceflight Charles Gemar got promoted to the rank of Major.
#25 by Ares67 on 15 Dec, 2016 19:20
THE SECRET RING

“So the common background that everybody had from the standpoint of their experiences, pre-NASA experiences, I think helped us as a crew.” said Richard Covey. “ All five of us were qualified and checked out to fly the front seat of the T-38, so a lot of crews, if they had five people, they might have three pilots and two mission specialists, and they take three airplanes when they go somewhere. Well, we always took five airplanes whenever we went anywhere.”

“There are some great stories about that,” Covey remembered, “because, you know, Sam Gemar, even though he was flying the front seat of a T-38, his flying background before he came to NASA was predominantly helicopters. So he didn’t have as much experience in flying high-performance jet aircraft as the rest of us did, and it showed. So we always had to accommodate that sometimes and make sure we were watching out for Sam; make sure we didn’t put him in the wrong situation and do that. But that was fun.”

Covey said, “We got to travel a lot together to places where we couldn’t tell anybody else where we were going. We had a lot of things that we could only share with each other. We couldn’t share them with our families; we couldn’t share them with other people in the office. So from that standpoint we still have a secret ring or whatever, and can nod at each other when we hear things or know things that we know that nobody else still knows about what we did and how we trained and stuff.”
#26 by Ares67 on 15 Dec, 2016 19:22
COVEY IN COMMAND

Ross-Nazzal: Let’s talk about your style as a commander. This is your first flight that you get to command. What was your commanding style like, if you can characterize it?

Covey: Well, it’s probably better for someone else to answer that question than me. Well, my approach was always to make sure that everyone understood clearly their roles and responsibilities, and then to make sure that I held them accountable for those, the activities associated with that. With the type of people that I had on the crew, that wasn’t hard to do. They were all very much project, process oriented people, because of their test piloting backgrounds, and so they would go off and work the specific issues that they were assigned and do that.

I very much as a commander never felt like I had to be the smartest person on everything that was happening. I had smart people, and I wanted them to be smartest on the specific areas, and I would rely on them to be able to keep me smart, as smart as I needed to be. So I know that I learned that from the commanders I flew with, which is not an unusual approach for commanders to take.

A commander’s role varies from mission to mission, and it varies from individual to individual. My focus was making sure that our preparation for the mission, including how we related to and dealt with our customers, which I considered to be the payload customers, the Air Force and DOD agencies, that that relationship was clear and solidified. That our relationships with the flight control teams and the Flight Directors, in particular, was appropriate and clear and open, and then that we had properly trained and were capable, each of us performing the specific roles and actions that were required of us during the course of the mission.

So, you know, that meant watching guys in training and making sure they had the right training, and being comfortable with their ability to perform on orbit. There are other people that are making some of those judgments, but ultimately to me it’s the commander that has to make those calls on the readiness of the crew to perform on orbit.

Ross-Nazzal: As commander did you have any opportunity to select the crew, or as Coordinator of the DOD flights, did you have that opportunity?

Covey: I did not in this case. Dan pretty much told me who I was going to fly it with, so there I was.

Ross-Nazzal: Why don’t you tell us about training? You alluded to some of the challenges in training, but was training any different for this mission than your previous two, besides the classified discussion we had?

Covey: Actually, the training was very much, in my mind, very much like the training that we had for STS-26. They were similar type missions. They were both scheduled for four days. They both involved flight-day-one deployment of a payload, and then basically a couple of days of doing things then coming home and landing. I mean, they’re pretty simple missions from the standpoint of the structure of them.

So the training, very much like that, a lot of focus on ascent and entry for the pilot, commander, and flight engineer, who was Bob Springer in our case. We didn’t have any robotic arm operations, so we didn’t have to do that. The guys that were doing EVA training were strictly contingency-type operations, and that was pretty minimal, as it usually was. So we didn’t have any rendezvous. We didn’t have any of those types of things, so the training, it was focused around ascent/entry, and then flight-day-one payload operations, and that was pretty much it, so it was pretty simple. We could get our training done pretty easily and in a pretty structured time frame.

Ross-Nazzal: What did you tell the rookies on your flight about being in space and some of the challenges that they might face or things they should be aware of?

Covey: Yes, you know, I don’t really remember coaching them that much. I’m sure I did, and both Bob and I did, trying to help them get ready for that. I don’t remember any specific things, other than I’m sure we probably told a lot of war stories along the way and helped them that way.

(Countdown, July 1990; Barbara Schwartz, NASA JSC News Release No. 90-060, Dec. 12, 1990; Richard Covey, JSC Oral History Project interview, Feb. 7, 2007; Michael Cassutt, Who’s Who in Space, The ISS Edition, Macmillan 1999 – edited)
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