I missed the first panel, but arrived just in time to see the second panel on the development of the space shuttle. A retired engineer, Bob Ryan, explained that the shuttle program was created by a number of factors, including politics, cost, and Air Force requirements on payloads and cross winds. It was designed to be a partially-reusable, high-performance machine, but it isn't very robust and has hardware integration problems. Bob Schwinghamer, another retired engineer who I had met before during a NASA Academy lunch, talked about his career finding and fixing shuttle problems using fault trees.

Tom Jones (STS-59, STS-68, STS-80, and STS-98) spoke about the shuttle from an astronaut's point of view. He expressed his opinion that space travel matured with the 30 years of flying the shuttle. Three-quarters of all astronauts have flown in space via the shuttle. He spoke of the intense scheduling while in space, the spectacular view of Earth, and the fragility of the shuttle design. He gave his opinion that it would be best to retire the shuttle as soon as possible in order to free the overhead costs and funnel the freed funding into the new Constellation program.

I'm not sure what it is about the lunch break, but again, as I was returning from lunch, I ran into an astronaut. Tom Jones was leaving and said hi to me in the parking lot as we passed each other. No autograph this time, but still pretty cool.

The last panel I attended was about Skylab (space station from 1973 - 1979) and Spacelab (flown on the shuttle from 1983 - 1998). George Hardy, chief of engineering for Skylab, spoke of how the space station diversified NASA, but was overshadowed by larger programs. Former astronaut Owen Garriott (Skylab-3, STS-9), who I've met during NASA Academy talks, summarized the talk he gave during a the Space Studies Board panel I heard in December. He spoke of the experiments conducted on astronauts on longer duration missions, solar observations, and Earth observations conducted on Skylab.

Jack Lee, former Center Director of MSFC, spoke next about creating the Spacelab program. He described the need to identify requirements for the program and recruit international partners to build it. Carolyn Griner, former Deputy Center Director of MSFC, described the challenge of integrating the science and engineering aspects of Spacelab. There existed a need to determine the science requirements, but more importantly, the science goals, and integrate them with the processes of the shuttle.

During the question and answer session, a woman stood and gave a long, historical lecture about how the scientific experiments conducted on Skylab and Spacelab brought those programs down to the general public, and the importance of public outreach and the legacy of the space program. After she finished her remarks, the panel moderator commented that it was easy to tell that she was Valerie Neal, the space history curator of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.