Recently, I was asked by John Shannon, the current Space Shuttle Program Manager, to comment on my experiences, best practices, and lessons learned as a former Space Shuttle program manager. This project is part of a broader knowledge capture and retention initiative being conducted by the NASA Johnson Space Center in an “oral history” format.
One of the questions posed was to comment on some of the most memorable moments of my time as a Space Shuttle program manager. Without question, the top two of these were the launch of
Challenger on STS‐51L on January 28, 1986, and the launch of Discovery on STS‐26 on September 29,
1988.