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Ask A Kansan is a podcast where we're amplifying, connecting and uncovering stories across Kansas.
Every week, Gus and Sydney sit down with the people who actually make this state run — museum directors and ranchers, founders and historians, zookeepers and woodcarvers. From Kansas City to Kinsley, WaKeeney to Wichita, we go where the story is.
You'll leave each episode knowing something you didn't about the state we call home. It's not a history lecture and it's not a business show. It's a real conversation with a Kansan worth knowing.
New episodes weekly. askakansan.com
Ep81
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Starlink Sky Surprise
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[00:00:00]
Gus Applequist: Two Christmases ago, uh, I was out near Colby with my, my wife and my mother-in-law- and brother-in-law. And we were driving back to an Airbnb out in the middle of nowhere from Colby, and I, like, look out the windshield and there's, like, 10 lights in the sky, and they're all just streaking, like, just going flying across the sky. And I, like... I was, you know, I was a space geek. I was just, like, trying to keep the car on the road. Like, "Oh my gosh." And-
Sydney Collins: Aliens.
Gus Applequist: ... you know, I don't think Kat even really cared too much. And so, like, I, like, floored it to get to the Airbnb. And by the time we got there, it was already gone. And I, I pretty quickly figured out that it was a, a Starlink launch.
Oh. You know, where there's a... What happens is they launch them together and then they gradually spread out.
Sydney Collins: Spread apart
Gus Applequist: But, but I mean, they were just flying. But if you ever have a chance to see that, um, [00:01:00] like, keep, keep an eye on the sky. It's, it's just really cool to see
Podcast Welcome and a Pivotal Moment
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Gus Applequist: Welcome to Ask a Kansan.
Sydney Collins: A podcast where we're amplifying, connecting, and uncovering stories across Kansas.
And today, like-
Is a pivotal moment ...
Gus Applequist: it's a pivotal moment. Um, you know, when, when you start something like this, you never know where it's gonna go- who you're gonna get to talk to, what it's gonna mean to you as an individual.
And for, for me, uh, this episode is really important and, and just because, astronaut Steve Hawley is, is somebody I've looked up to for my entire li- like I, I wanted to be an astronaut for the longest time and, and I eventually charted a [00:02:00] different path, but, thi- this was just such a surreal experience to get to sit here and talk with Steve.
Sydney Collins: And if you are new here, if this is your first episode, um, my name is Sydney. This is Gus.
Uh, we are the hosts of Ask a Kansan, and so we, we have done, this is probably over 80 episodes now, of just interviewing super cool people.
And we finally, for Gus- We got an astronaut.
And, um, uh, we were talking to Steve after, after this conversation.
I was like, I told my family, you know, I get to meet an astronaut today." They're like, "Okay, cool." And I'm like, "Uh-
Gus Applequist: You don't understand
Sydney Collins: you don't understand." This guy literally went into space five times.
Gus Applequist: This conversation with Steve, it was, it was super hard to prepare for this episode just because-
Sydney Collins: There's so much
Gus Applequist: there's so much to talk about with him. But I hope we, we covered, uh, some of the big picture stuff, and I hope that you enjoy. Here's our interview with astronaut Steve Hawley.
Meet Steve Hawley
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Gus Applequist: [00:03:00] Hello and welcome. How are you today?
Steve Hawley: Very well, I think. We'll see.
Gus Applequist: All right, just gonna position that there and, Well, welcome to Ask a Kansan.
Steve Hawley: Thank you.
Gus Applequist: Thanks for being here.
Steve Hawley: Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.
Gus Applequist: We, we have a tradition of having our, our interviewees introduce themselves, so would you please do that for our audience?
Steve Hawley: Okay. Uh, well, I'm Steve Hawley. Uh, grew up in Salina. I went to KU. always wanted to be an astronomer, ended up working for NASA.
Sydney Collins: So it worked out.
Steve Hawley: So it worked out.
Gus Applequist: That's, that's somehow understating things quite dramatically, but, uh, but that's a great l- lead off. Um, you know, I grew up, you know, in Salina, going past the exits on the interstate, seeing your name associated with Salina, and I always imagined that you were interested in, in space flight and being a, being an astronaut.
But, but as I've done my research, I've, I realized [00:04:00] that no, y- like you just said, you wanted to be an as- astronomer first.
Steve Hawley: Um- Exactly, yes.
Third Grade Astronomy Spark
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Gus Applequist: And, and so how did you discover that passion as a kid?
Steve Hawley: it's so long ago, it's a little hard to remember the details, but it was in third grade, and we had a unit in our class about science.
Sydney Collins: Hm.
Steve Hawley: And probably a week was spent talking about astronomy. And in those days, astronomy in grade school was probably the sun and the solar system.
But I still found it really kind of interesting, and I started going to the library and reading books about astronomy and astronomers. And one thing struck me as really interesting was that astronomers were a little bit different in the sense that they actually didn't do experiments the way a chemist or a physicist would. Um, you can't set up an experiment, get a result, look at the result, change the experiment, get a different result. And I thought, "These guys figure stuff out just by looking and being [00:05:00] clever."
And I thought, "That sounds like a lot of fun." So in third grade, I decided that's what I was gonna do. And in fifth grade, Al Shepard launched, becoming the first American in space, and that was obviously my first introduction to the concept of people flying in space.
And I thought, based on my reading, that the atmosphere is kind of a problem for astronomers. It's not transparent to all wavelengths of light. It smears out your image you're trying to observe. And it occurred to me that if we put a telescope in space, that would make a lot of sense. And, uh, turns out that that was actually a really good idea, because a famous astronomer wrote a paper on it five years before I was born. So I don't get credit for having thought of it. but I knew from the beginning that all of the astronauts were pilots. Test pilots, and I, I didn't wanna do that. So I thought, "Well, okay, [00:06:00] if we're putting people in space, maybe one day we'd put an astronomer in space who could use a telescope in space." And I thought, "Okay, well, maybe one day that would be something I could do."
Gus Applequist: Boy, that was pretty clairvoyant.
Sydney Collins: Very much so.
Steve Hawley: Although as it turns out, um- Working with telescopes in space was a little different in real life than I had imagined it when I was in grade school.
Gus Applequist: And the, this, I, I assume you're sort of referencing the story of Hubble there.
Steve Hawley: Correct.
Gus Applequist: So, I, obviously, we're gonna, we're gonna get to space.
Kansas Roots and KU Path
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Gus Applequist: But, but first, um, you've described Salina as your hometown, but you were born in Ottawa, I read. right. Because we're focused on, on Kansas, um, I, I'm just curious, how did, how do you think your time here in Salina and later at KU in Lawrence, how did that prepare you for your career both as an astronomer and an astronaut?
Steve Hawley: Well, I think for sure, uh, I was lucky 'cause at Salina, it was Salina High back then, now it's Salina Central. [00:07:00] Um, I had several really good teachers.
And they encouraged me and challenged me, frankly, um, 'cause some of the classes were pretty easy, and so they made it, made sure that wasn't the case. Uh, KU had an astronomy major.
Uh, and I had already decided, you know, that's what I wanted to do. I had a, say an energetic discussion with my dad about that. Um, he was in favor of my being an astronomer if I wanted to, but he thought the best way to get there was through a small liberal arts college.
Sydney Collins: Oh.
Steve Hawley: He thought KU would be big and I'd get lost- in the, you know, tens of thousands of other students.
Sydney Collins: The normal parent speech to go to college.
Steve Hawley: And he was right to be worried about that- 'cause I was introverted in high school and, um, but, in the end, I, I told him I wanted to ma- I would go somewhere where I could major in astronomy.
And that was KU. K State didn't have a major in astronomy. so it seemed like the natural [00:08:00] progression. Uh, although interestingly enough, the, um, after my freshman year, the astronomer they had on the faculty retired.
Gus Applequist: Oh.
Steve Hawley: Oh, no. And so now suddenly I'm at KU majoring in astronomy, and we may not have a major anymore.
Sydney Collins: Oh, shoot.
Steve Hawley: So we organized, some of us, a, a friend of mine also graduated Salina High and wanted to be an astronomer, so we organized a little protest group and- got the college to hire another astronomer and, and the major persisted, and I was able to actually get a major in, a degree in astronomy and physics.
Gus Applequist: Something about a student protest seems so KU to me. Um- So bravo.
Steve Hawley: By today's standards- it wasn't much, but- it was enough to, uh... I, I guess they felt, I don't remember the details anymore, but I guess they felt if we had f- four or five or six students- that were really passionate about this major, maybe it's something we should continue.
Sydney Collins: Keep going,
From Telescopes to NASA Offer
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Gus Applequist: So l- late in your college career, you [00:09:00] began, uh, doing these summer, uh, research assistantships- I guess you'd call them, at the US Naval Observatory in DC and then the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia. So I'm curious, what was it like to go from your backyard telescope to working with some of our nation's most important telescopes in just a matter of a few years?
Steve Hawley: it was, um, great, and it was the beginning of a progression that continued, uh, into my graduate school and postdoc. By the time I was a postdoc, I was working with the fourth-largest telescope in the world- and so that was really, really an honor, frankly, 'cause telescope time is precious and- and, uh, not everybody gets to use it. And- and so, that played into something later at which you may be gonna ask me about, but, um, I'll mention it here. We can get into more detail if you like. But, um, so I was now a, you know, [00:10:00] at some point after grad school I was a postdoc, and it was great, and I was doing research that was fun and, and pushing it.
And frankly, uh, the telescope we had in, in South America where I was a postdoc, you know, it was the first time we had big telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere- so it was a unique opportunity. And then suddenly NASA offers me a job, and it's not being an astronomer. You know, when they offered it to me, and it's a, lot of stories we could discuss there, but um, I said yes immediately without having really thought through. You know, I just spent 20-some years training for the job I've got now.
I'm in a great position- ...with a, a real nice future in research and astronomy.
And I just-
Gus Applequist: Threw it all away
Steve Hawley: Suddenly threw it all away. And, uh, to make matters worse, the job I was hired into [00:11:00] was a two-year job.
And there's a reason for that, which I'd be happy to discuss if you want. But, um, so what I was really being hired to do was be an astronaut candidate.
Sydney Collins: Oh.
Steve Hawley: And that meant that I and my colleagues were basically going to have to demonstrate proficiency in the skills that NASA was looking for, and we had two years to do it, and if we couldn't do it, then my-
Sydney Collins: You're out
Steve Hawley: my job goes away. And part of that was because in 1967, NASA hired some scientists and engineers to be astronauts. First thing they did was send them to pilot training. But several of them quit. They didn't like it. Maybe they didn't like flying, but they didn't like it, and so to avoid that problem in the future, now that they're picking scientists and engineers again, they set up this system where, you know, if, if I'm not happy, [00:12:00] I can leave.
If they're not happy, I can leave. And, uh, but nobody gets fired, nobody resigns. And so it was actually kind of a, a gutsy move that I had not really thought deeply about until it happened, and then I thought about it. At that point, though, I felt like this is your basic once in a lifetime opportunity, and I gotta try for it. And I, and I tell kids when I get a chance to talk to them, "You know, sometimes to get what you want, you gotta take a risk."
Yep.
And I thought I was taking a risk, but I also thought it was worth it to have a chance to, to do this and, and maybe be part of something special.
Applying to Be an Astronaut
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Sydney Collins: How did NASA find you?
Steve Hawley: Um, I kind of found them.
Sydney Collins: Okay.
Steve Hawley: so, The, the story is as follows. I was in grad school-
Sydney Collins: Taking notes.
Steve Hawley: Uh, and I was finishing my dissertation. This was in the fall of [00:13:00] 1976, and I was planning to complete my dissertation and do my defense in August of '77, which meant that in the fall of '76, I needed to start looking for a job.
Once I, once I graduated, you know, I needed somewhere to go and, and so in those days the way that worked is that, institutions who were looking for new PhDs in astronomy would send out notices to degree-granting institutions. Okay. And they would say, "Hey, we've got a position here for an astronomer with these interests and with these, uh, capabilities." Uh, sometimes they'd be national labs, sometimes they'd be observatories, many times they'd be universities.
And the way it worked was the letters would come into the department office, and the secretary would take them and post them on a bulletin board, physical bulletin board. And so every day or two I would [00:14:00] wander down to the bulletin board and look to see what jobs there might be that, you know, to which I could apply.
One of them I remember for sure was K-State. They were looking for a, somebody with a degree in- ... astrophysics. I, I actually did apply- and they turned me down. But, uh, So there were a couple other places I applied and, and was turned down. Um, th- that, you know, it's still early in the process. I wasn't panicking yet.
but one day there was a letter on the bulletin board that I hadn't seen before, and on the top it said NASA And I thought, "NASA's hiring astronomers?" And I started reading it, and they weren't really hiring astronomers. They were hiring this new thing they called a mission specialist astronaut. And they were still hiring pilot astronauts, and you-
you know, the qualifications were basically the same as John Glenn had. But suddenly they were now [00:15:00] looking for scientists and engineers who could be astronauts and fly this new thing called the space shuttle. And the mission specialists were the guys that would do the experiments, do the space walks, launch telescopes, service telescopes, and I thought, "Wow." And I read the qualifications they were requesting, and I, and I had them. Of course, you know, 100,000 other people did, too. Uh, I thought, "Well, I gotta try this." I mean, I hadn't seriously thought about applying to be an astronaut. I had thought, as I said, maybe one day- ...you know, they would want an astronomer to go use a telescope in space. So I filled out an application, sent it in. I figured there's no chance that I would ever get picked, but it was important to me as I thought ahead, and, you know, if any of this came true and there were really people putting telescopes in space and doing these other things, would I feel [00:16:00] terrible if I thought, "I wonder if I could have done that if I had only tried?"
Sydney Collins: Hmm.
Steve Hawley: And so I think being turned down would have been okay. But to not try was not okay. And that's another lesson that I've shared with, with kids I've talked to over the years is that, you know, not trying can be worse than trying and- being declined. Uh, but anyway, so I, I submitted the application, figured nothing would ever happen. In the summer of, let's see, that would have been '77, some guy in a suit showed up on campus. And, and where I was at grad school, UC Santa Cruz, it was very casual.
Sydney Collins: Hmm.
Steve Hawley: And so this guy stood out like a sore thumb. He was the only one within miles who wore a suit, but he was from the OPM and he was doing a background investigation on me. And I thought, "Okay, well, maybe that means I'm still in the running," which struck me as incredibly unbelievable. [00:17:00] I did finally get a postdoc position, so I had a job after graduation. That was in South America at an observatory called the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, run by the same outfit that runs Kitt Peak in Arizona. And so, okay, that's great. Um, in fact, one of my best friends through grad school also got a job there, so we were going down together and, and this is a tremendous research opportunity. Looking forward to it. and my report date, I think, was October 1st. And in August, I read that NASA was gonna start interviews for these new space shuttle astronaut positions. And to show you how naive I was- I thought, "Well, it's probably a long shot, but if they were thinking of interviewing me and I'm in South America, they may say, 'Ah, the heck with it.'" You know, "We'll get somebody that's [00:18:00] closer and cheaper," 'cause they probably had all the applications they needed. So I decided to write them a letter, and I did, and I wrote them a letter and I said, "Hey, look, not meaning to be-"
Sydney Collins: Change of address
Steve Hawley: "presumptuous, but-"
Sydney Collins: Change your address ... "
Steve Hawley: if you were thinking of interviewing me, maybe it would make sense to do that before I went off to South America." And about two weeks later, I got a phone call Saying, "Hey, can you come to Houston for physical and interviews and-
evaluation?" And this was the last week I was supposed to be in the States.
Oh my gosh.
And so this is gonna be incredibly inconvenient, but I said, sure. No problem."
Sydney Collins: I mean, at least it's kind of on the way a
Steve Hawley: little bit. a little bit. From California, From California. Um, so-
Sydney Collins: Stop in Houston and go to Oregon ...
Steve Hawley: so that's how I ended up getting an interview, and I still didn't expect to be picked, but I, what did think when I applied, you know, [00:19:00] the best possible outcome probably would be to get an all-expenses-paid trip to the Johnson Space Center-
Sydney Collins: Oh yeah,
Steve Hawley: where I could meet some astronauts, I could see mission control, you know.
Sydney Collins: Live a little.
Steve Hawley: That would be awesome if I got a chance- to do that. So this was gonna be great, you know, so I get to, I'm gonna get, actually get to go to Houston and, and see this and, and if that's as far as I get, then that's fine 'cause I got a job and I got to see the Space Center.
Facing the Risk of Launch
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Gus Applequist: At what point did you, and maybe you, maybe you never did this, but I always imagined that if, if I was becoming an astronaut, at some point I have to confront the fact that I'm gonna be strapping myself to essentially a huge bomb.
Steve Hawley: Right.
Gus Applequist: Um, When, when did it become real for you?
Steve Hawley: Um, probably after I got the interview.
Because then I thought, "Okay, well maybe there's a non-zero chance."
And, and I think that's when you wrestle with, okay, let me consider all of the aspects of the job, you know? [00:20:00] Yeah it's gonna be fun, it's gonna be exciting, I might be able to help, you know, push astronomy forward, but you could also get killed.
And, you know, I, I've told people over the years, I mean, I think you have to that's when you start worrying about it. People- ask me, "Well, you know, did you really get scared, you know, before your first flight?" Well, I dealt with that before I even said yes.
Um, I knew it was risky, but I thought it was worth the risk.
Discovery Scrubs and Pad Abort
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Gus Applequist: So fast-forward six-ish years, it's 1984. You're sitting atop Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery for its maiden flight. And, um, I've heard you tell this story once before when you were speaking in Salina, um, about being the most scrubbed astronaut.
Steve Hawley: Still true.
Gus Applequist: Okay. D- could you, could you share, uh, the story of your, your late, uh, your last second scrub? Sure.
Steve Hawley: Um-
Sydney Collins: Can we define what a scrub
Gus Applequist: is? Oh, Sure.
Steve Hawley: Sorry. Um, actually-
Sydney Collins: Non-space person here. [00:21:00]
Steve Hawley: Fair enough. Um, the, there's actually two concepts-
Sydney Collins: Okay ...
Steve Hawley: that are appropriate. One is a slip. Hmm. The other's a scrub. And NASA has a different definition for each of those than I do. But as far as NASA's concerned, a slip is if the launch date changes as, after it's formally manifested.
Sydney Collins: Hmm. Okay.
Steve Hawley: A scrub, as far as NASA's concerned, is once they start filling the tank for launch, and then you don't launch, that's a scrub.
Sydney Collins: Oh, okay.
Steve Hawley: Now for me, a slip was if I'm in Florida for my launch, and we, uh, postpone for some reason, weather or- some technical issue before we get on board, then that's a slip in my counting. And a scrub, you know, I have to be on board, strapped in-
Sydney Collins: ready to go ...
Steve Hawley: ready to go-
Sydney Collins: And they say, "Never mind."
Steve Hawley: And then if they don't launch, that's a s- in my mind, that's a scrub.
So, you know, there [00:22:00] has been some confusion among- nerdy people that keep track of these things, that when I say, you know, how many scrubs or, or- uh, I've had, they say, "Well, the record is different." And I say, "Well, 'cause NASA has a different definition."
Under NASA's definition, I've got more scrubs. Um, so okay. This is June 25, I think, of 1984. The first launch attempt, so we're strapped in, hatch is closed, cr- closeout crew left. We're counting down. There's one... Th- there are two planned holds once the crew gets on board. One's at 20 minutes, and one's at nine minutes. Um, and so at 20 minutes, we're holding nor- as normal, and then when you come out of the hold and start counting again, the first thing that the commander does is he reaches up, grabs the switch for the backup flight computer, and takes it to run. [00:23:00] And on the 25th, it did not go to run, and so we scrubbed. The, the KSC guys did a great job. They changed out the computer overnight. We were ready to go the next day. So we count down again, get to 20 minutes, come out of the hold, commander takes the switch to run, computer goes to run. So life is good.
We count down to nine minutes, and now we're holding as planned. When you come out of the nine-minute hold, there are h- four or five places you can hold before T-0. You don't plan to, but if you need to for some reason, you, let's say the weather suddenly got bad or you got a technical issue you need to work, you can do it. The last one's at 31 seconds. Once you get past 31 seconds, you can't hold. You either launch or you, uh-
Or you
don't ... go back to T-minus 20 minutes.
So on this day we're counting down. Things are looking good. We pass the, the unplanned hold points until we get [00:24:00] inside T-minus 31 seconds, and our commander gets on the intercom, and he says, "Well, gang, we're going now unless something really bad happens." And so we count down to 10 seconds, and we hear the call from the control center. They say, "GLS is go for main engine start." At seven seconds we hear the start of the main engines, the sh- shuttle starts to vibrate, and then at four seconds, the engines quit, and the sound we hear is a master alarm in the cockpit. And what had happened was that they had started and then shut down on the pad. And the previous time that had happened was Gemini 6, so it'd been a while since anybody had been through that. It, it's interesting actually, because just by chance in our training for the last month before the launch attempt, when we were trying, training for ascent, the simulator was having [00:25:00] difficulty with the main engine model, and about once every session we'd get a pad abort. Hmm. And there are some immediate action steps the crew has to take in that case, and we had practiced those for a month before the actual abort. Um, so we knew what to do, and it was pretty instinctive. And there's about maybe 30 to 60 seconds worth of stuff that we were doing, and then the ground called and said, um, "Hey, we want you to push the shu- main engine push buttons 'cause we think maybe one of the engines is still running." Uh, we were pretty sure that wasn't true, but, uh, we did as instructed. And now we're sitting here listening as the, the ground crew goes through their steps to recycle and make sure everything is secure. after a while, we hear some conversation about fire, and what had happened [00:26:00] was-
Sydney Collins: Why is this not a movie?
Steve Hawley: when the engines shut down, they were still leaking a little hydrogen, and the hydrogen caught fire, and hydrogen burns without a visible flame. So there was fire, but until the orbiter caught on fire, nobody could see it. And there's some fabric gap fillers between the tile, and that's what eventually, uh, started to show flame and, and, so, you know, just when we thought it was getting better.
Gus Applequist: So obviously that, uh, that probably taste- tested all of your nerves and patience and, uh, and, and asking that question, like, "Am I really committed to this?"
Steve Hawley: Well, I, my, I re- my honest first thought when it happened was, "This is not supposed to happen." I mean, we trained for lots of-
of problems, and we tried to play out all the what ifs, but this was not one that, you know, we had given a lot of thought to.
That what happens if you shut down on the pad.
Gus Applequist: [00:27:00] But so your- Well ... your first mission, other than that went well, you launched a, a satellite into orbit, I believe. Or-
Steve Hawley: Three, actually.
Gus Applequist: Three, wow.
Sydney Collins: Oh my gosh.
Gus Applequist: Um, and then, I mean, then you just kind of started going, going up more frequently.
Sydney Collins: For funsies.
Gus Applequist: And so you flew on so many important missions during your career.
Deploying Hubble in Space
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Gus Applequist: Two of your missions involved the Hubble Space Telescope, STS-31 and STS-82. I remember watching the IMAX film Destiny in Space- Ah ... at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, which documents the moment you operated Discovery's Canada arm to remove and release Hubble from the payload bay. Um, and to this day, I, I just want to say I'm so proud of you, a fellow Salinan and Kansan- for playing such an important role in that mission and in, and in history. Um, the image of you and future NASA administrator Charlie Bolden looking out the aft windows of Discovery is just, like, seared into my brain.
It always has been. I remember, like, when, when it, when they said your name, Steve Hawley, I was like, you know, "That's our guy."
Steve Hawley: Well, it was an honor to be [00:28:00] part of it, for sure.
Gus Applequist: To the, to the US government, that telescope on the end of the Canada arm was, like, a billion-dollar check just waving out there. Um, but to you as an astronomer, what did it mean to have Hubble at the end of that arm and to be the person who would actually let it go?
Steve Hawley: I mean, at the time, I mean, I was thinking back- Uh, I had, of course, a chance to think about it even before we launched, but now we're here, the telescope's here, we're about to release it. Think back to the original idea that Professor Lyman Spitzer had in 1946 when he wrote the paper about having the big telescope in space, and what it took to get from that point to where I was at that moment. And I, I share that with my, my students and with my astronomy major students, um, because it tells a story of, you know, persistence and commitment and [00:29:00] vision. The astronomy community ... I mean, Hubble was always gonna be expensive.
And the astronomy budget is limited, and what it took was a bunch of scientists, astronomers, who saw the potential and what it would do for the discipline, even if necess- it took maybe some money away from their specific project. But they were willing to say, "Okay, this is more important," you know, putting the money into a big facility that everybody can use. And, and that allowed, frankly, that allowed, uh, advocacy with Congress that allowed Congress to agree to fund it.
And that, that's actually been the case actually for a long time.
The astronomy community's been very good about coming together around a handful of really important, uh, projects, and then they can go to Congress and say, "Hey, the whole community is behind these," as opposed to, you know, factions that are [00:30:00] sort of fighting amongst themselves for, for money. so then Congress issued money. Hubble became official. The development took many years. The testing took many years. Of course, the Challenger accident happened in there, uh, and so there was a delay resulting from that. Um, so anyway, I was, remember thinking of all of the people and all of the hard work and all the dedication that they'd put in to give me the chance to actually release it, and and frankly, I, I was thinking about how Hubble would improve our knowledge of the universe, and I was way too conservative. It has done so much more than-
than I imagined. And, and I think, too, that, when you're in the moment and you're focused, you know, I w- I wasn't focused on how Hubble is gonna d- gonna finally peg down the age of the universe. [00:31:00] I was focused on, I need to make sure it's in the right position. I need to make sure the power's on.
I need to make sure I've got the hand controller ready to do the release. You know, I was focused on the technical issues of the deployment. And it, it was probably, you know, over time, I mean, years, that I had a chance to really think about what it has done. Um, I was part of a, it is true I was part of a collaboration when I was back at KU that got to use Hubble.
And what I was gonna say is I think that makes me the only person that's ever worked on it in space and then used it for research.
So I feel really, you know, sort of a special bond with the telescope- 'cause we've been through a bunch together. just to kind of put a bow around it, the lifetime of the telescope when we launched it was 15 years. Hmm. And, you know, that was, you know, 36 years ago. And it's still, you know, a [00:32:00] state-of-the-art instrument. You know, h- servicing was critical-
to making that so. Um, servicing was critical to making it-
Gus Applequist: Work in the first place ...
Steve Hawley: work in the first place- Oh, because of the aberration.
Um, which made me real nervous when we launched James Webb because it's not serviceable, and a whole bunch of stuff had to happen automatically.
Gus Applequist: In a much higher orbit. And so.
Steve Hawley: But it did, so, you know- Hmm ... good on them. But I was really scared.
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Servicing Hubble and Aging Signs
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Gus Applequist: So jumping [00:33:00] forward, well, I guess backward from James Webb, but forward from that first or the second flight that you were on to STS-82, when you were part of the second servicing mission, I'm, I'm curious, so you, you recaptured it.
Steve Hawley: Hmm.
Gus Applequist: W- was there signs of age, uh-
and so was it a different telescope than the one you put up there?
Steve Hawley: I- in some ways, you know, I remember as we were approaching the telescope, it started out looking kind of like a faint star, and then it started looking like a brighter star, and then it started looking like a little tiny telescope. And as we got close to it, I could see, uh, what I considered to be the effects of being in space for, I think maybe it would've been seven years back then. There were places on the, particularly the handrails, which are yellow
uh, that's actually so the EVA guys can know what's legal to grab.
If it's yellow, it's okay. But they looked, uh, scorched.
Sydney Collins: Really?
Steve Hawley: And some of [00:34:00] the m- the silver insulation was peeling. And in fact, there was a NASA worm on the top end of Hubble, and part of that had peeled up. Oh, worm. Uh, so it looked, I thought it looked very weathered.
Gus Applequist: That's the logo. The worm logo. It- it's like, it kind of the '70s era.
Um-
Steve Hawley: I n- I never liked it anyway, so
Gus Applequist: We'll show you a picture later.
Sydney Collins: I'm learning so much today.
Gus Applequist: We'll put it on screen so you can see.
Steve Hawley: I never liked the worm.
Gus Applequist: It's not the best logo.
Steve Hawley: This is the meatball.
Gus Applequist: Meatball, meatball, all the way.
Steve Hawley: so it-
Sydney Collins: I have more questions now about logos.
but it, but it looked
Steve Hawley: definitely weathered, I thought.
Gus Applequist: Wow. It's, it's so cool that you were able to put it up there and then visit it, um, and, and that it's still up there working. And I can't imagine if it was that deteriorated in, in those seven years, what it must be like now, um-
and the fact that it's still-
Steve Hawley: And it's been, well, 2009 was the last servicing mission-
Gus Applequist: Oh, that's, I- Oh, wow
Steve Hawley: so it's been that long since anybody's seen it.
Gus Applequist: Wow.
Keeping Hubble Alive Long Term
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Steve Hawley: Um, you know, the performance, well, I was gonna say the pro- performance is, you know, unaffected. That's not true. It's, uh, [00:35:00] that we've seen some degradation.
The solar array, uh, output is degraded a bit. The instrumentation isn't quite as, uh, capable as it used to be, and that's just the effect of-
being in that environment for, for, so many years. But the, the guys at the, Hubble Control Center have done a remarkable job at making the best of what they've got. Uh, one example is, um, Hubble had, well, has six gyros, and-
Sydney Collins: I know what those are.
Steve Hawley: Good job, Susie. And- There was a generic problem in manufacturing them, so we were having gyro failures a lot.
And in 1999, we actually moved up a Hubble servicing mission because, uh, I think three gyros had failed, and we only had three, and that wasn't enough to do science.
Um, [00:36:00] today we have two. One's, uh, turned off. It's in reserve in case we need it. And we're operating on one gyro, which I thought was never gonna be possible. But again, people figured out, "Okay, if I've got one gyro, what can I do-
to help point HST?" And they figured out how to do it. They use the Earth's magnetic field- uh, and magnetic torquers on board Hubble. Um, it's really remarkable how they have managed to really coax, you know, more science out of it than I think- we would've ever thought possible.
Was Servicing Always the Plan
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Sydney Collins: when you initially put, um, the telescope up in space, was it always the plan for you to go back and service it?
Steve Hawley: Yes. Well, when we put it there, the plan was, yes, to do that. There was a time in the past when the idea was we would put it in orbit, and then every five years we'd go get it and bring it home- and do the servicing and upgrades on the ground, and then relaunch it.
Gus Applequist: [00:37:00] Wow. Oh.
Steve Hawley: That-
Gus Applequist: Then you burn a mission each time.
Steve Hawley: And you put the telescope at greater risk-
of something happening. So that was quickly abandoned, I think, and then they, they said, "Well, we'll just service it on orbit," like that's easy. We had to figure out how to do that.
Sydney Collins: My, uh, was it always the intention for you specifically to go up, go back up and, and service it? Or was it a-
Management Over Missions
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Steve Hawley: Not when I launched it, no.
Sydney Collins: Not when you launched it?
Steve Hawley: In fact, I thought I would I would never fly again. I thought that was gonna be my last mission. Um, and part of that was because my goal was to stay with NASA until I retired. And that would mean, at some point, giving up flying in order- to take more responsible management jobs. And I was given a responsible management job after the Hubble mission. I was the associate director of NASA Ames.
Oh, wow.
And, so a- and I ended up after two years there coming back to JSC in a management job. so I [00:38:00] never expected to fly again. And, uh, it isn't that I didn't want to, but I didn't think it was appropriate.
I thought people that took the management positions-
should do their job and not decide to go fly and just, you know. Um, but-
Sydney Collins: Might take a sabbatical
to space.
Back to Space Again
---
Gus Applequist: but I was offered the job in, I guess it was, like, February of '96. And despite the fact that I thought this was totally inappropriate, I said, "Let me think about it." And I thought about it overnight and, and, uh, said, I gotta do this." So.
Sydney Collins: I like that it was just an overnight thought.
For me, I think I'd probably- take a week, be like, "Do I wanna risk my life again, and go up in a bomb and, and go up into space again?" But no, overnight, okay.
Steve Hawley: I I think it was the case, that the Hubble missions were probably th- at least among the most desired, if not the most desired- flight assignments in the astronaut office.
Everybody [00:39:00] wanted to get to do a Hubble mission. And I got to do two, so-
I felt like I got more than my share.
Gus Applequist: And it wasn't the only telescope that you're involved in. Could you share- Right ... a little bit about your last mission in Chandra?
Chandra and Great Observatories
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Steve Hawley: That was another one where... uh, of course, Chandra and Hubble were part of NASA's Great Observatories program.
Gus Applequist: Hm.
Steve Hawley: Um, and that was a program- Probably in the mid-'70s, uh, to launch four major observatories into space that would cover the whole electromagnetic spectrum- Oh ... except radio, I guess. But radio gets to the ground, so- it's not a problem. So we had the, uh, uh, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which actually f- uh, was launched about a year after Hubble. Hmm. Um, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and then the Spitzer Infrared Telescope, which was launched on an expendable. I got to do [00:40:00] Chandra, so I got to do two of the four great observatories. Actually, the only two that are still working. I'm sure that's a coincidence. so- Back to your superior
Gus Applequist: intellect.
I'm not so sure. You need a Kansan
Sydney Collins: on these
Steve Hawley: kinds of projects. So I s- so this was another one where, you know, I had a management job.
And my boss called me into his office, and he said that, that, "I want you to fly the Chandra mission."
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Steve Hawley: And I said I didn't want to. I'm not sure how many people ever told him that-
that they didn't want to fly this mission. Uh, but I, I said, look, you know, I got, I, I hadn't even been back a year from STS-82, and I thought I should do the job that I was appointed to do. And he was persistent. He was also my boss. And in the end, I said, well, if that's what he thinks I should do, then that's what I'll do, and that's how I got on, on the crew.
Sydney Collins: Oh, darn. Gotta go to space again.
Steve Hawley: Gotta go to space.
Last Landing Reflections
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Gus Applequist: Was it hard to come home that last time?
Steve Hawley: Um-
Gus Applequist: I mean, you've had, like, three last times, haven't you?
Steve Hawley: No, not really. I, [00:41:00] 'cause I, exactly, 'cause I think I had, you know, two other last times- that I thought, you know, this is it, and it wasn't. I was pretty sure the Chandra mission was- Hmm
gonna be my last time. Uh, we didn't have any more great ob- well, we did have the, the, the Spitzer, but that was already gonna fly on a Delta, so I didn't wanna go on that one.
Gus Applequist: ... when, when you're, when you're coming back to Earth on the space shuttle orbiter, um, do you have, do you feel like you, like you dodged a bullet sort of?
Or, or is there just a joy in returning? Or what was, what were your feelings like?
Steve Hawley: I, I think, you know, in my case, we were lucky because... Well, maybe not lucky. What I always focused on was, did we do our mission?
And we're r- they want- we're gonna come home. Did we get everything done? Hmm.
Did we do it properly? Uh, and if we could say yes to that, then, you know, good, I'm ready to go home, 'cause we did-
Gus Applequist: Hmm ...
Steve Hawley: what we were sent to [00:42:00] do.
Sydney Collins: Such a good employee,
Gus Applequist: Dan. I was gonna say, that's, that's a company man right there. No.
Science From Orbit
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Gus Applequist: most astronomers encounter, uh, these space telescopes just through the data they return.
Um, how do your experiences in space with Hubble and Chandra shape the way that you view the science they brought?
Steve Hawley: Uh, well, a a couple of thing. One is, that, that there are more, helpful than I thought they would be in terms of answering some of the fundamental questions. And of course, every time you answer a fundamental question, you find two more fundamental questions. And so as somebody once said, "We're still confused. We're just confused at a greater level of significance." so, so I think all of the great observatories did a lot more than we had hoped they'd be able to do.
Hubble Tension Explained
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Steve Hawley: one, one example of how Hubble helped us was, um, when we launched it, as we didn't know the [00:43:00] age of the universe to a factor of two. And maybe today that's hard to believe, but, but, one of the key projects before Hubble was launched was to determine the age of the universe, uh, to a uncertainty of 20%. And that was done in the mid-'90s, and that was really important. Now today, with the help not only of, of Hubble, but of other space assets, um, we have a slightly different value depending on how you calculate the, age of the universe. And that turns out to be an important problem because if you do the age of the universe from two completely separate approaches and you get the same answer, hey, you might have got it right. And we've got almost the same answer.
Gus Applequist: Hm.
Steve Hawley: But not exactly the same [00:44:00] answer. And the discrepancy is larger than the quoted uncertainties of the different techniques.
Gus Applequist: Uh-oh.
Steve Hawley: And that actually has a name now. They call it the Hubble Tension.
Gus Applequist: Hm.
Steve Hawley: And we're going, okay, well these should agree better than they do, and we've got confidence in each of the techniques. They don't agree, so what's going on? So there's, you know, people are talking about, well, is there some new physics that we-
Sydney Collins: Hm
Steve Hawley: don't understand, or is it some systematic error in one of the techniques? So, um, you know, every time we think we make an advance, which we d- you know, it significantly is an advance, we find there's still more to do.
Gus Applequist: Hm.
Steve Hawley: And, um, by that way we get closer to the truth, I think.
Gus Applequist: So 13.7 billion years is w- what, what, you know, what's the gap there?
What, what's the two numbers?
Steve Hawley: so I, I think of it, um, in terms of the Hubble constant. So 13.7 [00:45:00] years corresponds to 13.7 billion years for the age of the universe. But there are other techniques, totally different than the technique used by Hubble, which says it's 68 kilometers per second per megaparsec.
So it's only a difference of, you know, four or five kilometers per second per megaparsec, but it's significant because the 68 is plus or minus one, the 72 is plus or minus one.
Gus Applequist: Getting all this
Steve Hawley: in there. So they don't overlap.
Sydney Collins: My physics teacher was also the high school soccer coach- ... the chemistry teacher, the bus driver, so like granted, Dr.
Schmidt is, was a great teacher, but I'm struggling here.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy
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Steve Hawley: So I, I mean, I guess the bottom line is- you know, we probably answered all of the questions we had when we launched the telescopes.
But now we've got, you know, at least as many questions that we're trying to answer and, and things like Webb and Nancy [00:46:00] Roman-
will maybe the new instruments that help, you know, it's... I was, I was, I was talking to a group a couple weeks ago about the questions that, that I had when we launched Hubble. You know, how old is the universe? Are there really black holes? what's the nature of the missing matter?
Sydney Collins: Still
is And one of them was dark energy, what the hell is that? And then I told them boy, where we stood today in terms of, of understanding that, and, you know, th- we, through Hubble we know the age of the universe, sort of.
Steve Hawley: Uh, are there black holes? Yes. Uh, it's not missing matter- It's dark matter ... Uh, we only thought it was missing 'cause we couldn't see it. And we still don't know what dark energy is, but it makes up 70% of the universe. With dark matter, they make up 95% of the universe, so basically we know nothing about what makes up the universe.
Gus Applequist: Isn't that [00:47:00] crazy?
Steve Hawley: And we consider that progress.
Gus Applequist: Well, you, you, you just keep working on it, right? right?
Steve Hawley: Job security for-
Sydney Collins: Job security. ...
Steve Hawley: next generation of astronomers.
Sydney Collins: Oh.
Gus Applequist: When you, um, were working at NASA and, you know, maybe right after you had been involved with, with getting Hubble up into orbit, um, did you ever imagine that there'd be s- I mean, obviously these space telescopes were so exciting and new and, and offered so much to the astronomy community. B- and, and right now we're obviously benefiting from early results from James Webb and, and there's others as well.
But, um, but there's so many new telescopes coming online right now on Earth, in Chile and other places. Did you sort of think that, that space telescopes would replace terrestrial ones, or-
Ground vs Space Telescopes
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Steve Hawley: Uh, if you go back to the '70s, um, I w- I would argue that part of the reason that we developed Hubble was because we thought we had done as well as we could [00:48:00] do from the ground.
You know, the Palomar 200-inch was the biggest telescope in the world that worked. The Russians had a six-meter telescope, but it never, never was worth much. It was at a bad site. The problem is when you build huge mirrors like that, they deform pretty easily under their own weight. It's hard to support it and keep a, a good figure, uh, on your mirror. And so I think, you know, when I was finishing my grad school work You know, we needed to go to space in order to make progress, 'cause we had done as well as we could do from the ground. Turned out, that point of view didn't last very long. And in fact, it was my advisor working with a, a physicist from Berkeley, Jerry Nelson, that began, to think about building mirrors, not out of one big hunk of glass, but of a whole bunch of small hexagonal segments.
if you do that, then the [00:49:00] weight's reduced tremendously. You can build huge mirrors out of these segments. Now, the trick is you gotta get each of the segments to work with the other segments to perform as a monolithic mirror, and what made that possible was microcomputers. So when computer technology came along and we had pretty fast, capable microcomputers, suddenly we could build 10-meter telescopes on the ground. That was remarkable. I didn't see that coming. But the good news is, you know, you don't say, "Well, you know, didn't really need to develop Hubble then, did you?" No. The fact that Hubble would work together with these ground-based telescopes, Hubble has tremendous resolution, and these big telescopes have tremendous light-gathering power.
Hubble Deep Field Shock
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Steve Hawley: And so one of the ways it works is if you heard of the Hubble Deep Field- which, uh, was a 10-day exposure [00:50:00] taken, uh, in the mid-'90s, I don't remember exactly when it was, and it was taken in a region of the sky near the handle of the Big Dipper where we were away from the plane of the Milky Way and there were no galaxy clusters. And, uh, it was, uh, Bob Williams, who's the director of the Space Telescope Institute, devoted his director's discretionary time- to taking a deep image of this particular spot in the sky where far as we knew, nothing was there.
Gus Applequist: And this is, this is about the same size if you hold a penny out. Is this- Smaller, I would say.
Small-
like the, uh, the, I, what I was always was told the, the same size as, as Lincoln's eye. It's that small-
Steve Hawley: Okay, that could be,
Gus Applequist: of a area-
in space. Sorry, please continue.
Steve Hawley: And I don't remember now what I thought we would see. But what we saw was an image that had something like 1,200 objects in it. [00:51:00] Almost all of them were galaxies. And suddenly the universe is full of galaxies. So one of the ways that's been very helpful is that this image, if you go look at it sometime, it's kind of cool, and, and look for the, the red, uh, ratty looking images in the deep field because those are galaxies. And the fact that they're red says they're highly red shifted, which says-
Gus Applequist: They're close to the beginning
Steve Hawley: they're close to the beginning. And so the way this works is you use the Hubble Deep Field to identify these guys. Then you take a big eight or 10 meter telescope on the ground, and you just- uh, get a spectrum, which, you know, Hubble probably can't do 'cause they're too faint. And then that started us down this road of discovering there are galaxies that formed way earlier than we can understand.
We, you know, how do, how do you [00:52:00] form a galaxy, you know, a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang? I don't know, but they seem to be there. How do you make super massive black holes 200 million years after the Big Bang? I don't know, but they're there.
Sydney Collins: So this is where I'm at.
Steve Hawley: Let-
Gus Applequist: let's
Steve Hawley: catch up,
Gus Applequist: Sydney.
Sydney Collins: Let's catch up. I don't know if you're a watcher of The Big Bang Theory, but- I'm at that episode where Sheldon is trying to, uh, tell Penny about string theory, and Penny's like, "So did we solve it?"
Gus Applequist: This is, this is-
Sydney Collins: And I'm like
Gus Applequist: Thankfully this is much easier to, to grasp than string theory. But, you know, when you...
Early Universe Mysteries
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Gus Applequist: W- we think of astronomers as, as people who look up and, and, you know, study constellations and stuff. But, but really you guys are, are historians, right? Like- That's true ... looking back through time. The further you can see in space, the further back you're looking. And so when he's talking about red shifted galaxies, I mean, you can, we can't quite see the Big Bang-
Steve Hawley: No
Gus Applequist: but we can [00:53:00] see the area right after the Big Bang, and, and that's pretty remarkable. I mean, imagine if, if we could, you know, look through a telescope and see your grandfather. That's, that's kind of what's happening here.
Steve Hawley: And, um, it could be that one of the keys to understanding how galaxies and stars form as early as they did is dark matter. Hmm. Because dark matter doesn't interact except gravitationally. And so forgive me, but you know-
Sydney Collins: I'm, I'm-
Steve Hawley: the Big Bang-
Sydney Collins: I'll do a lot of Googling after
Steve Hawley: ... involves a lot of energetic photons, and at some point they get cool enough they, they can create particles and antiparticles, and then of course they annihilate each other right away. But at some point, uh, the universe expands enough that you have particles that will persist, and they will eventually make atoms. And the thing about dark matter is even though we don't [00:54:00] know what it is, we know kinda how it operates, and dark matter would not interact with the photons. And so you could have matter existing way before, you know, our conventional, uh, theory suggested it could. And so if you had, you know, lots of dark matter, maybe that would be, uh, the focus for collecting together regular matter in a way that, you know, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do it.
I'm, I'm guessing. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. But, uh, I think dark matter has a role to play in understanding how stars and galaxies form so early in the universe. In fact, people are talking about dark matter stars, although I don't know exactly how that would work.
Robots vs Astronauts
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Gus Applequist: I have a few friends that are working at NASA right now, and they describe this tension between science missions and the manned space flight program. And I'm sure that tension isn't new, um, but we're also hearing [00:55:00] about a major shift in where funding is going within NASA. So why is continued investment in the science side of things so important? And also, conversely, why is manned space flight necessary?
Steve Hawley: We learn a lot of science from unmanned missions. Um, in fact, maybe most of our science comes from unmanned missions, so that's critically important. There, and there are some things you can only do from the vantage point of, of orbit, whether it's low Earth orbit or L2 Lagrange point. matter of fact, I got involved a little bit with some of our representatives, um, when...
This would have been maybe last year when, uh, they were talking about, uh, cutting things like the Nancy Roman Telescope- which actually was already built and ready to launch. Sort of [00:56:00] suggested that's kind of stupid Cut it, you know, when it's sitting there on the launchpad.
Sydney Collins: Ready.
Steve Hawley: Um, would be almost hard to detail all of the things that we have managed to learn by having assets in space. Um, now, you know, where do humans fit in? Well, I'm probably a little prejudiced, but, uh, I think human space flight is important. Um, it's part of what we are, I think, as a, as a civilization. I mean, it's, it's part of exploration. It's part of, you know, what's over the next hill. Um, some people even have taken it so far as to say we're eventually gonna make it impossible to live on the Earth, and so we gotta figure out, you know, is there some place we can go and, There are some things we don't yet, uh, know how to teach robots to do that humans do better. It's also frankly, I think, a lot more interesting to the public- [00:57:00]
than talking about the latest data release from James Webb.
Why Hubble Captivated
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Steve Hawley: I mean, Hubble was kind of remarkable in the sense that, um, it managed to maintain its popularity over decades, and I was never quite sure why that was the case. Um, it could be, uh, because, you know, there'd been humans involved with it.
It could be because of the drama associated with the original mirror problem and- and what we had to do to fix it. It could be because they did a great job of finding really pretty pictures that they could release, uh, and people thought were really interesting. When, um, Sean O'Keefe canceled the final Hubble servicing mission, uh, part of the reason it was restored was because the people put pressure on their representatives- to fly one last servicing mission to [00:58:00] Hubble. I even, uh, remember trying to get somebody at headquarters to look into it more scientifically. I mean, what was it that, you know, a lot of people lose interest in I mean, Apollo, there are three Apollo Saturn rockets lying on their side, one at Marshall, one at JSC, and one at Kennedy, because people kind of lost interest in Apollo. But what is it that was different about Hubble? What was it that, you know, you know, everybody's got an idea, but I thought somebody should scientifically look at the problem and see-
Sydney Collins: Hm ...
Steve Hawley: you know, if could we point to one thing or a couple of things that made Hubble popular? Chandra, Chandra's a space telescope.
Chandra produces images. Chandra is not as popular as Hubble.
Sydney Collins: never heard that name before.
Gus Applequist: I, I suspect that there's, there's story is a big part of all of this. That- Probably ... that, the drama around Hubble was actually the thing that attracted people's attention to it. [00:59:00]
Steve Hawley: And, and it was the first space telescope, significant- space telescope. You know, Chandra was the third.
So maybe by then people, you know, space telescopes, you know, oh. How boring. Uh, you know, but, it's always been, to me at least, a bit of a mystery what was it about Hubble that made it-
so popular. I was grateful, but I'd like to know why because maybe then with other programs, you could figure out how to apply the lessons learned.
Memoir Eyes to the Stars
---
Gus Applequist: Um, well, to, to wrap up, you, you have a new memoir out called Eyes to the Stars. Can you tell us about the book and, and, uh, what, what it contains?
Steve Hawley: Well, I've been giving talks about NASA and the shuttle program for going on 50 years and one of the most common questions that I'm asked is, "Have you written a [01:00:00] book or are you writing a book?"
And I always said, "No. No, I'm not writing a book." So what changed? Well, this is kind of personal, but what changed was my brother, who's also an astronomer, um, was diagnosed with cancer-
Sydney Collins: Hmm ...
Steve Hawley: in 2019, the younger brother, and it was important to both of us that we, stay in touch and communicate. So once a week- at least I would have, you know, a Zoom call with him and, and, we'd just talk about stuff as he was going through chemos and surgeries. And a lot of times he wanted to talk about what I had done at NASA. Hmm. And I found out he was a lot more knowledgeable than I remembered- uh, and interested in what I had done.
In fact, lots of times he would ask me a question and my answer would be, "Oh, I forgot about that." And so after doing that for a while, I decided what I wanted to do [01:01:00] was write down some of the experiences I had and give it to him as a present, and something he could read and, and before I had a chance to do that, he, he died.
Gus Applequist: Hmm.
Steve Hawley: And, uh, one of the operational principles that I've adhered to over the years is, if you don't know what to do, don't do anything. Hmm. Um, and I didn't know what to do with this partially-
Sydney Collins: Hmm ...
Steve Hawley: uh, written manuscript, so I didn't do anything. Um, and about a year after he died, we launched Artemis I.
Sydney Collins: Hmm.
Steve Hawley: And people got really excited, which was cool, and people started talking about the Artemis generation, and then people started remembering the Apollo generation. And I listened to that. I was grateful that people thought, you know, this was kind of exciting again. But I was going, you know, there were 30 or 40 years in there when, you know, we weren't just sitting around. We actually did some pretty cool things. [01:02:00]
And that caused me to go ahead and decide to finish- what I had been writing, and then see if it was, you know, something that, that people thought was worth publishing. I wanted it to be different. You know, there's a thousand astronaut books-
out there. Um, I wanted to be different in the sense that, it's about what I did, but what I really wanted it to be was kind of the history of the space shuttle program as I saw it. Because I was there as a crew member, but I was also there as a manager, and I sat through a lot of meetings where things were discussed and decisions were made.
And, and you know, sometimes things were working well and sometimes not so much. Um, I wanted to talk about, you know, what we went through after Challenger- To get back to where we could fly. Um, and, you know, how we went from [01:03:00] the first several years of operations, we were mostly launching satellites. And how we went from that to deploying the Hubble Space Telescope, servicing the Hubble Space Telescope, and eventually building the International Space Station. That's- You know, that's a big leap in capability. And how did we develop systematically, carefully, the capability to do things in space that probably we never envisioned, uh, when we launched, you know, STS-1.
So that wa- that was kinda my goal, was to leave behind something that would describe what we did and, and why we did it.
Gus Applequist: Well, I'm excited to read the book. I know- Tanner on our team- Tanner's started it ... has been reading it, and, and I look forward to diving into it as well. I, I have one last question.
Sure.
NASA Chaplain Dad
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Gus Applequist: And, um, there's a couple different ways, uh, or directions this could go, but, um, your your dad was a Presbyterian minister and, you know, I imagine that, that it was, is... [01:04:00] Maybe, m- I don't know, maybe it wasn't challenging, but, but for, for a scientist and a, and a minister to, to be in a family together, and, and you go off to space and you come back, um, did your dad ask you what it was like in space?
Did he, uh-
Steve Hawley: Oh, I think he had the, the sort of normal curiosity that everybody has. It's actually worse than that- because my brother's a minister and my sister's- a scientist. Wow. So we've got a, we've got a, several ministers and several scientists in the family. he, uh-
Gus Applequist: All trying to answer big questions.
Steve Hawley: It was really interesting because, um- one of the guys that I mention a lot in the book is a guy named George Abbey, who's the director, was the director of flight operations, flight crew operations. Um, he was kind of my big boss. And, um, he was responsible for, engaging my father, uh- [01:05:00] when, uh, it was appropriate because there was something with kind of a religious theme.
And so for instance, uh, Dad was asked to give the invocation at the Challenger memorial service.
Sydney Collins: Oh, wow.
Steve Hawley: Reagan spoke and Dad spoke. Um, he, uh, gave, invocation at the memorial service for Bob Gilruth, who was a big shot NASA guy back in the early days. Um, we, uh, the, I think it was the third Hubble servicing mission, was in orbit over Christmas, and George wanted something for the crew to read down- um, because they were gonna be in orbit over Christmas, and he had Dad write something that-
the commander read down. So Dad was kind of part of the-
Gus Applequist: I didn't realize that.
Sydney Collins: Wow. I feel like this is a whole, like, documentary narrative of just, like- ... your dad's perspective of, of you in space and all the cool things he got to do.[01:06:00]
Steve Hawley: I, I always told people that we didn't really have a, a, what would you call it? A chaplain.
But Dad was- He was that ... functionally the-
astronauts' chaplain.
Um, I remember several times when I had friends who suffered losses- um, you know, a family member, and they would call me and s- and ask, you know, um, could I give them Dad's phone number, and they would call Dad and-
and talk about it. And, uh, so I really felt like he was part of the space program
along with me. Um, you know, of course, he had, you know, kind of privileged access. You know, he, he knew a lot of the astronauts. He obviously knew George, and he was involved in a lot of these activities. Uh, so I was, you know, kind of proud that he was part of it.
Kansas Sky Perspective
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Gus Applequist: we started this interview with a Kansas boy looking up at the stars. After everything you've seen and done, [01:07:00] what do you see when you look up into that Kansas sky now?
Steve Hawley: Oh. Well, it's not as dark as it used to be when I was a kid. Uh, no, I think about, um- the kid I was and how I had thought about, you know, space and doing astronomy from space and having this vision of working on telescopes in space, and how unlikely that seemed to be, uh, ever to happen, and to be so grateful that it did.
Um, so you know, maybe, you know, somebody else would get inspired by looking maybe not at the sky, but at something else- that causes them to think about, you know, "Could I do something that would be really important?" and I think that'd be really cool. I was lucky, but, you know, uh, fortunate. I got, I got to take advantage of, of the opportunities. [01:08:00] I mean, you know, if I hadn't been getting my degree when I did, for instance, you know, say I was gonna graduate a year later, you know, would I have bothered to apply, you know?
Would I have bothered to apply subsequently, you know? Say I've got a new, you know, a job, you know, would I... You know, if I had been married, would I have wanted to, to do this? So for me, a lot of it was, you know, being at the right place at the right time.
Gus Applequist: You could almost say the stars were aligned.
Steve Hawley: Yes.
Gus Applequist: I'm so sorry.
Steve Hawley: Stars were aligned, So I think that's fair.
Sydney Collins: Oh, goodness.
Gus Applequist: Well, thank you so much for coming on Ask a Kansan. Thank you. And, and for, uh, being a role model. Well. I've, I've looked up to you for a long time.
Steve Hawley: Thank you so much.
Gus Applequist: This is, this is really a, a great-
Steve Hawley: Appreciate it ...
Gus Applequist: special time.
Thanks.
Thanks.
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Post Interview Wrap
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Gus Applequist: There are so many things that we didn't get to talk with Steve about.
Sydney Collins: Oh, not even remotely. Um- There's so much we probably could've a lot... I w- 'cause, like, I am really invested in, like, how the family reacts around these people who are doing these really cool things. So I'm so glad you asked about, um, his dad.
And I'm like, "That could- that's all movie."
Like- so I just, I just wanna know so much more about his family and how- their reactions were to him doing all these amazing things.
Gus Applequist: I, I considered asking him about, um, you know, he, he was married for a few years to- to Sally Ride, the first, uh, astronaut from the US that was a female.
And, um, you know, his story is his own and, and hers is her own. And so I, I didn't ask about it. But, um, the, [01:10:00] it's, there's just so many different directions to go and, and talk about with him. So I hope, hope we covered it, uh, well enough for- our audience.
Sydney Collins: Very much so. So we don't have a segment today 'cause we, we could've talked to-
Gus Applequist: We went into overtime.
Sydney Collins: we could've been here for hours. He is s- well, he's just a such a good storyteller.
Which fascinates me that he, like, writing the book was not his, like, number one thing, and I think that's so funny.
Gus Applequist: I have... Can I- Go for it ... can I do an addendum?
Sydney Collins: Do an addendum.
Gus Applequist: Okay.
Launch Abort Addendum
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Gus Applequist: So, so he, he missed telling one of my favorite parts about the last-minute abort story.
Sydney Collins: Oh,
Gus Applequist: And that was, so they call it the stack. The stack consists of the two white cylinders, which are the solid rocket boosters.The big external fuel tank.
Sydney Collins: Right.
Gus Applequist: And then the orbiter, which is the white part- that everybody calls the shuttle. So that's the stack. So they're sitting in the white part on the launchpad, and they get to I think T-minus 11 or T-minus 10 seconds when the main engines of the shuttle fire.
Or, [01:11:00] and so when that happens, what happens is, is that the, the, the s- the stack is bolted to the, the launch platform. So it, it cannot move until those, those, uh, restraints are released.
So what happens is these engines turn on and the whole stack shifts forward like this. And over the course of, uh, five to eight seconds, it shifts forward and then it shifts back. And right when it gets back to vertical is when the solid rocket boosters are fired. And when those go at T-minus zero, or zero, um, you, you're not stopping. Those are, those are basically fireworks. You know, once they're lit, you're going to space. So, but what didn't h- that didn't happen, right? So they, they went forward, and then they rocked back, and then they aborted, and so they just kept rocking- Oh, nope
on the pad. Nope,
Sydney Collins: nope,
Gus Applequist: nope, nope. And, and the way he told the story-
Sydney Collins: I would be like, "Get me out. Get me out" ...
Gus Applequist: the way he told this story when, when he was actually at Ro- Roosevelt Lincoln- Middle School, um, to speak years ago, was that just [01:12:00] for, for minutes, they were just going back and forth on the pad while that drama was playing out underneath them, trying to figure out whether or not they were on fire. So It's- It's a wild thing to, uh, strap yourself on a rocket and go to space. So that brings us-
Sydney Collins: Buz Lightyear could never.
Credits and Sign Off
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Gus Applequist: That brings us to the end of another episode of Ask a Kansan.
Sydney Collins: Make sure to check out our website, AskaKansan.com, where you can find our library of over, you know, 80 episodes now.
Um, links to our social media, our line of merch, and the Curious Kansan, um, newsletter, which features Tanner, um, our photojournalist explorations, um, all throughout Kansas.
Gus Applequist: Ask a Kansan is a production of Fili Creative in Salina, Kansas.
Sydney Collins: Um, our show is produced by Tanner Colvin, Julie Mindrup, and technical directed by, uh, Merlin Shippy, uh, graphic design by Austin Tone, and edited by Bryan and Alan at Forge Podcasts.
Gus Applequist: Thanks to Everyday Lights for the use of our theme song, Horse Thief Canyon.
For everyone here at Ask a Kansan, thanks for [01:13:00] tuning in.
Sydney Collins: And remember, every Kansan has a story.
Gus Applequist: What's yours?