Welcome to all of our regulars, for anyone who is a first timer the secret science club is at event series and we bring sciences of all disciplines out of their labs and onto the public stages. Here they can be part of the cultural life of new york city and people like you and me can come and be informed, energized and be engaged by scientific ideas and discovery and interact directly with some of the scientist. Secret science club, our regular hang out our main layers in brooklyn but secret science club north, we are back here tonight in manhattan as a part of our fifth miniseries at sympathy space. We would really like to thank all of the people at symphony space, the staff, particularly kathy led down Johanna ThompsonRebecca White mary mead, james lazio, and zach ricci for help us expand our showing. Began for them. [applause] very big special thank you to the bar, we have the bar actually to the back and left if youve not visited yet. They have concocted our cocktail does your or however you say it, its called the atlantis. Fabulous blue glowing drink. Its name for the Space Shuttle in which our speaker was a crewmember. And its very tasty, we highly recommend it. To expand your universe further. Also thanks to cspan who is covering is here tonight, i want to give a shout out to them. If youd like to find out more about the secret science club and our Upcoming Events here in brooklyn or anywhere in the universe, sometimes we are out there, please visit our charmingly retro website yes we are blogspot secret science club. Blogspot. Com, you can also signup for our mailing list and we would love to have new members. You are a member just by being here. But if you sign up you get to know about all of her goings on. So on the evenings event. Tonight we are thrilled to present astronaut, scientist, and author Kathryn Sullivan. As a nasa astronaut Kathryn Sullivan spent over 500 hours in space. But before that she trained as a scientist receiving a phd in geology and she actually went from studying the ocean floor onto nasa to train some more, and become the First American woman to walk in space. She is a veteran of three nasa suspicion missions and she was on the crew of the discovery shuttle that launched the amazing Hubble Space Telescope which has so radically revolutionized our views of the universe. But she did not stop when she left the astronaut corps. After words, Kathryn Sullivan served as the administrator of the u. S. National oceanic and atmospheric administration, and oaa. Overseeing ships and airplanes that looked back at earth, monitoring the health of our oceans and atmosphere. And now, after 2017 she has written a book its called handprints on hubble, and astronaut story of invention. And that is a subject never talk tonight. The lovely folks at books on call nyc are our booksellers tonight. Kathryn sylvan will be signing copies after the talk and after the q a. She is going to come and talk, followed by q a with you our wonderful audience. And then we will have the book signing. Please welcome doctor Kathryn Sullivan. [applause] april 24, 1990 found us right where we had been 14 days earlier. Suited up, strapped in, and ready to go. With the countdown clock stopped at t minus 31 seconds, again. This time, the Launch Control center computers had halted the countdown because of an indication that a valve on one of the pipes used to field the fuel tanks had failed to close. If the indicator was correct, then only one valve was left to prevent the fuel in the tank from leaking overboard instead of feeding into the Space Shuttles three main engines. And if that happens, we could end up too low to deploy the space telescope and aborts to the other side of the ocean or splash into the ocean. The launch would be scrubbed rather than accept that risk. If the indicator was wrong, however, think about the flaky tire Pressure Sensor on your car, and the system was fine, and there is no reason to scratch. So which was it . Serious problem . Or faulty indicator . Go for lunch . Or scrub . This highstakes call fell to the launch team controller responsible for the shuttles main propulsion system. Someone i still know only by his call sign as mips. Time was not on this guys side. The shuttles auxiliary power elite limit had a strict limit on how much more we can hold this point, just 12 minutes more. In the cockpit wheat listened intently as the Launch Controller worked out the problem. Mps what your status the launch director asked . The propulsion engineer talk calmly to the data on his display. Temperature and pressure readings in line surrounding the valve were not consistent with it being open. Fundamental physics said it was closed. He proposed to send a manual command hoping this would make the indicator read correctly. That works. But the control center computers still had a lock on the countdown clock. Mps what your call . The launch director pressed. Im prepared to manually override the software, proceed with account replied. With a crisp and rapid cadence, the vessel through nb the launch director gave him go to do that until the other Launch Controllers to get ready to resume the countdown. Then he involves jet advised that the launch team was again go. The call we had been waiting for came a split second later. All controllers, this is ntd, the countdown clock will resume on my mark. Three, two, one, mark. The entire episode had taken less than three minutes. Thirtyone seconds later discovery roared off the launchpad. Well thats the moment at which my Hubble Telescope adventure really launched into the phase that matters. But the early stages of the story go back several years before that. In fact, they start here in 1978, february of 1978 when nasa introduced to the world their newest class of astronauts chosen specifically to fly aboard the Space Shuttle. Their brandnew space truck and research vessel. As a group of 35 people, we quickly became known as the tf and gees, 35 new guys, but if you come for the military would also know theres another phrase where the f does not stand for five, but for something else. So there was a double entendre on that military phrase. The other interesting thing about our group as we had strange people amongst us. We had 25 military test pilot types as every other group of nasa astronauts have had, but we also had six women, eve see the six of us here, and three africanamerican men and one Asian American man. By the end of our first day, right after we had been introduced to the public, it became clear to all of us that the simple way to describe our group was ten interesting people and 25 standard white guys. [laughter] the 25 standard white guys were out of the publicity building and off to the gym, or the beach, or whatever they wanted to do, about a half an hour after the introduction ceremony ended. And the six of us and our four other strange people were besieged and barraged with interviews all the way to the east coast news hour and beyond. It was a kind of life, new phase of life that none of us had ever expected. Two of us in this picture here, me on the middle left in sally on the far right, we had only just turned 206, we were straight out of graduate school, we had just finished our phds. Astronaut interview was our first ever serious Job Interview and astronaut was our first ever fulltime job. [laughter] which if you think about it, is just beyond crazy. [laughter] [applause] so what happens when you are a baby astronaut . What happens when your baby astronaut is you go back to school you start learning more things. We spent about a years or group going through a highly compressed graduate school for astronauts. Think of any aspect of science or engineering, Earth Science, physiology, space physics, systems design, anything that might faintly touch on spaceflight, we got a crash course in it from some of the nations best experts. Its about equivalent to the first year of graduate school coursework. When that was done we were actually entitled to wear the insignia of the astronaut corps, silver because you hadnt flown yet, but still. Then we started getting plugged into supportive roles, basically helping other flights come into being. Helping the preparations, the planning for the operation of Shuttle Missions that would happen before our turn in line came along. Its a little bit like starting your career at a company in the mailroom and learning by rotating around from one part of the company to another learning all of the bits and pieces of how the enterprise actually works. We did that for a number of years, before we started getting our group got to the front line and started getting slotted into flight opportunities. For me, my first Flight Opportunity came about in october 1984. My colleague and classmate, sally ride had earned the distinction of being the First American woman to fly in space june the year before. And a late 83, nasa put a press release out announcing this new mission with a fallacy acronym i wont bother you with, it meant cooler science things thats all you need to know. And announcing that sally ride would be on that crew again making her second spaceflight. Kathy sullivan would be aboard for first base flight and spacewalk. Now ive got to tell you there is an absolute delightful wave of excitement and congratulation that swept across the Johnson Space center as our colleagues came up to us and said valid this is so cool youll be the first woman ever to fly twice. And to me you will be the woman to ever do spacewalk. In sally and i looked each other and said, these people have not been paying attention history. Our flight was announced in late 83 for an october 84 launch date, and we had been paying attention to the soviet Space Program. We knew that ten months was plenty of time for the soviet Space Program to put her on another mission and let her do spacewalk. So if you asked sally writing Kathy Sullivan that she owes us both her second flight and her spacewalk. So what do you think is happening here . This is on the launchpad, on october 5, 1984, were getting ready to board the Space Shuttle challenger for our fancy Earth Science mission i told you about. And shouted out guess whats happening here question rick there you go. Limits i was really happening here. The seating arrangements in the cabin dictated that sally and i would board the shuttle last. We waited our turn in the Small Chamber just outside the hatch known as the white room. We were keenly aware that the cameras above our heads meant our every move was being monitored by the Launch Control center and perhaps broadcast on National Television as well. After a few minutes of idle chitchat, we decided we probably ought to appear to be doing something more important than just waiting around. Watches are already synchronized before big mission in the movies. So we decided to pretend that we are synchronizing ours. Happily, there were no microphones in the white room to hear us saying so what you think the news answers are saying about us right now . Or i dont do think we stretch this out quite enough . Im delighted to say that when we landed, there were press clippings from all the coverage are flight had received, this featured probably in all of the articles and the caption says kathy smit sullivan synchronize their watches. Stupid astro joke one, more to follow. That was a great eightday mission, the science was fabulous. Dave gleason i were outside in the second to last day for several hours out in the shuttles payload bay to do a Pretty Simple engineering demonstration to prove some specialized tools would actually allow nasa to begin refueling satellites on orbit. Something to this day that is still never been done. But important to life extensions for battle light untrained sidelights in orbit. We landed, and there is this schizophrenic thing that happens when you fly in space. You go through several weeks of being the center of the universe. Your prime crew, youre next in line, every single thing you need is at your disposable as soon as you need it. If you need an airplane to go fly summer, got it. You need to get into to the doctors, got it. Need another hour the same leaders, god appeared you can cut in line is front of absolutely everybody else for every resource to get you ready for flight. Then you had to some magical crazy indescribable eightday experience, but the thing you dont know is that moment your Space Shuttle clears the launch tower on your way out into orbit leaving the earth, the first four seconds of your mission, there is this other crew in a Conference Room in houston that stands up and says prime crew you are now first in line and when you land you are nobody. You are at the back of a long line of people waiting to get back into the cycle and get to go fly again. Its a really disappointed lonely sort of wandered around with a deer in the headlights look trying to remind yourself you actually really did this stuff, you can see yourself in the photograph but youre trying to remember you did it. I was fortunate that that period did not last too long for me after my first flight. By early the next year, my boss boss called me into his office and said i was going to fly a mission coming up soon with this thing here. The Hubble Space Telescope. What he said to me was, you know the big large space telescope payloads in the manifest, yes ive seen that, its supposed to be maintainable in space by astronauts. And last for 15 years. Ive heard that. But i dont think i actually have any of the equipment. I need the tools and equipment that it will take to do that. So you and bruce mccandless, go get in the middle of all of that now, and make sure that by the time you take it into orbit we actually have all of the stuff we need to fulfill that promise of maintaining it in space at 17000 binder miles an hour for 15 years. So the time i was assigned to that flight this is all i had ever seen of the Hubble Space Telescope. This is an artist concept of right around 1982 or 83 vintage, it had not even been named for Edward Hubble it was still called the space telescope with a large space telescope. But you see, the shuttle just having left it off, nice cartoon, thats all i knew about it for a wild. In parallel with getting ready for this flight however, i was also working on a president ial commission assessing the future of the United StatesSpace Program. And sort of to capture the vision of the past, and the prospect of the future in that report. Our boss, a guy named tom paine, went back to an illustration that had made many, many, many years earlier. This illustration by chesley appeared in initiative colliers magazine in 1952. I encountered it in middle 1985. At the age of 33. I looked at it, and i read the little paragraph in the article, this is of course described is a space station, people are living there, there are tours visiting there, there are scientists working there. Its a jumping off point for destinations beyond lower orbit. This is the craft that takes people back and forth from the earth to the station, at specialized comments tailored for just that 200mile hop back and forth. Its the hardest step off our planet is that first 200mile step. So this is a purpose built a vehicle that will just do that and do it repeatedly. This is described as a telescope that is input into orbit above the atmosphere so its never bothered by clouds, never bothered by turbulence, and that guy there, is obviously an astronaut who is attending it, fixing it, upgrading it. Chesley bosco sketch this out and made this illustration in the year i was born. In my early 30s, i looked at this picture and i have flown on this thing, it turned out to be white and have a different shape of wing. But there is one and it is a shuttle and it really does just what the vision was when this illustrated was created. Im assigned to put this thing into orbit. It exists, it looks different than that the details came out different but the ideas there. The vision that went back to the mid 40s and 1950s to a time when engineers almost did not have the skills to do it, has become a reality, and im going to take it to orbit in a year or two. And the space station, it also did not end up looking like Arthur C Clarkes hub and spoke wheel of a space station. At looks more like a tinker toy or erector set. But that too was on the drawing boards in the engineering was beginning to turn it from a conception conceptual sketch to an engineering reality and into the four room house larger than a football field, space station that is over our heads right now. That has had People Living on it continually for almost 20 years. I was just stunned by this picture and how rapidly, both how long it takes to make the engineering matchup with the vision, but also how vivid and powerful division was in the year i was born. When i had no inkling, nor did my parents, of where my life would go. This is where hubble really started and really came from. As i did the research for this book, the timelines between my life and hubbles really started to jump out at me. It almost became like we were born at essentially the same time. By five years hes my older brother if you want to look at it one way. At the different junctures where ive matured in the highschooler off into college or grad school, those time points also interestingly kind of lined up when hubble began to win enough political support, financial support, enough engineering definition it took the next leap