On. I am joined on stage today by six incredible individuals, each of whom have helped shape the history and the future of human space flight. So ill give a little introduction. He gave an introduction about myself, but as he said, my name is deanne. Much like many of our panelists today am an engineer. Unlike most of our panelists today, i have never been to space. Which gives you an idea of the impressiveness next to me. But i did grow up in brevard county, florida, and Cape Canaveral, and i have watched many of you launch to space, and it has been an inspiration in my life and one of the reasons that i chose to pursue engineering. Ive gone on to have a bit of an atypical career. Im an engineering tv host nowadays, and also founder and ceo of future engineers and we actually have a current challenge that was launched with nasa where students can name the next mars rover, so i dont know if youchb you know but the mars curiosity rover was named by a kindergarten through 12 student. We have a contest live, if you have any kids or grandkids that want to be a part of space history, i encourage them to go online and submit their name. So speaking of space history, im going to tell you about our panelists here today, and i want to let you know that their placement here on stage is not a coincidence. We really have a chronology here from apollo on to thinking about going to mars. So right here on my left we have general tom stafford, former nasa astronaut with the gemini and Apollo Programs. Next we have captain bob crippen, shuttle astronaut, also joined in 1969 in the apollo days. Next we have dr. Sandy magnus, another former shuttle astronaut also spent four and a half months on the International Space station. After that we have captain Chris Ferguson, also a former shuttle nasa astronaut, also now a boeing commercial astronaut, which is quite exciting. After that we have Hans Koenigsmann. He is the vp of flight and build reliability at spacex. He joined spacex in 2002 since its inception and was employee number four, debately free. Hans and i share the title of never having been to spate, but i have to caveat that with yet because im hoping with all the work going on on the commercial side that maybe all of us will have the opportunity to go to space one day. And at the end, we have Major General charlie bolden. He is a former shuttle astronaut and also former nasa administrator during the Obama Administration, and really oversaw the transition from the Space Shuttle program to a new era of Space Exploration where low earth orbit is now being turned over to commercial entities, and were looking forward to new technologies going on to mars. So the way the panels going to work today is were really going to separate it into three different segments. The first segment, were going to give all of our speakers time to share just a bit about themselves, and then were going to have about a 30minute q a, and then were going to transition out to the audience. So start thinking about your questions and what you want to ask our panelists. Okay, so were going to start over here on my left with general Thomas Stafford. You ready . Yes. So general Thomas Stafford received his bachelors degree with honors, an electrical and mechanical engineer from the u. S. Naval academy and graduated first in his class at the United States air force Test Pilot School in 1959. He then went on to become an american legend. In 1965 he piloted gemini 6, the first rendezvous in space and in 1966 he commanded gemini 9 demonstrating a rendezvous used in the apollo missions. He headed Software Development for project apollo. As commander of apollo 10 in 1969, he flew the first re rendezvous around the moon and designated the first Lunar Landing site. He also commanded the apollo Soyuz Mission which culminated in the historic first meeting in space between u. S. Astronauts and soviet cosmonauts ending the International Space race. He holds the muck speed world record. He has flown four types of spacecrafts and more than 100 types of aircraft. As commanding general at Edwards Air Force base he presided over the development of multiple aircraft. He conceived of and started the stealth Aircraft Programs and the road map for the f 22 raptor. At this point, i think you understand why it is my honor and pleasure to introduce general Thomas Stafford. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Well, it was a real pleasure to talk yesterday about the Apollo Program, how the decision was made in only about three weeks from the time that al shepherd flew until the fact we could go to the moon when shepherd had 15 minutes of flight and only five minutes of weightlessness. Other factors entered into that like the bay of pigs invasion, and the analysis of what the soviets would do on a free return trajectory around the moon to say the soviets had been there first. It was a real dynamic time, and i use the knowledge ive gained from the good friends al shepherd and those people to talk about it. Really enjoyed it yesterday for those of you that were there. It was really a lot of fun. Its great time to be there. So i look at apollo and gemini, we set the tools because we didnt know what we didnt know. And for example, on that first rendezvous and would lose a computer, the radar or the platform, and then later on the first space walk around the world nearly got killed, and i could have been killed, too. We then evolved, we got to train forward better from that. Today is a rule you train under water before you go out and do a space walk. And also now they have virtual reality. You can see with goggles to look at it, so you train that way. That came from gemini 9. Also from gemini 6 when wally and i had our engine shut down at t0 with a liftoff signal, and we knew we had a dead mans curve about 3 4 of a second. We learned that youve got to have in the system, not maybe complete automatic but a manual override and all this has to be a very complex thing you do, and you do it right. We also learned lessons like on apollo 13, im sure youve all seen the movie, a lot of it, and that is a lesson like you learned back in high school chemistry. When you mix acid and water, you always pour acid into water. You do not pour water into acid because you have some bad results. Well, we learned from apollo 13 you dont mix liquid oxygen with compounds that have carbon in it because apollo 13 we had about five and a half pounds of carbon and the teflon and 300 pounds of rocks, youve all seen probably the pictures that blew that double wall of steel, to pieces, and also a square of the Service Module out and say its one of the better days of apollo to get 13 back, so that was a series of things, and so then i was involved in the shuttle return to flight after the columbia accident, and then a briefing with admiral who chaired the accident board. Theres a whole series of things. The admiral said he could have used the word challenger anywhere that he had the word columbia, settlemethe same less theres a lot of rules you do not violate. And we set these tools in place, and theyre all there, and so the main thing is dont screw up. [ laughter ] it was a great time to be there, but also as you mentioned i started all these stealth programs for the air force. If i had not had the experience of being in the soviet union and cripp was with me as one of my support crew members, and then later the first experimental selfairplane while i was commanding general there, i would have never started the f117 a or writes the specks for the b 2 bomber and start the road map there for the f22 raptor fighter, so theres a whole series of things. Just a great time to be there. Ill cut short by a couple seconds. Zb sounds good. There are rules out there. There are tools out there, and you do not violate them. Theres rules and tools, you do not violate them, and do not screw up. All right, so our next panelist today, we have captain bob crippen. Captain bob crippen was the pilot of the very first Space Shuttle flight in april 1981 and went on to command three other Space Shuttle missions. During his 30 years in the u. S. Navy, he was an attack pilot and served as a test Pilot Instructor at Edwards Air Force base. In 1969 he was selected as a nasa astronaut and was on the support crew for the sky lab 2, 3, and 4 missions, and on the apollo soyuz test project. Captain crippen became director of the Space Shuttle program at nasa headquarters and then director of Kennedy Space center. He entered the private sector as a Vice President at Lockheed Martin and then served as president of the propulsion company. Captain crippen earned his bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from the university of texas at austin and was elected to the National Academy of engineering in 2012. Its my pleasure to introduce bob crippen. [ applause ] thank you, deanne, and good morning. I am really pleased that al pulled together this panel of friends of mine that its great to be up here, especially with my former boss and friend tom stafford. As he indicated, i he selected me as one of his support crew for the apollo Soyuz Mission, and took us over to russia to star city and the soviet union, yes, it was, but it was still the russia parliament. [ laughter ] and even out to their launch site, which was i think we were the first foreigners to ever visit that. And then i had the pleasure of tucking tom and the rest of his crew into the command module for their launch on apollo soyuz, so we go back a long ways as he indicated, but its also a pleasure to be up here with sandy magnus and Chris Ferguson who flew the last shuttle flight, and one of my fondest mem memories i was just telling sandy, john young and i my commander and i got to do a photo op with them because we represented the bookends of the Space Shuttle program, if you will. I joined nasa right after apollo 11, 50 years ago, a long time, so im older than dirt, too. [ laughter ] i had come off a program that was highly classified department of Defense Program called the man orbiting laboratory, the mol for short. It was highly classified just a few years ago, it was finally declassified. Our job was to take High Resolution photographs of the soviet union. But when that program was canceled, they took seven of us crew members off of that and transferred us over to the nasa Astronaut Office. We didnt do any training, didnt go through a Selection Process with nasa. We just walked in the door. They put us to work. But there were some similarities between the sky lab program and what was being developed by nasa and the mol, so that was my first assignment was to go follow or bird dog what was going on with the development of sky lab, to make sure the crew interfaces were acceptable, and i worked throughout the program and its fights, which started off kind of traumatic, but it ended up being a great program. When that was concluded, i was assigned to go start doing the same thing following the development of the Space Shuttle, which had just been announced. So a lot of people think of the job of an astronaut as mostly training, but most of my career with nasa was spent in doing Engineering Work following the development of a spacecraft. And i would imagine that the current Astronaut Office is doing the same thing with the vehicles that are being developed today by lockheed, boeing and spacex. So there is a lot of Engineering Work that the astronauts are assigned to do. I i was both surprised and honored when john young, our most experienced astronaut in the office at that time, selected me to be his crew mate for the first Space Shuttle flight, sts1. It was great training with john and flying that mission, certainly one of the highlights of my life. I went on to command three other flights and turns out most of those flights were also engineering test flights to make sure the Space Shuttle would do what we had designed it to do. And when looking back, im im very proud of the Space Shuttle program. Yes, we had two terrible accidents, and i lost some very close friends, but when you look at the sum of the 30 years that it was flying, early on in the program, we did some Important Department of Defense Missions that i think contributed significantly to us winning the cold war. The shuttle made it possible to fly payloads like the Hubble Space Telescope and the other Great Observatories that have revolutionized our knowledge of the universe. And it also made possible the building of the International Space station, which is an engineering marvel that is still up there today doing its job. So in summary, i think the Space Shuttle program is something well look back on, it will be a long time before we ever see a vehicle thats anywhere near as capable as that, and i was sorely disappointed when in 2011 the program was terminated, and i was primarily disappointed because we didnt have another capability to put our crews in space and would be dependent on russia to do that, and we have been for the past eight years. So ill conclude with that because im anxious to hear how the star liner and the dragon capsules are going to correct that problem very soon. So thank you. [ applause ] all right, for our next speaker we have dr. Sandy magnus. Dr. Sandy magnus was selected to the nasa Astronaut Corps in 1996 and has flown on four Shuttle Missions including the final shuttle flight in 2011. She flew to the International Space station in november 2008 where she spent four and a half months as Flight Engineer and science officer. Following her assignment on station she served at nasa headquarters and as the deputy chief of the Astronaut Office. During her time at nasa she worked extensively with the International Community including europe, japan, brazil and in russia. Dr. Magnus is now the Deputy Director for engineering within the office of the secretary of defense, research and engineering. Prior to working at nasa dr. Magnus was a stealth engineer at mcdonnell douglas. She earned her bachelors in physics and masters and her ph. D. From georgia tech. Help me in welcoming dr. Sandy magnus. [ applause ] so i want to take a moment to talk about the space station because i think thats why im on the panel, and thank you, al, for the invitation. Let me start off by saying theres a big difference as many of you in the audience know between intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge, between book learning and going into a lab and actually touching something, and thats when you really understand things, when you have that experience with the knowledge. And i think thats one of the biggest changes that happens with astronauts when we fly in space, whether its shortterm or longterm, is that we experience that environment, and we experience the planet a different way. And when you fly on space station, its really interesting. You adapt into the environment at a completely different level than when youre just up there sort of as a tourist for a 10 or 11 or 12day flight, and i didnt even realize that was happening until the crew came to pick me up in march when i saw them float across the hatch, and they looked so awkward and so unsure of their motions and just tippy not tippy toeing, but just very gingerly moving their bodies as they moved through the spacecraft trying not to touch things. I basically said hey, let me take you back he was replacing me let me take you back to the Service Module and show you how to use the treadmill, and i just took off because i knew immediately what handrail i was going to bounce off, i was going to bounce off that handrail, and i was going to go straight through the pma and hit that one bag. I knew exactly how i was going to translate through. Newtons laws by the way, derives your world when you live in space. And i just took off and he catches up with me eventually, and hes like wow, you really move fast, and i was amazed. Like really . I didnt realize it. Thats when i realized i had adapted to a whole new level. And its interesting because when you experience that and you realize it was normal for me to get up every morning and float through my day and talk to people around the world in Different Countries about all the amazing science and things that we were doing, it was normal to have the earth out the window to the extent that after maybe a month or so i almost took it for i did, i took it for granted looking out the window that t