Welcome And Space Crisis Setup

Tom Mueller 0:07

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. On this podcast, we share stories from the front lines of crisis communications. We deliver this through interviews, storytelling, and lessons learning. Share it from experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller. If you'd like to email the show, you can drop me a line at Tom at LeadingInacrisis.com, and we'd love to hear from you. And special welcome to our new listeners from around the world. In the last few weeks, we've added new listeners in Brazil, Argentina, and Vietnam. That's in addition to our already global footprint across the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia, New Zealand. So welcome everybody. We're glad to have you with us. On today's episode, we are heading to space. NASA has just completed the Artemis II mission that flew astronauts around the Moon and VAT. And that got us thinking about crisis communications around the space program. So our guest today is James Hartsfield, a veteran communications professional who worked much of his career at NASA's Johnson Space Center here in Houston. James, welcome to the show.

James Hartsfield 1:20

Hey Tom, thank you. And it's good to speak with you. And uh I'm gonna tell your listeners, right? I say I've known you for now 41 years. I'd hate to count them, you know, but uh but uh back in the day before our careers were really anything, both of our careers, we were kind of nobodies. And uh and I'm gonna tell them I took your place at a small, small newspaper that uh we both ended up at that area, both because of a natural attraction to the beach. And uh you had moved up and I took your spot, and uh who the heck knew what would unfold in the next uh lifetime, right? But uh it's a crazy world, isn't it? And and it's been awesome.

Tom Mueller 1:59

It is a crazy world. That's the uh that newspaper job interview was literally on my way to the beach, and I was in shorts. I actually threw on a collared shirt, you know, for the interview, but I was really headed to the beach, and uh that was too funny. I think you have a similar story to that, don't you?

Old Newsroom Days And Sailing

James Hartsfield 2:18

Yeah, I was, you know, the the interstate ends there in Galveston, right? And so maybe that's why I ended up there. I don't know, you know. I think there's a lot of people that end up there just because they can't drive any further, right? It ends right there. Um, but uh, but yeah, I uh went to that interview and I and then I said, well, the beach is a good place. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I said I want to live on the beach and I wanted to be in Texas, and there was that paper. So, you know, interviewing in the morning and in the afternoon, I was uh drinking a cold one on the in the sand, you know, so it was good. And uh and I, you know, never regret those choices. They were fantastic, they worked out well for both of us.

Tom Mueller 2:54

And James and I also actually also set up James and I also share a love of sailing. And uh back in those days, James, I remember you actually lived aboard uh 36-foot sloop for a while.

James Hartsfield 3:08

I did, yes, yeah. 36-foot islander freeport, which I had restored. I had worked on and fixed up for a couple years, and and I had it in a slip under an apartment at the time. But then I said, Well, gee, it's it's nicer than my apartment. I think I can move on board, you know, and uh allowed me to move around and be a bit of a gypsy while I was working still, though, you know. But I could live in Galveston or up here in Clear Lake, and uh and also it had good parallels to work in at NASA. You know, a sailboat, uh a boat has similar systems to a spacecraft in summer. Sounds crazy, but but it's a lot of uh, you know, self-contained. So as I was learning things like that, uh the boat was uh interesting to be on and and enjoyed it. But now you sailed on much bigger boats, so yeah. They I don't know, people know that you were an Alyssa crew member, you know, and you used to climb up uh how many stories into that old ship rig and unfurled sails in rough water. And I I wouldn't do that, Tom. I'd sail on that 36-foot sloop, but I'm not gonna be in the tall mast ship rigging.

Joining NASA After Challenger

Tom Mueller 4:07

So yeah, that was the old 1877 square rigged ship Alyssa, which is docked down in Galveston. So a historic ship that still sails today. So yeah, we went and learned how to sail that big beast and um took her out sailing in the Gulf of America. Well, hey, let's talk space stuff, James. Um, I mean, we've talked some personal history here. How about your professional history? Give our listeners a kind of rundown on your career. Sure.

James Hartsfield 4:35

Well, first of all, I I want to uh since we're gonna you cannot mention space today without uh me giving a huge, huge emotional congratulations to my team, uh mates, uh former teammates at NASA for a great Artemis II mission. Uh we had been working toward that mission, you know, when I left NASA about a year ago, my main thing had been preparing for that flight and preparing the team of communicators there at the Johnson Space Center for that flight. And uh so it was just amazing. I uh I was lucky my wife and I were invited to go to the launch by NASA. So we saw it launch, and uh then I watched the landing here last week, uh Friday. And it was just uh it was wonderful all throughout the mission to hear the voices of all my uh team, uh many of who I trained and hired, and and uh and I always told them, I repeated this phrase to them a lot um over the years that they were the right people in the right place at the right time to tell the world that story. And uh they certainly bore that truth out in this great, magnificent mission.

Tom Mueller 5:38

Yeah, it was a a very successful mission, and you know, everybody's just cheering for uh for NASA on the success of this. There's a lot of things happening out in the space race um these days. But James, how long were you at NASA then? Sure.

James Hartsfield 5:54

So I was at NASA a total of 38 years, right? I started there in uh 1988. I I'd worked at the paper that we talked about for several years, three years, you know, moved up. Uh there were only like three three people at the paper, right? So moving up was the you know, managing editor for the last uh year and a half or so. And and I was doing that job when the Challenger accident happened. And uh I went up to the Space Center to cover it uh for the paper. Reagan, Ronald Reagan, President Ronald Reagan doing his memorial service there. I had not been to NASA or the Space Center since uh I was a kid in the 60s when my parents came down once and we toured uh during Apollo. Um, so I said, wow, okay, the space center's here and the beach. Didn't really remember it, you know. And then I was looking for a place to move on to uh uh you know, because I'd been at the paper for a while and things were going well there. But uh I said, well, I'll go up there and try uh try my hand there. And I I kind of I stuck my foot in the door. It's a bit of a story, but I did uh I called up to the communications department there and I told them that I wanted to interview one of their communicators who lived in Galveston County just to do a profile story on for the paper. Um and uh they set me up a time to go in there and I I went in and it was uh a couple of the folks, uh Jack Riley and Doug Ward, two of the voices that you were prominent during Apollo 11, that uh were the voices of NASA during Apollo 11, and they they were gonna be interviewed by me, they thought, but I had shown up with all my clips and all my photos and all my resume, and I walked in right away and I said, Look, uh, truth is I'm looking for a job. I'm not here to interview you, you know. And they were super gracious, and they they talked with me for probably an hour and a half, and uh, and they said, uh, hey, you know, you look great on some of your things, but we don't have an opening right now. But if you'll go over to this this uh other building on site and fill out uh an application form, we'll get you in our system. You know, there were no this was before electronic anything, right? And so I went over to that building and I pulled this form up, and I was a cynical newspaper guy like you were, um, because that was one of the things about when you jump from papers to communications, it was a jump of some kinds, right? But uh but uh then you know, I they handed me a form that was no kidding, it was an accordion form, probably five and a half feet long, both sides. And I said, wow, okay, you know, I gotta take this home because there's a lot more than I can remember here. So I'm driving home in a $400 automobile I owned, and the air conditioners it didn't have an air conditioner, so I had the windows rolled down, I'm driving down the freeway. I have that form sitting in the passenger seat, it's flopping in the breeze. And I I said to myself, I said, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, NASA, put me in your computer, blah, and I threw it out the window. I never filled it out. And and I this story would never happen today, right? But then uh about a month and a half, two months later, I get a call from Jack Riley, the the one of the guys I interviewed with, and he said, Hey, James, you know, we have an opening now, and we'd be interested in hiring you, but you never filled out that form, so we can't even think about you. They still have my resume. And uh, so heck, I hooked it back up there and filled out the form, and and then it was 38 years. So I started I started right before the return to flight after Challenger, which was a really interesting time from a crisis communications perspective because uh NASA's uh communications performance at the Challenger accident is is uh was indeed kind of disastrous. Uh, I mean not to use a pun there, but it was a terrible communications performance um for a lot of reasons, which we've got to talk about a little bit later. But um, but I was part of the people that had gone through that. I was working with them, I heard a lot about it, and I was very fortunate to work with great people there. There had been a lot of turnover because the communications, being a communications person at NASA during that time frame was just uh very uh tough to endure. And um, and but I got to be a part of the best part of it of the return to flight, which was just uh uh fabulous, right? SCS-26 then. So and I I didn't really plan to stay at NASA for a long period of time at that point. You know, you're young, you don't know what you're gonna do, right? So I thought maybe I'd be there five, ten years and move on to do something else. Um, but you know, I blinked and suddenly it was 38 years, Tom. Because the the job was so fortunate to have a job that uh you get very engrossed in and it makes time fly, and uh it's one mission after another, and uh and always new things happening and uh exciting, you know. That the it's always a job of of uh moments, right? But uh so many moments at NASA that happened that uh that the time just flew by. And I was extremely privileged to have those opportunities.

Tom Mueller 10:37

Yeah, and it's there's always a new mission coming up, new things to learn about that. And um it just strikes me as an environment where you know there'd always be something kind of new and exciting if you're willing to jump in and go learn about it.

What The PAO Desk Does

James Hartsfield 10:52

And I think the thing that makes any job special, tremendous people, right? It's the there's no doubt at NASA that that uh you know I worked with people way smarter than me, and that's a good thing. That helps you that helps you be smarter. And um, and so that's a tremendous, tremendous thing. The the the team at NASA is unparalleled.

Columbia Clip And First Reactions

Tom Mueller 11:11

Well, James, one of the cool things that public affairs staff get to do at Johnson Space Center is they do the live commentary during space flights. Right? So if we're listening to a mission and we hear this voice come over the top, that is one of the PAO staff uh who are sitting on the PAO desk there in mission control and interpreting for us laymen what's actually happening there. Now, you were on the PAO desk. This was earlier in your career, uh, there in mission control back in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart on entry into Earth's atmosphere. Now that was just a you know a horrific situation for NASA. Uh, but you were on the desk, and I want to talk to you about what it was like, you know, being there watching all that live. But first, I have a clip uh that I want to share with uh with you and others, and then we'll talk about it.

James Hartsfield 12:16

This is Mission Control Houston. Flight Director Leroy Kane is instructing uh controllers to follow contingency procedures. The last communications with the Shuttle Columbia during its descent from orbits were at about 8 a.m. Central time as it uh was descending through the atmosphere at an altitude of about 207,000 feet en route to the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and a touchdown that uh was anticipated to occur about two and a half minutes ago. Flight controllers received uh no further communications with the spacecraft after about 8 a.m. Central time. And uh no further tracking data from the spacecraft that was gained from C-BAN tracking radar at the Merritt Island tracking station in Florida.

Training For Real Time Crisis

Tom Mueller 13:01

Your your voice was so calm through that, James. But you know, you worked with the with the shuttle program for a while now, you knew the people. Uh what was it like being on the desk for that?

James Hartsfield 13:13

Yeah, interesting, Tom, because I'm listening to that clip, and uh and actually it's a little hard to keep my voice calm after hearing it, to be honest with you. That uh it is it was a very tough day, you know, forever burned in in the memory, of course, everything about it. I I will say, I have to put it in context for your your audience, though, is that was uh probably uh the it was the 14th or 15th time I had done uh a launch and landing uh in mission control doing the voice of that. I I think I've done that more than anybody else ever did for the space shuttle, or at least uh even with anyone, um, maybe one other person. But uh I'd done also in addition to that, doing all the other phases of a shuttle flight where you're working around the clock, nine-hour shifts in mission control to do the voice all constantly through a launch to landing. We did the broadcast. I'd done uh more than 80 shuttle flights over the preceding 20 years, you know, 30 uh so not 20 to 10, 15 years, whatever. So um I had a lot of experience um going into that day. Um and and you train for that. Uh there's not uh it's there's a lot of self-training that goes into it, right? Um we the there are people, you know, we have commentators who are experienced who help you train. They tell you what you need to do. You have to self-motivate, you go in and uh you will listen to a lot of simulations, right? You'll go in the the flight control team trains as well, right? And you train with them because what you have are simulations where crew members are in another uh building in a simulated spacecraft and they're training, and you have the flight control team in mission control and their training, and uh you have a a different little cadre of folks called the simulation supervisors who who are largely regarded as devilish uh at NASA because they are designed to come up with difficult situations for you to deal with, for the crew to deal with, for the flight control team to deal with. And as the communications person, we would be in mission control with them on many of those. Uh understanding what was going on, learning what was going on in these anomalous situations. You had to learn the shuttle, which was a really difficult thing. Um, and even more so the space station, which was even a more complex machine. The shuttle was the most complex machine ever built at the time. Station space station has outweighed that. It's way more complex. Um but you had to learn those things. Uh, you had to learn how to explain the jargon back and forth between mission control and uh and the ground, which is a is a jumble of acronyms. It can be, you know, uh Atlantis will be AOS in five and uh will be LOS in five and gain AOS in at 230. Uh you need to uh proceed with a panel flip on on panel A1, switch B, you know, and we have to say we're gonna lose communications with the shuttle for about a minute and a half, and they're gonna turn on a wastewater dump when they come back, you know, so that people know what's happening. Um that's a large part of what we were as interpreters, but you don't have time to ask anybody what that means. You have to learn it because it's all real time. And especially in a crisis, in a critical situation, you can't interfere with the technical experts that are in mission control that are doing the job of preserving the mission and and attempting to preserve the spacecraft. So all of that practice, you know, I can't I I worked in mission control for thousands of hours doing the actual broadcast. More thousands of hours practicing. Way I spent way more time in mission control practicing than I ever did actually executing. And and you don't start doing the more critical phases of flight to you've gained a certain level of proficiency at it, of course, right? So you move up, and that's kind of judged by your peers in uh in communications as to how you do that. So I had I was at the top of proficiency at the time that I was doing the Columbia landing. Um and you know, I I will also say that uh the more that you do that, in some senses, sometimes it works against you, right? Sometimes you uh become I I've always told people you can't be comfortable doing that job. Uh you you should be confident, you should never get comfortable. I told people that you know that the people that worked for me and that I would be training and would bringing on that uh if you're comfortable, you are not situationally aware of where you are and what you're doing and what's taking place. So don't ever tell me you're comfortable. Tell me you're confident, stay calm, but don't be comfortable. But um, but I had been there a lot before on that one. And it was a you know, I I will take you into the day a little, is um, you know, and I'm gonna go backward in a minute, but but for that day, right? It was just a very quiet uh Saturday morning. It was gonna be a landing on a Saturday morning, which is not gonna get much news coverage, right? If you wanted to pick a time when you're not gonna get much news coverage, it's Sunday morning, it's probably best. The next best is Saturday morning, right? Um course that wasn't while we were landing then. We were landing then just because that's how orbital dynamics worked out and and that's what the laws of physics were. Um But it was gonna be a quiet morning, right? And you go in, I'd been into mission control the day before because you go in with the entry team the day before. I wasn't working the rest of the mission, just the entry on console. Um so did that as preparation on the Friday before, but then Saturday came in for the real thing. Probably came in there about uh it was maybe a little after midnight or 1 a.m. Um the biggest thing about the mission at that point to me, about the commentary I was gonna do, uh, was that it was gonna fly over the continental United States, right? On its way back to Florida, which was rare. It was pretty rare that we had a shuttle um because most went to space station then too, which wouldn't bring you back on that trajectory. So it was gonna come across the continental United States. Everybody could see it from California all the way to Florida, and it's an amazing sight. I hope there are people that saw shuttle re-entry uh going across the U.S. It's it's truly beautiful. It was a truly beautiful site. And um, and so I was really intent on telling people where to watch for it and when, and uh tracking that descent all across the U.S. Because the shuttle's descent was an amazing feat of engineering um as it transitioned from spacecraft to aircraft.

Tom Mueller 19:31

So your commentary as you're running along there is telling them approximately where they are, altitude, time to touch down, all of that, providing those.

James Hartsfield 19:40

And when they're going to be visible at certain major cities, you know, and giving them heads up for people who were gonna be watching. So and then interpreting anything the crew's saying, right? And the status of the vehicle systems, right? Everything's in good shape or not, right? And uh, and of course, as as we begin to descend, everything was nominal, normal. That's nominal, they call it, you know what I mean, but uh everything going well. Um as we got uh really over the central US, um southwest to central US, uh you know, we did get uh indications that we were losing uh readings from instruments around the wheel wells of the shuttle, right? And then on the left wing. Temperatures were rising, right?

Tom Mueller 20:27

I'm sorry. Temperatures temperatures were rising.

Foam Strike Context And Signals

Multiple Targets And Contingency Mode

James Hartsfield 20:30

Yes, well, it wasn't really super clear. Yeah, they're rising, but but it wasn't super clear everything that was happening, right? It the actual indications didn't make any sense. Now we'll have to backtrack for you a little bit, is that that I I had a dual role, right? I was I ended up doing the console job, the commentary, the voice uh on that uh on Columbia's Landing. But at the time I was also and had been for several years, uh a role that I had off and on during my career at that point, uh, as the lead communications uh person for the space shuttle program in Houston. So I worked really closely with uh multiple space shuttle program managers over the years. At that time, I was working really closely with Ron Diddamore, who was the shuttle program manager at the time of Columbia, who is uh an amazing person and was a great manager uh for the shuttle. But uh, you know, I'd worked very closely with him. So I I was not on the mission, I was working in that capacity during Columbia's mission. So I had seen and uh been been part of uh looking at the foam insulation that had come loose from the shuttle during launch. I I don't know if uh people all refreshed around the root cause of Columbia was that uh low density, very low density foam that is used on the shuttle's big orange external tank uh to insulate the super cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen that are held in the tank as propellants, to insulate them. Uh a large piece of that had come off and had struck the shuttle. Um Struck the front edge of the wing. We didn't know that for sure from the video we saw real time in the flight, but had uh had struck the shuttle or its underside. Um, and you saw that. We saw that on cameras at launch. We didn't have near as many cameras as we put in later to look at launch, but but uh they did an analysis of the video of launch always in the day or two after launch, and that and that was very clearly seen. And it was analyzed, thoroughly analyzed at the time. Uh we had media questions about it. I had prepared uh uh uh responses for all of those. Um the analysis had shown that uh you know there did not uh any indication that it would pose a safety issue for the shuttle on entry, right? From everything that they knew at the time, right? It it uh I'm getting off a little bit on the commentary part, and I'll go back to that. But um, but it had shown really that uh that it might impact the underside tiles around uh the landing gear doors or something in that area, but it would not in a way that would cause uh significant damage or concern for the heating of the shell on reentry. Was not any thought process that it would hit the front edge of the wing and and actually fracture the uh reinforced carbon carbon on the wing, which is indeed what had happened. Um, that reinforced carbon-carbon, very solid. This foam, uh, just so you know intuitively, uh it's it's doesn't fit common sense that that could happen. The foam is so low density and so lightweight by design, you could hold a probably a 10-foot section of it in your in your hand and almost feel like you're holding nothing, right? It was like a marshmallow or less, you know. Yeah, um, so it was not intuitive that that could have happened. Now, rocket scientists are rocket scientists, and in hindsight, it's very clear that that was an uh easy to understand that it could have happened that and that it could have damaged the carbon. Carbon carbon, very strong part of the heat shield, too, made on purpose to do that. It wasn't the silicon uh heat tiles that are under underneath the shuttle. It was a very rigid, strong uh material. So, anyway, when I heard the the calls during the entry of the loss of sensors and these types of things, and I also when everyone in the room heard them, their mind immediately went to the potential damage from the foam, right? It went in the back of your head. Um, but not conclusive as to what could occur, right? And and uh in that room, you're not looking at why things happen necessarily unless they help you understand what to do now, right? Your training in there is what do we need to do to fix whatever problem there is and keep the mission intact and the crew safe and bring them home. Um so that's what everybody focuses on. Um when we heard that uh, you know, then very shortly afterward, uh there was a call up to the crew to tell them we saw it. That's that was normal. We would say we saw this so that they knew that we're looking at it. And uh the crew started to respond and were cut off. Um you know, now the shuttle, as it's coming in to land, it's like I said, its entry is amazing. And it it banks very steeply. It'll bank 90 degrees, a wing pointing down toward Earth, one pointing up toward space, and it kind of fishtails through the air, right? It really does. That's why I look at it, it's fishtailing like a car fishtailing through the air, and it switches banks about four times as it's coming in to slow down. That's how it slows down. It really puts its uh heat shield forward and just banks through to slow down and keep it on track toward the runway, toward the landing site. And when it does those banks, it loses communications, right? Because the antennas that are on top of the shuttle that are used for communications get blocked by the heat flow and the plasma. So an abrupt sh drop in communications is not something that causes immediate alarm in the control room. Um my job as a communicator was listening to that and to continue to call out where the shuttle was. I pointed out that we weren't receiving live telemetry from it anymore, which I usually did whenever we lost it, you know, whether it was normal or whatever. Um and then uh and then I think the telling factor was very shortly after that. We were supposed to uh it it it it it was supposed to gain um instead of communications through the satellite network, it's supposed to gain communications through a ground tracking station in Florida called uh Merritt Island tracking station, MILA. And uh and MILA also is a radar as well. It's a ground radar. And we used it to uh it verified that the shuttle's speed and its descent rate and its altitude, its track towards the was the same as what the onboard navigation was saying. Here's ground truth to show that it is and show that everything's fine and it's gone. So it was a normal thing that we would incorporate that. So you had the radar and the tracking for Merritt Island, but uh what was seen pretty quickly is the uh the ground uh officer there in mission control um reported that uh Merritt Island was only picking up uh uh, in his words, what he said on the flight was multiple targets, which when you heard that and knowing what was supposed to happen, you knew that the shuttle had broken apart because there are no multiple targets that exist. Um and so at that point, my job was to continue really to call out the last status, um, uh, which uh which I did. And then, you know, very quickly thereafter, there was footage on the news and people in the news, and we were hearing in Mission Control through uh some people were hearing from people that had been observing it that they had seen it uh start to break apart from the ground, right? Um, and and at that point, you know, we went into contingency mode. You heard uh, you know, the the clip you played was when they started to go to contingency mode, which means they locked the doors in the room to preserve all the data because it's gonna be part of an investigation. Um my job then switched to uh talking about the the recovery and safety, right? Get out information for the safety of individuals on the ground because you know the shuttle had broken apart and the pieces were falling across East Texas primarily, but uh also a swath from East Texas to Louisiana. Um the shuttle uses very, very toxic chemicals for propellants, so people could uh could um potentially be harmed if they approach debris, right? Um so we wanted to warn them of that. So I started doing that uh extensively.

Tom Mueller 28:24

Were you shifting gears then, James, from the PAL commentary role to your shuttle program support role?

Press Conference Prep And Next Episode

James Hartsfield 28:31

Well, I mean, I think that's not really. I'll tell you when I shifted gears on that. This is really all real time, you know. This is uh um, I don't know how to equate this to industrial uh capacity, you know, that's not space, but but maybe it's the the operations of the the plant or the factory, right? I'm I'm still talking about the operations of the factory and the operations are not going normally, and there's a problem happening and it's dangerous. Um, and I'm having to give out real-time information about it. Maybe that's it because I've got a whole planet watching me, you know. So so I'm busy so I'm doing that, right? And uh and that goes on for a while, and that is all according to our communications contingency plan, right? We had a very well and we had practiced this, and I'll talk about this in a minute, but um, but really the key linchpin in that plan during that time was that everything that NASA said would come from that person in mission control, right? Who is providing information out real time. Um, there would be a statement put out, but it just really quotes that person and just really uh issues that. Um so, and that's because that's the person in the no. That's the person that has all the information. That person is trusted because they've prepared, as I told you, the preparation is extensive to be doing that. Um, you do have access to lead uh to high management there right next to you in the control room if you need to ask them. And I did talk to them once the situation was not a flight situation. I did have the ability to talk to leadership that was in the room to verify certain things that I was going to say about the ground and and uh the potential for debris and these kind of things. Um so I continued that for quite a while. Now, probably the transition uh from doing the real-time communications of the space flight to my job as uh as a the communications lead there in Houston for the shuttle uh was uh when uh when the program manager came down. They they they usually sat in a room that was above mission control with a window looking down on it, and they uh came down and uh came up to me and and uh and we we exchanged a few words and and uh we knew a press conference was imminent then because one of our first things was to put together a press conference soon um after an incident. Um and and it really hadn't struck me much thinking about my job as the the shuttle program communication because I was so engrossed in that. And uh and he said I need I'm gonna need talking points from you. And then wham, you like a ton of bricks, my other job hit me quickly, you know. And then I we signed off the air. We signed off the air once we have a time for a press conference, right? And so we set up that there will be a press conference, and then I signed off the air. And then then Lee, I had to go to the recovery meeting. There's a meeting that that uh came uh right away that was chaired by all the mission managers.

Tom Mueller 31:15

And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll continue our conversation with James Hartsfield on the next episode. So please join us for more exciting stories from the front lines of crisis communications in the space agency.