This Week in Space 213: Live From ISDC With Gerry Griffin

Summary

This Week in Space 213: "Live From ISDC With Gerry Griffin"

Date: June 5, 2026
Hosts: Rod Pyle, Tarek Malik | Guest: Jerry Griffin

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Episode Overview

Live from the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in McLean, Virginia, Rod Pyle and Tarek Malik sit down for an in-depth, candid conversation with legendary Apollo flight director and former Johnson Space Center director, Jerry Griffin. Spanning the early days of NASA, the Apollo missions, disaster recovery, and Jerry's role as a technical advisor in Hollywood, the episode is a masterclass in space history and leadership. The show also delves into current headlines, notably the ongoing leak saga aboard the aging International Space Station.

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Table of Contents

1. Headline News: ISS Leak
2. Jerry Griffin's Extraordinary Career
3. Early NASA Days—Gemini & Apollo Beginnings
4. Apollo Program Reflections
   • The Apollo 1 Fire
   • The Race to the Moon: Apollo 7 & 8
   • Apollo 11: The First Landing
   • Apollo 13: Crisis & Hollywood
   • Apollo Program's Legacy & Exploration Philosophy
5. Leadership, Mission Control, and Today’s NASA
6. Quotes & Memorable Moments
7. Key Timestamps

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1. Headline News: International Space Station Leak

[02:31 – 08:52] Primary Segment

• The show's regular headlines are displaced by breaking news about a significant, persistent air leak in the Russian segment (PRK, Zvezda module) of the ISS.
• NASA sent five of seven crew members into the Crew-12 Dragon capsule as a "Safe Haven" measure during active repairs by Russian cosmonauts.
• Efforts to seal the leak have been hampered by access difficulties ("behind a cabinet"), requiring creative attempts like cutting hinges to reach the crack.
• This leak marks an escalation in the module’s slow decline — “one of the biggest threats to the International Space Station” according to OMB reports.
• The specific repair work (likely "epoxy or fast-sealing caulk") was not finished; the leak persists.

Jerry Griffin's Perspective:

“Every spacecraft leaks a little bit and you want it out for sure... but this has gone on a long time and, and those cracks are not getting stuffed up the way they need to be. So it must be a perplexing issue for them.” — Jerry Griffin [08:57]

"Every time you have a pressure cycle everything gets moved again... it's just like bending a piece of metal till it breaks.” — Jerry Griffin [09:35]

Takeaway:
The ISS is showing its age, especially in its oldest modules. The crew is safe for now, but the repair challenge underscores both the risks and technical complexity involved in keeping such systems running far beyond their expected lifespan.

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2. Jerry Griffin's Extraordinary Career

[13:25 – 19:14, 22:22+]

• Griffin is introduced as a flight director, former director of Johnson Space Center, and Texas business leader.
• In his “retirement” years (now in his early 90s), Griffin is involved in flood recovery after devastating Texas storms (16 inches of rain in three hours in 2025).
  • “I've learned a lot about disasters that you don't recover from very fast... we're in what we call the rebuild phase now.” [14:21]
• Griffin recounts his tenure as NASA’s congressional liaison:
  • Sent to Capitol Hill to help “save the shuttle” after it nearly lost Senate funding (“defeated by one vote, thanks to a Walter Mondale amendment”).
  • Visited all 535 Congress members with George Low—an education in “how the sausage is made.” [16:18]

"I was 6 foot 3 when I started, and I did four budget cycles on the Hill..." — Jerry Griffin, regarding the stress of Washington [16:18]

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3. Early NASA Days—Gemini & Apollo Beginnings

[19:14 – 29:44]

Entering the Space Program

• Griffin’s aerospace journey began as an aeronautical engineer and Air Force fighter pilot (“no space curriculum existed at the time”).
• A chance to work for NASA came from tenacity and the right skillset—experience with the Agena upper stage (later docked by Gemini flights).
  • “I started knocking on NASA's door and wouldn't give up…” — Jerry Griffin [21:17]
• Pivoted from Agena to Gemini operations and never looked back.

The Gemini Program: Fast and Furious

• Gemini flights occurred every six weeks, as NASA transitioned from Mercury’s single-seat capsule to a two-astronaut spacecraft.
• Key Gemini firsts: rendezvous, docking, spacewalks (EVAs) and long-duration missions—proven learning grounds for Apollo objectives.

On Living in Gemini Capsules:

"It's not even as big as a Toyota Corolla... You can't stretch your arms out, the hatch is literally right up against your helmet for 14 days." — Rod Pyle [28:05]

Spacewalk Challenges:

• Early EVAs risky; astronauts struggled without proper handholds/foot restraints (suit problems, “turn your body, not the wrench”).
• NASA refined EVA by Gemini 12—Buzz Aldrin trained for hours in a pool to perfect zero-G maneuvers, leading to future underwater astronaut training.

Memorable Quote:

"We learned how to go to the moon on Mercury and Gemini. That's why Gemini was so important." — Jerry Griffin [29:31]

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4. Apollo Program Reflections

A. The Apollo 1 Fire (Tragedy & Turning Point)

[42:09 – 49:34]

• Engineering pressures and design decisions contributed to the disastrous Apollo 1 pad fire (100% oxygen, flammable materials, inward-opening hatch).
• Griffin was in Mission Control during the tragedy; snaps to, hearing just "fire" on his comms.
• The fire cost 21 months of program time and prompted major safety overhauls: fire-resistant paper, outward-opening hatch, and procedural reforms.

"They burned so fast. Over pressurized, it split the heat shield area... crew actually died from asphyxiation... and the O2 was gone." — Jerry Griffin [47:32]

B. Apollo 7 & 8: Racing to the Moon

[51:40 – 56:54]

• Apollo 7: First crewed test—Earth orbital mission validated fixes post-fire.
• Apollo 8: The audacious leap, sending humans around the Moon for the first time.
  • The decision was kept secret even from most flight personnel until after Apollo 7's splashdown.
  • Motivated by "keeping momentum," but also a CIA-discovered Soviet rocket.

"To me, it was the gutsiest call that was ever made in the Apollo program—put that thing in orbit around the moon, then take it out of orbit to come home." — Jerry Griffin [55:35]

• Apollo 8’s success proved out hardware, mission procedures, and program feasibility.

C. Apollo 11: The First Lunar Landing

[57:40 – 61:50]

• By Apollo 11, cumulative lessons made mission control “past the gulp moments,” but landing still required focus and diligence.
• Griffin notes that later Apollo missions (15, 16, 17) were best for exploration with the addition of the lunar rover and enhanced field geology work—mission controllers even attended geology training trips.

"The best exploration came on 15, 16 and 17. When we had a rover, we had longer stay time... That's why we're going—not just to prove we can go land, but to explore." — Jerry Griffin [60:44]

D. Apollo 13: Crisis and Hollywood

[65:43 – 73:05]

The Real Mission

• Griffin was one of four real flight directors, not just Gene Kranz as in the movie. The lunar module’s CO2 scrubber improvisation scene in the film was compressed for drama; reality was a group working through inventory lists, not a dramatic "dump the box" moment.

Movie Consulting

• Technical adviser to Apollo 13 (as well as Contact, Deep Impact, Apollo 18, Fly Me To The Moon).
• Ron Howard’s directive: “This is not a documentary.”
  • Consolidated flight director characters for film clarity.
  • Griffin was awarded a SAG card (after negotiating the guild would pay!) for his onscreen participation.

"The technical accuracy of the film is very good. But the way it got to... some of you probably remember we had a CO2 problem... but the way they depicted it in the movie is this guy walks in and dumps this stuff out on the table—it's not the way it happened." — Jerry Griffin [71:12]

E. The Legacy of Apollo

• Apollo's true legacy: creating an unbreakable bond of trust between crew and mission control, and building the iterative, safety-first culture that informs Artemis and future programs.
• Griffin emphasizes the importance of public and program patience; "You can't drive risk to zero,"—highlighting that early missions will always be test flights before maturing into routine exploration.

“You gotta stay with [space programs] for a while. It’s not something you’re gonna... One of the things I worry about is the public’s view… when you strap six and a half million pounds of high explosive to your rear end and light it, there’s a danger you cannot drive to zero.” — Jerry Griffin [63:55]

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5. Leadership, Mission Control, and Today’s NASA

[77:14 – 81:35]

• Griffin reflects on changes—half of today’s flight directors are women, but shares how the “steely-eyed, can-do” attitude persists.
• He describes camaraderie, the "pecking order" among flight directors (he’s #6!), and how team culture at NASA mission control will carry future programs safely.

“The best job I ever had though was being a flight director. Oh, that was fun.” — Jerry Griffin [77:26]

“The flight controllers, flight directors particularly, [are] very, very fortunate people. And they know it to be selected." — Jerry Griffin [80:49]

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6. Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[Congress]...it was prep for doing a lot of things. For one thing, I learned how they make the sausage up in Congress, and it’s not pretty.” — Jerry Griffin [16:06]
• “I was in a fighter squadron with Bill Anders, who later flew on Apollo 8...we never thought we’d be in space together. Just a few years later, we were together in Houston.” — Jerry Griffin [19:28]
• “NASA says Gemini. I said, I was just going to say we should probably settle that once and for all. What do you prefer, Jerry?...I call them both." — [29:44]
• "To me, it was the gutsiest call that was ever made in the Apollo program.” — Jerry Griffin (on Apollo 8) [55:35]
• “We solved problems that we didn't know were coming, but we solved them all. And I think that's what they're going to do in Artemis.” [59:46]
• “In Apollo, the best exploration came on 15, 16, and 17...It opened my eyes. We kind of had been back in the test days before. We just never had dealt in how do you do exploration.” — [60:44]
• “People ask me sometimes what is the legacy of Apollo...The crew will tell you...‘We never worried about our backpack...because we knew you guys were watching our data...’” — [62:13]
• "Public [sometimes] makes it sound like, well, you just crank it in and launch, you know...when you strap six and a half million pounds of high explosive to your rear end and light it, yeah. There's a danger you cannot drive to zero." — [63:55]
• “I want you glued to my hip...if you see something wrong, tell me and we'll try to fix it. But...I'm not making a documentary.” — Jerry quoting Ron Howard [68:21]
• “You come back here [to the back room], don't go in that viewing room where you got all the riffraff.” — [78:34]
• “The best job I ever had though was being a flight director.” — [77:26]

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7. Key Timestamps

| Segment | Time | Notes | |----------------------------------|-----------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | Intro & ISS Headline | 00:00–08:52 | ISS leak, safe haven procedure, expert commentary | | Griffin’s Disaster Recovery Work | 13:25–15:39 | Texas flood leadership, disaster lessons | | NASA Congressional Liaison | 15:43–19:14 | Saving the shuttle; lessons from DC | | NASA Early Days | 19:14–23:25 | Engineering background, Gemini entry, career pivots | | Gemini Program & EVAs | 26:01–33:40 | Fast tempo, training, painful lessons, Aldrin's pool training | | Apollo 1 Fire | 42:09–49:34 | Tragedy, aftermath, design flaws | | Apollo 7, Apollo 8 | 51:40–56:54 | Surprised by lunar mission leap | | Apollo 11 and Exploration | 57:40–63:38 | How geology/fieldwork revolutionized final lunar missions | | Apollo 13 & Hollywood | 65:43–73:05 | Movie realism, on-set stories | | NASA’s Leadership and Legacy | 77:14–81:35 | Today's flight directors, culture, selection | | Audience Q&A, Wrap-Up | 81:42–End | Book plug, final advice, friendly banter |

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Closing Thoughts

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in space history, program leadership, and the essential “human factor” behind NASA’s greatest achievements. Jerry Griffin’s wit, wisdom, and humility come through in stories that span the dawn of the space age to today’s Artemis program—reminding us that perseverance, technical rigor, and a culture of trust remain at the heart of great exploration.

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Quick Reference:

• Notable topics: ISS leak, Apollo fire & recovery, Gemini-Apollo missions, evolution of Mission Control, consulting for Hollywood, future of Artemis.
• Notable guests: Jerry Griffin (flight director, NASA legend)
• Memorable quote: "The best job I ever had was being a flight director." [77:26]

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Transcript

[Tarek Malik]

Coming up on this Week in Space, Rod and I are at the International Space development conference in McLean, Virginia where we are going to talk with legendary flight director Jerry Griffin, who is going to tell us what it takes to have the right stuff to fly people to the moon and back and then do it again at the movies. Tune in

[Jerry Griffin]

podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Rod Pyle]

This is Tuit. This is this Week in space, episode number 213, recorded on June 5, 2026 live from ISDC with Jerry Griffin. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of this Week in Space. This is the live from ISDC 2026 edition.

[Jerry Griffin]

Thank you.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow. Normally we have to fake that, so we really appreciate it. I'm Rod Pyle, editor chief, Badass magazine here with the national space side and with the one and only Tarek Malik of Space.com.

[Tarek Malik]

hello, hello, hello, hello. Nice to see you. Rob, how are you?

[Rod Pyle]

Nobody claps for you.

[Tarek Malik]

I know.

[Rod Pyle]

But more importantly, we're here with Jerry Griffin. Am I aware followed flight director, former director of the Johnson Space center, icon of the Texas business community, and my personal hero. So, Jerry, thank you so much for joining us today.

[Jerry Griffin]

Pleasure.

[Rod Pyle]

He usually says nice things about me, but we won't go there.

[Jerry Griffin]

I'll try to keep it that way.

[Rod Pyle]

So we'll be taking a look at Jerry's career in this episode. Episode. But first, I have a space joke from Joel Olson.

[Tarek Malik]

You did not have a joke. You have a joke, Joel. Hi, Joe.

[Leo]

Hi, Joel.

[Rod Pyle]

What kind of. Hey, Tarek.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes, Rod?

[Rod Pyle]

What kind of paper do astronauts use to write home?

[Tarek Malik]

Space paper. Astro paper. I don't know.

[Rod Pyle]

Close. International space stationary.

[Tarek Malik]

Very appropriate. Very appropriate for today.

[Rod Pyle]

We got a half hearted room.

[Tarek Malik]

That's a good one.

[Rod Pyle]

Some sympathetic.

[Tarek Malik]

That was very clever, Joel. I liked it.

[Rod Pyle]

I've heard that some people want to write us off when it's joke time in this show. But you can help by sending us your best joke, best, worst or most different space joke to Twist tv. And we'll be happy to credit you on the air or give you blame, however it goes. Now let's go on to headline news. Headline news.

[Tarek Malik]

Headline news. Headline news.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow.

[Jerry Griffin]

We wrecked it.

[Tarek Malik]

I didn't know we were going to do the thing.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, our engineer is face bombing.

[Tarek Malik]

So I nailed it. You know, we'll just pretend that I nailed it.

[Rod Pyle]

We actually had some headlines lined up earlier and they have all been tossed out the window because speaking of tossing things out the window, the space station is leaking again.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, it's been leaking for like quite some time and. And Today, like as we were getting ready to finish up with the show, we got word through the NASA public affairs. Public. Bethany, the Stevens. The public, what do they call it? Public communications. Yeah, that's right, that, that they had a kind of an impromptu repair. Well, I can't say impromptu. We don't know very much about what exactly happened, but they sent five of the seven astronauts on the space station into the, the Crew 12 Dragon to do like Safe Haven Shelter because two of the cosmonauts went into the Zvezda PRK. It's like the docking vestibule that all the other stuff is attached to the Zarya module, the second oldest spacecraft or part of the space station, to look for the crack again to do some, some repairs. And they didn't finish the repairs. They stopped right what they were doing. But while they were working on that, they sent all five of the astronauts, the other astronauts. So it's, it's three NASA astronauts, a European astronaut, and then, and then one of the cosmos.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

They all went in there and, and waited for about like an hour, two hours since NASA made the announcement. And then they said that they gave them the all clear, they stopped the work that they were doing. It didn't sound like they finished the repair, but it sounded kind of urgent because we didn't know this was going to happen until it was already underway on the space station.

[Rod Pyle]

So when you say repair, this is like toothpaste or epoxy, right?

[Tarek Malik]

Something like that. Yeah. We should probably let people know what had happened. About a year or two ago, I want to say it was a while ago, there was a big report from the OMB that said that one of the biggest threats to the International Space Station was these cracks that were in the PRK service. Basically it's been leaking air and it's been leaking air consistently over time. And in the last year or so, they said that those cracks, that that leak rate had gone up. It was like 50% a day of the air in that module was leaking out and they would offset it with more air and keep the hatches shut. And this is a part of the space station that sees a lot of use. So where the Soyuz dock, it's progress dock, they open the hatches, they shut the hatchet.

[Rod Pyle]

There's a lot of flexing, a lot

[Tarek Malik]

of, a lot of, a lot of wear on that module. So they limited a lot of that activity in the area to try to address the issue. Well, it came back a few months ago. There was a report, we talked about it. I Think. On the podcast, Eric Berger had a report about how the leak was back and increasing again, which was a problem because they had thought they were mitigating it and clearly that's not the case. So today that's like the background for it. The space station is old. It's 25 plus years old.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, and this module, I think dates back to the late 80s, early 90s.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right, that's right. So it's a.

[Rod Pyle]

It was a spare.

[Tarek Malik]

It was the, it was the, the first edition after Zarya for Zvezda. And then it was the one that allowed them to live on the space station because Zarya was the control module. And, and so, so we're not. We didn't hear like exactly what they were doing. We didn't get any specifics. Maybe it's because it was a Roscosmos LED effort and NASA was just kind of saying what they were hearing from. From that. Yeah, I'm sure we're going to get more details as the day wears on, but we just know that they were working in there to try to either address or find the leak, and that's about it. I don't know if the hatches were closed throughout the space station. I would assume that they are because we were having the crew safe haven inside the Dragon. You wouldn't do that unless you were worried about a depressurization event or something that would incapacitate the crew.

[Rod Pyle]

Why don't we ask an expert?

[Jerry Griffin]

We should.

[Rod Pyle]

We have one right here.

[Tarek Malik]

Right.

[Jerry Griffin]

So, Jerry, I heard this for the first time from you today. Well, but yeah, just the idea that

[Rod Pyle]

you're in Mission Control and the word leap comes up.

[Leo]

Can't you.

[Jerry Griffin]

It's been a long time problem, as you mentioned. I think it was longer than two years ago. I think it's more like three or four.

[Tarek Malik]

It was a while. Yeah, I've been a while.

[Jerry Griffin]

And they tried to do some patching at that point and it's probably some sort of epoxy or some sort of fast sealing caulk, if you will. Yeah, and I can't understand really why it's quite so difficult, but it must be. Probably had an odd place that they can't get to.

[Rod Pyle]

You said it was behind a shelf or a cabinet, right?

[Tarek Malik]

That's what I've heard. This is what I heard from my team again. Like we're here in D.C. my team is, I guess they're all over the place in the computer ether, but I was told they were, they were cutting behind a cabinet to be able to get access. They were cutting a hinge off the cabinet to get into the area that was really hard to reach to see if that's where it was, and then try to patch it up. And they didn't finish what they were doing, Whatever they were doing.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, well, I've had some of that Russian borscht in a tube that they take up in the toothpaste tube, and you could. That didn't work. I think, you know, you let it sit there long enough. All right, well, I think that. Is there anything else for them?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, I guess just watch this space. Right. Because the, the big takeaway I took away is that they didn't finish whatever they were doing.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Which means that the leak is still there. The risk, apparently, is not because they let the crew leave the Dragon, but I'm just curious how that's going to evolve over time. Do they have to go back? Maybe they have to check it. They're going to be watching that, that over time, and then we're going to see if they're going to keep using that docking port or if they're going to use something else.

[Jerry Griffin]

I don't know.

[Tarek Malik]

I don't know. We'll have to see.

[Rod Pyle]

The Americans went to the Dragon. Where did the Russians go to the Soyuz? Or did they just sit in that module and wait to see what happened?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, so all four of the SpaceX crew, 12 astronauts, which includes one cosmonaut, I believe, two NASA astronauts and a European, if not three NASA astronauts, I don't recall, are in. So you had five astronauts in the Dragon itself. Now, now, one of those was NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who did fly with two other cosmonauts. So we assume because there are only five of them in the Dragon, that the other two cosmonauts were the ones that were working in the prk. And they are. Again, we don't, we didn't get those specific details. That's what we can infer from the information that we got. So.

[Rod Pyle]

But can a cosmonaut sit in the Dragon? They don't have the same air fittings.

[Tarek Malik]

He, he, he launched on that Dragon that goes.

[Jerry Griffin]

Oh, okay.

[Rod Pyle]

So he's wearing an American suit.

[Tarek Malik]

He was probably wearing his flight suit.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay. Sorry, I'm getting carried away.

[Tarek Malik]

That's all right. It's all right. It's good stuff. Luckily, everyone's safe. I think the big takeaway is everyone is safe for now. On the space station, there wasn't like a big emergency. We should all be thankful for that.

[Rod Pyle]

Is your phone going to be ringing in a minute for this emergency.

[Jerry Griffin]

You know, every spacecraft leaks a little bit and you want it out for sure and not, you know, big enough to, that you become a vacuum inside there. So. But this has gone on a long time and, and those cracks are not getting stuffed up the way they need to be. So it must be a perplexing issue for them. It's got to be.

[Rod Pyle]

So as an engineer, is this the kind of thing you look at from the ground and think this could blow out at any minute or is it just.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, if it's fatigue particularly it's caused by fatigue. Every time you have a pressure cycle everything gets moved again. And so it's, it's just like been in a piece of metal till it breaks. And so you don't, yeah, you don't want to mess with it if it's, it's probably minimal, but it's enough to get your attention because the trend is up.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jerry Griffin]

So.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, well we are going to trend ourselves into a short break and we'll be right back. So go nowhere.

[Leo]

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[Rod Pyle]

And we are back with flight. Former Apollo flight director Jerry Griffin, director of the Johnson Space center, deputy director of the Kennedy Space center, deputy director of the Dryden, now Armstrong Research center, captain of industry in Texas. You ran the Houston Chamber of Commerce. You ran the, I guess central or west coast version of Korn Ferry for a while.

[Jerry Griffin]

No, that was in Houston. But you're thinking of. Of the company that I chaired, a public company in California. That took a lot of my time.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, you've been a busy man. And since then, as Jerry started thinking about retirement in his 80s and then now early 90s, you were tapped to lead the recovery efforts from flooding in Texas in 2025.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, yeah. And I'm still in the middle of that. I live right where the. If you remember the Camp mystic campers that got killed, two and two counselors. I live probably two miles from the original hit area. And then the two forks of the river come together right below my house. And the rivers kept coming up, but I was up. I'm up on the side of a mountain, so I was okay. But it. I've learned a lot about disasters that you don't recover from very Fast. And we're in what we call the rebuild phase now, which is particularly tough because you're rebuilding businesses, you're rebuilding homes, infrastructure, roads, bridges. First thing you got to do is get everybody, you know, housed and get some food. And, of course, this happened on July 4th, so coldness, cold was not a problem. It was hot. And at my house, I had 16 inches of rain in three hours.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow.

[Jerry Griffin]

It was a fixed cell that just sat there.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow.

[Jerry Griffin]

But, you know, we're resilient. Come back.

[Rod Pyle]

So I forgot to mention the. One of the more interesting parts of your career, which is when NASA headquarters sent you to Washington, D.C. to be the congressional liaison for four years, which we'll talk about in a few minutes. But I'm wondering if that part of your job experience was the most useful prep for doing this blood recovery.

[Jerry Griffin]

It was. It was prep for doing a lot of things. For one thing, I learned how they make the sausage up in Congress, and it's not pretty.

[Rod Pyle]

Right down the street.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, it's right down the street and. But you kind of have to be in the middle of it to understand it. And. Arduous project. I was 6 foot 3 when I started, and I did four budget cycles on the Hill, mostly with George Lowe, who was the deputy administrator of NASA at the time. And we had. Had almost lost the shuttle. It was after Apollo. I was getting. Let me give you a little background there. I was the lead flight director on Apollo 17, the last one. And we went. That was December 72. We went into January, and I was getting ready to be a flight director for Skylab. And one day I get a call, actually, it was from Chris Kraft, who is now the center director, and said, hey, Jerry, Jim Fletcher, who was the administrator of NASA, and George Lowe wanted to talk to you. I said, about what? About a job. Said a job? Said, yeah. I said, what is it? And he said, get on an airplane. Get up there and let them tell you, you know, that's typical craft. And so I did. I got on NASA, airplane went up there, and they said, we want you to run legislative affairs. I said, you want a Texas A and M aeronautical engineer to run the Hill for NASA and. And be the interface? And they said, yep, we gotta save the shuttle. And Walter Mondale, who was later a presidential candidate, but he was a senator that didn't like space, never did. And he put an amendment to the 72 budget that would have killed the shuttle.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow.

[Jerry Griffin]

Artists. It was getting started, and it was defeated by one vote. That's. That's when they said, we got to have somebody that can go on the Hill with George. Right low. And I would. We tried to meet all 535 members of Congress, Senate in. And it was an education for Jerry Griffin. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was wild.

[Rod Pyle]

Would have been for anybody. Well, so let's step back a bit because I believe you have a question.

[Tarek Malik]

I do. Well, I'm very interested, Jerry, and how you even found yourself in the realm of space. You know, is it something that as a kid that you have always been fascinated with, or was it like a. An evolution of happenstance where you've just, you know, you found either a passion or a calling to it later in life and then obviously something that you're clearly good at because then you keep sending people to space.

[Jerry Griffin]

Well, you know, it was funny because I was an aeronautical engineer. That's what my degree is in. Because there was no space curriculum. Yeah, none. Zero.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Jerry Griffin]

Astronomers knew something about it. Astrophysicists knew something about how you change orbits and do. We didn't know any of that. I was in a fighter squadron. I graduated and got commissioned. I was in a fighter squadron. And in 19. I joined that squadron after training in 1958. And NASA was formed. That was July, and NASA was formed in October 58. And I can remember when it first came out, I said, that sounds fun. And by the way, I was in that fighter squadron with Bill Anders, who later Flew on Apollo 8 and is no longer with us. But he and I were both. He was a Naval Academy graduate. We were both in a squadron. We didn't know anything about space, and we never thought we would be in space together, but we actually flew in the same airplane sometimes together. And shows you how the world is not very big. Because when we separated, we thought, well, we'll see you later, you know. And just a few years later, we were together in Houston. And he was an astronaut and I was a flight controller. So I kept knocking on. I knew I wasn't going to make a career at that time. I could tell that that's not what I wanted to do long term, particularly with space coming out. So I started knocking on NASA's door and I wouldn't give up. I talked with Gene Kranz, and eventually he tried to lowball me on a. On a salary. And. And by this time I had. I got out of the Air Force. I was in Marin County, California, and I moved to the South Bay, to Sunnyvale, where Mikey Martin was building the Agena and also is where the control center was for the launches out of Vandenberg after the liftoff. So it's kind of like a Houston setting.

[Rod Pyle]

Excuse me. But at that point, the Agena was basically just an upper stage for small satellite.

[Jerry Griffin]

It was. It was the upper stage for the Thor, later, the Thor Delta. And yes, it was an upper stage that put spy satellites into orbit is what it did out of Vandenberg. And this was. This was in 60, around 62. And I can tell you, we put about as many in the Pacific Ocean as we put into orbit, but we were learning every time. And. And I was zeroed in. I was systems guy for the Agena. Well, guess what? If you remember when Gemini came along and we were going to dock with the Agena, and there was a fellow there that was going to run that piece of the business at Johnson Space center, he worked for Karens. His name was Mel Brooks. No, Ken to the other one. And Mel said, hey, you got background with Eugenia. We'd love to have you come on. Anyway. No further. That I couldn't refuse. It was still a pay cut, but I was ready. I wanted to get into mission control. I kept reading about it. I said, God, that sounds like a neat place. So, long story short, I never worked on the Eugene. I got there, and I was there about a month, and they came to me and said, we'd really like to move you over to the Gemini side of the equation. I said, don't throw me in that bar pass. I'm all for it. So I never worked on the Eugenia.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay?

[Jerry Griffin]

That's how I got in.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, let's tenacity there.

[Rod Pyle]

Let's work our way to a quick break, and we'll be right back. So go nowhere.

[Leo]

Hey, guys. I know the folks at Blue Origin probably aren't sleeping too well these days, but I am, thanks to my Helix Mattress, our sponsor. How's that for a segue? For this week in space, it's time to upgrade to a Helix mattress just like we did and get a good night's rest. No more night sweats, no back pain, no motion transfer. A great mattress made in the usa. Look, you don't want to settle for a mattress made overseas with low quality, questionable materials. Rest assured, your Helix mattress is assembled, packaged, and shipped from Arizona within days of your placing your order. They make it to order, so it's brand new and fresh, and you should do what we did. Lisa and I took the Helix Sleep quiz. This was really helpful. It matches you with the perfect mattress based on both your personal preferences and your sleep Needs. We like firmer mattresses. We're side sleepers like that. In a Wesper sleep study, Helix measured participants sleep performance after doing what we did, switching from their old mattress to to a Helix mattress. And they found what I would say was our experience. Exactly. 82% of participants in the study saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle.

[Rod Pyle]

So did we.

[Leo]

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[Tarek Malik]

Well, thank you so much, Jerry. You know, so, so now you've gotten us to the, to project Gemini and I'm very curious about that because we know, I know that Rod Rod got to watch a lot of that stuff, right?

[Rod Pyle]

Just the last couple.

[Tarek Malik]

A lot of, a lot of us here in the audience, you know, like, like we're not able to understand, you know, we didn't see anything of that light. But it was so many firsts and everything coming into it as you did. I'm wondering what that environment was like, what you, what you thought about the goals of those flights and how they really set things up for, for really the Apollo missions that came after.

[Jerry Griffin]

You know, to put that in perspective, we actually were on average flying Gemini flight every six weeks.

[Tarek Malik]

Every six weeks.

[Jerry Griffin]

How fast? Now Mercury was a one person capsule and then it became the Gemini two person spacecraft we called it. We actually don't use capsule for Gemini depression.

[Rod Pyle]

I've had fingers shook in my Face.

[Jerry Griffin]

You do the. I noticed that. Anyway, so. So anyhow, we, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were really all the Apollo. They were each one of us a learning state. Germany is first time we rendezvoused, first time we docked, first time we got outside the spacecraft and did what we call an EVA spacewalk and extra vehicular activity. Typical NASA. Yeah, and. And also long duration. We flew thing long enough in Earth orbit to go to the moon and back. So we knew we could do it.

[Tarek Malik]

And they survived in the spaciousness of Gemini.

[Rod Pyle]

Just a note on that, for those who don't know it was Gemini 7 or 6A was the 7. So imagine sitting in the front seat of. It's not even as big as a Toyota Corolla.

[Jerry Griffin]

No, it's more like a vw.

[Rod Pyle]

It's like if you've ever sat for a vet or a very, very small car. So you're sitting about this far away from the other guy. You can't stretch your legs out. You can't stretch your arms out. The hatch is literally right up against your helmet for 14 days.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I love your ride.

[Rod Pyle]

But now that's icky. And now during that time, you, of course, as a human being, have to attend to all the bodily functions of a human being in that space for 14 days.

[Jerry Griffin]

Weightlessness.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Which does funny things to fluids. So I know I'm kind of skipping ahead here, but from the perspective of mission Control, I mean, I'm sure you had sympathy for those guys, but there's nothing you could do on the ground. But I mean, what kind of words of solace did you send up because they were bored out of their minds?

[Jerry Griffin]

Well, you know, they never complained. They said became. They became very friendly over the years and. And no complaints. They never said anything about it. We did let one of them take off a suit at a time, if they could get it off. Now, cut. Pete Conrad, for instance, in Germany, was not about an inch taller than I am. He could get his feet straight out, even out of suit. But when he got out of the suit, he said he was pretty comfortable.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

And so. But we learned. So we learned how to go to the moon on Mercury and Gemini. That's why Gemini was. Or Gemini was so important. NASA says Gemini.

[Tarek Malik]

I said, I was just going to say we should probably settle that once and for all. What do you prefer, Jerry?

[Jerry Griffin]

And we called them. I call them both. Did then too. If you're talking to astronomer, you want to say Gemini. So anyway, we learned so much in that that it made Apollo work because we Knew we could get outside of spacecraft, get back in. When Ed White got out on Gemini 4, he was kind of like Leonov did. The Russian had gone out right before that. And he got outside and of course, the suit expanded a little bit. He had a hard time getting back in. Leonov and he was that.

[Rod Pyle]

He was big, right?

[Jerry Griffin]

He was tall. Yeah, yeah. And. And McDivitt, the commander was pulling on him to get him back in. And they finally made it. Now, Leonov did the same thing with the Russians. He got outside, having trouble getting back in, and he actually reduced the pressure in his suit to make it softer.

[Rod Pyle]

Considered risky.

[Jerry Griffin]

Very risky, yeah. And he couldn't have stayed at that pressure very long. He had to get in and get back up to partial pressure of oxygen being enough to survive. So he. That whole. Those years went by so fast. We were launching, it was 24 7. We would end one flight, start the next one. Turned out Apollo, we launched about every six months. It was still 24 7. Get one down and start the next one and let the crew go off and do their thing. That just came down. And I never will forget the first time I saw Neil Armstrong in a Mexican sombrero in a parade going down Mexico City, I think it was. And if you knew Neil, that was so far from him.

[Rod Pyle]

Bit of an introvert.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, but he's shy or he was shy. He was quiet. I tell you what, when he talked, everybody listened. That was. I've been in a room of probably 150 people or more, and they would be John Bank. There'd be all kinds of conversations. This was in a pre flight kind of a get ready. What else do we have to do? And at the very end, Neil sitting in the back, would Hank hold up his head or his hand and everybody get quiet because he's going to speak. And boy, when he did, he was right on. Great man.

[Rod Pyle]

So I want to jump back to Gemini 4 for a second. So this was the first spacewalk on the American side. And we are still, by much of the world, considered to be catching up with the Soviet Union. So it's a big deal. And Ed White climbed out of the spacecraft. He had a little handheld maneuvering nitrogen pistol that he depleted in about two minutes.

[Jerry Griffin]

Didn't work very well.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

And then.

[Rod Pyle]

And he's on. He's on a tether, so it's not like he's going anywhere. But he had a little trouble getting it back in. And can you kind of narrate that and how Chris Craft responded to this?

[Jerry Griffin]

Well, Chris Was always several people.

[Rod Pyle]

And. Sorry. Chris was the flight director at this point. Yeah, through most of the Gemini missions.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right. Well, he was one of them.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay.

[Jerry Griffin]

Because you had Kranz and Lonnie John Hodge. Okay. But he was the lead. He was. He was numero, you know, and so Chris never liked. And it was always a little unsettling to have a guy outside, you know, because so many things could go wrong.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Jerry Griffin]

So you didn't want to stay any longer than you had to. That was a little different on the moon because we had a backpack and different kind of thing, but in a gravity field. But when you had a guy out on a Gemini flight, until we learned later in the missions, we learned you got to have handholds, you got to have foot restraints that they could put their boots in, and then they could turn a wrench or do all kinds of things. We started out, they were just all loose. You know, they go to turn a wrench, and they put torque on it and turn their body. Right. So you had to anchor them down, get their feet in restraints, have handholds, tethers. They could move as they went. And by the Gemini 12, or when Aldrin did it, man, he aced it. But he had all the flights to learn from. And so Kraft always wanted to get people back in. Don't stay a second longer. That translated later to landing on the moon. Don't stay any longer, and you have to get to Ella. There's a. Don't tell the.

[Rod Pyle]

But the problem on Gemini 4 was, if I recall correctly, the McDivitt, who is the guy that stayed inside the capsule, had his. I guess, his push to talk button down, or he switched to manual instead of off.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, he was.

[Rod Pyle]

So you guys were saying, can you tell him to get it back inside the spacecraft? And.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah. And he was either not answering us or. Or he. He couldn't hear us. Anytime. The crew didn't want to do something in seg in Houston. No, can't read you. And I'm joking on that because they generally did everything we did. We asked them to. But it's a. That was a dynamic period of NASA, and, boy, did we learn a lot. And by the time we got to Apollo, we were comfortable with everything except the command module, because it was built by another contractor. And there was a little worry, I think, that bringing in a new contractor for a spacecraft, a manned piece of it. McDonnell had built Mercury, and they built Gemini spacecraft, so why not McDonnell? Well, it turned out that North American had a better design. It really was, and it was bigger.

[Rod Pyle]

So for the uninitiated, the first two orbital spacecraft that the US used, Mercury and Gemini, were built by McDonnell Douglas. Very successful, worked great. Exactly what was needed.

[Jerry Griffin]

McDonnell.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, McDonald at the time. Douglas was later.

[Jerry Griffin]

Before the.

[Rod Pyle]

Before all the mergers started happening. But then when Apollo came along, they moved over to North American aviation.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And I think there are a number of people, even within your structure at NASA, that were a little surprised by that. Can I ask before we move on?

[Jerry Griffin]

Oh, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

We'll take a break.

[Rod Pyle]

Yes.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay.

[Rod Pyle]

You forgot.

[Tarek Malik]

I forgot what?

[Rod Pyle]

You always forget. Let's go to a break, and we'll be right back. So stand by.

[Jerry Griffin]

Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha Frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel, maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

[Rod Pyle]

So there's a lot to say about Gemini, and I guess I'll just summarize. We had Gemini 8, Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott, that went into a potentially deadly spin. It was a really close call.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And that happened while they were out of communication with the ground. So you guys were kind of not even really knowing what was going on for a while, right?

[Jerry Griffin]

That's right. And they came up over a ship that picked them up first, had a big antenna on the ship. We had three of those ships in the. In those days. And. And they straightened it out fairly fast. And Neil Armstrong was the guy that really fixed that one. He. He finally took bold action. And it was a stuck thruster that was spinning them up, and then that coupled into pitch, and it was actually spinning in, going over and.

[Rod Pyle]

Like, once per second.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah. One revolution per second. Yeah. So they were in danger of raining out, not. Not being blacked out, but blood to the head. And. And Neil finally killed the primary system. He turned off all 16 thrusters and got onto the reentry system, which meant we had to come down. So we put them down in the Indian Ocean, where we didn't have a carrier to pick them up. We had a destroyer that had been trained a little bit. We had those around the. Several parts of the world to encase. Yeah. And they got them out of the water and got the command module out of the water or got the spacecraft out of the water and made it. Okay. But that was a close call. Really close.

[Rod Pyle]

And then we go up through Gemini 12, which I'll mention just because, you know, your last goal, to prove out the techniques needed for Apollo just in case they had to do an eva was to get eva, right. And you would try it, I think at this point, four or five times.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And never completely successful. The guys would over exert themselves, as you mentioned. There weren't enough handholds and footholds. Suits were stiff. But there was also, as I read it anyway, and you know better than I, obviously, a little bit of a gap in the training. And Buzz Aldrin, hero of the moon, I mean, it was a NASA effort, but he really doubled down, I think, just as a personal thing.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And NASA rented time in a pool in a boys school in Maryland. And they built a Gemini mock up. A very rough one was the capsule in the Eugenia in the deep end of the pool.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, I think. Yeah, probably, yeah. In 12 it was. Yeah, that's right.

[Rod Pyle]

Where Buzz would go and simulate this zero G maneuvering in this pool. But they could only do it after water polo practice when the boys vacated the pool. So this was NASA in its rough and ready years. But Buzz, by at least talking to him and the people that knew him, you know, he wasn't the easiest guy to get to know, but he was dedicated to getting this right. And he was down there for hours and hours and hours moving, and there's only so much you can do. You get out of the hatch, you crawl to the back, you crawl to the front, you go to the busy box, you turn a few knobs, get out, take a rest and go back

[Leo]

and do it again.

[Rod Pyle]

Probably knowing Buzz as I do, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of times. But when he got into space, he made it look easy.

[Jerry Griffin]

He did, he did. And by the way, that underwater facility led to, there is one now at the Johnson Space center that is huge state of the art in neutral Fluency lab. And they can put huge pieces of hardware in there.

[Tarek Malik]

And space stations, the whole space station is there.

[Jerry Griffin]

The reason that's important is because in water they can get you to neutral buoyancy, they call it, where you're, you're neither going up or down, you're down in the suit. You got your suit on and it's very much like zero G, except you still, of course, you can feel your feet on the bottom of the suit, but most of the movements and all, you're kind of suspended. So it's very similar and it's excellent training, really good. Drive me nuts. Get that water with a big old suit and backpack simulator.

[Rod Pyle]

Did you ever try it?

[Jerry Griffin]

Nope. It's like jumping out of an Airplane. I don't care to do that.

[Tarek Malik]

What about going to space? Would you want to go to space?

[Jerry Griffin]

Oh, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah. Yeah. I'd go to Mark if I could do it.

[Rod Pyle]

We can ask around.

[Jerry Griffin]

Ask around.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay. We probably should move on to Apollo 1, because this was a big deal. Yeah. Big turning point. So the Apollo capsule originally was specked out to probably land on the moon by itself. So it was built in a certain configuration. Didn't have the front hatch for the docking with the lunar module and so forth. And then later they started working on the block 2, which would be able to rendezvous and dock and undock with the lamin. Crews could transfer inside the tunnel and all that. But the original capsule was going to be used for the Apollo 1, Apollo 204 flight. Earth orbital flight. Right.

[Jerry Griffin]

Earth orbit.

[Rod Pyle]

That was supposed to be in 1967. So you were moving really fast at this point. And again, we got this new contractor, North American, putting this together. And this is a much more complex spacecraft than Gemini was. And according to. Depending on what you read, there were between dozens and many hundreds of change requests coming in from NASA constantly. North America was having trouble keeping up. So all this to say that the spacecraft design was a bit compromised.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, I think. And a lot of people have taken that to mean that we were cutting corners because there was this space race. I don't agree with that. We were cutting corners, trying to just get it done. And cutting corners is not even real accurate. We were in a hurry. And that's when you're doing something brand new, that's a tough place to be. But we never worried about the Soviet Union. We never thought about being in a race with them. It's kind of like when you're on a football team. You got to play your game. You can't worry about what the other guys, how they're coming along and their practices and all that. You know, you got to concentrate on your own. There were two problems that really caused. There was a fire that killed three guys on a pad. It wasn't a launch. It was a pad test. And. But there were two things that.

[Rod Pyle]

It wasn't even fueled right.

[Jerry Griffin]

No.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

No. Empty. And it counts down about T minus 9 minutes and then stops. So what happened? We had a bunch of flammable materials inside the cockpit. We had paper checklists. 8 and a half by 11. It was probably that big. Every phase of the mission, you had 100% oxygen, which we had done in Mercury. We did it in Gemini. We had done it way back when in High altitude airplanes. So it was kind of a standard thing to have 100% oxygen when you're going either up to the edge of the atmosphere or out of it. So we were kind of. The Russians or the Soviet Union had already changed to more like an air mixture and. But we hadn't. We stuck with what we knew. So we had this 100% oxygen. You always like to have a little bit of leakage out if don't pull anything from the Florida coast inside.

[Rod Pyle]

So you over pressure.

[Jerry Griffin]

So you over pressure a psi or 2 pound per square inch or two. And then everything was going out. So it was 100% oxygen with flammable material. And then there was a short which to this day has never been determined exactly what it was. But it caused a spark. It started a fire. I was still a guidance, navigation and control officer for that test for. I was just there to monitor the systems. And Gus Grissom finally. And we were having calm issues and he finally said, hey, we can't even talk between buildings. How are we going to talk when we get on the moon? And finally we called a halt and see if they could straighten out the calm issue. They had already been closed in. Hatch was sealed. And that was a change that came after the fire. But it was like that when it. When the spark happened and I just happened not to. We were taking a break and I didn't take my headset off and I could. I heard somebody say fire. It's all I heard. And there were guys getting up out of the control room to go take care of things or get a drink of water. And I kind of yelled at him. I said, hold on, something's going on at the Cape. And it was the fire. And that's about all that I heard in real time. A couple other guys heard it too because they hadn't taken their headsets off yet. Long story short, it was over in a few minutes. I mean, a few seconds. It was. They burned so fast. Over pressurized it split the heat shield area that where on the bottom. It kind of separated that.

[Rod Pyle]

Yes.

[Jerry Griffin]

And the crew actually died from asphyxiation. Right. And all the O2 was gone. So they couldn't breathe. And they got some birds too.

[Rod Pyle]

But if I could just add one point because this early capsule design, they had an interior opening hatch, which is a very smart thing to do because

[Jerry Griffin]

we're in space and you got.

[Rod Pyle]

You don't want a hatch that opens out because if you have one that opens in it just as you pressurized it.

[Jerry Griffin]

Plus it Just plugs, right? Plugs up.

[Rod Pyle]

So it's not going anywhere. Unfortunately, if you have a fire and now the pressure is building up inside the spacecraft.

[Tarek Malik]

There's no way you can get it

[Rod Pyle]

open until it's split open. So those guys didn't have a chance.

[Jerry Griffin]

They didn't have a chance. Out of that, we lost about 21 months to the next mission. And in October, we actually flew it in October of 68. And in the interim, back in June, Craft was George Loeb was brought in as the program manager. Kraft was elevated up to be the deputy director to Gilruth or godhood, depending

[Rod Pyle]

how you look at it.

[Tarek Malik]

Right.

[Jerry Griffin]

So he crayons and Crafts had to have some more flight directors. So in those days it's very difficult to be a flight director. You got to go through paperwork and training and. And that was after Challenger and shuttle caused that. But in those days, Craft said, griffin, I want you to be a flight director. Yes, sir. And he named two more at the same time. So that's when I became a flight director before the first human mission got launched.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, well let's launch ourselves into a break and we'll be right back.

[Jerry Griffin]

So don't I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine. Fifteen or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

[E]

Botox Onobotulinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for Those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

[Jerry Griffin]

Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more.

[Rod Pyle]

Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case.

[Jerry Griffin]

We're gonna crack this case and prove we're the greatest partners of all time. New friends you are Gary the snake and your last name. The snake Dream Team Hidden NEW HABITATS Zootopia has a secret reptile population.

[Rod Pyle]

You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home.

[Tarek Malik]

You're clearly working it.

[Rod Pyle]

Zootopia 2 now available on Disney Plus.

[Leo]

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[Tarek Malik]

So Jerry, now you're a flight director and like as you mentioned, you know, it took 21 months to, to get to that, that first human flight with Apollo. And I'm really struck because it's 1968 now and we're going from that first flight, that first crewed flight all the way to Apollo 8 at the end of the year where we're going around the moon for the first time. And that seems amazingly short, at least from now when we're, we're hoping to be able to launch it once a year. And I'm just curious what that environment was like because it seems like it's really fast and you're learning these lessons from the tragic Apollo 1 fire. And yet you know that you need to get to that end goal there.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, we got, we got the Apollo 1 fire satisfied but changing the air and getting the paper out. In fact 3M came up with a paper that was self extinguishing. You couldn't light it. I tried it. Well that's what all the checklists are printed. They use that in operating rooms. I've been told that high oxygen.

[Rod Pyle]

Another space program spin off I haven't heard about.

[Jerry Griffin]

But we finally got it. Got the hatch opening outward, quick disconnect, all of that. That said okay, now we can go. So we launched seven, worked like a charm, flew for ten and a half days.

[Rod Pyle]

Earth orbit only.

[Jerry Griffin]

Earth orbit only by itself. Very much like you're going to get a little bit. Well, Apollo 8 then came next. Yeah, that was in October and then in December just. It was so close that most of us on seven, I was one of the flight, three flight directors on seven and we didn't hear anything. We didn't know it. I was walking out of the control center after splashdown of seven. And this guy came up to me, said, did you hear we're going to the moon on 8? I can't repeat exactly what I said, but it was like, you're kidding me, that's close. And they said, no, we've had a small team, seven guys I think in CRAFT and Lowell working on could we do it? Could we go to the moon and circle it with just command module? We didn't have a lander yet very much like Artemis went through right now. Yeah, we didn't have a lander, so that's about all you could do. And it kept the momentum going. And it also said we can test out this whole system, all stages of the Saturn and the whole bit to get there, except for docking.

[Rod Pyle]

However, it'll be first. A difference? Well, yeah, because part of this was motivated by the CIA noticing a very large rocket being up in Russia which was attempting to do the same thing you were. It is worth noting though, for Apollo 8, one difference between that and Artemis. Artemis didn't go into lunar orbit. It was a flyby.

[Jerry Griffin]

It's a flyby.

[Rod Pyle]

Apollo 8 was going into lunar orbit with the space, with the capsule, excuse me, the spacecraft.

[Tarek Malik]

I was going to end up module,

[Rod Pyle]

which had a 20,000 pound thrust rocket engine on the back, right. That would break them into lunar orbit. And if that didn't work, they'd sling around and come home just like Artemis 2 did. However, when you want to leave lunar orbit, if that engine doesn't light up, you're not going anywhere. And there's no lunar module as a backup.

[Jerry Griffin]

That's right.

[Rod Pyle]

So looking back on that today, I know you guys are moving fast and you were submerged at the time, but you're really operating with kind of late 50s, early 1960s technology from today's viewpoint. Are you kind of astonished that it all works so well?

[Jerry Griffin]

Oh yeah, because I am. I tell you, it was. To me, it was the gutsiest call that was ever made in the Apollo program was to put that thing out at the moon and put it in orbit around the moon and then take it out of orbit around the moon to come home. People ask me what my favorite Apollo mission was and I tell them I can't answer that because that's like asking, which one of your kids do you like the best?

[Rod Pyle]

That's

[Jerry Griffin]

one. What I do answer is that the one that I think was most important to our success was Apollo 8 because we proved that the whole Saturn 5 chain, for one thing, and they did prove that on Artemis too, that the OSLs, all stages and all that worked just fine. So I think what we did in eight, then we kind of fell back to Artemis 3. We go in Earth orbit, and then. And then 10, we almost landed, and we couldn't have landed that lunar module. It was too heavy. We could have gotten it down okay. We just couldn't come home.

[Rod Pyle]

The hard part. Yeah, that's a problem.

[Jerry Griffin]

And so that next block of spacecraft of lunar modules came out and that it was fine. So we landed, we tried 10. Just. First we called it a dress rehearsal, but we aborted out of the landing and came back up and came home. And then 11, we went all the way.

[Rod Pyle]

And the abort test was important too, because you needed to know that if they had problems on the way down to the moon, that they could punch

[Jerry Griffin]

out and come home without landing in the SS stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

So, well, you know, I don't know about these folks. I would like to be here for another two hours.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, my gosh, yes.

[Rod Pyle]

We've only got another 10 or 15 minutes.

[Tarek Malik]

We didn't get to the landing yet.

[Rod Pyle]

We need to get to Apollo 11. So take it away, brother.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, yeah, so you mentioned the dress rehearsal, and you get there and obviously 11. 11 comes after 10, and you should

[Rod Pyle]

have been a scientist.

[Tarek Malik]

I know, right? It's a wonder why I didn't fly in space. So, but, but, so that big moment arrives, and I'm curious as a flight director, if there is anything different about that type of mission planning and, and, and overseeing a team, you know, where you're actually going to set down and walk around on a different, A different. What do you call it, Call it a world. A different world.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

A different service. Exactly, exactly. And, and, and, or was it just, you know, just. It's like the same process, just a different place because of all of the, the training that you've seen and, and systems you've designed.

[Jerry Griffin]

That's a good point to make, I think, because by the time we flew 11, we had done everything except land and we'd gotten pretty comfortable with it. We were getting to feel that this thing could work. They could extract the lunar module off of the booster and do all of that. The trans.

[Tarek Malik]

They call it transposition comfort is different from complacent. We should make that clear.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right, right. Yeah, right. But we were, we had done it enough that you finally get your learning curve up. And we had, we hadn't hit a 13 yet, but, but we had faced some problems that, that taught us a lot. Space flight is learning all the time. And that's what they're doing in Artemis right now. So by the time eleven got there, it was. We had been past those gulp moments of TLI translator injection when you added velocity and took them out of Earth orbit and shot him off toward the moon. And that was the first time we did that was gone.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, called those pucker points.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right. And. But we, we knew we could do it after we had done it a number of times. And you know, when it was all over, I think we went to the. We had 11 missions. We had nine of them out to the moon. Two of those didn't land on groupers. And eight and 10, and then we lost 13. But we landed six times. I can tell you by the end of the program, if you just fast forward a little bit, we were hitting on all cylinders. We solved problems that we didn't know were coming, but we solved them all. And I think that's what they're going to. And by the way, in Apollo, the best exploration came on 15, 16 and 17. When we had a rover, we had longer stay time on the lunar surface. Dave Scott on 15 asked me, Commander, said, you ought to come out in the field with us and on Earth because they did this geology training and how to do it. So I did. I went out with him and it opened my eyes because we kind of had been back in the test days before 15, 16, 17, which I kind of called operational. We had, we just never had dealt in how do you do the exploration visa. Why? And that's why we're going. We're not going there just to prove we can go gland. We're proving to explore. And so I came back, I told Kranz he was still running the astronaut office, the astronaut, the flight director office. I said, gene, you need to go out in the field. And. And he did. Then another flight director did. And then the program manager went. This was 15, 16, over 15, 1670.

[Rod Pyle]

But these are geology field trips.

[Jerry Griffin]

No geology field trips. They go to Iceland and all kinds of places to try to find stuff close to what they were going to land in.

[Rod Pyle]

I think you got sort of the short straw because you just ended up in the desert of California.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right? Is the desert in New Mexico.

[Rod Pyle]

New Mexico.

[Jerry Griffin]

And. But I learned so much. And then I said, you know, this is why we're going. That's why I thought it was important. And we ended up with headquarters guys going and saying, yeah, yeah, okay, now we get it. And the crew, I can tell you, the guys out on the surface of the moon. And Dave Scott's told me this, Charlie Duke has told me this, John Young has told me that. He said we never worried about our backpack and our, we were in a suit that heavy on the Earth but not too heavy on the moon 1:6. And, and they both, all of them said we never worried about the backpack because we knew you guys were watching our data and that if you had seen anything wrong, you would have gotten us out of trouble.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

He said that's how much we trusted you because we had this total operation finally put together. Artemis is going to go through the same thing. Those first tests, those first few flights are going to be more test flights than they are right. Than anything else. But then eventually they'll get to, aha, this is how you do this. And they'll. I think they'll get more comfortable never taking our eye off safety. Yeah, crew safety was number one concern.

[Tarek Malik]

It's funny what you say about the last mission being like the smoothest because we saw that on the shuttle program as well after Columbia, where each one gets just incrementally smoother and smoother and smoother. So it seems like that's a feature of this iterative process.

[Jerry Griffin]

You gotta stay with it for a while. It's not something you're gonna. And one of the things that's. I worry about the public's view of, of all these commercial guys now are doing and they're doing well, one of them is going to stub their toe one of these days and they make some of the media guys make it sound like, well, you just crank it in and launch, you know. And I tell you what, when you strap six and a half million pounds of high explosive to your rear end and light it, yeah. There's a danger, there's an inherent risk that you cannot drive to zero. You can drive it as low as you possibly can, but it, it's a inherently risky effort. Just like getting on my. An airplane to go back to Texas.

[Rod Pyle]

It's a bomb with one hole last week.

[Jerry Griffin]

That's right.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. Saw that with New Glenn.

[Jerry Griffin]

So. So Apollo taught us. And people ask me sometimes what is the legacy of Apollo that you think you left behind. The crew will tell you. In fact, I spoke with Reed Wiseman just a couple of days ago. It was very nice.

[Rod Pyle]

As one does.

[Jerry Griffin]

As one does. He was the commander of Artemis too. But it's one of these things where you want to say, how was it? Did you miss anything? Did you miss something systems wise or something you weren't ready for I've asked Reed that question. He said nope. Said we were ready, fully ready to go, and felt comfortable with it all.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, you know, we're. We're running short of time.

[Tarek Malik]

That brings us right to the current.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, not quite yet, so. No, not quite yet, because we need to touch on Apollo 13, which is a very big deal. But because you've consulted on five major movies now.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

Contact, Deep Impact. Apollo 18. Apollo 13.

[Tarek Malik]

I liked Apollo 18. Don't knock it.

[Rod Pyle]

And. And Fly Me to the Moon.

[Jerry Griffin]

Fly Me to the Moon.

[Rod Pyle]

Scarlett Johansson.

[Jerry Griffin]

Scarlett Johansson.

[Tarek Malik]

So he's got. I was confused. I thought it was the animated with the fly.

[Rod Pyle]

But. Hush. You. But you. You were on Apollo 13. And I guess we can kind of look at the Apollo 13 mission through the movie, which is that there was only one flight director on that mission, and that was Gene Kranz. And then there are a couple extras in the background. And I always thought when I was watching that. Wait a second.

[Jerry Griffin]

So let me tell you how that happened.

[Rod Pyle]

Talk about that, if you would.

[Jerry Griffin]

I can tell you how that happened. I show up in. Actually, it was. It was in Culver City, I think is actually the address for. There were. There were three technical advisors. There was. Me. I was a systems guy and a flight director. There was a guy named Jerry Bostic, who was Fido flight dynamics officer that worked with orbits and that kind of thing. And then there was Dave Scott, who worked with the crew in that simulator where they had a. Or a set where they had, you know, those scenes where you see Frost blowing out of it. That's not fake. They took that whole set, that whole building down to about 38 degrees like it was. The cameramen were all in. In parkas, you know, and everybody but the actors. Everybody but the actors. And they got. You know how they got the zero G effect where they're kind of floating around. Seesaw. They were on a seesaw one end, and they'd have a. A crew guy, you know, moving a grip a bit.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

And down a little bit. And they would kind of float around, touch a wall and stop. And. And. But it was colder and. Hell, I went in there a few times. God, it was cold. And I said, I don't know how you guys are doing this. I go back over to the other building and. Because we had a control center there that was. It was a set, and it looked just like the real control center. In fact, Hank one time asked me, where do you. Where do you live? I said, about a half mile back over here. And I Pointed in the direction of my house and we were on a movie set.

[Rod Pyle]

You're right. You know, you're actually pointing to Santa Monica.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was probably pointing. I don't know where I was. So it was. It was fascinating. The. The situation was, is that he told me, Ron Howard, the director, told me. He said, jerry said, I want you glued to my hip, and if you see something wrong, tell me and we'll try to fix it. But he said, I'm not making a documentary. And he said, I'm probably going to have to tell you this several more times. And he did, because I would see something that. That's not exactly the way it happened. He said, mary, this is not a documentary. All of the technical stuff was right, but there were many places in the. Where he took a license.

[Rod Pyle]

The hustle and bustle, if you will.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah, that was one of my biggest pet peeves that he never would take out. If you look at Apollo 13 movie and you look at the background, there's always these people walk. They had extras walk across, then they

[Rod Pyle]

walk around carrying a clipboard, right?

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah. And they're talking to each other and looking very important. And of course, we would never stand for that. Never stand for any kind of activity that wasn't needed in the room. Because it was particularly on 13, there were always a little more. Few more people in there than.

[Tarek Malik]

Nor.

[Jerry Griffin]

We had four teams on some flights, we could figure out we could cover it better. And this is going to finally answer your question. Ron came to me and he said, I don't have time enough to develop four characters. He was short on time anyway. The movie's over two hours long. He said, I would like to make a composite out of Gene Kranz because he was on duty when the tank exploded. If it had been Glenn Lunny, it had been Glenn. If it had been me, it had been Whittler, whoever was on duty, because they faced the first brunt of this thing. And so I said, yeah. And it was okay with everybody except one of them. I won't say which one, but one of the flight director's wives didn't like that at all, that their husband didn't get top billing, you know, and it didn't make any difference to me, so I made that decision.

[Tarek Malik]

Can I say that my daughter is writing a term paper this week that is about the historical accuracy of Apollo 13, and I'm going to tell her that you said that that's a true story.

[Jerry Griffin]

The technical accuracy of the film is very good.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

But the way it got to. And some of you probably remember we had a CO2 problem that the guys on the ground had to figure out. How do we use a lunar module canister over a round hole? And it was square, so it was really around square picking round hole. And. And they did. But the way they depicted it in the movie is this guy walks in and he's got this big bucket, and he dumps this stuff out on the table. He said, now that's what they've got up there, and we got to figure out how to make it work.

[Rod Pyle]

Right. It's a great seeing that it is.

[Jerry Griffin]

And. But it's not the way it happened. It happened with a bunch of guys sitting around the table with. With a list of everything they had on board, and they figured out how to do it, and it worked like a charm. And. But. And I had guys. I had NASA guys. My friends said, heck, the thing was all screwed up. They had the guy throwing the stuff, and that's not the way it happened. I said, no kidding. You know, I just. I didn't deal with it much.

[Rod Pyle]

But they were coming at you because you were.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yep, yep.

[Rod Pyle]

Just. Just remember, you got your SAG card.

[Jerry Griffin]

I didn't get in front of the camera on that one, though. Contact Deep Impact and fly me to the moon. Yeah, his. I got the sackcard after the. They forced me in what they do with Taft Hartley. Force on the first one. And then when Deep Impact wanted to put me on, they said, oh, you've already been forced. We can't force you. You got to join the sag, the Screen Actors Guild. So I said, okay.

[Rod Pyle]

And you got them to pay for

[Jerry Griffin]

it, and they paid for it.

[Rod Pyle]

2,500 bucks, I think Jerry Griffin, movie star. You know, there's. There's so much left that I'd love to talk about where we're running out of time, but I think, as kind of a public service, how many people here saw First Man? So you knew Neil Armstrong? I never met the man, but I probably listened to the downlink from the moonwalk and from Apollo 11. 80 times, 90 times, something like that. Ryan Gosling stumbling around the moon like he was on Prozac is not the Neil Armstrong I heard. And I don't think he was spending all that time bemoaning his life and his ill fortune. And, you know, yes, his daughter passing was. It was a crisis, but he sounded pretty happy to be on the moon to me. What did you think of that movie when you saw it?

[Jerry Griffin]

Tell you the truth, I haven't seen all of it.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah,

[Jerry Griffin]

Neil was different. He was a very thoughtful. He engaged his brain before he spoke. He was a little bit shy. He didn't like the press. He even. He didn't mind the press. He didn't like being in front of him.

[Tarek Malik]

And

[Jerry Griffin]

he had a way of saying things that made really good sense. That's why people listen to him. But he didn't talk a lot. He was. He was quiet. And I think I didn't like the way first man kind of that he was always worried about his next job and getting a mission or getting a. I think he would have taken whatever came along. He just wanted to be part of it. And, you know, even post flight with him, when he was. People were laying all this grace and wonder on him. He said, hey, I was just lucky enough to be the one chosen to step on the moon first. He said, there are 400,000 people made that possible.

[Rod Pyle]

Right?

[Jerry Griffin]

And he said, they're the ones you ought to be telling what a great job in Aulette. And he said, I've been a test pilot all my life. I've been an astronaut now. And to me, it was just, good God, I got. I got selected to do that. And so he was, I don't think, ever quite understood by people that didn't know him and. And that were around him some then. And his wit was extremely sharp. But you had to be around him a while before he would. Before you could see it. And he was quick. He was quick. And then I thought in his later years, his words were even better when he started speaking publicly. And he was the right guy to send to the moon, I can tell you have him step on it first.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, I think it was kind of telling when he came back. So Mike Collins went on to run the National Aerospace Museum down the street.

[Jerry Griffin]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

Buzz went on. He went through some personal challenges, but ended up becoming kind of a media darling. But it seemed that Armstrong's greatest desire was to go teach aeronautics at the University of Cincinnati and write a textbook. Which I was always.

[Jerry Griffin]

Teach and write a textbook.

[Rod Pyle]

Can you imagine being an undergraduate the University of Cincinnati and sit next to some kids. Who's that guy down there, that Rumple? Tweed jackets. He walked on the moon. What? That. That had to be pretty amazing. Well, I'm afraid we have to draw this to a close, but what words of advice do you have for the people currently running Mission Control?

[Jerry Griffin]

Well, I was. I was in mission control for the launch of Artemis 2. I've stayed in touch with Johnson Space center. Of course, after running the place, you kind of feel like, you know.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes.

[Jerry Griffin]

Of it. And by the way, the best job I ever had though was being a flight director. Oh, that was fun. But I really think they're going to have to go through a period. The control center guys and gals. We didn't have any gals, but about half of them now are women.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

And they look just like we did. Got that steely eyed, we can do this look. I love to be around them. After. I was actually in the viewing room right behind the flight ops console and a guy came and got me. He's a flown astronaut, flew in shuttle. And he came to me and said, okay. Said they want you in the back room. And I said what? The back room? And they said, yeah, it's where the flight directors that haven't come on duty yet are not.

[Tarek Malik]

They're watching the green room for the mission.

[Jerry Griffin]

I went back in this back room and here were three flight directors and they were getting ready to go on when the. After tli. And they, they look just. God, they were young.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Jerry Griffin]

And they had a desk set up that looked very much like a console, but it was just a little room with a desk. And said. And they told me, he said, jerry, don't you ever come back in to this control center. You come back here. Don't go in that viewing room where you got all the riffraff. So they were just like we were. I don't worry about. I think they'll do fine.

[Rod Pyle]

And you did mention to me if they introduced themselves, apparently flight directors have like a secret handshake.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yep.

[Rod Pyle]

So. Hi, I'm number 87. Yeah, I'm number one.

[Jerry Griffin]

101.

[Rod Pyle]

And you were six. I am number six.

[Jerry Griffin]

That was funny because they, they really have a pecking order. And that wasn't true with us. There were too few of us. But for some reason when they did the master list, there's only been about 108 flight directors. A lot of that space station, shuttle. Yeah. Apollo, Germany, etc, working back. They ended up. There was an 83 in there and a 94. And I think the woman whose husband I think is an ass. No, he's another flight director. That's what it is. Both of them are. And, and I think she was something like 63. She's been around a little longer. And anyway, they were introducing me and I shook hands with them and they said, I'm so. And so. I'm 63, you know, so. So 94, 74, whatever. And I said Jerry Griffin, 6. And they got a big kick out of that. And so it's a. It's a good group. You know, the. The flight controllers, flight directors, particularly, very, very fortunate people. And they know it to be selected. And a lot of them worked hard to get there.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, what an exciting time to be

[Leo]

in that job once again.

[Jerry Griffin]

Once again.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you, Jerry, for coming to be with us today.

[Jerry Griffin]

Willie, it is a pleasure to be here. I've seen. I see you guys every once in a while and you get out the good word.

[Leo]

Watch us.

[Rod Pyle]

As long as you can stand to it.

[Tarek Malik]

That's a mistake.

[Jerry Griffin]

You kind of shoot each other.

[Rod Pyle]

I've been accused of that once or twice.

[Tarek Malik]

You got to be nicer.

[Rod Pyle]

Guitar. And I also want to thank our audience for being here today. So let's give you a round of

[Tarek Malik]

applause for an Astralong.

[Jerry Griffin]

A little so.

[Rod Pyle]

And thank you online for joining today for episode number 213 that we're calling live from ISDC 2026 with Jerry Griffin. Jerry, I think the best place to learn about you online is probably Wikipedia, but do you have another web presence?

[Jerry Griffin]

I don't have anything. I get a lot of people sending me stuff. Yeah. On me and. But you're probably right. And then, of course, I'm, you know, I'm working on a book.

[Rod Pyle]

I heard that.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Whoever could you be working on it with? Jerry?

[Jerry Griffin]

I have a biographer that. That is helping me. Has now for, I think, two and a half years or so.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. I think I counted between 60 and 70 hours of interviews.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah. And. But it's one. Rod Pyle is. So we're. We're in the later stages of things.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. So I'm thinking release will probably be around Christmas, which is good because what do you get for dad.

[Jerry Griffin]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Book about the Apollo Project. Dark. Where can we find you fortnighting these days?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, you can. That's a nice segue.

[Leo]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

You can find [e-mail], as always. Right now you can find me in the fabulous capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. but I guess McLean.

[Rod Pyle]

But you'll be online playing tonight.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. Well, tonight you'll find me on Fortnite because it's the end of season shatter to get for Fortnite. And I'm very excited about that. And. And then, of course, tomorrow my daughter's taking the SATs. Big moment. Big moment.

[Rod Pyle]

And you're playing computer games the night before.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, yeah. And if you're in New York City, keep your eyes out on Sunday because we might have some news about spacesuits on that day. It's gonna be really exciting. So Prada and Axiom. It's gonna be really, really fun.

[Rod Pyle]

So, you know, being products of the space race era, does it seem right to have Prada designing spacesuits?

[Jerry Griffin]

Sure, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

McLaren designing spacecraft stuff. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And of course, find me at pilebooks.com and add astermagazine.com or here at ISTC. You can always drop us a line at Twist Tweet tv. We appreciate your comments, follow ups ideas, especially space jokes. People are falling behind. I'm going back to listen.

[Tarek Malik]

Joel, I like your joke, Joe.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, Joel was good. We got, we got some real winners, but we need some more space jokes. And just a tip for those of you out there in Internet land, don't use AI because it does not have a good sense of humor. We've tried new episodes published every Friday on your favorite podcaster. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews, we'll take five. Thumbs up. Drive, Rotten Tomatoes, whatever you got, we don't mind. Just give us five or something. You can follow the Twitt podcast network at Twit on Twitter and Facebook @Twit TV on Instagram. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure, it's been an honor flying with you. Thank you very much and thank you, everybody.

[Tarek Malik]

Thank you, everybody.