NASA Griffin, Richard L. "Larry" - May 25, 2001
Interview with Richard L. “Larry” Griffin
Interviewer: Seana M. Baughman
Date of Interview: May 25, 2001
Location, Hunt Store, Hunt, Texas
BAUGHMAN: This oral history with Larry Griffin is being conducted at Hunt Store in downtown Hunt, Texas. The interview is being conducted for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in conjunction with Southwest Texas State University, History Department by graduate student Seana Baughman.
Thank you for joining me today, Colonel Griffin.
GRIFFIN: It’s good to be here.
BAUGHMAN: How did you come to the decision to study aeronautical engineering at A&M?
GRIFFIN: A very good question. It actually began when I was about seven years old. I had a brother—older brother—that was in the Air Force in World War II, and he was considerably older than both my twin brother and I were, but he was a great inspiration to us on anything to do with aviation and particularly in those very intense years of the war. My brother and I decided when we were about eight years old that we would go to Texas A&M and be aeronautical engineers. And we never wavered from that. We did exactly that.
We graduated in 1956, went straight to the Air Force as planned. It was a very well thought out thing [laughs]. And we—I went to pilot training and became an Air Force pilot. And, of course, with a background in aeronautical engineering, that lead to—after, after several years in the operational world—of getting into the test flying business after I came back from Vietnam. And that’s sort of where my NASA connection really got started, was once I entered into the test flying for the Air Force.
BAUGHMAN: So, as you mentioned, you have a very distinguished thirty-year career with the Air Force.
GRIFFIN: Well, thank you.
BAUGHMAN: This project, since it’s being funded by NASA, most of the questions I’m going to ask you pertain specifically to the NASA connection, but it is remarkable, your accomplishments. Very wonderful.
How did NASA become a part of your career? How did that all work out in actuality?
GRIFFIN: Also a very good question. I had been close to NASA through my twin brother, Gerry, when he was a flight controller for the Gemini program. [He] Started in the Gemini program, ended up as a flight director in the Apollo program. And I was very ambitious at that time to get into the astronaut program myself. And I applied several times, came close but didn’t get selected, and I think I can trace that, pretty well, back to third semester calculus at A&M, which I had a little problem with. And the competition is so tough that when you get right down to the end they have to make a decision based on something, and if you’ve someone that’s got a 4.0 grade point ratio sittin’ next to somebody that’s got a 2.7 [chuckles]—in the old days that was a C+ average—sorta like I did, then, you know, it’s obvious who you’re gonna select. It’s not always done just on piloting skills or whatever. But, anyway, so I was very close to the program and had been since 1964, in particular, when Gerry, my brother, went to NASA.
Then, as things happened, I went to Vietnam in 1966. I came back in 1967 and at that time was assigned to a test squadron down in Florida, and I really got into the test flying business from that time on—from 1967. In 1976, ’77 and ’78, I was commander of that very same test squadron after several assignments. And I was selected to go to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at Ft. McNair in Washington. That’s sort of a graduate level school for senior officers of all services. I went to that. Yeah. I was there in 1979. I was going to graduate in the summer. I was already programmed for another assignment in the Pentagon when, lo and behold, the full colonel’s list came out and I was promoted on it a year early. So, it sort of promoted me out of the job I was in. They had to find something else for me to do because I had too much rank, I was going to have too much rank for that job they had me programmed for as a lieutenant colonel.
So, the day the list came out, I got a phone call from Tom Stafford, who was a lieutenant general in the Air Force, former Apollo astronaut, great guy. I had known him for years. In fact, since the days of the Gemini program back in the ’60s. And he called and congratulated me on being selected “below the zone,” so called, to full colonel, and he said, “I just cut a deal with NASA Headquarters to put a brigadier general and a full colonel as liaisons from the air staff, from the Air Force headquarters, in NASA headquarters to sort of tie together the Air Force and NASA in the Shuttle program.” At that time there was a very strong plan, a very grand plan as a matter of fact, that the Air Force was going to operate the Shuttle as well as NASA would. And in fact, that the primary Air Force operations would be out of Vandenberg Air Force Base on the west coast and would be for polar orbit of the Shuttle so that military satellites, most of which are in polar orbit, if they’re low earth orbit, for reconnaissance purposes, intelligence purposes. That was the most likely scenario, would be that they would be launched from Vandenberg because you can launch from the south there and get into a polar orbit. You can’t do that, of course, out of Florida, without going across Cuba [chuckles] or some other places, or Miami, and you don’t want to take the vehicles across those kind of populated areas.
At any rate we—the idea was that NASA and the Air Force would be very closely tied together in the Shuttle program. In those days, realize, we were still talking about sixty flights a year [chuckles]—of the Shuttle. We still had grand plans. Well, that suddenly came down to forty and then it was thirty and twenty and ten, and now we’re doing about six or eight a year. I guess we’re back up to that. And it’s—over time, over time, up until about the time I retired from the Air Force, the military just sorta kept backing off the Shuttle program because the flight rate was going down, the costs were going up. Most of the Air Force satellites could be launched from expendable vehicles rather than a very costly, manned vehicle. So that’s—right or wrong—that was the decision that was made and that was sort of the brief history.
But during my time at NASA headquarters, it was fantastic because the Shuttle program was just about—had not flown yet. It didn’t fly—it flew the first time while I was assigned to the headquarters—at NASA headquarters. I was the special assistant to the program office there, and so we delved in all the NASA program management aspects—me—the brigadier general that I worked for (who later got a second star while we were there) and I sat in on all the councils of the program and went to the—traveled extensively to all the centers. We reported back to those responsible in the Air Force for funding the Shuttle support that the Air Force was going to have. A very interesting job. And so I got to know everything while I was still getting credit for a Pentagon tour, and actually my office was in NASA headquarters, in a corner office on Independence Avenue. It was beautiful. So I didn’t have to go work in the basement of the Pentagon as I thought I was going to. But anyway, it was great—great experience.
In 1981, General Jim Abrahamson became the Associate Administrator for Space Flight, and when he came there, there was really sorta no—since he was a NASA detailee, he was actually detailed to NASA and he was gonna run the Shuttle program. There was very little necessity, at that point then, of having two other military officers sitting in the program office. So Jim Abrahamson, General Abrahamson, said “Hey,” he said, “if you’d like to stay with NASA maybe we can detail you to someplace else. You know, you can go do whatever you like, if you can find a job that maybe somebody would want you for.”
So I got on my horse and rode down to the Johnson Space Center and talked to Glynn Lunney, who was then the Shuttle Program Manager. He really was the field center manager for the Shuttle program. And he said, “sure,” because again we were still—the Air Force and NASA were going to be very closely tied together on the Shuttle program, so there was this idea that, hey, it would probably be good to have someone at field center, responsible for the program, who could—was at a high enough level that you could talk to anybody in the system. You could go straight to Systems Command, as it was at that time, or you could go to—a little bit later—Space Command Headquarters and so on. So, it was another great experience. And, of course, it was sort of like coming home for me, too, because I knew so many of the people at the Johnson Space Center, both on my own and through my brother, and it was sort of coming home to Texas, too. So, it was a great deal all the way around.
I then had—those were during all those early flights, then, of the Shuttle program, from 19—November of ’81 until, well, I should throw in here, that at—in 1982, Gerry [Griffin] got named as the Center Director. Chris Kraft retired. Purely by happenstance, you know, we end up at the same place, and he’s running the Center! There was some reorganization going on anyway, but it was most appropriate, probably, that I began to look to get on somewhere else, but not just because we were brothers, but because I had been there long enough anyway, for one thing. But I was, by that time, I had become the Special Assistant for DOD [Department of Defense] Affairs to the Center Director—to my brother. And in that responsibility I had sort of administrative responsibilities for all the military astronauts ‘cause somebody has to sign their paperwork and that sort of thing. So, that was what I did. And, of course, I was still very much involved in the program.
It was during that period that Jim Abrahamson, the same fellow up at the Office of Space Flight, had called me one day and said, “Jim Beggs,” who was then the [NASA] Administrator, “and I [Abrahamson],” he said “Jim Beggs and I just committed that we are gonna take the Shuttle Enterprise and the—on the 747 to Europe for an—with the highlight of that trip being the Paris Air Show.” This is 1983. And before he could finish saying it I said, “Yes! Yes! Yes! I’ll do it!” Because, he said, “I need somebody—we need somebody to sort of go along that can sort of ‘command’ the thing.” And I’m not a 747 pilot, but, we had plenty of those, and actually they had to do most of the flight—all of the flight planning and things. But he said, “I need somebody that can deal with the diplomatic side, that knows the Air Force support system,” because the Air Force was gonna support the vehicle while we were there—in Europe. We ended up going to eight different countries, including the U.S. Thirty days. Treated like rock stars, I mean it was fantastic. I’ve never had such a good time. Fell in love with all of Europe—particularly in Paris. In fact, that’s where I’m heading next Wednesday [laughs].
But anyway, so, but back to the story. So, I had some of those kind of great experiences like that, and I was able to do not only that but I went to several—you know, most of the launches, and I was there for most of the crew training that went on and the simulations. So, I got a good knowledge and a good exposure, though I sure wish I could’ve been on the stick-and-rudder side, but it was still a lot of fun.
In 1984, at about that time, the Space Command was formed. The U.S. Space Command. It was run, and it was—by a four-star general named Jim Hartinger. H-a-r-t-i-n-g-e-r. Jim Hartinger. And I got a call from him, and he said, “Hey,” he said, “we’re about to start building our new center that will control the Shuttle, amongst other things. It’s going to be out on the prairie east of Colorado Springs. We’re gonna form a new wing to—Air Force wing—to do that. How would you like to be the wing commander?” And I said, “Of course [laughs]. I would love to be a wing commander.” And so, actually, I went up there—back to Colorado Springs—I had been there once before on a previous assignment—but I went back to the headquarters, Space Command Headquarters it was called now, in Colorado Springs. I was there while we built up the wing. We had to man it and organize it, so that was great organizational management experience for me and a lot of fun. Got to sort of put it together the way—with a lot of help, of course. I’m not sayin’ I did it all, I certainly didn’t, but it was neat being able to do that. We then activated that wing in early 1985 or, I can’t remember exactly when, but it was 1985. And things were pretty well going along by the time I retired in ’86. So, that was my NASA connection, start to finish.
Now, during the time while I was there, ’85, or ’84 through ’86 when I retired, that I was back in Colorado Springs, was that time that the Air Force decided not to pursue building that control center—finishing that control center. It was already well under construction, but to not to finish the control center in Colorado Springs because that was the plan. We would have controlled—as you know Mission Control is in Houston, would have controlled all the civilian flights. There was a thing called “sopcee”, S-O-P-C, Shuttle Operations and Planning Center, that would have been the control center for all the military missions. As I say, as the flight rate dropped, as the cost went up, there was some political infighting between the Air Force and—everybody really [laughs] because the Air Force sorta wanted to control its own destiny. They didn’t want—some people did not—not all—but some people did not want to be on the NASA Shuttle. They wanted something of their own with their own badge on it, I suppose. But at any rate, I had the option. I could have stayed a little longer, but the fun was sort of out of it for me when I realized that the Air Force was no longer gonna have a man-in-space program. And if you’re not gonna have a man-in-space program—I mean, the unmanned world is a great one, too, but it just wasn’t my thing. I was a, primarily a test pilot and a people flyer, and flying rockets by themselves with nobody in ‘em just didn’t tweak my fancy. And, so, that’s when I retired from the Air Force.
BAUGHMAN: You’re doing wonderfully. These are exactly my questions. A little more about this relationship between NASA and the military and perhaps about the attitudes that you found in the military in the early days when you were, maybe, trying to become an astronaut and how that particular side of military life, toward NASA, how that changed through the years.
GRIFFIN: Right. That’s another good question. In the beginning, when I was first interested in trying to become an astronaut there were—there was already a lot of Air Force involvement in NASA programs. They’d been doin’ it for years at the Cape. Down at Cape Canaveral [Kennedy Space Center, Florida]. The Air Force had supported NASA launches since the beginning of time [laughs] as far as the Cape was concerned. They hauled all the fuel. They stored the fuel. They had all of the range safety responsibilities. They had all sorts of close workings between NASA and the Air Force. But it was only when the Shuttle program came along that—well, I should back up just a minute.
Back in—all the way back into the ‘60s there was the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, which was going to be an Air Force—sort of a space station. And it would have had a lot of highly classified information and systems aboard it. The—that was being developed by the Air Force when, in 1969, then President Nixon cancelled the program. And several of the astronauts who were being trained as MOL, or Manned Orbiting Laboratory, astronauts ended up going to NASA and becoming some of the additional military astronauts that we had. But that was a big blow in 1969. That was a big blow to military manned space flight.
And it wasn’t until the Shuttle program came along that there was this idea that the—that the military would operate this other—same vehicles—but we’d have this other launch site and a different control system and be able to control the Shuttle. Until that came along there wasn’t really a separate military man-in-space program. And during those intervening years, it was interesting to watch because most of the, what I would say differences, between the Air Force and NASA on how to proceed with all of that was mostly political, not technical. The Air Force Space Program was handled by a relatively small number of very dedicated, very capable people, and out of the sp—what’s been called the Space Division. It was based in Los Angeles. And I frankly think, and this is just my opinion, but I frankly think that the people who were in Space Division were not anxious to have anybody else playing in their sand pile. I was just an old operational fighter pilot who had become a test pilot. I just wanted to go fly something and fly something in space. If the military—and if I couldn’t do it some other military guy ought to do it. But there were some really, some really deep political divisions on who was responsible for what, is what it really boiled down to. And there was enough of that resistance in the Air Force that I think that is eventually what killed the Shuttle Operations and Planning Center, for example, and any strong reliance on the Shuttle program at all.
So, it was a—and now that’s gone—that’s sort of come full circle. Because now the, both the civilian and the senior military leadership have begun to see how important space is in the military arena. Whether it’s for—just for reconnaissance or if, and we hope it doesn’t happen, but if you ever have to go there to defend your assets, or whatever, somebody’s got to do that. And you probably, at least with the technology we have right now, and this is an ongoing discussion all the time, but, you probably can’t do all of that with unmanned systems. So that there has been sort of a resurgence, or at least it’s ongoing right now that—and particularly since Secretary Rumsfeld [Donald] came in with new administration [George W. Bush administration], that—and he’s the Secretary of Defense—but there’s sort of this re-thinking of what is the space mission for the military? And how far do we have to go to ensure that we can operate in space as we see fit? How does that play with the NASA mission? Because they are different. We’re not tryin’ to—and nobody in the military, I don’t think, wants to militarize NASA whatsoever. In fact, that would be counterproductive. They should be doing what they do, and that is to push the technology and stay on the edge. The military mission is more of an operational mission. Let’s make sure we have everything covered that we need to cover. So, I think there has, there has, and is going on now, a re-thinking of some of that, and perhaps in the future we’ll see some more cooperation on the manned side. But don’t let me give you, or anyone, the impression that there is not cooperation already and already has been for thirty years or more. It is a very, very tightly wound business. And that’s both on the east coast and the west coast.
I think that now the Space Command, if you look at the organization now, many of those things that were handled in the past by people who were more in the development business, that was the old Air Force Systems Command, many of those mission functions have now been transferred to the Air Force Space Command. It’s an operational command. They actually do things and they are not just developing. They are trying to provide the war fighters with the right pictures, or communications or whatever it might be that they need. So, it has come a long way.
But in the days that we are talking about, in my experience, it was very, very difficult at times not to want to jump up and scream because—and say, “Guys, we’re all on the same side here!” But I would go over to my Air Force comrades and people that I had to deal with on the Air Force side, and they would say, “We don’t want to get on the Shuttle program. That’s not something we want to do. That’s not ours, that’s NASA. And then if we end up in there they’re going to be looking into our secrets all the time,” and whatever the case may be. And then often I would—and I must say that often I would see those, hear those same people that say that, when I sat down on a meeting with the NASA people, they would be all sweetness and light. You know, “this is great cooperation. It’s great to be on a program.” And then I’d go back to the Air Force—and I was one of the unique guys that got to hear both sides of these conversations. And it was a very—from 1981, when Shuttle first flew, to 1985, when the Shuttle Operations and Planning Center was killed, which is sort of the end of the Air Force active involvement in the Shuttle program on the flying of it side. In that time period, it was, if not chaotic [chuckles], it was very, very interesting, because we had so much in the area of, “We don’t want to do that, but let’s don’t tell NASA,” and those kinds of things, and it was not a good time. It was not a good time and frankly, even though I love the guys I worked with and for and all that, we didn’t handle it very well. We the Air Force did not handle it very well because I think what we ended up doing was we impacted NASA to a great degree because they were gonna have to live with our security requirements and all that sort of thing. They worked hard. So, anyway, that was the story and it came out, I think, pretty well in the end.
BAUGHMAN: Do you think that, as you said, you got to see both sides of the picture because you did have the interest as a fighter pilot and you were military, but you had this love of space and, the adventure and whatnot, I imagine. Do you think that you and your brother Gerry, being twins, and being brothers, that you brought to the whole—the whole—really America’s Space Program, a certain, perhaps, a bridge. And do you think that, maybe, obviously things fell out in about ’85 I believe you said—’86.
GRIFFIN: Right.
BAUGHMAN: But do you think that, you all being positioned where you were perhaps that offered the best possible chance America had to—?
GRIFFIN: Well, I , I would like to flatter myself and Gerry by saying that I think if we’d had more of us—if we’d had more people on both sides like us, it would’ve made a huge difference because we didn’t have any—I can tell you twins don’t have any secrets anyway, but we certainly didn’t have any secrets about what was going on and who needed to be convinced one way or another to do something right. And, like I say, I’d like to flatter Gerry and me both by saying that we had something to do with it, maybe on the margin we did, but there were a lot of people who were trying very, very hard to keep NASA and the Air Force together on the Shuttle program. It just didn’t have enough clout at a high enough level because it finally came down to dollars. And in the year—I will tell you I’ll never forget it—in 1985 when the Shuttle Operations and Planning Center finally died it was for lack of 25 million dollars for the 1986 budget year to keep the Shuttle Operations and Planning Center design and construction ongoing. 25 million dollars. Now 25 million dollars is a lot of money, but when you look at a DOD budget, it ain’t very much. And the Air Force was not willing to spend 25 million dollars to keep that program alive. I was appalled.
But anyway, back to the real issue—is that there were a lot of people who were trying their best both on the NASA side and on the Air Force side and, Gerry and I certainly did, because we thought it was gonna to be good for the Shuttle program. Another—and one of the main reasons on the Shuttle program is that it would give the Shuttle a “bedrock mission,” so that—when I say a bedrock mission, something that’s not gonna go away. If the Air Force, if the military, through the Air Force primarily, of course—if the military had really cast its lot with the Shuttle Program, then there was never gonna be any question about funding it, there was not going to be a question about upgrading systems and all that sort of thing, and the Air Force budget could handle that in a heartbeat [chuckles]! It could handle it because the, as we used to say, the whole NASA budget, roughly 14 billion, is in the rounding era for the DOD budget. And the DOD was in a good position in being able to make sure that the program made it. And so when I put on my “national hat” and my “space advocacy hat” I said, “Hey, this is a good thing because with the Air Force involved in the program it’s never gonna want for money.” Well now, I would say I was right then—we were right then—we are right today.
One of the problems that the Shuttle program has had is that it is eating up NASA’s piddley little 14 billion dollar budget—about 5 billion a year. So, go to ops, of one kind or another. And that’s a shame because NASA needs to be out there doing “Son of Shuttle” [laughs] or “Shuttle III” by now or whatever else. And they’ve got some low funded activities like that going on, but NASA needed to sorta get out of the Shuttle business much sooner than it has or will. If they’d gotten out of the business and we could have—and NASA could have gone and pursued that next level of technology for moving people and things into space, we’d just be further down the road. And the DOD could have been a very, very important part of that and they chose not to be. And, I still don’t understand it all. I do know I understand the politics involved and I understand the personali—some of the personalities involved, that were just dead set against the Air Force doing anything with NASA or the Shuttle. I won’t mention any names.
BAUGHMAN: Do you think that public opinion, in any way, in 1985, when the SOPC stopped—how much of a role do you think public opinion played? Do you think that had the American public been more involved, as perhaps they were during the early Apollo days, that that might have made a difference on those budgets and with those politicians?
GRIFFIN: Yeah, I think it could have. The issue was, and this is one of the—it once was an advantage, sometimes it was a great disadvantage—but one of the problems was the great secrecy and the paranoia that was rampant in the DOD side about security because the systems were highly classified. I think that really was misplaced—at best. I mean, it was, I mean, NASA could handle—NASA had a beautiful system, even fully installed already at the time the program was cancelled, for handling most of the launches and the systems that we were talking about at the Johnson Space Center. I mean, they had built a security system with some Air Force money and some NASA money. But, at any rate, I think that because of the secrecy the public wasn’t very aware that there was even a military, potential military application for the Shuttle program. They were very well aware that we spent, about, 3 billion—that’s billion with a “b”—dollars on the launch complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base for the Shuttle and it sets there in moth balls today. Three billion dollars down the drain. Now, parts of that, I understand now are being used, that—they’ve actually used part of the old control system and all. And I guess it’s just sunk cost, and I guess we go on and forget about it. But as opposed to 25 million, I’d say 3 billion is real money [laughs].
And it really is, I think, one of those things that it—the question is a good one—had the public known more about it, would it have it made a difference? It could have. I just don’t know. It would have been very difficult because of the security aspects of it to get the public very much involved, and it was a time of, if you’ll recall in ‘85, of very tight budgets. They’re always tight, but I mean, in ’85 we were coming out of a recession and, in fact, in many cases were still in it in certain sectors of the economy. And so the budgets were tight. I’m sure that those who ultimately made the decision thought it was the right thing to do. I think it was the wrong thing to do. We should’ve kept goin’.
BAUGHMAN: Can you tell me a little bit—back to the Space Division of the Air Force—when were those Space Divisions first formed and by whom and—?
GRIFFIN: Well, it was back in the ‘50s. We had the Air Force Systems Command. The Air Force Systems Command, which existed up until just a few years ago when the Air Force reorganized for the last time. But the Systems Command was primarily—think of it as the development arm of the Air Force. Edwards Air Force Base [Houston, Texas] is primarily a Systems Command, was a Systems Command base—a Materiel Command now it’s called. But anyway. As soon as the Air Force started launching our very first rockets—
BAUGHMAN: Which were?
GRIFFIN: Which were the, I guess, the Thor and the Vanguard and there were some other names and some—our first successful launches. There was a small group formed. Now I don’t know exactly what year that was, but there was a small group formed on the west coast that sort of looked after that development. That is what became, as I recall, now I could be wrong on this, but I think it was in the very early ‘60s that Space Division as a part of Systems Command was identified and set up shop in Los Angeles. It’s an Air Force station that’s right in the heart of [laughs]—I guess it’s down in the Redondo area. But, you know, it is—it’s something. It was an Air Force base but all it had was parkin’ lot and buildings. It looked just like an office building. And it’s still there. Now it’s got another name now and they still carry on some functions, but that is so much better organized now between the Space Command and the Materiel Command.
It’s now—makes a lot more sense to me organizationally then it did then, because what happened was, was that the only operational space people we had, if we had any, in the early days were in that Space Division. Well, they really weren’t operators; they were developers. They were testing and laboratories and all that sort of thing. But because there was no one else to do it, and they did a great job, because there was no one else to do it, they started operating the systems as well. Well then when we came along with this idea of a Space Command, now we’re gonna get in their sandbox. So there was great resistance by the Systems Command, and understandably; like in any organization, they had their turf and they wanted to keep it. And they didn’t want these operators to come in and take over all this stuff. Well, as a matter of fact, that’s what’s happened now. It took a while [laughs], but it worked out and we got there. But it was—the Space Division has been around, the old Space Division has been around in one form or another since the early ‘60s at least. And it’s still there. Those offices are still there.
BAUGHMAN: What do you consider the most significant accomplishment of your career? And I understand you have many careers.
GRIFFIN: [laughs]
BAUGHMAN: Very impressive. I hate to limit you to just this part, but in regard to the Space Program and the time you spent there, what would you—do you think is your most significant?
GRIFFIN: Well, obviously on the space side because I came to that rather late, really, getting out of the—it was not until 1979 when I got out of that assignment at headquarters that I was telling you about, that was when I got into the space side of things, really. My greatest accomplishment would have to be in my Air Force space career would be that formation of and the initial operations of the, what was then the Second Space Wing which is now the Fiftieth Space Wing at Falcon Air Force Station, now Falcon Air Force Base, in Colorado, because that was nothing but a piece of prairie out there. And now it’s a billion-dollar facility, or more. I don’t know what the price tag is on it now, but here’s this great facility, and there’s so much going on there now. I have to put that at the top of the list.
Now if you wanted to—you didn’t ask me, but if you wanted to know what my greatest Air Force achievement is, I would have to say two things. One was being squadron commander. No better job in the Air Force than being a squadron commander because you fly and you lead. It’s where—that’s where it is. That’s where the real action is. And all those hours I got to spend in airplanes and got paid for it. I still can’t believe it. Going super sonic and gettin paid at the same time! You know, it’s just fantastic. There’s so many different things you could put in that list, but on the space side it’d have to be the formation of the wing and the initial operation of Falcon Air Force Station.
BAUGHMAN: And I may know the answer to this, but what would you say is your greatest disappointment on the space side? Maybe that you weren’t directly involved with, but—
GRIFFIN: Well, there’s two. There’s two. My very first one was that I should have done better in calculus [laughs], so I could have been a card carrying astronaut. You know, that’s, I just really believe I’da been a good one. And—but that’s one disappointment. The other disappointment was the cancellation of the Shuttle Operations and Planning Center. I’ll never forget that day. I’ll never forget that day, how disappointing that was, to realize that the Air Force was gonna opt out of the manned space business, at that point, at least. And I knew that it would never happen once that program died. It was never gonna happen, in my career, that it would be renewed. I’m just hoping it happens in my lifetime now [laughs]!
BAUGHMAN: Did you make a decision to retire at that point in 1985 when the SOPC closed, or was that already decided?
GRIFFIN: Partly, partly, I mean—there was—I had, in all my time, I had thirty years in the Air Force. I felt like it was time to go on and do something else. I was still in good health, still am [laughs], and figured, what the heck, I might as well go try something else. The fun was sort of out of it for me. I knew that as a relatively senior colonel I would never get back into the flying business again. If I could have I would have, and I’d a stayed until they kicked me out. But I knew that wasn’t in the cards. You know, because when I took that career branch that said “go space,” when I took that branch I sort of, necessarily, in a career sense, sort of gave up on the flying side. I really thought that it was worth doing, and I still do. But I knew I couldn’t go back to that, and now we’re not going to have man—we’re not going to have military man-in-space, and so—eh—go do something else while I’m still young enough to do something else.
BAUGHMAN: And you’ve done a lot.
GRIFFIN: [laughs]
BAUGHMAN: Can you tell me about the NASA Exceptional Service Medal that you received?
GRIFFIN: Yeah, that was for that Paris Air Show—acting as the—the title they gave me was as Mission Commander. And it was a very demanding job. You know, several times when I was in—we flew out of the Paris Air Show every day while we were there; it was eleven days at that time. They’ve shortened the show since, but—so, we flew every day. There were all kinds of requests from various governments that we go take the vehicle by their whatever was going on. And, so, here I was dealing with ambassadors and chargés and all these people who just—demanding what they wanted. And so I was really having to apply my best diplomatic skills. “Well, we can’t do that today, perhaps tomorrow. I’m sorry we can’t do it at all because we don’t have enough fuel to get there,” or whatever it was. And so it was—it was a great time.
BAUGHMAN: So what would you do? You had the 747 had the Shuttle piggybacked, right?
GRIFFIN: Right.
BAUGHMAN: And you would just take it and land in these various places?
GRIFFIN: Yeah. Well, we went—as I say we went to seven different countries other than the United States, that was the eighth one. But we [clears throat]—what we did was, yes, we’d land in Rome, for example. We landed in Rome and the vehicle, or the airplane and the Shuttle were on display there for a couple of days. Security was very tight in Rome, so the audience was rather limited because they had to really screen everybody. The terrorist threat was high in 1983. But anyway, so, and it would be on display and we would be there to answer questions—the whole crew. And we had as many as eight or nine people at one time that would be on the crew. Crew chiefs and pilots and so on, but anyway, we, so we would—and while we were at the Paris Air Show, I mean, there was no doubt that the 747 and the Enter—with the Enterprise on it was by far—that they still talk about it in Paris. It was the star of the show. We flew it everyday during the aerial part of the show. It was on static display.
We landed at—coming when we started home, our first stop was in England. And the day that we—the one day that we were there, there’s 225,000 people showed up to see this thing. You know, and it is—it’s just—it’s so big and it’s so impressive, and in 1983 it was still a relatively new thing even in pictures to see it, so, gosh, we had a—we just had a great time with it. We would fly her around. We would take off and make a low approach at the Air Show in Paris and then we would fly around what’s called a “périphérique”—it’s sort of like Loop 610 in Houston. It’s a road that goes all the way around the city. It’s called a “périphérique”. We’d fly around that and as you do that, over on the west side of Paris is the Roland Garros Tennis Stadium and the French Open was on at that time. And John McEnroe was playing in a match, and he stopped the match and was applauding with his racket, the way tennis players do, looking up at this thing. And they got a great picture of him with us in the background and John McEnroe in Paris doing that, and it made all the papers in Europe, and I’ve got a copy of it. And it was just a great thing. I mean, and that—so, when we got back General Abrahamson wrote everybody up who had a part in that. There were probably some ten or twelve people who were involved at one level or another. And that’s—he recommended me for the Exceptional Service Medal, and that’s how I got it. I’m very proud of that. Not very many Air Force officers have NASA Medals [laughs].
BAUGHMAN: Before I go back to some other questions I have, is there anything, while we still have quite a chunk of time, is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to record for posterity?
GRIFFIN: I can’t think of a lot, Seana. You’ve really covered the waterfront. I would think that the aspect—there is one thing I think I could say because this has not changed in the last—since I was with NASA. And that is the NASA budget. And one of the things that really concerns me, and I know it concerns many people, is that if we don’t see some re-structuring of NASA’s mission, and get back to more of what they used to do, I’m just afraid that now with the Shuttle program and the International Space Station that their entire budget is going to get consumed by these repetitive necessities that they have. It would be so much better if the Shuttle and the Space Station, eventually—and I know that’s a little different because it’s so political in that we have international partners—but if we could get that off to the operational world—in the civilian world. Let, let Boeing or somebody go operate the Shuttle. Give it to ‘em so that you don’t have to—but let them pay the operational costs and let them recover that through launching things and doing all of that. If we don’t see some change there, and this has been happening since my days with NASA, you can just gradually see the amount of budget that’s getting eaten up with less research and the research budget goin’ down. That, uh.
BAUGHMAN: I heard while I was at NASA that there’s a present move for the Air Force—and it was technical, so I didn’t understand everything that was said— but that there’s some move for the Air Force to take over maintenance of some elements in return for getting to run payloads on the Shuttle, so is that the kind of thing—?
GRIFFIN: Well, and yes, if short of handing it over to somebody entirely, yes. Anything like that that you can do to shift that budget requirement from NASA to anybody—Air Force or anybody—I would be in favor of. Because NASA is sort of—is becoming—having, necessarily, to become a “crank turning”—and all the budget’s gettin eaten up just turning the crank, you know. So, you can’t go do these new things that they need to be doing.
BAUGHMAN: Another questions. Back to the DOD for a second. What kind of space activities were you involved in planning? I imagine a lot of those were classified, but what types of things were being discussed—
GRIFFIN: Right.
BAUGHMAN: —before the Shuttles actually ran them? And what actually did the Shuttle run? Did it fulfill the purpose?
GRIFFIN: Right, well, we had several, we had several systems—satellite systems—that did fly and were launched on Shuttles. And that was prior to the Challenger accident ‘cause the Challenger accident, again, and this was where the Air Force did something right. They said, “Wait a minute.” They said, “If this system is not going to be available to us,” —and it wasn’t for eighteen—or two years—“if the system’s not going to be available to us and we could lose another one—God forbid, but we always could lose another one—do we really want to rely on it?” So that gave the Shuttle nay-sayers some real ammunition. And after the Challenger accident we really started to back off. We started to back off the use of the Shuttle. But, now I’ve forgotten the question [laughs].
BAUGHMAN: About the DOD payloads.
GRIFFIN: Oh, yes.
BAUGHMAN: About what the hopes were that the Shuttle would run and what eventually was run.
GRIFFIN: Yes. OK. And obviously the payload capability of the Shuttle was fantastic. It ended up being a lot more expensive than we thought it would be in the early days, but the reason the payload bay on the Shuttle is sixty feet long and fifteen feet wide is not by accident. That’s to take the largest, at that time, the largest Air Force satellite. So, we—actually—we the Air Force in may ways drove the Shuttle design. It might have looked something different—perhaps even aerodynamically a little more efficient, but we insisted, back in the design days, back in the ‘70s, early ‘70s, we insisted sixty feet long, fifteen feet in diameter, which is what it is today. Every payload that was launched on the Shuttle, as far as the Shuttle was concerned, everything worked fine. That’s the highly classified ones and the not-so-highly-classified ones. Ahhh [thinks]. The Air Force never lost a mission—a satellite mission—because of some malfunction of the Shuttle. Never. And, the beauty of it is, unlike unmanned vehicles, the beauty of it is you get up and you check it out. If it’s not ready to go, close up the payload bay, pull it back in, close up the payload bay, take it home and fix it, and save your 100- million, 200- million, 300-million-dollar satellite for another day. Take it back when it’s working right. So it was a—the Shuttle would have been a great advantage to the Air Force. And it was—we had other means, but there’s no doubt that given the design and what it was meant for that we could have very easily used the Shuttle, particularly in those polar orbits out of Vandenberg. It would have been beautiful. It’s too bad it didn’t work out.
BAUGHMAN: I appreciate your time. And it’s been fascinating.
GRIFFIN: [laughs] Well, I’m glad I could add something, and I really appreciate you inviting me to take part. It’s fun to be able to reminisce and go through it.
BAUGHMAN: We appreciate it. Thanks for your work.
GRIFFIN: Um hum.