Steve Johnson Interviews – Apollo/Saturn Program

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NASA MSFC Oral History Interview

Steve Johnson Interviews – Apollo/Saturn Program

Parker Counts

Interviewed by Steve Johnson

Huntsville, Alabama – Unknown, Circa 2012

Steve Johnson: I am talking to Parker Counts who went to work for NASA [National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration] in 1963 and was there until he retired in 2003. 

Parker, talk a little bit about your education. What prepared you to be in the space 

program?

Parker Counts: I graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1962. I always wanted 

to be an engineer, but, interestingly, I was not space-driven at the time and I decided to 

come across the border to Alabama and had an interesting interview. In fact, I had a 

courtesy interview, folks did not have a job in NASA at that time, this was mid-Apollo 

timeframe, and the key hiring had gone away. I got the wrong Jim Lindsey, as it turned 

out, so the people I did interview with did have a job in Quality and Reliability 

Assurance as a test engineer. They hired me on the spot and forty years later, I enjoyed 

a great career with NASA. 

Johnson: Describe what that meant. That particular task, what did that entail?
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Counts: Back in [Wernher] von Braun’s era, he had wisely set up what many of us refer 

to as a three-legged stool. That is, he had equally staffed engineering components of the 

design engineering side of the house, which designed the rockets, then he had the test 

group, which did the physical hot fire testing of the rockets before they were shipped 

off to be launched. Then he had created Reliability and Quality Assurance as an equally 

staffed engineering group that would do the pre-static and post-static testing and we 

would do all the component testing. Everything that went into the vehicle, we had done 

the acceptance testing of as it came in. Our primary role was to assure that the 

designers, what they said they wanted out of the hardware, the product, we would test 

it to its full limits. It was our responsibility to make sure those limits were met. [There 

were] many discussions with our design friends because they thought we were treating 

their hardware a little tough. Again, that was our job because von Braun wanted to test 

everything on the ground before it was ever launched. He gave us that charter and that 

was the fun part of it, we got to test it.

Johnson: You joined Marshall Space Flight Center in 1963, the middle, so to speak, of 

the Saturn/Apollo Program. Talk about something you tested and how you went about 

doing it, something that was crucial to the mission.
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Counts: Let me start with one of my first remembrances after I got the job. I was 

responsible for the leak checks of the systems, it was mechanical systems back then and 

pressure-fed. I had the privilege as a young engineer to climb around the aft end of the 

Saturn V with the five F-1 engines installed and had to locate with schematics every 

joint that fed the pneumatics to that engine or any of the other activity. My first 

operations were to do those to make sure everything was properly leak checked. I did 

the procedures and schematics to locate where to go test everything for the technicians.

Johnson: You said you did leak checks, and you also said before and after a static test 

you would be testing the hardware. When you did a leak check, what did that mean?

Counts: A leak check, they were pretty simple. You would go up with the system 

pressurized at certain pressures and make sure those connections were all leak free 

before we sent the vehicle over to a static test. When we would prepare the vehicle test 

wise, we would make sure that vehicle was ready to go down the road and be put into 

the test stand to be fired. After firing, we would come back and repeat that same set of 

procedures. We called that our pre and post-static testing of the launch vehicle. 

Johnson: What were the main technical challenges for doing the kind of testing that you 

did?
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Counts: The technical from the leak check standpoint, that was pretty straightforward. I 

moved from a systems test engineer into component tests, and we would have to go to 

the vendors for hardware such as pneumatic piping and pneumatic valves, prevalves 

were a big item back in those days, and all the varied components that made up the 

whole vehicle, then we would check them prior to their installation on the vehicle. That 

was exciting. I was also challenged to do the electrical side of the testing, again, at the 

component level. Those were early on things I did. There were challenges in that each 

vendor had a different problem, we would have the specs, we would have the 

requirements, and those that did not meet, we had to go back to the vendor or do our 

checks here.

Johnson: Would people be surprised to know how much testing of every single piece of 

the Saturn V was conducted, do you think?

Counts: I think they would. It was so very thoroughly thought through. That was the 

heritage Dr. von Braun instilled in us to make sure that everything was tested. We 

would test, retest, fire it, then retest it again to make sure it was right.

Johnson: Then, of course, there were not computer simulations that you could do. Did 

that require you to do more testing than, say, would be done now?
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Counts: I think the difference would be that we had to do a lot of things manually as 

opposed to having the simulated test. We had test equipment, the best we could get at 

the time, but certainly not to the level of what testing the simulators and the things that 

have now been developed in the later generations. 

Johnson: While you were testing, did you have to develop any new tools or come up 

with any new materials or were you basically testing the materials that were already 

there to see if they did what they were supposed to do?

Counts: Pretty much, we were designed when I came into the program, so we were 

more in an operational phase of making sure these vehicles were tested. As we turned 

these vehicles over to the industry base, then we were involved with monitoring them. 

Again, one of those strong features of the Saturn/Apollo Program was that having done 

the testing, having done the designs, prepared us as an agency when we turned 

production over to the various contractors. We were able to monitor them. We hand the 

hands-on experience to be able to evaluate their experience and make sure they did a 

good job.

Johnson: You have already mentioned vendors and contractors. From your end of 

things, talk about the vendor experience. Was it a good experience? Did the various 
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vendors and contractors involved with the Saturn Program, was that, in general terms, 

a good experience during the Saturn days?

Counts: In the Saturn days, again, very good experiences, everybody was excited. This 

whole forty, fifty thousand folks that were involved in going to the Moon, every vendor 

we went to was very excited about being a part of it. We did not have any issues, Some 

may not have been able to perform as well as others and we had to weed out the good 

and the bad, but as far as their attitude and working together, it was good relationship.

Johnson: Of course, you worked at Marshall on various other programs and there were 

contractors involved in that too. Did the experience stay as good over the years as it was 

during the Saturn days?

Counts: I will fast forward with you for a moment with the External Tank for the 

shuttle. From the vendor perspective, I think the excitement was there. We had the 

same kinds of things, but what happened in shuttle was the vendor base, ninety percent 

of that tank was vendor-procured. It was very critical that we have a good relationship. 

Then I was the project manager, so I relied upon the contractor, Lockheed Martin, who

for thirty-eight years had the External Tank. They did a marvelous job as a prime 

contractor and all our subs had that same fire in their belly, if you will, in terms of we 
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are working on the shuttle. I remember very well we brought many of those vendors to 

the launch site to let them see a shuttle launch. They just marveled, my part was on that 

thing. It was a good relationship. As we worked toward the end of shuttle, we did not 

have a high volume, high production rate, we did not have a large launch rate. Vendors 

had to start looking at themselves from a business case. They wanted to be a part of it, 

but there was not a lot of business when you are not turning out. It was hard.

Johnson: Basically, they could not make a living on a few shuttle launches. Let us go 

back to the Saturn Program. What was the work like then? You joined in 1963, a couple 

of years passed, the president guaranteeing a Moon landing, humans on the Moon 

within the decade. What was the pace of work like in those days?

Counts: I always told people that our standard work week was ten hours a day, eight 

on Saturday, and then we used the weekends if we did not get it done. It was 

demanding, but fun. I do not think any of us in the program complained about the long 

hours because it was very rewarding to be working toward it. We had the challenge and 

those were exciting times.

Johnson: You were essentially working ten hours a day, maybe eight on Saturday. How 

many years did this go on?
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Counts: This pretty much went on for the first ten years, at least, of my career. That is 

when I was more heavily involved in the test engineering. During that time, my first 

level management job, we did pre and post-static tests of the F-1 engines, H-1s, and J-2s. 

All of those came under the group I had the privilege of working with. We did the test 

on those. All that time, they were vendor procured engines. When they came in, we 

would do the same rigor that we did of the whole vehicle. We would test that whole 

engine as an assembly. Then it was taken to a hot fire, it would come back, and we 

would do a post-mechanical. The same logic was test before you hot fire it, hot fire it, 

and then you come back and do a post-static. Then the engines were ready to be 

installed on the vehicle. 

Johnson: What was the work environment like? We are talking a decade of working 

what most people would consider a very long week. Was everybody feeling like “this is 

what we need to be doing?” 

Counts: From my perspective, I cannot think of anything or anybody who was 

unhappy. We shared in the work, it was very exciting. I did not see anything. It was not 

one of those “I do not want to work today.” Obviously when you have some stress and 

issues and problems that are not the most exciting things, but overall, we knew what 

we were working on, we knew where we were headed, and it was exciting.
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Johnson: How did you control costs? Was there talk about money?

Counts: In my earlier days, that was before I got into the program management side of 

things. Cost was never an issue for us. I guess, in all honesty, von Braun had an open 

checkbook to go do everything he needed to do. Money was not an issue in the 

Saturn/Apollo Program. As we moved into further generations, things got tougher and 

you had to manage to a cost and schedule. Things got much more difficult as the next 

thirty years of my career progressed to an order of stronger management role. We had 

to manage the cost, and that was different. Apollo, at least as I was testing things and 

going, money was never an issue.

Johnson: In later years when you were working other programs up to and including the 

shuttle, you were still involved in testing, am I correct?

Counts: I went into testing, I got into systems engineering for a while, then into 

requirements, but I eventually ended up managing programs. I kind of grew out of the 

testing after about ten, fifteen years.
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Johnson: In the testing part in the first ten to fifteen years, were there dead ends in the 

testing you guys did? If there were any dead ends, how did you recover from them? 

Did you test things that just did not work?

Counts: We did have failures. I did start early. The last part of my testing side was 

when I was involved with the space shuttle main engines, when we started setting them 

up. They were the pacing item for the space shuttle. That was one of my field 

assignments. I had a short assignment at the Mississippi Test Facility where we were to 

set up the engine firings, but I remember one of the problems we had there was starting 

the start sequence. We must have literally destroyed six or eight engines just trying to 

get the start sequence on this finely tuned engine. Of course, it turned out to be a Swiss 

watch once it was set up, it worked perfectly. We burned up several engines just trying 

to do the start sequence. It comes to main stage in about a second and half. That is really 

turning things up quickly.

Johnson: Zero to sixty in a second is what you are saying. (Laughs)

Counts: Yes, it was really running hard.
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Johnson: Was it a surprise it was so hard? You had had success with the Saturn V 

engines. When you were working on the shuttle engines, was it ever a surprise you 

were having so much trouble?

Counts: I think it was because we had come off as very successful because every shuttle 

we launched on thirty two vehicles were successful. We had some problems with those 

and we had some failures even during flight, but we had margins to cover them. It was 

well-designed. We had done a very good job in testing and preparing everything for the 

vehicles and for the launches, so we were coming off a very successful program. I think 

when we tried to stretch the technology, particularly in that shuttle main engine when 

we were looking for higher performance, we ran into several problems.

Johnson: Of course, the shuttle main engines were one of the marvels of the aerospace 

industry. How much pride do you have about the fact that you contributed to that 

engine being so special?

Counts: Certainly the engines were probably the highlight of the second phase of my 

activities. I did get called on to go to California and spend three years at the factory, this 

was when we were having trouble building the main engines. I left Mississippi and 

went to California for three years at the Canoga Park facility where Rocketdyne was 
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building the Space Shuttle Main Engines. I spent three years there working with the 

contractor to try to work through and price. We were resident office folks out there. I 

was the resident quality and reliability assurance manager out there for three years. 

That was exciting to get involved in. It gave me a greater appreciation of how a 

contractor has to work, sometimes sitting back 2,000 miles and saying why can you not 

do this and that. Being in the factory was a real eye-opener for me and helped me 

develop a career base where I then had a greater appreciation about the contractors and 

what they have to go through by having to live through that time with them. 

Johnson: Between Saturn and shuttle, you worked on Skylab. What was your Skylab 

involvement?

Counts: Skylab was that fill-in program between the Apollo Program until we got 

shuttle up and running. Fill-in meaning we used residual hardware coming out of 

Apollo and used the remaining Saturn vehicles to get Skylab up. My role there was with 

the orbital workshop. They took and removed all the propulsion lines off of that and 

made it a habitable workshop. I was responsible for the mechanical systems on the 

orbital workshop for Skylab. I had a year’s assignment out at McDonnell Douglas. That 

program got into some problems early on in terms of schedule and getting it through. I 

think it was about ninety of us that went out to work with that contractor. That was a 
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pleasure to work and get the vehicle prepared and tested for our standards. Then we 

shipped that third stage as it was, known as the orbital workshop, to the Cape 

[Kennedy] to be mounted to the Saturn V vehicle and be launched. I got to go and 

spend another year at the Cape while we were preparing Skylab for launch.

Johnson: You worked on planetary missions after that. Talk about what exactly that 

entailed.

Counts: Before I started the shuttle, one of the first responsibilities to get the shuttle 

system up and running was the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. They formed the 

network of satellites in geostationary orbit that would provide the continuous 

communications to the shuttle and to the ground. They had to be launched in this 

22,000 mile geostationary orbit, so they needed secondary propulsion stages coming out 

of the shuttle. Shuttle would get up to low Earth orbit and then you had to have a two 

stage solid rocket motor to propel those large satellites up to their final destination. 

After Skylab, I went to work with those and eventually became the project manager for 

the upper stages. That was a program out of Marshall, because it was propulsion, so we 

managed that. That is what we used the first few flights for, to get the tracking data 

satellites up. 
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With that capability established, then there were planetary missions that needed to be 

put into planetary positions or travel to the other orbits, needing that propulsive power 

coming out of the shuttle bay. We had the Magellan, the Galileo, and the Ulysses 

missions. They were exciting missions, quite large, very expensive in terms of billion 

dollar-type planetary satellites. We had the responsibility not only in that phase to 

provide the two stage solid rocket motor to give them the thrust from the shuttle, we 

also had the responsibility as Marshall to integrate these payloads to the upper stages 

and take that as a combined payload to the orbiter. We followed through the testing of 

the orbiter. Our test and launch complex was off the west coast where we managed it, 

so we would support the shuttle launches and then transition to the west coast, San Jose 

[California] at the Air Force facility to then follow the mission for the next eighteen 

hours to get those planetary missions going. It was quite successful. All those

planetarys, you were targeting from a propulsion standpoint. We had a target to hit and 

we hit the bullseye on all the planetary missions. It was quite exciting to finish the 

planetarys, and we also got all the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites up. It was a very 

exciting program. 

Johnson: You had one of those careers where you were at Marshall Space Flight Center, 

you were in California, you were all over NASA territory not only with NASA but with 

contractors. What was it like having a career that called you to live so many places?
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Counts: I have often been asked that question. I guess my answer is I could not have 

dreamt of a more fascinating career. I would never have thought I could put all these 

pieces together. I enjoyed every move, everything. There are always a few issues, but 

from a concept and from a career standpoint, I could not have put the pieces together in 

any better fashion. It was great.

Johnson: Did working on the Saturn V Program, which, as someone has said, is a 

marvel of systems engineering because so many things had to go together to allow us to 

do something that we had never done before. Did that set you up to make all these 

other things you did a success? Did you learn things during your early days working in 

the Saturn Program that benefitted you the rest of your NASA career?

Counts: Absolutely. I could not say it more strongly because it was a marvel, it was first 

things. I think it also contributed not only to my ability to understand and go through it 

and be part of it, I just had a small part, as many of us did, but it was a beautiful 

opportunity to be involved. It also built confidence in us, confidence that we had been 

there, we had done that. I think we rode that confidence all the way through shuttle. 

Even though we probably had more issues, we launched a couple of missions tragically, 

but we knew we could do things and that, at least from a personal standpoint, prepared 

me quite well for the rest of my career.
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Johnson: Could you talk about the differences between Marshall and other NASA 

centers? Specifically, were there rivalries over the course of your career that you 

noticed?

Counts: Yes, that probably comes in any strong, competitive [environment]. We have 

ten NASA field centers now, and, of course, that competition was with Johnson [Space 

Center] and Kennedy [Space Center], Stennis, and Marshall were the propulsive-type 

centers. Then there was competition with the others, primarily budget, as it got in the 

later years, because of the invariable argument, why do we need humans, why do we 

not go robotic, we need more science, we need less humans. It was there. We would be 

foolish not to admit it. I think we have come to appreciate that there is room for all of us 

to exist in this thing. In the later years, particularly on the human spaceflight side of 

things, I think we have come together now very strongly in trying to support where we 

need to go in space exploration. I think the teams now know we have a very restricted 

budget, we have economic situations that are very difficult. I think we are all working

together to make it a stronger one. I think before everybody had their own roles, 

Saturn/Apollo, for example, I think it was clear the roles each had. Then we moved to 

budget constraints and things got a little tight. Now I think we are seeing we have to all 

play well and work together. I think it is working in the right direction.
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Johnson: Let us drop back to the Saturn days for a moment and talk about Dr. von 

Braun’s involvement in what you did, which was testing. Did he visit a lot? Did he have 

a real interest in what your group was doing?

Counts: Absolutely. He was there at every opportunity. That was his strength, he was 

there among the people, he was there to give leadership and guidance. He was just a 

marvelous man, as many of us will testify. Personally, I came late, so I was in a few 

meetings with him, but I did not have the hands-on that many of the others that came in 

the mid-1950s had. What a great leader we had. He set the stage, but he would be 

around. He was very gentlemanly. Everything I remember seeing him do, he was very 

much the gentleman, respected the people, and kept us invigorated and kept us

challenged.

Johnson: Compare the leadership, which you just talked about, under von Braun with 

leadership in later years at Marshall, and maybe even NASA. Was there ever anyone 

who was able to be all the things von Braun was during the Saturn days?

Counts: No, I do not think we have anybody that, in my mind, could come up to that 

level. I was privileged to work for all ten center directors in my career base. The ten I 
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worked for, there were different personalities, different leaders. I got closer to the ones 

later and worked very closely with them. I have very fond memories of direct 

involvement with our center directors. Everyone I dealt with was fair and honest. We 

had to work through problems, but von Braun was that special kind of guy that only 

comes around every once in a while.

Johnson: Staying in the Saturn V days, talk about the integration of all the different 

parts, projects, designs. When we got to the point where we had tested and it was time 

to fly, did it all fit together the way you expected it to? Did everything perform like you, 

in your mind, a guy who worked on it, thought it would?

Counts: Because we had the rigors of testing and because we went to all the special 

efforts as well as preparing the vehicle for shipment to the Cape, for stacking it at the 

Cape, for the tests that were done there, we were all integrated into it. Those first 

firings, you were pleasantly surprised that everything worked together, but I was 

pleased the amount of effort, integration, and testing that we did prepared us for that. 

You do not know what that outcome is until you see it leave the launchpad. When it 

does, and when I completes its mission, then you can breathe a sigh of relief and be 

happy. 
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Johnson: Do you remember your feeling when the Saturn V finally flew?

Counts: I was there for that one, at Apollo 17, and my remembrance of that one, that 

was the first time you speak of testing. We had a ground simulator and we had all the 

hardware simulated in the Quality and Reliability Assurance Lab where we were. That 

was all set up in the event you had a problem. I distinctly remember we had to delay 

that launch and Marshall finally got a little notoriety because they said Marshall had a 

system. We had a failure, I have forgotten what it was, but it was fun through that 

simulator. They found it, validated it, and said you are safe to fly. It was good to see it 

go. It was sad, we had other launch vehicles ready that could have gone, but it was a 

good closure to a very successful program.

Johnson: When the Saturn V, and even the shuttle, for that matter, flew, did you have 

enough familiarity with all the testing and all the things that had been done that you 

were confident? Do you remember being confident that it was going to go and be 

successful, that you had done everything you needed to do to these spacecraft?

Counts: We go through, again on shuttle, I will be specific since I was responsible for 

giving elements on the shuttle, be it upper stages as a payload or External Tank. With 

those specifics, we go through quite an elaborate preflight readiness review, so we are 
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confident, at least for our elements. In my case, either of those three or four projects that 

I worked on, we were confident we were ready to fly at that point. We felt good about 

it. I cannot speak to the whole system. By this time, we had now been very focused on 

making sure that our particular elements were ready when we come together at the 

launch site, and much more carefully in the later days after Challenger. We had a very 

rigorous review process we go through. Being part of that, we saw it totally. I think we 

went into it pretty confidently. Each element would have to give our go status, so we 

were ready for launch. Sitting through the process, we became confident that after we 

finished that process, we felt like that vehicle was ready to go.

Johnson: Despite all our testing, we had the accident with Challenger. You left in 2003, 

so you actually left before Columbia, but you were there for the Challenger disaster. Talk 

about that. How did that effect what you did?

Counts: Let me take you back. I was there for Columbia. I was in Washington [District of 

Columbia] running a program. I was part of it. In fact, that very day, I was coming 

home to retire on February 11, which would have been on my fortieth anniversary. I 

was in Washington doing the Shuttle Program. Columbia was February 1 and I had just 

gotten back to Marshall, just landed, and I got a call from the folks in Washington 

saying we were about to land Columbia and they were only fifteen minutes away. Then I 
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got a call saying we had a problem. Then I was able to run out to the center. I did work 

both, and I will give you the flavor of each one.

For Challenger, I was the upper stage manager. I was working the Upper Stage Program, 

so we were the payload on Challenger. We were satisfied, we had given the go for our 

upper stage payload and had integrated it into the shuttle. Things were ready to go. I 

was there. Unbelievably, we were on our consoles, we were dead silent for a couple of 

seconds. The hope was we would see an orbiter fly out of what looked to be a cloud, 

but, of course, it did not. 

Johnson: Were you involved with the work to figure out exactly what had happened 

and redesign things to make sure it would not happen again?

Counts: We were. On our part, we had to establish a review team to verify that the 

payload did not cause a problem. It was really interesting because there was an issue in 

our minds with the spreader beams, these were the beams that mounted the 45,000 

pound payload into the shuttle bay. There was some concern about this material maybe 

being fractured, it could have been something. Our group’s greatest fear was these 

beams broke and then it shifted during maximum dynamic pressure we went through 

at that timeframe and that we might have caused that accident. We had to form a team 
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and go do that. We were very rigorous. Every element put their team together, and we 

did an overall team working it with the commission. 

Our side of it was when we pulled those beams out of the ocean, they were bent but not 

broken. We were able to at least validate that the payload did not cause the issue. Of 

course the issue, we knew what caused it later, it came on out. Yes, we were involved. 

We did not have any redesigns to do, but we did revalidate everything that we do in 

the process so that we would have a safe payload because we had to fly the Tracking 

and Data Relay Satellites. They had to be up for the shuttle to be successful.

Johnson: How about Columbia?

Counts: Columbia, I was in Washington doing the Shuttle Program, so I was involved in 

the detailed activities. 

Johnson: You were in Washington for two years with the Shuttle Program. Explain 

what you did in Washington.

Counts: In Washington, I was the deputy associate administrator for the Shuttle 

Program. Primarily, that means we watched the budget. We had the responsibility for 
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the entire shuttle budget and we had to defend that budget to Congress. Most of that 

work was primarily interfacing with the congressmen, the staffers, and answer all the 

questions. It was very incumbent on that person to be able to stay in touch with the 

other field centers so we could get all the answers together. We developed a great 

relationship with all the program managers and project managers because Congress is 

notorious for wanting answers and wanting them quickly. 

Our challenge was to get the right answers to the folks. That was the side of it that was 

not hands-on hardware as much as it was dealing with the congressional budget, 

working with NASA Headquarters, keeping information flowing on where the shuttle 

was, how we were meeting our schedules, and how the elements were coming together. 

It was good that it happened at the end of my career because I had had hands on 

hardware in the field. That really made that a simpler job for me because I knew who to 

go to for the information and I had the hardware knowledge. Hardware knowledge in 

Washington is a bit of a rare thing. I think it worked well and kept us able to answer the 

questions from Congress.

Johnson: Did you have any function in the post-Columbia investigation?
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Counts: That is why I did not retire on February 11 and stayed until we got a plan 

together that set up the recoveries and find out what we needed to do. I stayed on until 

July to finish the initial planning and get the activities together and support the agency 

in that regard. Then it came into a commission review, so they took over. I stayed that 

extra six months just to get the plans together. 

Johnson: The job you did during both the Challenger disaster and Columbia really had 

nothing to do with what the various commissions indicated caused the disasters. Do 

you care to comment or say your opinion on how things might have been handled 

differently by NASA or if there as a culture that was unfortunately not changed in time 

to avoid these accidents?

Counts: The one thing I would say is there was a distinct improvement between 

Columbia and Challenger relative to the contingency plans. We were not prepared for 

Challenger in terms of contingency plans, what would we do. I think Challenger proved 

that we had put the right plans together for the contingency. We knew who to call. I 

mentioned I just came back, and the first thing we did within forty-five minutes of that 

accident was we had all the teams assembled on a telecon and called everybody 

together that needed to be there for it. The contingency plan was a big difference, I 

think. When you go through those things, they are intense, and, when we have a failure, 
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we tend to possibly get into a very conservative mode. I cannot say it is bad or good, we 

are treating with human life, and we have to treat it very much so. We have to look at 

those things and we come out. Between the two, the one big difference I saw was in

how the operations were run.

Johnson: This has been mentioned by other people that launching rockets with humans 

on board is a dangerous business. Do you feel like what happened came with the 

territory, or could we have avoided those two disasters?

Counts: In hindsight, of course you would not have launched on a cold day.

Johnson: That is with Challenger.

Counts: That is with Challenger. And Columbia, had we known that we had a transport 

mechanism to get that foam from that bipod on the External Tank down into the wing 

area of the orbiter, all the systems engineering up to that point said we did not have a 

transport mechanism. In hindsight, we knew we did not. Those are the two critical 

things about those two accidents that could have prevented it. As we look back, I was in 

the readiness reviews for Challenger and I thought the biggest issue was the C state. As I 

remember in the flight readiness reviews, the seas were going to be twelve foot levels, 
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so the program manager had to make the call. Somebody had to elevate that. That was 

one of the bigger discussions. We understood other things were going on behind the 

scenes. Like you said, it is human spaceflight, it is a risky business, and we do know 

there are going to be those and we may not get everything, but we have to try. In the 

future, we have to put safety number one and keep everybody there. 

Johnson: We were so successful in the Saturn V days, and with those glaring examples

you already talked about, very successful during the shuttle years. Does the success by 

NASA sometimes make the agency overconfident or make the people who work on 

these complex systems overconfident that we have done everything and things are 

going to go well?

Counts: I know through the comments and the press releases people picked up on that. 

I guess I can only share with you a personal feeling. I do not think I ever felt 

overconfident because it was instilled in us from the very beginning that you have to 

treat human spaceflight very specially and very conservatively. I do not think that 

changed, at least in my mind. I know from an external source people can comment on 

those things and say NASA got overconfident. That, I think, is maybe an overstatement. 

I can only say it personally because from my perspective, we thought we were doing 

everything we were trying to do and we were trying to stay to a very conservative base. 
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I do not think we let confidence factor into that under the confidence that we can do 

these things. As far as being overconfident, I did not experience that in my lifetime.

Johnson: We know how much recognition Dr. von Braun and the German rocket team 

received, certainly at the beginning of NASA. Do you feel like other people maybe did 

not get as much credit as they deserved?

Counts: No, I think not. I think von Braun was the leader and he got considerable credit 

for a lot of things, but that was a team effort. I think the one thing I remember about Dr. 

von Braun as it relates to people getting credit for everything is when he brought his 

German team over. He said, “We are going to speak English and we are going to be a 

team. We are kind of a foreign element, so this will be a group, this will be with the 

United States, and we will do it together.” I think that was the credit he is due, it is 

deserved. You have egos in any of these things, you will have those that stand out and 

wish they had gotten more, but I felt privileged to be part of the whole opportunity, not 

only through Saturn, but through my whole NASA career. I felt very blessed and 

privileged to have that opportunity. 

Johnson: You got to work at Marshall and various other centers and you also got to 

work at Headquarters. Do you think over the years, from what you have seen and being 
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at Headquarters, that Headquarters for NASA was a contributor, or did Headquarters 

get in the way in any instances you can think of?

Counts: I think early on it was clear we had strong leadership from Washington as well 

as the field centers. I am sure there were a lot of backroom discussions. Again, I was a 

young engineer, so I did not get involved in those. I think there was a good balance 

there. In later years when I was there, I tried to normalize the activities from a shuttle 

perspective, I could not do it for the agency, of course. I at least recognized that my role 

was not to be the manager back to my External Tank days or something else. I had to 

rely on the program and the projects to do that. Mine was to be the integrator of those 

results and to keep the money flowing and to keep people doing. 

I think we got a smaller role and it should have been smaller. I think in the shuttle days 

it normalized itself pretty much. It was not nearly as big as it was in the beginning. We 

transitioned down, and yes, you are going to find incidents where the bureaucratic role 

in Washington from a field center standpoint was stifling. Those are just challenges you 

have to work through there. Nothing of that was insurmountable. You would like to 

have had a little less involvement sometimes in some areas, but when you build a pretty 

big program, you are going to have to deal with some of the bureaucratic issues.
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Johnson: You worked on the Saturn V, you worked on the space shuttle, two of the 

vehicles that have meant more to human spaceflight than any others. When you think 

about your career doing that, what comes to your mind? How do you look at that?

Counts: I just marvel again to be so blessed to part of it. As I said earlier, if somebody 

asked me to put it down on a piece of paper, what would you like to do in your lifetime, 

I would have failed miserably. I could not have come up with such an exciting career. I 

am blessed and truly happy with everything that came out. We had some rough times, 

everything is not always a bed of roses, but the reward and excitement outweigh any 

problems that I experienced through my forty years at NASA.

Johnson: It occurs to me that I need to ask a question or two about the External Tank

work you did. The External Tank, one of the marvels of the Shuttle Program, was also a 

little bit of a troublemaker with the foam which would come off. The foam was put on 

to prevent ice, but the foam came off instead of the ice. Looking back at the 

development of that, what is your take on the External Tank and what it contributed to 

the Shuttle program?

Counts: Let me first say the External Tank was the highlight of my career with NASA. 

The initial design, I was not involved in. I came along as the second or third program 
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manager behind Jim Odom. Jim was one of my mentors. It was a great program, great 

contractor. We had some problems, we had to take some reductions. I was part of that 

team that reduced it. Then I was challenged to go manage that contract after we took 

1000 people off the program. As you might imagine, I might not have been the most 

respected project manager coming in. Two weeks after I got the job, we were asked to 

build a super lightweight tank. We were able to add more then. That was the highlight. 

My seven years on External Tank, we did go from a redesign of the External Tank

through a weight savings program to give us 7,500 pounds of weight savings. 

Every pound of that External Tank is worth a pound of payload to orbit. It became very 

critical when NASA made the decision to meet the Russians in the fifty-two degree 

orbit. We lost fifteen thousand pounds of performance, so we could not even get the 

modules of the space station up. A great challenge to the tank team was to at least come 

up with fifty percent of that weight savings. We did that, we had issues, two of which I 

remember very clearly. We had chosen aluminum lithium as a material. That was a 

material that had never been used in a space application. It was known to be not easily 

welded, and there are 36,000 inches of weld on the External Tank. 

We thought we had it whipped when we made the initial welds. It turned out we could 

only do the initial welds and not the repair welds. That became a problem and we had 
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to develop whole new procedures to weld. We also lost what I call the recipe for the 

aluminum lithium. We made the ingot sizes small. When they were that small

(Gestures), they met all the material properties we wanted. When we expanded that to 

the size of ingot we needed to make External Tank barrel sections, we lost significant

properties. We had to form a team and go work that. There were two issues that could 

have put the shuttle out of business. Without the External Tank’s weight savings, we 

could not have built the space station. 

It was challenging, but the team rallied and we overcame some very difficult situations 

and produced the Super Lightweight Tank. We did it on schedule, we met the Russian 

module, it was the first to be launched, we did it and accomplished our weight savings 

of a little over 7,500 pounds. More significantly, I guess, it probably has not been done 

in many development programs, at least my friend Wayne Littles tells me, I do not 

know of any development program that ever came in under budget. We finished 

$20,000,000 under budget for the development of that third generation tank. It was a 

marvelous success.

When that was done, I left that program in 2000 and went over to do Solid Rocket 

Booster Program. The foam and all the other things came later. I was not involved in the 

recovery. I think on my watch we launched fifty-one tanks, many of those Super 
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Lightweights, to start building the station. That side of it was probably the most exciting 

time in my NASA career.

Johnson: Did your time as a test engineer it the Saturn Program help you as you 

worked on this effort to make this tank do what you wanted it to do?

Counts: Certainly, because that built in a rigor. That was the good part about the test 

engineering side of it, we were very clear on the processes. We had to build it, we had 

to establish the rigor of the test program as we were doing it. That benefitted me. As I 

became a project manager, those were instilled in me as to how to do things. I think it 

worked well as we worked through it. Plus, I think it was important that we had a good 

team of folks and had to communicate that to them. Test engineering gives you an 

opportunity to communicate back to your designers or your hot fire guys because you 

have to keep a good dialog going. Those two aspects benefitted me in my career as I 

moved into program management.

Johnson: You, once upon a time, were the kind of engineer who crawls around on a 

Saturn V doing testing. You moved from that to a project manager. As someone who 

worked in the space program for decades, which would you rather do, be a hands-on

guy crawling around on a spacecraft or manage a project?
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Counts: Each of those had a place in my life is the best way I can answer it. Each one 

prepared me for the further role. Quite honestly, I enjoyed the program sides and 

project sides better because it was expanded and we had the challenges of meeting the 

schedule and driving a program to completion and accomplishing it on budget. That 

was more of where I wanted to be. I did not know that at the time, crawling around in 

the back end. It is interesting you should ask that, Steve, because every place I went 

early in my career, boy, I wanted to stay right here and do this, I wanted to be handson, right here. Then I had a wonderful branch chief who said, “Parker, I will challenge 

you. I want you to go over here and work in component tests.” I did that for two, three 

years. Then he said, “Now I want you to go over here and head up the engine program 

and do the test program for these engines.” Each time I said, “But I like where I am. I do 

not want to move.” After the third move, it had built my confidence to a point that I felt 

very blessed to be able to move forward and keep going in my career base.