Wayne Hale is retired from NASA after 32 years. In his career he was the Space Shuttle Program Manager or Deputy for 5 years, a Space Shuttle Flight Director for 40 missions, and is currently a consultant for SAS and full time grandpa.
To book Wayne as a speaker at your event, please go to the Special Aerospace Services web page.
Glad you’re back to posting!
Hi Wayne…like the blog. Marissa told me to check it out!
Mr. Hale,
I love the blog…please keep updating it…we’re out there looking for good space info and opinion.
I love reading your blog. frankly, I have missed your press conferences before shuttle flights. Looking forward to the Shuttle Book you worked on (is it really coming out in February, or will you wait for the final mission?)
Hi, Wayne.
Thanks for doing this blog. I’ve added you to my blogroll at The Space Buff. (http://www.thespacebuff.com/links/)
Thanks for your input (or should it be output?) concerning the safety of spaceflights. It is such an important topic of study. Our collective national heart has certainly been broken from the spaceflight accidents of the past. It is such a concern – I hope and pray there will be never be another disaster.
Love your blog and can’t wait for your book to be released! Love the picture with Hale Kid #1
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. It is fantastic learning and reading about your experiences in the shuttle program.
Great blog.
Mr Hale,
I am eagerly awaiting to be able to purchase your new book; “Wings in Orbit..”
What is holding up its availability?
Thank you for your interest. Wings in Orbit is a Government Printing Office publication. While I and several hundred other NASA employees and retirees wrote most of the book, the printing and distribution was done by the GPO. Unfortunately, I have very little insight into what is holding up distribution of those books. I hope that the wheels will be rolling shortly and those that pre-ordered the book will get theirs delivered, and that you will find copies at not only GPO bookstores, but also at Barnes & Nobels bookstores and Amazon.com which have signed agreements to merchandise those books. Please note that neither I nor any of the other authors or editors get any reimbursement for this book, all sales profits go to the US Treasury.
Mr Hale,
With the recent failure of the Soyuz rocket and the possibility of a soon abandoned ISS, thoughts from 1979 spring to my mind. I was at the time a humble 3rd grader, at that age I watched a lot of cartoons on Saturday morning, like most kids, CBS had this science program and maybe it was Charles Kuralt or Marvin Kalb that hosted it, but they had kids write in on how to save Skylab from falling out of the sky. That memory made me remember that just such a piece of hardware had been built and I’m sure is now sitting in some warehouse in a crate at JSC or Marshall. Apparently the Shuttle on one of the first 3 or four flights then planned was to attach this to Skylab and boost it into a higher orbit, thus saving it for future visits and so on.
Is the Shuttle Endeavour capable, if necessary, (as it seems on hold from full retirement for some USA space alliance contingency right now according to spaceflight.com) able to transport a Soyuz vehicle to the ISS and thereby save us from a 100 billion dollar 12 year flaming ISS as it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere. I realize this is a worst case as the ISS can be controlled from the ground, but there’s always the worst case scenario when these things happen. —
Wondering if deja vu will happen all over again to coin a phrase — Jonathan
Mr Hale
I am an avid space enthusiast from Montreal, Canada.
In 2009 I decided to put together a power point presentation for the 40th anniversary of every Apollo moon mission. I present the conferences at my local astronomy club and at the only museum dedicated to space exploration and Astronomy in Canada (the Cosmodôme in Laval, Quebec).
I just want to say that I absolutely love your Blog. Your opinion as an insider is very precious to me in understanding the current developments in the transition period we are witnessing these days.
Thanks and keep up the good work
Michel Burelle
Montreal, Canada
Hi Wayne,
I very much enjoyed your presentation at the Special Aerospace Services conference on manned spacelight in Boulder, CO. It was very interesting and described China’s expansion and contraction during the Ming Dynasty. I was disappointed that it was not included on the USB memory stick we received from the conference. Would you mind sending the presentation to me for review? It was really informative.
Thanks,
Tim
You can find the text on my old NASA blog, still archived on their web site : http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/viewpostlist.jsp?blogname=waynehalesblog
The title was “Its Your Choice Really”. I will work on getting the pictures posted somewhere . . . .
Hey Wayne,
Its Patricia Green. Understand awhile ago you saw Kelley and asked about me. Thanks for remembering. My husband and I are retired now and love every minute. No more getting up at 4 a.m. every morning or working launch, sometimes for 24 hours. Am very proud to have worked with you from your first day at KSC until you moved on. Will enjoy reading your blog.
Wayne,
This is an excellent lesson. I will find a way to work this into our curriculum at New Mexico Space Academy this summer.
Dave Dooling
Education Director (& ex-Huntsville Times science editor)
NM Museum of Space History
Alamogordo, NM
Hi Wayne,
I’m watching your MIT “Aircraft Systems Engineering” lecture on Mission Control from 2005. At the beginning of the lecture you handed out two papers you had written to the class. Is there any chance there is a digital version available for me to read?
Thanks!
By the way, I loved Wings in Orbit!
Help me with the titles of the papers – that’s been a few years ago . .
Oh, haha, of course. Sorry about that.
It looks like you never actually said the paper titles in the lecture, so I may be out of luck, but here’s what you said about them:
“Also because I had a whole bunch of copies of my last two papers sitting around that I needed to get rid of, I lugged them up here.
I want to give you copies of my last two papers which have to do with operational issues that you can read at your leisure.
And I particularly want you to look at the considerations in rendezvous launch windows.”
If it’s too much trouble, don’t sweat it. Great lecture!
Oops, my quote got cut off. You also mentioned this about the papers
“One discussing entry operational considerations and hypersonic entry that we’ve learned with the Space Shuttle.
The other about rendezvous launch windows.”