Date: March 5, 2010
Title: Go for Launch! A Conversation with George Diller from NASA TV
Podcaster: Nancy Atkinson
Description: If NASA TV is part of your daily diet of space media, you will likely recognize the voice of George Diller, who does the TV commentary for launches from Kennedy Space Center. George shares some of the highlights of his 29 years at KSC.
Links: Listen to and read additional interviews with more people who work at NASA TV at Kennedy Space Center at Universe Today, “Behind the Scenes at NASA TV.: NASA TV on the web, Universe Today, Astronomy Cast
Bio: Nancy Atkinson is the Senior Editor for Universe Today, a producer/researcher for Astronomy Cast, and the project manager for the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Maurice Cahill and dedicated to Dennis Byrnes whose enthusiasm for astronomy inspired me, and to the folks at 365 days of Astronomy who have kept me informed, challenged, and entertained for over a year (especially with the “überfar shout”!).
Transcript:
Hi, this is Nancy Atkinson from Universe Today. Right now I’m at Kennedy Space Center, and I’ve had the opportunity to see a couple of launches and cover other events here that normally, I’d be back home watching on NASA TV. I had the chance to talk with some of the people who work at NASA TV at Kennedy Space Center, or KSC TV as they call it, to find out about the things that they do. One of those people was George Diller, one of the voices of KSC TV.
Nancy: The next voice you’ll hear you will probably recognize. He’s the voice of, I think almost all the launches here at Kennedy Space Center for the past several year. It’s George Diller. Hi George, thanks for talking with us today.
George: I do a lot of the launches but the shuttle launches we tend to spread out between among some of us in the office because there is a tremendous amount of preparation that goes into one of those so its hard for one person to do them all. I do do a lot more of the expendable launches, the unmanned launches and I really enjoy those particularly because the payloads are so different. They are deploy-able spacecraft that tend to be focused on space science, planetary exploration, astrophysics – those are the ones to me that have a certain amount of fascination, and always have way back from when I started here back in the late 70’s. In fact I cut my teeth as a newsman covering the space center for about five years and became particularly interested in the expendable vehicle launches with Viking, Voyager and Pioneer Venus. I’ve been here 29 years now and that still has the same attraction for me. We did launch those kinds of payloads on the shuttle for awhile and I got to work with those payloads in preparation for launch. But those all transitioned over to the expendable launch vehicles completely after the Challenger accident and the space shuttle was refocused on building the International Space Station.
If I look back probably at some of the missions that I have most enjoyed working on and doing the launch commentary for, probably the Hubble Space Telescope would the one that would be the highlight because I was directly involved with the telescope and the spacecraft payload testing and doing the commentary for launch, as well as for all the missions that have been done since that have gone up to service the telescope. So it really is quite a feeling to look back and say that I was a part of that for all of those Hubble Missions, both for the launch and all the flights that have followed to service it.
Probably the most memorable spacecraft that I have been directly involved with have been involved with particularly would be Cassini that went to Saturn and sent a probe down to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Also Galileo that went to Jupiter and that was such a great success and the Magellan mission to Venus. So, I think I enjoy those kinds of missions because they are leaving low Earth orbit and going so much farther out that we can only hope that one day we’ll one day go to those places ourselves.
The shuttle missions have really become focused on the space station, and it’s kind of been fun on those flights to focus on a particular piece of flight hardware that’s going up to be attached to the station, and later on when there is some kind of reference to a particular component or something particular that has been attached to it, you can remember some involvement that you’ve had with it.
But I think the space station, is, when is all finished and we look back at the science that was done over the next 10 or 15 years, I think we are going to look back at it as probably one of the wonders of the world in terms of modern accomplishments just as we have the Hubble Space Telescope, because I think so much will come out of it that is focused to us right down here on the ground. It will translate to benefits such as new metals, new pharmaceuticals, new computer substrates; new potential cures for diseases, medicines that we can get to synthesize only in the microgravity – zero gravity environment of The potential of the space station is almost mind boggling.
And I’m hoping to be around long enough to look back at the history of the space station program and say, well, I was with NASA when we were putting this together, and I may be retired eventually, but I can look back and say, look at all of the great things that now have come from the program.
Nancy: As you see the end of the space shuttle program coming, what are your personal feelings about that?
George: Well, the shuttle is something that gives us the kind of capability and flexibility that we never had before and that we do not have any plans to have again. It has the tremendous ability in terms of being able to deploy payloads, to take large payloads to space, to be able to services things in space, to be able to service things in space, to be able to construct things in space, also to be able to take things up and bring them back. And looking forward we’re going to have more capable rockets but they don’t have the same flexibility in terms of the weight that they can bring up or bring things back or be able to servicing that the shuttle has become so famous for being able to do for things already up there. So I think we’ll miss that, but it’s going to be fun to be able to look back and say the shuttle gave us the only way could have ever built the space station. I think it is a very storied program in the history of NASA. I’m proud to say I was here for the first launch and I’ll be here for the last launch and I was in some way a part of that story.
Nancy: Could you tell us about what it takes to put everything together to do a launch commentary for NASA TV?
George: The launch commentaries are, when you start planning for one, not only are there all the materials that you have to put together, but you also have to work with the TV people on all the things you want to show during the broadcast. That means scheduling all the video to be shot over a certain amount of time as the spacecraft is being prepared for launch, then all the things you want to do to tell the story, such as the animations you want to show and you have to figure out where in the broadcast its going to fit with what you are doing. Then have to schedule for it, so it’s a lot more than just writing it. Although there’s a lot of it now that, as far as the shuttle is concerned, I can work from an outline. I really don’t have to read from a script, although if I’m doing something very mission specific I might need a script for some part of it, if it is very mission specific. So, for anybody doing a launch commentary, it’s not something you can just pull together in just an afternoon. It takes a fair amount of time to pull all that together, and then work with the TV people and tell them where you want to include it and you have to work out your shot sheet of the sequence you want all these things in, so I think it’s good, in a way, that we kind of rotate the shuttle launches in particular around the office because it takes a fair amount of work to put it together. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of work!
Nancy: I’ve noticed that it seems recently you’ve had extra people come on and talk about different things going on with the mission during the launch countdown.
George: On the shuttle side, yes. On the ELV side we’ve always kind of done that. Our ELV commentary is usually divided into two parts, because the commentaries run usually between two and two and a half hours, as a rule on an unmanned launch. The first part of it picks up at a certain point in the countdown, but it is very heavy on interviews and things that are associated with the mission aspect. Usually you’re doing all that while they are fueling the vehicle. So, it gives you the chance to talk about fueling and things going on, but basically it gives you time for the color.
And then the second half of it is really focused on the launch itself and the launch operations. So it is divided into two parts that way.
On the shuttle, its more of a desire on the part of NASa to include much more activity both in terms of the mission as well as features that tell a story in the countdown and include more background that the average guy watching NASA TV can relate to. So it has meant more features, and some are related to the mission and some are related to the countdown, some are more related to the astronauts, some are more related to the people that have been involved with it, so we try to broaden it out a little bit. I think that is the reason behind that, because the count is on for such a long time. It’s one for five to five and a half hours. I think there was a feeling that we needed to do that and we had enough time to do that.
Nancy: I know I always enjoy watching as much as I can because it is fun to watch the whole process of what takes place. And now that I’ve been here and have gotten to see that, like the astronauts walking out and seeing it live and in person, its been really fun being here.
George: There have been a coupel that have almost been extravaganzas because of the nature of the mission, like the John Glenn mission. That one, there was so much you could include in the commentary because of the history of John Glenn. And he is so modest. He didn’t want us to do any more than we customarily do. But how can you not? And he is such a favorite around here. When he was here for the countdown dress rehearsal and the training, it was hard to get him through these exercises and these tests because he was just being mobbed by the NASA workers and the KSC employees. They were pulling dollar bills out of their wallets to get him to sign. And he would never be rushed. The trainers would try to keep things moving, but he would not be rushed. He took time to talk to everybody and sign their bills.
When we had the Challenger accident, he was the first person on site after the accident. He flew down here immediately and was on a briefing that afternoon over in the news center. He absolutely loves this place. He’s never forgotten it and those are the kinds of missions that have a lot of public interest. Plus the return to flight missions after Challenger and Columbia those were always big because in each case it meant a re-focusing of the program in some way.
And of course the last one will just be a blowout.
Nancy: Thanks very much for talking with us today, this has been a lot of fun.
George: All right!
Nancy: If you’d like to hear from more people that work at KSC TV, I have about 30 minutes of interviews with directors, producers and technicians that you can hear over at Universe Today. You can find the link to those interviews in the show notes for this, the March 5, 2010 edition of 365 Days of Astronomy on 365daysof astronomy.org, or go directly to Universe Today and search for “Behind the Scenes at NASA TV.” Thanks very much for listening.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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