Oral History: Charles Justiz

[0:00] I grew up uh I'm a first generation Cuban American uh came to uh the United States finally in 1959 before that we'd go back and forth between uh Cuba and uh Miami uh and then uh so finally at in 59 when I was seven we just stayed in Miami the rest of the time uh about you know a little while after that my dad started taking flying lessons and he uh had a terrible fear of heights he had gone up to the top of the Empire State Building oddly enough and got to the edge and got that Panic that a lot of people get and uh so he started flying he says I'm going to beat this thing and uh

[0:40] unfortunately he was a surgeon so his uh flying skills never got that good but one of the great things that happened was I ended up uh borrowing half of one of his flight lessons to go up in a little j3 cub and uh as I say the rest is history I said this is just too much fun uh I had a uh I think it was an F-15 assignment that they gave me but at the same time this is 1980 and uh uh two of our uh former uh test pilots that were working with me at uh egund had been picked up in 78 to go to the astronaut program so they came back and they were

[1:21] looking for more astronauts because we had not flown the shuttle yet and I said well guys I'm not exactly you know I'm still kind of a young kid of 27 I don't have the the qualifications to be an astronaut but you know is there anything there for a young puppy like me and they said oh absolutely we have research Pilots that that fly all the research aircraft and uh I said really so I signed up for that and uh got the job well the only job I really had along with other jobs the main job was research pilot research pilot flies the research aircraft uh and what we do at Nasa is most of our airplanes we had

[2:07] nine different types of airplanes uh over my career that we flew out of the Johnson Space Center in support of space flight missions uh and what we did there is we would take an airplane and we'd modify it and we say yeah that's that's very cute you know the the aircraft manufacturer wanted this to be the aircraft envelope but you know we we're Engineers we can do other stuff with it for example everybody uh loves the vomit Comet the microgravity airplane I was an instructor on both the KC 135 version which is a Boeing 707 is uh model and also the dc9 which is a a a twin engine uh airplane so I was all of the uh

[2:49] Pilots that flew that I I instructed them so I had a great time with that fantastic time with that oh let's see I flew the uh 747 shuttle carrier uh that was amazing I enjoy that the uh 747 is a joy absolute Joy To Fly super design it's a puppy dog in Flight it's about as gentlemanly uh uh an airplane as you can imagine just uh very docile and then you put an Orbiter on the back and what a pig uh so U the whole time you're flying uh you know it's shaking it's it's pretty noticeable shake so you're you're shaking the whole time and uh you can't go very fast you can't go very

[3:42] high we couldn't take it uh above the freezing level so you're down about 15,000 ft is about as high as you could go the Orbiter uh on the 747 is up at an angle because it lifts its own weight well it does nothing for the drag you still have that drag so it's you know you can feel the the uh the vortices is putting out are are running over the tail so that's what you're feeling is it's shaking the whole vehicle uh and uh also it's up pretty high so if you roll over it kind of wants to keep going and and off you go and also you're burning gas like crazy I was happy when I got

[4:18] the fuel flows below 10,000 lounds per hour per engine yeah so I it a 747 can go from you know used to go from New York to Japan Non-Stop we couldn't go from uh LA to El Paso uh sometimes so it was one of those that was very very uh difficult plus you're you know you've got a a National Asset sitting on top of your airplane so you we really had to take care of it we have another airplane in front of us a Pathfinder looking for weather and it it there was occasions he goes sucks don't go and we would turn around we'd land uh because we're taking care of the vehicle and uh actually there is some

[5:05] dead air the U uh any swep wi aircraft and most aircraft uh uh you have a directional control issue it it'll sit there and hunt and it's kind of annoying uh but not a big deal and uh because of that most vehicles of that size have a y damper and the rudder will kick and and it senses when the nose starts moving and just now and it stops it well the rudder is blanked by the Orbiter so what would happen is you'd be sitting there uh in autopilot uh we'd always do that uh so we can monitor the systems very carefully all all eyeballs and uh you'd be flying along and all of a sudden

[5:43] you'd feel like this and You' about two degrees is all and you could feel pulses and what would happen is and this is me thinking is the Y damper is back there going but it's in dead air until it gets into a side slip and and then then it would kick and go hey hey it's so kicking on the and you would do that all the way across the country so it's like so but it yeah it was uh and it was very subtle but you could feel and of course the whole time you're shaking so uh that was that was kind of fun we were very worried about that uh because um of course you have tremendous

[6:30] drag and uh they weren't too worried about the uh uh the vibrations uh that you're getting off the turbulence uh it turns out we probably should have because we had uh secondary uh structures did did crack on the uh 747 uh because of that and that's why we probably discontinued the uh well not probably we that's why we discontinued that uh the tail con off part of it but what we're really worried about is uh if you do the map uh the drag is tremendously different with tail cone off and when you release we're worried about it coming back and hitting the tail and uh because of that we had some very uh strong Escape

[7:14] Maneuvers uh that we use that the 747 pushes away uh and and the Orbiter pulls well you can't pull too much because if you pull too much you get too much drag and uh then you'll you will run into the back so we had this all calibr it out and uh the math says you miss it by a foot and a half a foot and a half is in the noise that's that means you hit uh so uh we did all this uh uh different kind of machinations and if you look it's it it's not a foot and a half but it it gets close but it's uh we were able to ameliorate a lot of the risk uh

[7:50] and get rid of the some of the issues and we did it at once yeah know we did it successfully so yay uh no it it the safety of the vehicle is Paramount so and plus there's no way to get rid of it uh it's not it wasn't carted there's no explosive bolts uh uh it it's stuck for Life uh and uh that's that's why we picked the 74 more than anything is reliability of the 747 uh was unbelievable it's dispatchable and it just works like crazy and uh I never had a problem with the airplane where I couldn't you know redundancy was uh off the charts I never lost any flight control surface that I

[8:36] couldn't recover somehow you you could wrun it by Hydraulics pneumatics you know power of thought it just the thing was amazing Joe Henry Engel uh had uh come to the uh uh management at the time said he wanted uh to build something that uh you know Joe Henry you have to understand Joe Henry he's just a character and a half probably the best set of hands I've ever seen in my life as a test pilot that guy could tell if something was off just by sense of smell and I'm I'm flying you know things I'm going I don't feel anything he goes no Charlie look watch watch the the roll rate left and right okay see how they're

[9:23] different now there's there's a problem here okay we get it to the ground sure enough there's a problem it's like holy cow so you know Joe Henry you have to understand had a great set of hands uh on him so and and really really sharp uh with respect to flight tests uh and he says you know we're going to be up there for a month and not fly uh an approach in the this is for extended duration Orbiter and we have to have something that can you know tell us you know as he says you poke the horse and see what it does I said well Joe Henry you know can we be a little more specific I don't

[9:57] know want to put that into a reest for proposal he goes I don't know Charlie what do you think I said why don't we build a simulator and and do it so he says that'll work and so do a a landing simulator and uh so we started down that path and uh uh at the time the technology was not there absolutely not there neither the screen resolution was there and the computer power was definitely not there and then uh I was uh so I went to uh Boeing uh or I should say we went to Boeing asked them they said oh would be uh $5 million 5 years okay thank you went to locked Martin $5

[10:34] million five everybody was that and and I said this is unsatisfactory and uh they you know these guys had you know beautiful proposals but that doesn't fit in what we we needed so I started uh uh don't know how I oh I I think I do uh one of the Japanese astronauts kuichi wakata uh and we're you know drinking uh after sometime and he brings up the fact that he just seen the most beautiful computer from Panasonic I mean this thing's got a huge screen Charlie and oh my gosh the power on it is awesome it's a Unix machine and I'm my eyes are going big and I go uh kichi son can we get a hold

[11:17] of one you know I'd like to you I've got one over here you know so we go look at it I do a benchmark on it I go holy cow this thing will work and uh we said well why don't we do it well and then talk to Joe Henry and he goes well where are we going to get a a rotational hand control or a stick and how are we going to mount it and I go I don't know you know the details and we got a team together and uh long story short we flew that in about six months and buying four uh computers uh and four rotational hand controllers for less than half a million

[11:52] dollars uh total you know title tax license one of the the best success stories you know let somebody lose loose uh at Nasa uh with a job and we'll do it we'll we'll knock it out of the park and we did that and pilot flew in one form or another on every mission after that uh so and and the pilot said nothing but praise for it uh and uh the benefit of it was not what we expected the hand uh eye coordination issue it was uh the uh an approach in the shuttle is a dance it's it's it's it's a a give and take uh of of information back and forth between the two pilots very very tight and very

[12:35] choreographed and what they found was that they they didn't have their timing down because it had been a couple of weeks and their timing they were stepping all over each other it's like you know I got it wrong you know and and I didn't know what my air speed didn't know what my sink rate was and he goes yeah we got we got to fix that so they do the approach on pilot and they found out within two two or three approaches they had it down pat they did it the day before landing and they said well that I want that and it turns out the uh the numbers uh we we would take every

[13:05] single parameter you can imagine on landing and I actually had a score and uh uh that that we developed that unfortunately it was uh JN because J is a cost function they called started calling it The Justice number great thanks uh so U we we looked at the this cost function and it was kind of all over the place until you got your training down path and then it always hit a number it hit hit a Groove and you stayed within a point or two of that that number out of a 100 so very very repeatable if you're trained up and you know we looked at orbitor Landings up to Pilot and they were all over the place I

[13:42] mean people were just scatter gunning and then uh after pilot everything just locked right in and they were within a point again of of these parameters just because they got their their uh Cadence down correctly so that was that was a big surprise to me I did not expect that result excellent career excellent uh fun airplanes to fly great Cadre of people uh couldn't have asked for anything better it was it was just fun and you know we had we had our problems we solved them it was a a fantastic opportunity and uh anybody gets a chance to work for NASA I would take it immediately I don't care any seat any mission