Amanda Mitskevich: We just had a new name get attributed to us, and it’s called the Jedi Masters of Launchery.

Launch Countdown Sequence: EGS Program Chief Engineer, verify no constraints to launch. 3, 2, 1, and lift-off. Welcome to space.

Joshua Santora: For over 20 years, NASA’s Launch Services Program has been the workhorse of uncrewed spaceflight, enabling exploration of Pluto, the sun, the Earth, and other worlds, next on the “Rocket Ranch.” Alright, I am here in the booth now with Amanda — correct me if I get this wrong, I’m sorry — Mitskevich?

Amanda Mitskevich: Mitskevich.

Joshua Santora: Mitskevich. I’m sorry.

Amanda Mitskevich: That’s right. That’s pretty close.

Joshua Santora: And Chuck Dovale. So, Amanda, Chuck, thanks for joining me.

Chuck Dovale: Great to be here.

Amanda Mitskevich: Sure, yeah. Good to be here.

Joshua Santora: So, Amanda you are the — the title is Manager for the Launch Services Program? Is that correct?

Amanda Mitskevich: It depends on what piece of paper you look at. I’d say Program Manager of the NASA Launch Services Program or Director of Launch Services or — It’s been many things.

Joshua Santora: Okay. And then, Chuck, your specific role is…

Chuck Dovale: Deputy Program Manager — or “number two.”

Joshua Santora: Number two.

Amanda Mitskevich: Number two. Right.

Joshua Santora: I’ve heard that’s your name.

Chuck Dovale: Yes.

Joshua Santora: I’ve also heard — Amanda, somebody told me — I think the story goes that you stole Chuck’s desk at some point. Is that an accurate telling of the story?

Amanda Mitskevich: Well, not really.

Chuck Dovale: Not just my desk — the whole office…

Amanda Mitskevich: No, no.

Chuck Dovale:…which was a precursor.

Amanda Mitskevich: No, no, no. I was given his desk…

Chuck Dovale: Or borrowed it.

Amanda Mitskevich:…by the boss ’cause he was gone for several months and I didn’t have anywhere to sit. So I got his desk.

Chuck Dovale: She didn’t turn it down.

Amanda Mitskevich: And that’s how it started. Yeah. I didn’t turn it down. Right. It was a whole — So, here I was, coming over there to this new job thinking I was gonna be in some little cubicle, and I get this great, big office of a branch chief. I’m like, “This is great. I’ll take it.”

Chuck Dovale: I was on a source board. I came back, and my door’s open. I was like, “Oh.” And it was like, “Oh, there’s someone in there.” And Ray Lugo says, “Hey, here’s who I gave the office to.” [ Laughter ] I’m like, “Uh, so, should I find another job?”

Amanda Mitskevich: [ Chuckles ]

Joshua Santora: Alright, so, it’s pretty obvious that you two go a good ways back. So, let’s kind of walk back. If you would, each kind of just tell me a little bit about kind of how you got to where you are today ’cause you have a pretty cool job, but you didn’t get there overnight.

Amanda Mitskevich: No. You want to start, or you want me to start?

Chuck Dovale: You could start.

Amanda Mitskevich: Me start. Okay. Let’s see. So, I started out there — How long you want me to go back here?

Joshua Santora: Let’s go with like — What’s your degree in?

Amanda Mitskevich: Two hours worth.

Joshua Santora: How about there? Yeah, no, not quite that long.

Amanda Mitskevich: Okay, not that long. So, I graduated from Georgia Tech a long time ago — I won’t say what year — with an industrial engineering degree, which is way different than what most people at the Space Center have or had at the time. And I started in Shuttle, in Logistics, actually, and I went from Logistics — After about five years in Logistics, I got my masters at UCF in engineering management.

Joshua Santora: Go, Knights.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah, go, Knights, yeah. Go, Jackets. I should have said that. And so I got that degree, and then I went to Shuttle Operations, where we started up an industrial engineering group that was helping improve shuttle ops. And then from there, I went to be an intern on the fourth floor at that — Well, it was the fourth floor at that time. It’s the seventh floor now.

Joshua Santora: Yeah, that’s our executive suite…

Amanda Mitskevich: Exactly.

Joshua Santora:…for our center management.

Amanda Mitskevich: Exactly. Executive suite. So, I went up there to be the intern to Roy Bridges, who was a newly appointed Center Director at the time. And while I was interning up there, the Launch Services Program was transitioned down to Kennedy from Goddard, And at that time, Lewis, now Glenn, and partially Marshall. So, it transitioned during that time, And when I finished my internship, I went over to — It wasn’t called LSP then. It was called Expendable Launch Vehicles, I think. Is that right?

Chuck Dovale: ELV.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah. ELV. So, I went over there which was a — I didn’t even know that there was anything other than Shuttle. When you were on the Shuttle Program, Human Space Flight pretty much everything is all about Johnson and Marshall and Kennedy, and you didn’t even know there were science missions. There’s those other launches on the Cape side.

Chuck Dovale: They’re the best-kept secret over there.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah. Like, nobody even knew about it on the Kennedy side, and I thought, “Well, I’ll try it, but I have no idea what I’m doing.” I was Ray Lugo who convinced me to go over there. He was quite the recruiter. So, I went over to there, and I helped transition the program, writing a bunch of the documentation, helping work with Goddard moving things down to Kennedy. And then after that, I became a mission manager, where I got to work on some really neat missions, leading a mission team. And then from there, I went to be the chief of that office. And then from there I went to be the deputy program manager number two to Steve Francois, and then I became program manager after that. It was a path — it was a crooked path, a straight path. A roundabout way. But, yeah, I have a great job now, it’s really a lot of fun.

Joshua Santora: Yeah, we’ll come back to what exactly it is you do these days in just a minute. But Chuck, I want to hear from you first.

Chuck Dovale: What is it exactly you do?

Amanda Mitskevich: I don’t know, I have no idea.

Chuck Dovale: Mine’s a little bit straighter path. I started out as a summer student at the Space Center until I could get some engineering courses at the local community college, Brevard Community College at the time, and then I went on to UCF. Go Knights.

Joshua Santora: There you go.

Chuck Dovale: But I was in the — I got to be in the co-op program, so I would go to school for a semester and then I’d work for a semester.

Joshua Santora: It’s now called Pathways for those that might be interested.

Chuck Dovale: Right. So in 1984 I got a call if I wanted to go work in the ELV project in the telemetry lab of Hangar 8. And I said certainly, especially after I had looked up telemetry in the dictionary.

Amanda Mitskevich: Whatever that was.

Chuck Dovale: I said, “Yeah, that’s me. ” So I’ve been in ELV ever since. And you know, ELV has probably changed its names three or four times in the duration I’ve been there. So I started as a co-op student, finally graduated. You know, it was a little bit lengthened because of being in the co-op program but I became full time in 1989, and worked missions from day one and just love the diversity of all the different missions and projects and partners that we worked with and being off the radar, like Amanda had said, we were a small group back then and only did launch, and then so I was working for about 10 years before the program started to transition, which was quite the step for us because we only knew the last three or four months of the entire mission flow. All we did was launch.

Joshua Santora: Right.

Chuck Dovale: And we didn’t fully understand what Lewis and Goddard were doing for years prior to that, we just knew they brought us their satellites and we launched them for them. So it was a big step to get the entire program. And being part of that group, we weren’t really sure if we were equipped to do that. But Ray, you know, had the foresight and as well as a few other folks at headquarters that led the transition and, you know, we since have become LSP, we obviously recruited good people from Kennedy and Lewis and Goddard to form, you know, what’s been the nucleus of LSP. So it’s been, you know, a great run since. I started as a systems engineer, I became a branch chief — branch chief of the avionics group, I had the opportunity to become or shadow the launch director position and then became a launch director and then senior launch director for 10 years, which I always say that’s been and is the best job in LSP if not the entire agency. And then for whatever reason, I’m not quite sure, it’s almost 10 years now, I left the launch director position to go to the front office. So that’s that.

Amanda Mitskevich: To make room for others to grow.

Chuck Dovale: Yes, I paved the way for Tim Dunn. Tim, if you’re listening, it’s been a while since you’ve thanked me for getting out of your way.

Joshua Santora: So that’s an interesting idea. The idea of rising up to get out of someone’s way. Is that something that you say or is this something that is really meaningful?

Amanda Mitskevich: I say that’s an interesting question because — [ Clears throat ] Excuse me. When I was the mission management branch chief, or office chief, that’s when Ray Lugo had an opportunity to go to Glenn Research Center, and I think the deputy center director there and they talked to a bunch of us about applying for his position because they wanted to be able to get someone from LSP to be in that job. And so I don’t think any of us really wanted to leave the jobs we had because we really liked them. But for me personally I got to thinking about, well, I’m in this job that is supervising a bunch of mission managers who are looking at the mission teams, launching all these spacecraft, and if I’m not willing to take the next step forward then I probably need to find a way to step aside so that somebody else can have my job because probably it would make sense for me to try and help the organization at another level. I never envision doing that. And I think it took a lot of pressure from Ray at the time to get any of us to apply for that, but it was kind of a feeling of I probably need to find a way to let other people come up through the program.

Chuck Dovale: It was the same for me. It was a factor that played into it. It was a tough decision for me because I truly love the job I was in and I felt like I was good at it. When you’re asked to go to the next level, you know, you have some doubts whether or not you can do that and the safe thing to do is to stay where you’re at where, where you know you’re successful. But part of it was, and I didn’t know it was Tim at the time, was to really get out of the way of somebody else, I may have been holding someone back because I’d been in that position for 10 years. So because of that and other factors it was time to move on. And it is gratifying to see how great Tim is in that job and it makes me feel good that I know I joke about it’s the one selfless thing I have done is I got out of the way to let Tim shine.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah, I would say the same about Albert moving into the job that I had. He’s done a way better job than I ever did in that position and he’s excellent at it. So if you give other people opportunities, then they definitely excel.

Joshua Santora: You know, that’s awesome. And part of the reason why I ask that question of you both is because your reputation is pretty sturdy when it comes to being good leaders and I think that that’s something that can be overlooked. There’s almost — it looks like you’re climbing the ladder but I think that there’s more to it than that. And I think that your answers speak to that. So I appreciate that. And obviously you’re kind of carrying the baton of a program with a pretty excellent 20-plus year history now. So give us kind of a a really high level, “Here’s what LSP does, and here’s what we’ve done for 20 years.”

Amanda Mitskevich: So I’d go back to your opening statement. You said they’ve been launching un-crewed rocket, so we would rather you said we’ve been launching robotic spacecraft for the agency for 20 years because we don’t want to be seen as a secondary to the human spaceflight and be called un-crewed, right?

Joshua Santora: My apologies.

Amanda Mitskevich: No, no problem.

Joshua Santora: Certainly a fair point. The reputation of the program is very strong, as well. So I don’t want to create the impression with anybody that they’re second class.

Amanda Mitskevich: Exactly. No. Yeah, absolutely. So, for me, the program is about finding a way to find the right rocket that matches up with the right satellite for the right place to get them where they need to go. And we have spent 20 years building up expertise and all kinds of disciplines — and business disciplines and technical disciplines, rocket science disciplines, everything across the board — customer service — in order to be able to make that happen. And so I think our reputation now with our main customers who are Science Mission Directorate is that we do what we say we’re going to do and that we help them find the right to get to orbit.

Chuck Dovale: I’ll give Wanda Harding a shout-out ’cause she’s the one that came up with the idea that we were like we are Earth’s bridge to space. So we are truly serving our customers who need to get, you know, either to another solar system, planet, Earth orbiting, and we’re equipped in a lot of ways to make that journey for them, you know, more successful, easier, just a better experience all around for them.

Announcer: So I was just gonna say we just had a new name get attributed to us and it’s called the Jedi masters of launchery and we thought that was really cool. That was from somebody totally not associated with the space program that was giving us a leadership talk and that’s what they think of us as.

Chuck Dovale: We should have started with that.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah.

Chuck Dovale: We couldn’t come up with that on our own.

Joshua Santora: So as you think about carrying the baton now, what do you view your roles as? Because obviously you kind of have both, whether through a straight path or a more crooked one, have come up through the program where you were more in the weeds on specific things. So at this high level of director or manager and number two, what do you do functionally?

Amanda Mitskevich: Hmm. Let’s see. It doesn’t really fall into one clean bucket of things that we do, I think. What we what we try to do is work with the entire team to set a vision for where we want to head, and then…

Chuck Dovale: Get out of the way.

Amanda Mitskevich:…get out of the way. That’s exactly right. So, you know, our goal really should be to work like six hours a day or something, because everybody else knows what they’re supposed to do and they do all the work for us. I think we would clear the way a lot of times for folks to be able to do their job. We do a lot of the high level interfacing to make sure that people understand what we do, and we always seem to be struggling with what is launch services, like the question you ask, what do you guys even do. On a day to day basis though, it’s it’s really hard to say what you do. You’re solving problems and people have questions, they’re wandering by. We’re big proponents of being in the office and being accessible to people. Anybody can come by and ask questions and we’ll talk with them about about any of their issues that they have going on.

Chuck Dovale: Most days the calendars full, right?

Amanda Mitskevich: Right.

Chuck Dovale: But there are other days where it’s not full and we’re certainly not sitting around. I mean, there’s a lot of drive-bys, as we call them, but there’s a lot of new work and different work than what was there 20 or even 10 years ago in the program, which was we were, you know, responsible for one mission end-to-end to get that satellite in orbit. We’ve grown so much in our expertise that we’re asked by a lot of different parts of the agency to do different things, so we have a whole advisory role that we play and that could be with the CRC program or it could be with an international partner that’s working through Goddard, let’s say. And some of it is one or two people are working on that project or 10 or 12 are working on it. And then we’ve got 40 on a primary mission. So there’s such a variety now that when the program started that every day’s different.

Joshua Santora: Can you give me kind of feeling — so two things. Obviously, Chuck, you mentioned the team used to be a lot smaller than it is today. So how big is your whole team, and kind of talk me through what’s the process look like from when a mission hits your radar to launch, and I guess beyond that if you guys have a responsibility beyond launch.

Chuck Dovale: So civil servants, we have a matrix, not just, you know —

Amanda Mitskevich: Probably about 250 civil servants, and that’s across every element, public affairs, contracts, resources, procurement…

Chuck Dovale: Engineering. And then about 200 contractors.

Amanda Mitskevich: So about 450 total. And now we really operate badgeless. So when you ask a question about how many civil servants, we have to stop for a second and think, “Okay, I know there’s 450 people in the program, so you subtract, I think there’s about 200 on contract, so we got about 250 civil servants.

Chuck Dovale: And then we have up to, right now, we have over 70 missions that are being processed. So 450 might sound a lot to somebody.

Joshua Santora: That’s 70 future missions.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yes.

Joshua Santora: So not counting everything you’ve done.

Amanda Mitskevich: ICON forward would be 70 missions.

Chuck Dovale: All the ones that are yet to launch. So that’s that’s a lot. And it, like I said, it varies from, you know, it’s a four to seven year process and we’ve been in on the ground floor all the way through post launch and making sure, even after it’s separated that it’s a success to just a couple of people supporting JWST across the pond because they’ve been asked by Goddard for some expertise, or just sit in on a review and lend an ear just to see if things are going well.

Amanda Mitskevich: That 70 doesn’t even include the CubeSats, though, right? So if you add, we have 45 CubeSats waiting to be manifested, and there’s about 40 that are on the manifest to fly, so there’s even more, yeah.

Joshua Santora: All right, so now let me ask you to go ahead and kind of dive in like, so what’s the process look like, because obviously we’re not talking about 70 missions flying next year. So there’s a long process, a long lead time here, so from start to finish. And we kind of have to generalize here because I know some missions are different than others, there’s the CubeSats, there’s advisory, so a full-fledged NASA science mission, what’s that look like start to finish?

Amanda Mitskevich: So like March 2020 or something like that.

Joshua Santora: Coming up next year, obviously really excited for you guys, that’s another rover similar to Curiosity.

Amanda Mitskevich: With a helicopter on it.

Joshua Santora: With a helicopter on board. It’s going to be awesome.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah, so the process I’ll go through and you just jump in if you don’t mind, so that I don’t keep it too boring, so — Because I’m an industrial engineer, it’s got to be processes. So early on, there’s a science concept that science mission director that works with the Decadal surveys and they figure out what do we want to achieve in the next decade for certain types of science. And so they decide what the sciences, then they put out, usually put out an announcement of opportunity that says, “Hey, we have the science we want to do. Bid to it.” And so people come in, they bid to it, and during that process is when we start. So we provide an assessment of what launch vehicles might be in the market at the time that these spacecraft are gonna fly. This is like it could be five to eight years before they’re going to launch. So this is a process way in advance, and if you think about our current launch vehicle market, we don’t really even know what’s gonna be flying in five years right now, right?

Chuck Dovale: Yeah, it’s a crazy time right now.

Amanda Mitskevich: Right, exactly, because we just finished Delta 2. Atlas 5 is on its way out for Vulcan and Blue Origins hasn’t flown their new Glenn so. So you’re trying to predict based on what you have on contract and based on the market what to put in these announcements of opportunities so that the scientists can see what vehicles they might be flying on, so that’s really where our first entry point is in the process. And that’s usually done by Albert Sayer’s group and the Mission Management Group. And so we start doing that and then as that process works through, they eventually down select, they pick a spacecraft. And then at that point, we start working with the spacecraft more directly to pull together what the requirements might be so that we can put a rocket out for bid.

Joshua Santora: And when you say requirements, give me a general idea of what does that mean.

Amanda Mitskevich: So like the interfaces between the spacecraft and the launch vehicle, we’ll say — your spacecraft is X mass, dimensions, where it’s going.

Chuck Dovale: Mention peculiar purges or the size, can it fit in the common fairings that the vehicles have.

Amanda Mitskevich: Right. So we start gathering all that information with them, letting them understand what rockets can provide and they’re telling us what their spacecraft is supposed to do. We help them sometimes with design iterations because they may not know exactly how to design something because a lot of them have never been through the process before, so we provide that stable interface for them so that we can give them the knowledge that we have. So they go from that point where they’re telling us what they might want and then we take all the requirements, we put them out for bid to the contractors that we have on this indefinite delivery contract, we put them out for bid, bidders bid. We go through a process six or eight months to be able to select the right rocket, and then we make that selection and then we work with them from that point which is usually about 24 to 30 months before their launch. So that’s when they’re coming through their design process and they’re trying to finalize their design so that they, I think a seat at CDR Point normally, is when we make that selection. So they’re working at that point and then start building their spacecraft. And so it’s really important they know what rocket they’re gonna be flying on so they make sure they encompass the exact right environments that they’re going to have.

Chuck Dovale: And most of them are one of a kind. So it’s it’s truly like the first iteration of it. So it’s not like a communication, bird words. There’s a production line. So they they all are almost all unique. Other than GOES and TDRS, which is as close to a repeat mission as we get. Everything else is extremely unique. So how it fits or if it fits in the fairing, how it fits. How are you going to purge it where the doors are located, all of those or like, you know, we do it for the first time each and every time.

Amanda Mitskevich: But so that also brings up another important point to interrupt the whole process, part of it is that because each one is unique and the timeline that we talked about, five to eight years out, some of these principal investigators have been working on the science for these missions their entire time that they have started through college and through their career. So it could be 40 years. Gravity Probe B, the guy working on it was — it was literally for his whole life pretty much, he had been working on the mission so, it’s really, for us, it’s really important that we do a good job of overseeing what’s going on with the launch vehicle, making sure that spacecraft can integrate because you can’t afford to lose that mission.

Chuck Dovale: As if it’s not pressure enough to be a success for a launch, this guy has spent his whole life to this mission.

Joshua Santora: Does that feel personal, when you think about like, hey, you’re in charge of a program that’s trying to get this guy’s life work into space.

Chuck Dovale: That particular one was noteworthy for that reason. And then also George Morrow of Goddard used this analogy one time in our offsite. He said it’s like we have a baby at Goddard and we’ve nurtured it, but now it’s time for us to give it up and we’re nervous about that and we’re handing it off to you and we need to know that you’re going to care for it like you know we did. And so that hit home. It wasn’t like it was lost on us, but just that analogy was very tangible.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yes.

Chuck Dovale: And I think it’s stayed with us. Thanks George.

Joshua Santora: So we mentioned Mars 2020 coming up here really soon. So thinking about other babies you’re going to have handed off to you or are in the process of taking, what are the ones you’re excited about? So obviously thinking a couple of years out, what are you looking at?

Chuck Dovale: I think we have 9 or 10 in the next 18, 25 months.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah, yeah, we do. Maybe a little one to look forward to before all of those big ones start is Virgin Orbit. We’ve been working with them for a while to get a small launch vehicle capability in place. We had Rocket Lab electron launch in December of last year, that was the first government launch on an electron, and that was really exciting for us.

Joshua Santora: Congrats, that was a good one.

Amanda Mitskevich: It was really neat. And so our next one would be Virgin Orbit, that is a rocket that’s launched under an airplane and we have some CubeSats on that to test that out. So we’re hoping to see that towards the end of this year, as well, sometime after ICON. For me, I really am looking forward to Mars 2020. I don’t want to beat that to death, but it is really cool. So I just talked to someone on the phone about it, and they said that the scientists are maybe not so excited about this helicopter because there’s no science that has to do with the helicopter.

Joshua Santora: Interesting.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah, but there was a whole report on NPR recently that all they focused on was the helicopter because it’s so exciting, and it’ll be really neat.

Chuck Dovale: Well, yeah, just track the public interest with that, when it’s up there and starts tooling around there.

Joshua Santora: Right.

Amanda Mitskevich: It’ll be pretty cool.

Chuck Dovale: The other aspects are the missions that we’ve worked on that are still in the public eye and returning science and stuff. We even had, you know, someone in the organization in a meeting yesterday and she talked about how excited she gets when she’s listening to the radio or NPR and they start talking about like OSIRIS-REx And she’s like, “Oh, I remember that, we launched that.” And it’s around Bennu and it’s about to go in for the sample in about a year. So it’s those kinds of things. Parker going into the sun and being able to talk. So when we have outreach opportunities, those are the fun things, people love planetaries and stuff, but all of the exciting missions, there’s always something, you know, that excites the public about the science. Landsat, some of it. We’ve got a few Earth Observing coming, either ocean or land. Those are coming. Those are pretty popular, too.

Amanda Mitskevich: solar orbiter in February. That’s the international partnership that we have. And so the U.S. provided the rocket and the European Space Agency’s providing the spacecraft. So that one’s gonna be pretty exciting, we’ll have a lot of visitors here that are going to see their spacecraft finally launch. This one’s been on contract for a really long time. They’ve been working really hard on it and they’re really looking forward to February’s launch. It’ll be neat.

Joshua Santora: As I think back on kind of the more recent history of rocketry and what looks like it’s coming in the future, the near future, it seems like there’s a huge shift in the landscape of available rockets. Obviously, the launches themselves get people excited and it feels like we’re going to have a very different pool of rockets here in the next couple years — is that accurate and how does that impact you all and your work?

Chuck Dovale: I think it’s very accurate. In fact, we’re in our on ramp period for our contract. So every once a year we allow new bidders to come in and join the contract.

Joshua Santora: Okay.

Chuck Dovale: They have to then bid for each and every mission. So they’re just getting the right to be on the contract at this point. And some years go by where there’s nobody interested in joining. We’ve got —

Amanda Mitskevich: A record number, it’s like five or six. Five or six new rockets, yeah. Pretty amazing.

Joshua Santora: You can’t tell me beyond that?

Chuck Dovale: We can’t probably talk about that.

Joshua Santora: But honestly, those kinds of things are really exciting for me when it’s like we have a lot in the mix, we can’t talk about that.

Chuck Dovale: We’re popular right now.

Amanda Mitskevich: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s probably almost unprecedented in terms of how many new rockets are gonna be out there, and all different of the vehicle classes too. So we talked about Rocket Lab. We talked about Virgin Orbit. You think about Blue Origins bringing on the new Glenn, which is gonna be a huge capability. ULA has had rockets for many years between Boeing and Lockheed. They’ve got a new rocket coming online. Northrop Grumman has a new rocket coming online. Firefly’s a new company that just took over the Delta 2 complex out at Vandenberg that’s gonna be launching rockets.

Chuck Dovale: You have brand new ones and then incumbents that are changing their…

Amanda Mitskevich: Right, right. It’s a pretty amazing collection of what we’re gonna have. Now, I’m not sure how many satellites are out there to be launching all of these, so we’ll have to watch and see which one actually makes it, which ones actually make it.

Joshua Santora: So is there growth for LSP beyond simply volume of throughput, or is that really how LSP grows into the future?

Amanda Mitskevich: That’s a good question. When we think about LSP — classic LSP — it’s really, and it still is — the core of our business are the science missions. I mean, that’s why we exist. That’s why we started. But the agency has expanded into so many other areas that are now using commercial rockets that it may not necessarily be the throughput of missions that we buy end to end but the throughput of the type of service that we provide the agency is growing. So if you look at the new Artemis program, boots on the moon 2024, going to Mars, we’re right now in the throes of teaching people what LSP does who don’t usually deal with LSP and don’t know what we have to offer so that we can make sure that we provide some service for their launch vehicles.

Joshua Santora: So let me ask this question, because I know pretty well what LSP does and when I heard Moon 2024 and saw some of the manifest imaging, some of the plans, I was like I think LSP is about to get busier. Did you all feel similarly?

Amanda Mitskevich: Well, I think we felt, “Boy, I hope we’re gonna get some of that work” because they are purchasing them a different way than normal. They’re buying an end to end service where typically science will come to us with their spacecraft and then we’ll go buy them a launch vehicle. In this case, they’re having the spacecraft portion of it by the entire service. And so what we are trying to manage is how do we still provide our mission assurance on a rocket that is being bought a different way. And so we do actually, we are a little bit concerned. We had a strategic offsite with management in May and we talked about how busy we’re getting. And we don’t really want to grow the organization in size. We’d rather become more efficient at things and then use the resources that we have to be able to do the work on the new programs. But there’s a ton of work. Like, you said that manifest, the number of commercial rockets on there, is incredible. And they’re all going to be new rockets. The only one right now that has flown really is the Falcon Heavy, right, and it’s only flown three times. There are no other rockets that are capable of taking these big masses to the moon right now, other than SLS, of course.

Chuck Dovale: But if there’s one group that has the expertise and knowledge of either, you know, the current rockets or the derivatives, it’s us, so we’re a capability that should be used and should be a big part of it, in our minds. But we do have to balance that work with the science, which is why we’re really here.

Amanda Mitskevich: Right. Right.

Joshua Santora: Cool, so as you both individually look to the future, is there something else, is there another level up, is there —

Amanda Mitskevich: That is a fair question.

Joshua Santora: What does it look like when you rise to move out of the way again?

Amanda Mitskevich: Oh, boy, then maybe it’s retirement time. I don’t know.

Chuck Dovale: Well, one of the things that comes up a lot now in these strategic offsites that we have is because a large majority of the management within LSP all started together 20 years ago, we’re all close to retirement age together. And so the discussion quickly turns to — we can’t talk about when people are going but it’s definitely something that’s on the agenda of succession planning, because we are all able in the next five years. And if there is a mass exodus, what are we leaving behind? Are we leaving and educating the people behind us well enough for them to take our place and keep the program running like it is? So that’s a constant agenda item at our meetings now.

Amanda Mitskevich: I honestly think I have like the best job in the agency, and I don’t see why you would want to go anywhere else. I mean, where else can you work with all the science missions, all the customers that we have, all the people that we interact with, the NRO, the Air Force, everybody. Every day is a challenge. So I see it as, well, sometime in that five years maybe there’s some changes in LSP but we’ll see.

Chuck Dovale: I’ve been in ELV my whole career, and I’m certainly not gonna change now. So I’d say it’s given me a lot. So all I’m doing now —

Amanda Mitskevich: So maybe I’m gonna be selfish, I’m not gonna step out of the way right now.

Joshua Santora: Well, very good. Thank you both very much. Obviously, you guys put in a ton of time and effort, I’m sure blood, sweat, and tears. So good luck. The next 18 months or so especially, obviously we’ll be keeping a close eye on your work as the new and improved rockets take flight.

Chuck Dovale: All right.

Amanda Mitskevich: Sounds great. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Joshua Santora: I’m Joshua Santora, and that’s our show. Thanks for stopping by the rocket ranch. And special thanks to our guests Amanda Mitskevich and Chuck Dovale. To learn more about LSP, visit nasa.gov/launchservices. And to learn more about everything going on at the Kennedy Space Center, go to nasa.gov/kennedy. Check out NASA’s other podcasts to learn more about what’s happening at all of our centers at nasa.gov/podcasts. A special shout-out to our producer, John Sackman, our soundman Lorne Mathre, editor Michelle Stone, and special thanks to Mary McLachlan.

And remember, on the rocket ranch… even the sky isn’t the limit.