>> I'm Tom Sanzone.
I graduated from Villanova in 1968.
And for 43 years, I worked for the
Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation,
it's a United Technologies Company in
Houston, Texas at the Johnson Space Center.
In the Apollo Program, we made the life
support backpack that they wore in the moon.
And more recently, over the last 30 or
so years, we've made the space suit,
the life support system that's used
when astronauts do space walks.
We use to say that the space suit is not
a large garment, it's a small spacecraft.
And so everything that you would have
in the spacecraft short of propulsion
and now we've actually had propulsion
for emergency return to a vehicle
in case you were disconnected is in that
life support system, that space suit.
So it's basically taking everything
that we take for granted here
on the ground including the air pressure around
us and things that you don't even think about.
And providing those capabilities
in space in a vacuum environment,
we call it the thermal environment
where the temperature changes several
hundred degrees going from shade
to light, and lots and lots of challenges.
So a lot of smart people did it.
And we were so busy; I mean we
just worked like seven days a week
and 12 hours a day plus, you
know, those kinds of things.
And so assignments for trying hand it out,
like who's kind of next in line or whatever.
And so, one of the things that we did was
we trained astronauts in vacuum chambers.
And so my boss asked me to take the lead
on training this one crew,
and it was the Apollo 11 crew.
So one of the first people I ever
got to train when I was 22 years old,
10 months out of Villanova was Neil
Armstrong which was pretty cool,
it's become more cool, you
know, thinking back on it.
I think my career had two basic halves.
The first half of my career
was very technically oriented.
And so back when I first went to NASA,
shortly after I got out of Villanova,
the day would consist of-- I would work on life
support systems, help test them, modify them.
We would take astronauts, put them in space
suit, put the life support system on the back,
train them in a vacuum environment,
put them in another vacuum chamber
that had thermal capability
so it could be very cold
like minus 200 degrees in
there or plus 200 degrees.
And that's the environment that the space we
can operate in, and did a lot of training.
During the missions, we were in what
was called the mission evaluation room,
the back room to mission control,
and we would monitor the performance
of both life support systems from
the two guys that would be out there.
And if there were any issues, we'd
have to respond pretty quickly,
make recommendations obviously and in
hindsight, now, the benefit of history,
that hardware worked incredibly well.
The latter half of my career, the last 22
years of career, I was the general manager
for our Houston office which was very rewarding.
At that times, it wasn't quite as much fun as
the hands-on technical staff that I got to do.
But it was a business environment.
Challenges were not so much technical.
They were more business oriented,
people oriented, hiring the right people
to get the job done and things
like that but very, very rewarding.
Certainly, in our lifetimes, it
will go down as, if not the most,
one of the most incredible accomplishments
in the 20th century and beyond.
So it was phenomenal to be
able to be a part of it.
I think maybe one of the more rewarding parts
of my job was that I got to deal very closely
with what we call the ultimate customer, the
astronaut that would actually use our equipment
when they would go do space walks.
Knowing them and knowing their spouses
and their kids was always very special.
I think people tend to think of astronauts,
people not living in Houston tend to think
about astronauts as a combination of
an athletic star and a movie star.
And you would never see them.
And that's not the case with astronauts.
I was telling somebody yesterday the story in
my church, St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church
in Nassau Bay, Texas, we have several
astronauts who are members and parishioners.
And a year or two ago, one of those
parishioners was orbiting the Earth
on Thursday landed later on Thursday.
And at the five o'clock mass in Saturday
afternoon, she was in the pew next to me.
So you know, those kinds of things are
kind of hard to describe but very rewarding
at the same time 'cause they're real people.
I have a long career of 43 years and over
that career, there are ups and downs.
And every career is filled with ups and downs.
We tend to focus on the ups, that's
what we've been talking about,
you know, the real super highs.
But there are some lows.
My favorite quote is Thomas Payne in 1776.
And he said, "The harder the conflict,
the more glorious the triumph."
So if you always won every game,
you'd never appreciate winning,
you have to lose occasionally.
And over my long career at NASA, we
had some devastating losses, you know,
we lost two crew members while I--
two sets of crews while I was there.
In Houston, the whole company-- the
whole country mourned that lost.
But in Houston, these were coworkers of ours.
These were people we went to church with.
And so that was hard.
And so I think, you know, I wouldn't say it was
that much of a challenge but do not give up,
do not throw your hands up and
say, "I can't do this anymore."
The spirit at NASA was one of never giving up.
Well, first of all you have to be incredibly
lucky because it wasn't something--
now, people that work at NASA are
absolutely the best and the brightest,
and many of them have the
vision to work at NASA someday.
And I was just in Washington a couple
of days ago with two young men and,
you know, they both want to work at NASA.
It was very serendipitous for me, you
know, I just kind of got placed there.
And, you know, one thing you might not--
you might not expect this, I would say,
pray about what your career is going to have
for you, realize that the God has a plan
and you have a plan, and your plan doesn't
count as much as you probably think it does,
but the perseverance working hard, working
in teams, knowing how to work with teams.
We've done a leadership presentation at NASA,
the subtitle of which is it's all about people.
And that's probably my number
one message to students.
They've spent most, if not all, of their career,
I know, now, there's more teamwork in college.
But many of them have been focused
on grades for 16 plus years.
And everything has been grades,
grades, grades, grades, grades.
And those grades-- having those good
grades will help them get their first job.
But once they get their first
job, they will never, again,
be asked what their grade point average
is because now, they're in competition,
if you will, or in team work,
but they're in competition
with other people that might busy students.
But they may work harder.
I went to Villanova University, I
majored in electrical engineering.
I graduated in 1968 and I went to work
for Hamilton Sundstrand in Connecticut.
But I joined the field service department
because like the Navy, I wanted to,
you know, join the Navy and see the world.
I wanted to go to other places.
And Hamilton Sundstrand has
reps all over the world
because we make lots of aircraft
supply equipment.
And my first assignment was supposed
to be on the Boeing 747 in Seattle.
And the day I showed up for work, May
27th of 1968, someone met me in the lobby,
it was actually the man who took me to lunch
when I was interviewed several months before.
And he said, "Same as you were
last year, I've been promoted
to be the service manager
for the space department.
And you're going to work for
me, you're not going to work
for the other guy that interviewed with.
And you're not going to go to Seattle.
You're going to go to Houston for
one year, maybe a year and half."
That's what he told me.
And 43 years later, I finally
retired after my year and half.
So it was one of those things, like I said
earlier, it's you know, God has a plan for you
that you don't really understand.
And his plan is almost always better than the
one that you would ever have for yourself.
Instantaneously, you may not recognize it.
But in hindsight, that's where you recognize it.
The number one tip that I do some mentoring
at NASA, and the number one tip that I give
to folks other than it's all about people is
I work for United Technologies Corporations,
a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation
and they had a bunch of leadership traits.
One of which was number 30, I
remember that on the list, it said,
"Making a decision work once made
despite the fact that you didn't agree
with that decision prior to a thing made."
And I find career-wise, that is one of the
most challenging thing for people to do.
To state your case, have their day in court,
be heard, and then have a decision made
that wasn't the one that they were
recommending, and not only living
with it but actively supporting it.
And it really-- in business, it really separates
those that ultimately are successful or those
that I say get it and those that don't.
And the bosses above you recognize
that, it becomes very obvious.
And personally, I think worse than opposing a
decision, it's to only passively support it.
You have to actively support it.
Very, very challenging if it's something that,
you know, your heart wasn't in before but it's,
you know, one of the things that you have to do.