114 | The Man Who Carried Space Shuttles with Charlie Justiz
Charles Justiz, Ph.D., is a pilot, risk & safety consultant, and author of the sci-fi thriller, Specific Impulse. He is the founder and Managing Director of JFA Inc. and formerly served as the Chief of Aviation Safety at the NASA Johnson Space Center, where he established a crew resource management program, a safety management system, and a just culture approach. All of which have become industry standards.
During his 30-year-long career at NASA, Charlie has flown over 16,000 flight hours in over 100 different types of aircraft, chased Space Shuttles returning from orbit, trained every astronaut who has piloted and landed a Space Shuttle and ferried numerous Space Shuttles across the United States using a modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.
Charlie joins me today to describe how he fell in love with flying and aviation in his early teens and shares how he became a pilot after studying Aerospace Engineering at the Air Force Academy. We talk about his path to becoming a NASA test pilot, and he describes how he became involved in music and theater production later in life and how writing Specific Impulse opened his unexpected artistic side. Charlie also advises making mistakes in one’s career and shares his thoughts on following a vision and pursuing seemingly unrelated career paths.
“There is no box; you define what the boundaries are.”
- Charlie Justiz
This week on Kathy Sullivan Explores:
● Charlie’s childhood from Havana to Miami
● Where Charlie’s early love for flying and aviation came from
● The many Cuban revolutions
● Charlie’s experience learning about Spanish literature in high school
● Charlie’s road to the Air Force Academy and how he survived his freshman year
● How Charlie became an Air Force pilot
● Celestial navigation in the space age
● Flying exotic airplanes at NASA and training to ferry Space Shuttles with the 747
● Why the 747 is a pilot’s dream
● Charlie’s work as a risk & safety consultant
● How Charlie became involved in music and theater production
● What it means to be a theater producer
● Charlie’s thoughts on taking seemingly unrelated career paths
● Charlie’s next adventure in life
Our Favorite Quotes:
● “You may be wrong, and that’s okay. I’ve failed a dozen times in my career, trying to do stuff that was wrong, but it only made me smarter on the things that I did next.” - Charlie Justiz
● “All knowledge is valuable and important.” - Charlie Justiz
Connect with Charlie Justiz:
Book: Specific Impulse
Spaceship Not Required
I’m Kathy Sullivan, the only person to have walked in space and gone to the deepest point in the ocean.
I’m an explorer, and that doesn’t always have to involve going to some remote or exotic place. It simply requires a commitment to put curiosity into action.
In this podcast, you can explore, reflecting on lessons learned from life so far and from my brilliant and ever-inquisitive guests. We explore together in this very moment from right where you are… spaceship not required.
Welcome to Kathy Sullivan Explores.