A Conversation With: Dick Covey

Richard O. “Dick” Covey joined United Space Alliance as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in February 2006 after serving as President of Boeing Service Company in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A former NASA astronaut, Covey flew four space missions – STS 51-I, STS-26, STS-38 and STS-61. Following the loss of Columbia, Covey also provided critical leadership during the exhaustive independent assessment of NASA’s actions in response to the accident investigation as co-chairman of the Return to Flight Task Group. In this issue, the USA Update talks to Covey about his early impressions of USA and the outlook for USA’s future in a competitive marketplace.

UPDATE: You’ve been with USA now for more than five months; what are your impressions of USA so far?

COVEY: I am almost overwhelmed at the breadth of activities that take place within United Space Alliance. At a high level, I was well aware of much that we do to support the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs. But in going around and visiting with our employees and managers and seeing in more detail those things that we do, I continue to be amazed.

UPDATE: As the co-chair of the Return to Flight Task Group, you played a large role in ensuring the program was ready to return to flight. What do you think is the biggest lesson we learned from the challenges encountered in the Return to Flight effort?

COVEY: My experience with the Return to Flight Task Group really led me to believe and understand how little we knew about Space Shuttle system performance. What we knew and didn’t know about the External Tank performance has received the greatest focus.

What I took away from the Return to Flight activity is that we will continue to learn about the Space Shuttle system as we continue to fly. Though we have been flying for 25 years, there is still a lot we can learn about operating the Space Shuttle system, and we’ll continue to learn all the way to the last flight. Indeed, NASA recognizes that the Space Shuttle program is a developmental program and one that will present challenges through the remainder of its fly out, because we will continue to learn.

UPDATE: How would you describe the current state of the Shuttle and ISS programs?

COVEY: Both programs are very tenuous right now, largely driven by the fact that the Space Shuttle hasn’t been flying on a regular basis. That has stressed the Space Station Program to a point where they really need for us to be flying the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle clearly needs to return to regular flight, and, until it does, both programs will remain challenged in their ability to meet program goals.

UPDATE: You come to USA from a multicontract, multicustomer business environment similar to the one USA will be encountering in the future. What does it take for a company to compete in that kind of market?

COVEY: The things that we do at United Space Alliance very much focus on making the SFOC (Space Flight Operations Contract) successful – and that’s not bad – but in the future, we should anticipate that the opportunities that come to us will be more fragmented than our one large SFOC contract.

We have to be flexible in our approaches, policies and procedures to be able to support multiple customers. And those won’t always necessarily be government customers. Sometimes we will be subcontractors. We already are a subcontractor on the Crew Launch Vehicle initial study activity. We have proposed to be a subcontractor on both of the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) teams. We need to learn how to do that well.

We need to have a workforce that understands that just because we did something a particular way on the SFOC and for the SFOC customer, that doesn’t mean its going to meet the requirements of new customers, particularly if they are other contractors. That’s the primary attitude shift we need to be able to accommodate within the company. Not all customers will ask for the same things the same way, and we have to be prepared to deliver our services and products to them in a way that meets their needs.

UPDATE: What does USA need to do to position itself in a competitive business environment?

COVEY: One, we have to realize that we need to structure ourselves to be competitive. That includes structuring ourselves organizationally to support multiple contracts and multiple customers, and structuring ourselves from a cost standpoint to be able to match our potential competitors.

USA has been blessed that we have not had to compete for most of the work that we do. The work has been given to us on a sole-source basis based upon our unique capabilities and breadth of capabilities. That won’t be the case in the future, so we have to be cost competitive in the future to show a clear value to our customers.

UPDATE: What are the opportunities that lie ahead for USA?

COVEY: United Space Alliance was clearly formed by Rockwell, now Boeing, and Lockheed Martin to provide space operations support to our nation’s space flight program, which was the Shuttle at the time and then included the Station.

In the future, our greatest opportunities, and the ones that best suit our member companies’ objectives, will be to continue to provide space ops support in human space flight.

The evolution of the Vision for Space Exploration and the elements that make up the Constellation Program provide us the greatest opportunities for the future, both within our capabilities and within the expectations of our member companies. So we’ve already started getting involved in some of those early elements – the Crew Launch Vehicle and the Crew Exploration Vehicle. We are seeking a role in defining the launch processing and support infrastructure to support exploration and Constellation at the Kennedy Space Center.

Those things associated with the Vision provide us the greatest opportunities, particularly as they evolve to the operational phases of those programs.

UPDATE: Is there much opportunity outside of the Vision programs?

COVEY: There is, but they are more limited. We are continuing to assess those opportunities. We believe there are activities that are space operations or space-support-related in the Department of Defense, commercial markets, and, potentially, the international market in which the skills and competencies of USA can meet the customers’ requirements. We’re continuing to look at those, but they will always be ancillary to the major focus of our business on human space flight operations.

UPDATE: What is USA’s biggest challenge ahead?

COVEY: I’ve often talked about the imperative for change within USA. I believe our ability to change to meet the needs of the coming market is our biggest challenge. And it’s not change just at the top. It’s change in the way every one of us in the company looks at our business. It’s a change in the way our customers and competitors look at us.

That is our challenge. It’s our challenge as leaders to provide the impetus and the path of change for us to be a competitive, viable force in human space flight operations in the future.

UPDATE: What advice would you give to employees questioning USA’s role in future programs as well as their own personal roles within the company?

COVEY: The future of human space flight is exciting. As we complete the Space Station, return to the moon and plan to go beyond, there will continue to be a need for the skills and capabilities that United Space Alliance brings to NASA today. The focus may be somewhat different, and it may not necessarily be a one-for-one translation of the work that we do, but the overall context of operations support for human space flight says that the type of people and capabilities that currently reside in United Space Alliance are going to be needed.

The timing, the phasing of how the work we do today transitions to the work of the future is the area of uncertainty, and one that not only USA but NASA is struggling with and needs to work out a solution for. We want to be part of that solution, because we believe USA should be and will be the premier space operations company for NASA, not only for Shuttle and Station, but also into the Vision for Space Exploration.

UPDATE: Any final thoughts?

COVEY: Yes. As we look to the future, we can’t forget that the number one thing we have to do well is successfully fly the Shuttle to its end of life. That is really the whole purpose of our existence. We have an incredible record within USA of success at doing that job. We need to ensure ourselves that, through each individual’s dedication and attention, we remain successful through all the remaining flights.

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