In “General Kevin ‘Chili’ Chilton, Board Member, Astronaut and Flying the Space Shuttle,” General Kevin “Chili” Chilton shares lessons from his extraordinary 34½ years in the U.S. Air Force and his successful transition into corporate leadership. On this episode of CXO Conversations, Chili reflects on problem-solving and leadership training, the astronaut band Max Q, and the experience of flying three space shuttle missions. From serving as Deputy Program Manager of Operations for the International Space Station to becoming the only astronaut to achieve the rank of 4-star General, Chili’s story is a powerful blend of humility, discipline, and leadership.

For the full interview: https://ocns.co/general-kevin-chili-chilton-board-member-astronaut-and-flying-the-space-shuttle/

10 Min Clip Transcript

Kevin Chilton: [00:00:00] All right. I’m gonna kick it.

Michael Mitchel: Hello everyone. Thanks for joining CXO conversations and welcome back from the 4th of July holiday weekend. Given the holiday, I felt an edited version of a previous guest would be appropriate for today. The following is an excerpt from a two-part interview with General Kevin Chi Chilton, currently a board member with Lumen Technology and a retired force or general who has an astronaut through the Space shuttle more than once in the show notes is more in his bio and linked to the full episode.

Welcome to the Conversation General. Please share an interesting fact about yourself to our listeners. And what you’re doing now. 

Kevin Chilton: Hello Michael. It’s great to be with you today. Um, I think maybe the interesting fact that, um, wasn’t covered in just career stuff is probably the most important thing in my life, and that is my family.

I’m the proud father of four daughters who are out of the home and very successful. [00:01:00] And, uh, I give most of that credit to my lovely wife Kathy, who of course with my career had to fill in, um, doing most of the child rearing while at the same time she had a career as a, uh, in the United States Air Force Reserves.

Michael Mitchel: See, I kind of thought you might’ve gone to your, uh, your band days at Max Q. 

Kevin Chilton: Well, that was certainly fun and different. You have a bunch of astronauts, uh, in a rock and roll band and uh, we were not the greatest, but we weren’t the worst. We were a dance band and loved doing it. So you had all these, uh, left brain people trying to be right brain or whatever, whatever the side of the brain it was, and just, uh, something we all really loved doing.

Michael Mitchel: I love the fact that the astronauts have a, have their own band. 

Kevin Chilton: Yeah. And the band continues. It was, uh, started I think in about 1987. It was, it was just started as a lark. I was just, they were just worked up a couple numbers for a party they were having and [00:02:00] there was such a success. The boss said, well, you guys ought to keep the band together.

And so the band continues, it’s called Max Q, and whenever someone retires or leaves the office, someone steps in and they’ve just gotten better and better over the years. 

Michael Mitchel: Uh, it doesn’t quite beat a Corvette though, right? 

Kevin Chilton: No, that was the Mercury astronauts, not the shuttle astronauts. We didn’t get Corvettes.

Michael Mitchel: So we’re gonna kind of go back to the early days for Chile. So when did you first realize you wanted to, uh, attend the Air Force Academy? 

Kevin Chilton: Well, I, you know, I, I grew up in Los Angeles, um, near LA International Airport, and I was kind of, I guess, immersed a bit in aviation, and then my mother had been a stewardess in the forties.

That’s what they were called then. Back in those days, they had to quit when they got married, but she. Uh, in early, you know, American Airlines, early aviation is stewardess. My father was an aeronautical engineer. My grammar school was at the approach end to [00:03:00] LA International Airport. My high school was at the departure end.

Runway of the runway. And you know, I just watching airplanes every day take off and land going to the beach, having ’em fly over your head. And one of my, uh, mom’s dearest friends, a a fellow stewardess, she was married to a United Airlines pilot. So through that exposure, um, in my youth, I decided that that looked like something fun to do and I might wanna do it.

Uh, my problem was I didn’t know how I was gonna get flying lessons and just out of pure luck or, or Providence one, one summer day. I called up one of my friends to see if his mom could drive us to the beach, and he said, no, my mom can’t. But one of my older brothers is home from college, and it turned out the college she was going to was the Air Force Academy, and if I hadn’t gotten a car that day to go to the beach, I never would’ve heard of the place.

But he told me what it was all about that. If you went there and were pilot qualified, they’d teach you how to fly and when you finished your time in service, you could go [00:04:00] fly for the airlines. And that was my goal. So I didn’t join the Air Force for noble reasons. Pretty selfish reasons actually, actually.

But, uh, I like to tell people a funny thing happened on the way to the airlines. I fell in love with the Air Force and decided to stay and had, I was just so blessed for the opportunities that presented me. 

Michael Mitchel: You, you know, I’m part of, um, the selection committee for, for high school students who wanna enter the academies.

And, you know, it’s a three person panel. And sometimes one of the panelists will ask, you know, is it your intent to do a career in the military? And they viewed that as a judging question. I don’t, because when I joined the Navy, there were so many people, I’m gonna do my 20. And they were the first ones who started looking for the door.

Yeah. And the quiet ones were the ones that went the distance. So you just never know what a path’s gonna take you. 

Kevin Chilton: Right. And I, I don’t know if I was asked that question or not, but I, you know, I, I certainly, up until, well, throughout my career, I always kind of felt like if I didn’t like what I was [00:05:00] doing, I could always go be an airline pilot.

In fact, at one point I said, they’re gonna, they make me mad, I’ll leave. Well, they never made me mad, so I stayed. 

Michael Mitchel: So where did, where did your call sign come from? 

Kevin Chilton: Oh, there, you know, there’s all kinds of stories for different people and their call signs. Mine’s pretty, you know, ordinary. I had a, my first boss when I was flying F fifteens, which is where everyone in the fighter world, everyone had call signs.

Um, he couldn’t remember my last name. He knew it was chills something. So, uh, he said one day he says to me, I’m just gonna call you chili. Is that okay? And I said, that’s fine. So that’s how I got it. 

Michael Mitchel: I figured it was a combination of your last name and Grace under pressure or something like that. Well, you know, um, one thing I’ve always admired about the, about NASA and ENG and the engineering culture is the ability to stay calm and, and work the problem.

I find that sometimes I say that to myself during the day. Mm-hmm. How does someone, obviously with military training, that’s com part of where you got yours, but how does someone learn to approach problems outweigh? 

Kevin Chilton: Well, you know, you can [00:06:00] always, there, there are classes on it. In fact, uh, we had a class at the academy when I was a cadet.

When I was a junior officer, there was a course we went to that gave us some leadership skills, uh, taught us some leadership skills down at, uh, Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. All junior officers go through it and it’s problem solving 1 0 1. And you go out, you not only study the techniques, but then you go out and take turns on these various problems, field problems, and you take turns leading the team.

Uh, and I think, you know, that is something that gives you the basic. Tools. Um, I think operational experience helps too, particularly in the aviation business. Um, you know, you train all the time for emergency procedures and so when you have a serious emergency in, in flight, uh, you’re well-trained and you work the problem.

Uh, and I would say that was also very much the atmosphere at nasa. I mean, you, you work the problem until [00:07:00] it was either solved or. Until, uh, there was nothing else you could do. And I, and so I think it was, so it was a, it’s a combination of both the little book learning and experience 

Michael Mitchel: for, for the astronauts who, without the military training, did NASA have similar classes or programs?

Kevin Chilton: Um, I don’t, NASA didn’t have any programs in that regard. These were all the, the, the courses I took were all associated with the Air Force. Um, I think at NASA looked to hire people that they recognized, uh, were good at both. Um, problem solving, but also assessing risk. So if you look at a lot of the non-military astronauts, you know, they’re brilliant people, first of all, in, in their career field, whether it’s in material science or medical science or other engineering.

Disciplines or astronomical engineering or astrophysics. They’re of course just tops at that. But in the interview process, [00:08:00] um, NASA was also looking at what else they did outside of their specialty. So were they pilots, were they scuba divers? Were they mountain climbers? We had one great fellow who raced the luge in the Olympics.

I mean, there were people, they wanted to know if you could assess risk in a situation, if you had some kind of notion of operations. Uh, operational experience and, uh, so they were, they were looking for, you know, outside activities that demonstrated that. 

Michael Mitchel: Do you feel that there’s a way managers or executive can, executives can learn this kind of a, a critical thinking approach without the benefit of military training and, and courses that you 

Kevin Chilton: had?

Oh, yeah. No, I, there there’s problem solving courses out there that are taught by, you know, professional leadership schools. Um, and then you get it through experience as well. Uh, you know, all through life you get, you’re faced with problems and, um, whether they’re personal or professional. And, uh, you just, you learn how to address them and, and work ’em.

And [00:09:00] ultimately you’ll find that, you know, no problem is ever solved by one individual, takes a team. So, as much a part of that is learning how to lead a team, uh, to a solution of a problem. Uh, 

Michael Mitchel: you alluded to some of the other professions that are starting to enter the astronaut astronaut corps. Do you feel, I’ve done no research on this.

Do you feel that there’s more non-military astronauts coming into the program, or is it still balanced? 

Kevin Chilton: Well, there always were in the shuttle program, if you looked at the total cadre, there was, it was probably 60 40, you know, non-military pilot. Um, and now as we go back to capsules away from, uh. Shuttle and as you know, automation’s improved.

I, I, I frankly don’t know, there might be a tilt more toward other, other, uh, skill sets, but, you know, you’re still gonna be operating, you’re still gonna be in a dangerous environment. There’s still gonna be times when you’re gonna have to make, uh, risk decisions and as you say, work the problem. So they’re gonna be always looking for those fundamental skills in the [00:10:00] background.

Uh, and at the end of the day, you know, I saw it, and even in the shuttle program and the International Space Station program. The needs of NASA will change along the way and they’ll need, uh, talent, a little more talent in one area than another, depending on where they are in the execution of the program.

Michael Mitchel: You flew twice in the Endeavor and once in the Atlantis. Uh, how did the two shuttles compare? Did they handle differently? 

Kevin Chilton: Well, you know, they, the, all the shuttles flew the same, uh, they were. Um, well harmonized in that regard. I guess that you The biggest difference. I, I was blessed to fly on the maiden voyage.

My first flight was endeavor’s, first flight, and so a special bond there. And, uh, endeavor smelled like a new car. I mean, it was just, it was, it was just brand spanking new. It was wonderful. And, uh, of course it only smelled that way for one flight and it was bright and shiny on the outside until we brought it back through, uh, reentry.

So, uh, yeah, no, but as far as flying qualities wise, you really couldn’t tell a difference between Atlantis and Endeavor. 

Michael Mitchel: We’re gonna get into the business aspect of this interview [00:11:00] shortly, but right now, the 10-year-old Michael’s into control as you’re, I’ve, I’ve always wondered because the shuttle glides as it comes in and Right.

You can’t power it up and, and throttle up for another come around. So, as you’re coming in, it’s a one shot deal. What, what’s going through your mind and what’s the mood in the cabin like? 

Kevin Chilton: Don’t up, that’s what’s going through your mind. Actually, you know, the training was so good at nasa, uh, before you flew, we, we would train, uh, in the simulators of course, but we had this thing called the shuttle training aircraft, which was really an engineering marvel.

It was a Gulf Stream two that was highly modified. Uh, had a computer in the back that you could connect up the left seat, uh, flight controls to fly just like the space shuttle and had space shuttle. Controls in it, we’d mask the windows so that when you looked out the window, you, it looked just like looking out the windows of the shuttle.

The right seat had regular gulf stream control, so the instructor would take off in the right seat, climb up to [00:12:00] altitude, turn on the, uh, computer and reconfigure the plane so that it flew like the shuttle. And then you’d take over and you’d dive down and do approaches. And you had to do, you had to have successfully completed 500 dives.

Before you flew as a copilot, and you’re not even gonna, you’re not even expected to land as a copilot and you have to have made a thousand dives, um, before you fly as a commander where you actually land the shuttle. So by the time you know that, that was probably the most comforting thing when you took control.

Um, just as we got below Mach one up around 55,000 feet and hand flew to touchdown, it flew so much like the Gulf Stream, uh, that you trained all those many times in that it was, uh. Uh, it, it was, I don’t wanna say it was easy, but it, it was familiar. 

Michael Mitchel: So she was pretty nimble to handle, 

Kevin Chilton: uh, nimble wouldn’t be the right word, I don’t think.

Well, you know, maybe it, it felt like a big airplane and roll and a little bit more like a fighter and pitch, pretty sensitive and [00:13:00] pitch. Uh, and it, you had to fly it differently than a regular airplane just because it was a fly by wire system. And there was, uh, enough delay in the computers that, uh. If you tried to fly it like a regular airplane, uh, you could go outta control.

So you had to, and that’s why, you know, we did so many practice approaches. You were really untraining your natural instincts in certain phases of flight so that you flew space shuttle differently than you would’ve flown an F 15 or F 16 or an F four or B 52. 

Michael Mitchel: When my dad got of the Navy back in the day, he used to, he was doing the wiring on the Saturn five rockets.

Hmm. So I think maybe that’s where my. My, my, uh, interest, uh, come, came from. What, uh, what specific event from a mission stands out in your memory? 

Kevin Chilton: Oh gosh. Every mission was memorable. Um, probably endeavors first flight. My first flight was, uh, it wasn’t a specific event, I would say was the entire mission.

Um, endeavor flew great and was basically [00:14:00] flawless for the flight, but we had some difficulty completing the mission. And, you know, you were talking about problem solving earlier, uh, we had to execute problem solving 1 0 1 and we had trained to complete the mission for almost a year and a half in a certain way.

And we had to throw that all out the window and in 48 hours come up with a totally new way of solving the problem. In concert with our team, uh, mates in mission control and, uh. We were successful in doing that, but for a long period of time, uh, it looked like we were gonna end in failure. And, uh, so that was particularly tense.

Uh, it wasn’t life threatening, but particularly tense from a mission success perspective for about five out of the nine days we were up there, and then particularly joyful after we were successful in the end. 

Michael Mitchel: So I’m sure there are more astronauts and missions, and obviously the culture is mission first, but competition’s tough.

Does the, as chief astronauts still make the selections, and how does mission selection look like? How does it happen? 

Kevin Chilton: Well, [00:15:00] I’m not sure how they do it now. When, when I was there, the chief of the astronaut office would, would put a crew together re and then recommend that, uh, crew to his boss or her boss, which would be the head of flight crew operations director, who was a.

Typically an, uh, well, at the time, a NASA senior civil servant who’d been around for quite a while and very experienced, and then, and he would recommend it, uh, to the NASA administrator. Uh, and then, and then the head of the astronaut office would call you up. So you’d, you’d get a phone call, say, my first flight, head of the astronaut office called me up and said, Hey, Chile, how would you like to be there?

My pilot because he was our commander on the first flight of Endeavor. That’s an easy answer. 

Michael Mitchel: W why did you wanna become an astronaut? 

Kevin Chilton: Well, actually I didn’t. I wanted to become an airline pilot and so, you know, it, it was for me. I was, I was not. Um, I’m sure there was other folks like me. I know [00:16:00] there were, but I, I didn’t grow up wanting to be an astronaut.

Um, I remember my parents waking, my sister and I up to watch Alan Shepherd and Gus Christm and John Glenn take off and, you know, we grew up in California, so those were early wake up. Those guys were launching at six o’clock in the morning on the East Coast. So, uh, 3:00 AM wake up, sitting on the couch watching a little black and white TV in Los Angeles.

I thought one. Why would you want to ever get up this early to go to work? And, and it’s nothing I thought I could ever do. So I, I, you know, it, it did not imprint on me at a young age that being an astronaut would be a goal, but it being a pilot did become a goal. And, uh, I would just say it, it, it was one thing after another.

There’s so many things that, uh, happened in my life that I didn’t control, but, uh, opportunities that were presented to me that kinda led me to it. Um, I didn’t. 

Michael Mitchel: You had to apply. You had to apply. Oh, I did. 

Kevin Chilton: Yeah. So eventually, you know, I got to a point eventually after [00:17:00] becoming a test pilot and serving as a test pilot for about two years, uh, when NASA said they were taking another round of applications, and I thought, you know, I wonder if they’d pick me one, and I’d kick myself if I never knew the answer to that question.

And two, I had a, a friend who was a, a year ahead of me. Who had gone to nasa and in fact we had flown F fifteens together. We had been test pilots together. He had gone in an earlier astronaut selection class, and I called him up and he said, uh, he knew me really well. And he said, you know, I think you’d like this.

So, so I threw my hat in the ring and frankly, when I went down. To interview. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but after that weak experience at the Johnson Space Center, which included, you know, the interview process when I came back, I was so, you know, wishing uh, and hopeful that they would pick me ’cause uh, he was right.

I could see it was something I’d really love doing. 

Michael Mitchel: What was that moment like when you learned [00:18:00] it about your selection? 

Kevin Chilton: Oh, it was great. It was great. Totally excited. Yeah. I immediately called my wife and then, uh. Um, and then it was, well wait a minute. Back up. I wasn’t married yet. I had a girlfriend. She became my wife, so I let her know, but I couldn’t get ahold of my parents.

I remember they were traveling to Europe and uh, I got a message to ’em and I think they called me during a layover in an airport. Uh, somehow I got a message to him and uh, I was just thrilled to share it with my family. 

Michael Mitchel: I’m sure Kathy will forgive you. ’cause like me, it’s hard to imagine life pre wife. 

Kevin Chilton: I like that line.

I’m gonna use it if she listens to this. 

Michael Mitchel: So a hiatus from Air Force to the NASA seems like normally can be detrimental to one’s career. Is that as true now as in the past? And how’d you beat those odds? 

Kevin Chilton: Well, actually when I went to nasa, it was kind of the general Air force policy. If you did that, uh, you were never gonna come [00:19:00] back into the line Air Force.

You would stay in the Air Force, but you would work for NASA the rest of your career and retire from there. Uh, in fact, right after we got there, we had a Senior Air Force officer come down to visit, um, yeah, the Air Force astronauts and. One of the older astronauts who was in the Air Force asked that very question, is there any chance we’d come back and serve in the Air Force?

And he said, no. Uh, you know, you haven’t been com squadron commanders, you haven’t been to the schools. And it just wouldn’t make sense to come back and put you in a position that someone else has earned and been trained to do. Um, and so that was in 1987 and, and then in 1996, uh. The commander of Air Force Base Command came down to visit and same kind of meeting.

Now I’m one of the more senior astronauts, but he comes in and says, uh, look, we’re trying to operationalize space in the Air Force. And he says, I got this gut feeling that you guys could help us. He says, I no [00:20:00] promises on career path, no promises on jobs. In fact, I’m not sure exactly what I’m gonna do with you, but my gut tells me you can help us.

So I said, you know, if you want to volunteer, I won’t make you come back. You’re welcome to volunteer and we’ll see what we can do. And I was the only one to volunteer. I, I was just getting ready to fly my third flight and I was at the 20 year career point, so I had lots of options. I could retire, I could stay at nasa, I could go back in the Air Force.

The airlines were hiring all these things. And, uh, so my wife and I, Kathy, after a lot of prayer and thought. Decided, let’s, we both love the Air Force. Uh, you know, we met in the Air Force. She grew up as a daughter of an Air Force officer and served on active duty herself. Um, she, uh, we said, you know, we’d really like to expose our children to that lifestyle.

We had four daughters at the time. They’re all young, and so they were very mobile and we wanted them to be, learn what the Air Force Family was about. And I figured if it [00:21:00] didn’t work out, I’d go be an airline pilot. So it turns out, uh, a lot of luck and great bosses things worked out. 

Michael Mitchel: Thank you for listening to CXO conversations.

I really do hope you enjoyed this episode. I met Chile when I served as the executive director of vfw Post one, the first post in the world. If you’re a veteran or a family member of a veteran of a foreign war, please consider joining the first and best VFW Post ever. Please visit VFW one. Org also, please give us five stars on Apple to help others find this podcast.

You can find me on LinkedIn, Michael Mitchell with one L, and I’m in Denver. Till next time.