With Great Authority Comes Great Responsibility

When Royce Renfrew ’85, ’87 finally got the call he had been waiting for, he literally dropped the phone.

“It banged off the desk, hit my chair, and fell on the floor as I fumbled to pick it up to verify I had heard correctly,” Renfrew remembers. “I can only imagine what it sounded like on the other end of the call!”

That fateful call on May 6, 2008 was from John McCullough, chief of the Flight Director Office for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), informing Renfrew that he had been selected as the 74th flight director of NASA.

When it comes to human space flight, the buck stops with the flight director. Because things move so fast, Chris Kraft, the very first flight director and essentially the father of the modern concept, designed the job so that the flight director is authorized to make any decision for the safety of the crew or the success of the mission, and no one can countermand that decision. Renfrew wanted to take on this awesome amount of responsibility and be the “Man in the Arena,” as Theodore Roosevelt described in a speech titled “Citizenship in a Republic” in Paris on April 23, 1910.

“The flight director holds the crew and the mission in his or her hands at any time they are on console,” Renfrew explains. “Add to that the fact that we do all this work in full public view—the taxpayers deserve to observe what NASA is doing with their money. Being the flight director on console when things go sideways is like no other feeling in the world. It is frightening, exhilarating, an immense weight of responsibility, and a great feeling of authority all at the same time.”

Renfrew did not grow up aspiring to work for NASA. In fact, he had originally set his sights on becoming a lawyer, which is what led him to Trinity University.

Born in Riverton, Wyoming, Renfrew and his family moved from small town to small town, from Kremmling, Colorado, to Granite Shoals, Texas. A family friend who was a lawyer recommended Trinity to Renfrew. To afford Trinity’s tuition, Renfrew received Pell Grants and worked as a heavy equipment operator, primarily operating cranes every summer. Even around the age of 19, Renfrew noticed he had a knack for the work, which would come into play later in his career.

During his time at Trinity, Renfrew was part of a friend group called the Sarcasterons, which fielded a few intramural teams, including softball.

“As the name implies, we weren’t really focused on winning games; we were more focused on having fun in the San Antonio sun. We used to bribe umpires who were student workers from the intramural office to let us play even though we didn’t have a full roster for the game. We had a plastic pink flamingo that played center field for us most of the time with a baseball cap and a glove. You probably couldn’t tell from the batter’s box,” Renfrew says, laughing.

Renfrew and the Sarcasterons also played a lot of disc golf on Trinity’s course, and they even played a few holes followed by drinks at Bombay Bicycle Club when they reunited in San Antonio earlier this summer.

Renfrew, an alto saxophonist in the Jazz Ensemble, met his wife, Vanessa (Stringham) Renfrew ’87, who played clarinet in the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, on a tour in the spring of 1985 when he literally ran into her and knocked her off her feet. Renfrew picked her up, apologizing profusely. Luckily, as Renfrew tells it, she thought he was funny enough to keep around for at least a first date.

“We went to the Blue Bonnet Palace in Selma for our first date and danced the night away. I asked her to marry me not too long after that first date. She was the one. We had our wedding in Parker Chapel, and we’ve been together for 36 years now (38 if you include the two-year engagement),” Renfrew says.

In the classroom, Renfrew approached his courses from a pre-law perspective, but he ultimately decided on computer science as his major after taking a computer science course and really enjoying it. 

“Dr. Maurice Eggen was my faculty adviser. I took several classes from him and really liked how he taught,” Renfrew remembers. “I also took a few classes with Dr. Gerald Pitts. I remember he taught my senior software engineering design class. It was one grade at the end of the semester, and the grade went down every time he could crash your program. Vanessa and I were dating at that point, and she is still infamous for being able to break software—not that she intends to—so I had her beta test my software for the course; Dr. Pitts was not able to crash it in the end!”

While Renfrew did not enjoy the math component of his computer science major as much, he fondly remembers Darwin Peek, Ph.D. and says he was an influential part of his Trinity experience.

“He could never figure out how I did so well in his advanced classes like linear algebra and set theory, yet I struggled so much in calculus,” Renfrew says, chuckling.

Renfrew graduated with his Bachelor of Science in 1985. After being unable to find a computer science job, Renfrew decided to go back to Trinity to get his teaching certifications. Only needing a few more courses to earn a degree in history, he graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in 1987 with teaching certificates in math, history, and computer science. Renfrew was a high school teacher for seven years before he began working at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston.

“I loved being a teacher. I mostly taught freshman algebra, but I taught everything from calculus to American and world history to introduction to computer science,” Renfrew says. “Education at that level and time was dominated by women. I was one of the minorities as a male teacher in high school who did not coach something. During my career, I had several students gravitate to me as their male role model. If I did any good at all to those kids, showing them that men can be good and have positive impacts in their lives, I will be very happy.”

In 1997, Renfrew started his career as an International Space Station (ISS) robotics instructor. Vanessa, who already had a job at JSC working as a space shuttle communications system instructor, let Renfrew know that United Space Alliance, the prime contractor for Shuttle Operations, was looking to expand their instructor core with the goal of transitioning away from instructors who primarily had an engineering background to instructors who came from an education background.

Coupling his high school teaching experience with the skills he acquired while operating heavy equipment during summer jobs, Renfrew was selected for the robotics instructor job.

“Having good hand-eye coordination is critical for both operating a crane and for ‘flying’ the robotic arm,” Renfrew explains. “Who would have thought?”

Renfrew trained the Expedition 2 and 4 crews on the robotics system on the ISS—they are now on Expedition 70. He then transferred over to the ROBO console in Mission Control, the fourth person certified for the position. ROBO is responsible for planning and executing the operations of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS). Renfrew led one of the first shuttle missions that helped “assemble” the ISS, Assembly Mission 8A, which brought up the first and central portion of the large truss that continued to be built out until it looked like it does today with the solar arrays and radiators attached to it. Renfrew received awards for the mission, the rarest and the one that he has cherished ever since being the Silver Snoopy, which is given in recognition of excellence in the eyes of the astronauts themselves.

Renfrew eventually transitioned from working for United Space Alliance to NASA itself and applied to be a flight director. After his interview, however, the board told him that he needed more experience in a specialist flight controller position, so he took a job in the ODIN group. ODIN is the flight controller who is responsible for the ISS’ operational computer system.

After working as an ODIN for some time, Renfrew applied to be a flight director again. This time, the board told him he needed demonstrable leadership experience. He worked as the ODIN group lead for nine months before applying again and receiving the call that he had been selected for the Class of 2008.

In the earliest years of NASA, flight controllers were assigned to a team, and that team was named using the call sign of the flight director leading it. The primary colors were used up as more flight directors came along, and the list was eventually expanded to include gems, constellations, elements, Greek letters, and several other devices. The call sign has since evolved from more of a utilitarian device into a reflection of the attributes the flight director wants to reinforce. In keeping with the long-standing tradition of the Flight Director Office, new flight directors announce their call sign at the beginning of their first shift.

Renfrew struggled to settle on a call sign, discarding numerous names for reasons ranging from trivial to profound, trying them on like new suits that did not quite fit. To rid himself of “namer’s block” he started looking for things associated with the number 74. An evening helping his daughter with her chemistry homework provided him with the direction he needed, and he chose tungsten, the 74th element on the periodic table with the second highest melting point of any element.

“By itself, tungsten is a source of light, which I find symbolic of the flight director’s role as a leader. The images that come to my mind when I think of a leader often involve a person lighting the way for others to follow while also illuminating the pitfalls for those following to avoid,” Renfrew says. “I also find tungsten symbolic because an important attribute of a flight director is to take the heat of the job without melting. The attribute of tungsten I think best represents the position of flight director, however, is that it is most often used in combination with other elements. Adopting tungsten as my call sign signifies that no matter what strengths I bring individually, I recognize that I am always stronger as part of a team of flight controllers.”

With America’s human spaceflight program resting on the shoulders of the flight director, it can be a heavy weight to bear. Flight directors prioritize crew first, then vehicle, and then the mission. Renfrew made it a point to get to know the crew and their families personally.

“They can see how fiercely I protect them. I don’t think I go too far when I say they trust me to always have thoughts about their safety front and center. The challenge, then, is knowing the crew as I do and then intentionally putting them in a situation that has increased risk. They are literally my friends, but I also recognize them as professional astronauts who intend to be there, at the pointed end of the spear. That, without question, is the hardest part of the job,” Renfrew says.

On the other hand, Renfrew shares that the most rewarding part of being a flight director is being able to work with the dedicated, immensely talented people on his team. Renfrew tells the story of Hurricane Harvey hitting Houston in 2017 to demonstrate the resilience and professionalism embodied by the people he works with. Two flight control teams were trapped in JSC for approximately four days, but they still remained on console to protect their crew, their vehicle, and execute their mission without missing a beat, doing their job so well that the ISS crew did not even know that they were flooded in until days later.

There is a saying at JSC, ”It is the people that make us fly,” that brings home the message that without the caliber of people working there, none of the cutting edge technology is all that useful. Renfrew thinks the same could be said for his time at Trinity.

“It wasn’t the classroom lessons that stuck with me; it was the lessons associated with the people I met there,” Renfrew says. “Yes, the education was important, but there were far more important lessons I learned about myself, about other people, and about other cultures than I ever did learn in class.”

Renfrew is currently on rotation from the Flight Operations Directorate and the Flight Director Office. He has also been loaned out to the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program, where he is the operations manager. As NASA celebrates its 65th anniversary of starting operations this October, Renfrew believes its greatest legacy is the international cooperation it has built that extends far beyond spaceflight.

“The real legacy of NASA is that we have shown the world what’s possible when we cooperate with each other, and we have shown the world that, from space, you cannot see the boundaries separating us from one another,” Renfrew says.