Rick Searfoss,Professional Speaker, (Former Top Gun Pilot) Astronaut, Space Shuttle Commander and currently Business Entrepreneur, shares his stories about leadership, team building, team work, safety, execution, innovation, inspiration, motivation, dedication, focus, hope for our world, the global economy, the future of space flight and the future of mankind.

Mix pilots, engineers, physicians, veterinarians, and scientists together and what do you get? The STS-90 Neurolab crew! There's nine of us altogether. During the mission, seven will be flying and two will be providing ground support in the Payload Operations Control Center at JSC.

Bureau Directors Comments: Rick was a Space Shuttle Commander, for STS-90, and built a team of Astronaut Researchers with medical degrees for the largest and most complicated medical research mission in space.

Plus his presentations are wonderful, Rick spends time with the people after his presentation and the clients consistently rave about how wonderful Rick is to work with.

Rick Searfoss is a unique speaker! Rick tells a story how his last mission as commander was over 8 years in the planning, and two years in daily training, and two weeks in execution. On the last day of the mission (STS-90) he had to land the Space Shuttle Columbia, (Value $500,000,000 - that's half a billion) with the heaviest payload in the history of NASA, at night, while the whole world was watching! It's a great story about high level ACCOUNTABILITY!

Rick Searfoss was featured in a Volkswagen Commercial, (Same series with Heidi Klum - Advertising Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky, USA) and Rick had a celebrity appearance on Donald Trumps, The Apprentice with the Zero Gravity Plane.

Four times a year, Rick is the celebrity guest Astronaut at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Rick Searfoss trains top pilots from around the world to become certified experimental test pilots. Rick also works with another entrepreneurial space technology company, XCOR Aerospace, as their chief test pilot and director of flight test in developing unique, highly innovative rocket-propelled space planes for the emerging suborbital space industry. Rick is one of only two people in history to fly a Liquid Fueled Rocket Plane.

The Real "Right Stuff" Human space flight: Dynamic, challenging, difficult. A perfect model for any ambitious venture. Former astronaut Rick Searfoss was the Chief Judge for the highly successful and innovative Ansari X Prize competition for a $10 million prize to the first private team to develop and fly a reusable human-carrying spacecraft.

Neurolab's 26 experiments targeted one of the most complex and least understood parts of the human body - the nervous system. Primary goals were to conduct basic research in neurosciences and expand understanding of how the nervous system develops and functions in space. Test subjects were crew members and rats, mice, crickets, snails and two kinds of fish. Cooperative effort of NASA, several domestic partners and the space agencies of Canada (CSA), France (CNES) and Germany (DARA), as well as the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). Most experiments conducted in pressurized Spacelab long module located in Columbia's payload bay. This was 16th and last scheduled flight of the ESA-developed Spacelab module although Spacelab pallets will continue to be used on the International Space Station.

Research conducted as planned, with the exception of the Mammalian Development Team, which had to reprioritize science activities because of the unexpected high mortality rate of neonatal rats on board.

Other payloads included the Shuttle Vibration Forces experiment, the Bioreactor Demonstration System-04, and three Get-Away Special (GAS) canister investigations.

Working with engineers on the ground a week into the flight, the on-orbit crew used aluminum tape to bypass a suspect valve in the Regenerative Carbon Dioxide Removal System that had threatened to cut short the mission.

Mission Management Team considered, but decided against, extending the mission one day because the science community indicated an extended flight was not necessary and weather conditions were expected to deteriorate after planned landing on Sunday, May 3.

STS-90 Mission Specialist Kay Hire was Kennedy Space Center's first employee to be chosen as an astronaut candidate.

STS-58

STS-76

STS-90