HWHAP Ep415 Air Force Rescue and Recovery
JSC · 2026-03-13
HWHAP Air Force Rescue and Recovery Leah Cheshier Houston We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 415: Air Force Rescue and Recovery. I'm Leah Cheshier, and I'll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human space flight and more. At NASA, we believe it takes a team to make a mission successful, and sometimes that includes teams outside the agency. The First Air Force Detachment 3 has a storied history supporting rescue and recovery for NASA, beginning with the Mercury program in the late 50s. This specialized team coordinates Commercial Crew Program, Artemis, and Soyuz launch and recovery support, integrates with the launch support officers in Mission Control, conducts water survival and recovery training for space flight crews, advises the Flight Operations Directorate on rescue and recovery capabilities, and more. Joining me today to discuss all things recovery is Lieutenant Colonel Dan Kulp, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Strack, and retired Navy SEAL Master Chief Dan Kirkbride. We'll talk through the history of their program, how they trained for various missions, and the importance of having their team ready to jump into action. Let's do it. <Intro Music> Leah Cheshier Everyone. Thank you so much for joining us here today on Houston We Have a Podcast. Brian Strack Thank you. It's great to be here. Daniel Kulp Thanks. Thanks for having us. Dan Kirkbride Great to be here. Leah Cheshier Well, thank you all for joining here today. I would love to start by just learning a little bit more about each of you, where you come from, and what your jobs look like right now. Daniel Kulp Guess I'll start. My name is Daniel Kulp I'm a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and my role here at JSC is I'm the Deputy Chief of Department of War, Human Space Flight Support. I commissioned to the Air Force out of University of Colorado at Boulder at Detachment 105, go Thunder Chiefs. And have a interest in space for a long time, and have got Master's in Space Studies from University of North Dakota, Flight Test Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology, and now I'm a PhD student at Colorado School of Mines, working in Space Resources. So being out here at JSC is just kind of a kid in a candy shop. Brian Strack Hey, Brian Strack, I'm also a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, also a pilot. Flew a couple of things back in the day, and I've been a lead for the mission that's a NASA facing mission, for the Department of Defense now, the Department of War, for about 10 years now. So I was out at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Then moved up to United States Space Command, which is relatively new. They reinstated US Space Comm, as they call it, up in Colorado Springs. So I was able to stand up the office that is a NASA facing an Integration Office there and then I'm hopefully my final assignment here as the as the Chief of the Office. So I work with Dan and Dan. Grew up in a small town in Montana, went to University of North Dakota, and have been in the Air Force now for about 24 years. Dan Kirkbride Hey, I'm Dane Kirkbride. I'm like the other two fine gentlemen here as Air Force officers. I'm the token Navy guy making this truly a joint operation. Retired Navy SEAL Master Chief, one of my roles in when I was on active duty was the personnel recovery and Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, program manager. So a lot of combat search and rescue and personnel recovery operations and management, and my background, this is a joint operation that we'll obviously get into with the particulars between rescue and recovery. So it's heavy on Air Force and heavy on Navy. So really stoked to be able to represent the maritime side of things. Leah Cheshier Wow, I'm excited. So two of you went to the same school, though, right? Who was that? Did y'all know each other in school? Daniel Kulp I think Brian and I both have master’s from University of North Dakota in the Space Studies program out there, so we didn't overlap. But that was one of those great distance learning opportunities that we get to kind of have in the military, where we can get some good degrees from some schools online. Brian Strack I was, I was there as an undergrad. He got his master's there. I went, I did my undergrad, and then undergrad there, or a master's there, and Embry Riddle. Leah Cheshier Okay, cool. Daniel Kulp Yeah, I think it's fair to say we're a team of space nerds, so we've all been working kind of like academically in the space. And it's really cool that we're all three here at the same time. Leah Cheshier Thank you all for breaking down a little bit more about who you are, what you've been doing up until this point. And so the Air Force recovery team really became involved with NASA during the Mercury era. So at our beginnings of human space flight, what did that involvement look like? Wh