Dan Swint—fighter pilot, lawyer, IT guru
2015-07-07
The launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, started the space race and defined a generation. The world was different then, with no Internet or cable news and only three channels on TV. For a young boy in La Porte, Texas, seeing the newspaper headlines about the launch of Sputnik created dreams of space travel and flying. Dan Swint made those dreams a reality when he became a NASA cooperative education student in 1965 and a fighter pilot for the Air National Guard in 1969.
Over the next 50 years, Swint would explore different career paths inside the government and out. After active duty, he returned to the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Field. While waiting to fly, he studied for the bar exam and eventually obtained his law degree. He began practicing general civil law in Houston, but it didn’t hold his attention for long.
“The most interesting thing while practicing law wasn’t as interesting as watching someone check for cut tires on my aircraft, which was the most boring part of the flight,” Swint said. “There’s nothing I’d rather do [than work for NASA].”
Returning to NASA in 1989, Swint led the Flight Crew Operations Space Station Support Office, Integrated Operations. Several years later, he served on the Space Station Redesign Team in Crystal City.
In 1995, Swint began to build an information system infrastructure for JSC’s Aircraft Operations Division. NASA aircraft and crew were managed by individual systems at each of the seven centers with aircraft support, but Swint envisioned an integrated system that could be used agencywide.
Swint led the design, development and deployment of the NASA Aircraft Management Information System (NAMIS), an automated system for authorizing the use of government aircraft; tracking logistical spending, flight crew and hour tracking; and maintaining the status of maintenance actions. He questioned the status quo, requiring validation for every process and requirement before committing development resources to writing the code.
With NAMIS fully implemented, data was quickly and accurately extracted and reported, training needs were cross-checked with crew requests and maintenance plans were quickly modified with actions, source drawings and annotations. NAMIS’ intuitive user interface also mirrored actual workload procedures to facilitate work assignments and decision processes, and its Web-based feature gave full access to users wherever there was an Internet connection.
A decade after it was first conceptualized, NAMIS was deployed and implemented at all NASA agencies with aircraft support. In 2011, General Services Administration (GSA) officials visited JSC to view its capabilities for possible use by other government flight operations.
Since its implementation, NAMIS has been responsible for recovering over $26 million in exchange savings and credits from the Department of Defense and cost reductions for spare parts and materials in excess of $1.5 million per year since 2003.
On June 25, Swint’s passion for technology and space were recognized at the 15th Annual Federal Aviation Awards ceremony. GSA and the Interagency Committee for Aviation Policy presented Swint with the Aviation Professional in an Operational/Support Position Award.
In addition to his work on NAMIS, Swint is also the manager for the NASA Microgravity Flight Services Program, which provides a C-9 aircraft to the scientific community for reduced-gravity research and conducts educational campaigns to expose university students and teachers to the unique environment of microgravity. Swint is dedicated to ensuring the agency has the appropriate resources to execute microgravity flights.
“Space technology will ultimately be the survival of our species,” Swint said. “We won’t have the technology to deal with threats of asteroids, comets or global climate changes without the technology developed by space travel.”
Cat Pate
NASA Johnson Space Center
Over the next 50 years, Swint would explore different career paths inside the government and out. After active duty, he returned to the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Field. While waiting to fly, he studied for the bar exam and eventually obtained his law degree. He began practicing general civil law in Houston, but it didn’t hold his attention for long.
“The most interesting thing while practicing law wasn’t as interesting as watching someone check for cut tires on my aircraft, which was the most boring part of the flight,” Swint said. “There’s nothing I’d rather do [than work for NASA].”
Returning to NASA in 1989, Swint led the Flight Crew Operations Space Station Support Office, Integrated Operations. Several years later, he served on the Space Station Redesign Team in Crystal City.
In 1995, Swint began to build an information system infrastructure for JSC’s Aircraft Operations Division. NASA aircraft and crew were managed by individual systems at each of the seven centers with aircraft support, but Swint envisioned an integrated system that could be used agencywide.
Swint led the design, development and deployment of the NASA Aircraft Management Information System (NAMIS), an automated system for authorizing the use of government aircraft; tracking logistical spending, flight crew and hour tracking; and maintaining the status of maintenance actions. He questioned the status quo, requiring validation for every process and requirement before committing development resources to writing the code.
With NAMIS fully implemented, data was quickly and accurately extracted and reported, training needs were cross-checked with crew requests and maintenance plans were quickly modified with actions, source drawings and annotations. NAMIS’ intuitive user interface also mirrored actual workload procedures to facilitate work assignments and decision processes, and its Web-based feature gave full access to users wherever there was an Internet connection.
A decade after it was first conceptualized, NAMIS was deployed and implemented at all NASA agencies with aircraft support. In 2011, General Services Administration (GSA) officials visited JSC to view its capabilities for possible use by other government flight operations.
Since its implementation, NAMIS has been responsible for recovering over $26 million in exchange savings and credits from the Department of Defense and cost reductions for spare parts and materials in excess of $1.5 million per year since 2003.
On June 25, Swint’s passion for technology and space were recognized at the 15th Annual Federal Aviation Awards ceremony. GSA and the Interagency Committee for Aviation Policy presented Swint with the Aviation Professional in an Operational/Support Position Award.
In addition to his work on NAMIS, Swint is also the manager for the NASA Microgravity Flight Services Program, which provides a C-9 aircraft to the scientific community for reduced-gravity research and conducts educational campaigns to expose university students and teachers to the unique environment of microgravity. Swint is dedicated to ensuring the agency has the appropriate resources to execute microgravity flights.
“Space technology will ultimately be the survival of our species,” Swint said. “We won’t have the technology to deal with threats of asteroids, comets or global climate changes without the technology developed by space travel.”
Cat Pate
NASA Johnson Space Center