AC SCIENCE AND MATH STUDENTS VISIT NASA

The Red Team had a huge problem.

Not only were they nearly $80 million over budget, but the Mars rover prototype they’d worked so hard to design and build was falling apart before their very eyes, and at the worst possible moment: During the demonstration itself. Those students watched helplessly as their efforts deteriorated due to faulty equipment. All that planning, all that attention to detail in an effort to land a “contract” with the space program; all disappearing as their mortally wounded rover whirred helplessly across the mock Mars landscape.

“Red Rover, Red Rover, looks like it’s all over,” moaned one team member.

On the other side of the room, the White Team rolled through the course without any major malfunctions; however, they encountered one unforeseen problem. The module they’d created was sturdy, reliable; but in their efforts to design a hardier module, they’d designed the vehicle just a few centimeters too wide to fit into the various nooks and crevices. A couple of dips into those fissures came up empty, to the chagrin of the designers.

Finally, the Black Team emerged with a superior model. Their rover held up over the rugged terrain, displaying its ability to navigate the landscape while retrieving valuable specimens – the very goal of the project itself.

These weren’t NASA engineers at work – at least, not yet. These were eleven Angelina College Science and Math students who earned the distinction as NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars for 2009. These individuals – Bryan Williams (Lufkin), Amanda Murley (Zavalla), Michael Warren (Nacogdoches), Michael Verhoef (Lufkin), Clayton Scott (Alto), Chris Gergen (Central HS), Charles Morgan (Alto), Jake Tillery (Nacogdoches), Trevor Hagerty (Alto), Andre Vodonou (Webster) and Chad Golden (Corrigan) – along with AC instructors Dr. Sally Haas and Elaine Russell traveled to the Johnson Space Center for a seminar with NASA employees and students from other community colleges.

The Mars Rover was a team project designed to expose these students to the myriad stages of planning, design, presentation and demonstration involved with real-life situations faced by actual NASA employees. They had to “pitch” their rover to mock buyers – and in most cases, justify exceeding the budgets by as many as $100 million.

“In the classroom, you get so much theory,” Dr. Sally Haas, AC Science and Math instructor, said. “We try to give them practical applications, but much of time it’s canned. Here, they can see for themselves and get hands-on work while talking with (NASA) representatives who actually use what we teach in class. It’s more relevant, and it’s invaluable experience for a college student.”

The three-day seminar included a guest speaker present for both of the Challenger and Columbia disasters; he mentioned the mantra “failure is not an option” – and explained why such a statement, while hopeful, isn’t always realistic.

“Space exploration is a risky endeavor, no matter how many precautions we take,” Brock Stone, former Deputy Center Director at the JSC. “All we can do with any mishap is learn everything we can to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Later, the students and instructors took a break from the planning stages of their project to tour the Space Center itself. The guided tour offered each an opportunity to view both space history and history in the making.

For example, Building 9 housed space station replicas on which astronauts train for their work in space. A docking station in which Russian and American craft work in unison spread across the floor; the gray Russian stations with names such as Zvezda (star) and Zarya (sunrise) attached to the white U.S. modules Quest, Unity and Destiny. In the building were also space suits and lunar modules, along with mock-ups of the space shuttles themselves. The large, black-and-white cone of one shuttle allowed a distant peek into the cockpit; the tail section, with its enormous exhausts, gave students an idea of the sheer size of the vessel.

At this station, tour guide Donna Kitchen provided descriptions and commentary along with bits of space shuttle trivia. For example, Kitchen explained that the current space shuttles sport windshields a full seven panes thick. Previously, the vehicles employed five-pane thick shields, until a collision in orbit sent an object through the first four panes – leaving the mission mere inches from disaster.

For AC Chemical Engineering major Bryan Williams of Lufkin, learning the intricacies involved with even the most miniscule of tasks left an impression.

“It’s a big reminder of how one job that seems so small can lead to so many bigger things,” Williams said. “You see how vital something as seemingly insignificant as the thickness of an astronaut’s glove can be. The smaller details take so much time, but they’re all so vital to everything involved in the space program.”

Next stop: The current Mission Control Center, where students and guests witnessed an actual “T-minus” countdown for a simulated launch. Banks of computer screens manned by NASA employees sat before gigantic video screens relaying information to the operators – one of whom carried the hallowed title “Flight Director.” Students watched a video simulation of the projected flight path, following the vehicle’s progress as it left the earth’s atmosphere. Other screens offered real-time video transmitted from a station orbiting the earth; students viewed the images in awe as the station moved from sunrise to sunset across the globe.

Moments later, the students were standing inside a true national monument: The original Mission Control center, responsible for the nation’s first forays into space exploration. On the walls were plaques denoting the Gemini and Apollo missions (Gemini IV was the first). Throughout the room were small testaments to history. A mirror taken from the original spacecraft and given as a gift by the members of the near-disastrous Apollo 13 crew hung over the water fountain. In the hallway leading into the center, a large mural paid tribute to the crews of the ill-fated Challenger and Columbia missions. Students remarked on the “ancient” equipment: Computers with rotary dials for phone lines, and large square buttons with typed labels for operation.

Kitchen then led the group to the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory containing the pool in which astronauts train in buoyancy control to simulate space walking. The pool is 202-feet long, 100-feet wide and 40-feet, six-inches deep; it contains 6.2 million gallons of water. Mock stations were submersed below the surface, and the water’s clarity allowed viewers to witness divers and astronauts “space walking.” While working in this tank, the students learned, astronauts spend as many as eight hours at a time in their space suits simulating a workstation environment.

AC student Amanda Murley, from Zavalla, is a Mechanical Engineering major who found this particular station fascinating.

“The pool where they practice maneuvering in zero gravity is really neat,” Murley said. “I’m always interested when there are cranes and heavy machinery around, and seeing all that equipment in the pool, and the way they’re able to maneuver it, was very interesting.”

Williams said seeing the space station employees at work helped him realize how close he is to working in such an environment.

“It gave me a chance to focus on what I’m doing now as far as my chosen career, but it also showed me some changes I can make to better tailor my lifestyle so that maybe someday I can actually work here,” Williams said. “They told us about the co-op programs and internships, and it made me realize I actually have the possibility of working with NASA someday.”

Elaine Russell, AC Science and Math instructor, is a veteran of the seminar; as such, she’s seen the impact on those students who participate.

“I’ve made this trip several times, and the biggest benefit is opening students’ eyes to possibilities they didn’t know they have,” Russell said. “These projects tap into individual talents, such as creating a presentation board or giving the presentation itself. This gives those students an opportunity to realize they have skills other than what they thought they had.”

Finally, the students returned to the Gilruth Center to demonstrate their rovers’ capabilities. They ran their prototypes through a mock course containing “Mars” rocks; the goal was to use their rovers to retrieve specimens for later analysis. Some rocks rested on the borders of the course; any specimen knocked beyond those borders, according to course monitors, “falls off the planet.”

There was disappointment for the teams whose modules didn’t perform as expected; there was elation in those whose projects worked to near perfection. Through it all, there was a spirit of competition, as each team tried mightily to finish with a better performance than their counterparts. There were cheers as rovers crossed the line with precious samples just before the final buzzer; there were groans as another module dropped its specimen mere inches from the finish line.

In the end, the Black Team prevailed. Jake Tillery of Nacogdoches was a member of that team; in fact, he was the rover “driver” who skillfully navigated his rover around the course. His teammates greeted him with fist bumps, high fives and plenty of satisfied grins.

“You pretty much see this competitive spirit every time we come here,” Haas said. “I think knowing they get to see their creations come alive is different. They’ve seen it in theory; then they see the reality of how it all comes together.

“Today, the Black Team’s rover worked perfectly, so they get that sense of satisfaction.”

“You realize just how much of this revolves around teamwork,” Tillery said. “Every bit of it requires teamwork. We all had to work together to design the module, work within a budget, submit for ideas and put those ideas together in a way that could give us a chance for success.

“The whole experience makes you see just how much actual work and planning goes into something like this. I can’t imagine everything involved with the bigger projects.”

Charles Morgan, a Chemical Engineering major from Alto, said the combination of history and present gave him a true picture of how working in such environment requires contributions from every single person involved.

“One of the key aspects of being a chemical engineering major is working with so many other people whose ideas and ability levels might be different from yours,” Morgan said. “The diversity itself offered a very unique learning experience.

“But visiting NASA just makes you hungry for more. Knowing the idea of space exploration in the early 1900s was unthought-of, then seeing how it all transpired to reality – we’re contemplating a manned mission to Mars – is almost overwhelming.”