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Spaced out in Houston

Mark McPherson ('03) fulfils his lifelong ambition to work for NASA.

WORDS: Mrs JENNI ALLEN – Former Scotch Parent

Ever since I have known Mark McPherson (’03) he has had a fascination with rockets and space. So it was no surprise when he fulfilled a lifelong ambition to work for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, after completing Engineering and Commerce degrees at the University of Melbourne.

Recently I spoke to Mark and asked him a few questions about his work and life in Houston.

You spent a year studying at the University of Texas, Austin in 2007/08. How did that lead to an internship with NASA?

I was taking a number of elective classes in the Aerospace Engineering department at the University of Texas. They have a close relationship with NASA, particularly the Johnson Space Center where a number of their graduates ultimately end up. In my second semester at UT, I attended a fairly casual question and answer session with a group of engineers from the Johnson Space Center, organised by the department. I was able to speak one-on-one with a few of the engineers and learned about some of the opportunities for students to intern with NASA. A few weeks later I sent in my resume and the rest is history.

What project did you work on as an intern?

On arrival at the Johnson Space Center I was assigned a very challenging project in the flight design and dynamics division. This group is responsible for supporting flight operations for the Space Shuttle and the new Orion vehicle – a key component of the Constellation program intended to take humans back to the moon.

As a part of the design of this new spacecraft, I was given the task to identify the boundaries that may exist for what is known as an emergency ballistic abort: essentially a back-up procedure that allows the crew and the vehicle to get back to earth safely in the case of one or more serious system failures.

This kind of atmospheric re-entry puts a great deal of stress on both the crew and the spacecraft, and I was asked to determine exactly how high those stresses would be under a range of scenarios. This involved a lot of computational analysis using NASA’s powerful supercomputers and in-house simulation software. My work was then used to design the onboard flight software that controls the spacecraft during such an emergency.

How did your internship lead to full-time employment with NASA?

After my experience as an intern I was very keen to go back to Houston and fulfil my dream of working for NASA full time. Fortunately I made a good impression during my internship, and that resulted in the offer of a full-time position in the same group I’d been with.

What department are you with now, and what project are you currently working on (or is that classified!)?

Most of what I work on is public knowledge and is not classified. At the moment I am continuing to work on the operations side of things as part of the descent analysis group in the flight design and dynamics division. As an engineer I’m responsible for supporting the re-entry aspect of all missions flown out of the Johnson Space Center, both human and robotic. Recently, most of my work has centred on analysis to aid design decisions presently being made about the Orion spacecraft.

Mark sitting in the pilot seat of a shuttle flight simulator, at launch.

What have been the highlights of your job so far?

There have been so many highlights: from piloting the motion simulator that NASA uses to train the astronauts to fly the space shuttle, to experiencing weightlessness in the zero-G aircraft. For sheer excitement, nothing can compare to witnessing a Space Shuttle launch first hand. In April this year I was lucky enough to be invited to the VIP viewing area at the Kennedy Space Center for a pre-dawn launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Watching as night was literally turned into day by the sheer power required to hurtle a seven-person crew into orbit was an amazing sight in itself. However, to do this standing next to the first man to set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong, was an experience I will never forget.

Have you met any famous people yet?

Working at the Johnson Space Center, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to meet some very interesting people. Notably, these have included Gene Kranz (flight director for Apollo 11 and 13), Chris Kraft (NASA’s first flight director) and Charles Bolden (current NASA administrator and former Space Shuttle commander). However, the highlight has to be meeting Neil Armstrong at the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-131.

If you had the opportunity would you like to become an astronaut?

Absolutely! The chance to see the curvature of the earth and entire continents in one view, to witness a sunset and sunrise every 45 minutes, or the oceans juxtaposed against the blackness of space is a perspective and an experience that I hope one day to achieve. During my internship I was fortunate enough to get a small taste of what it’s like to be an astronaut by flying in NASA’s weightless training aircraft, and that has certainly cemented my dream of getting into space.

How did you get the opportunity to experience weightlessness?

Four fellow interns and I were given a rare chance to design, build and fly an experiment on the zero-G aircraft, which NASA uses for weightless training. This plane simulates weightlessness by flying a series of harrowing parabolic arcs that effectively eliminate the force of gravity, leaving you in complete weightlessness for about 25 seconds at a time! It is an amazing feeling and one that is difficult to describe … sort of like swimming without the water. It is quite a sight to see ordinary objects (like M&Ms) and people (arms flailing) literally floating right in front of you. But it’s not something I’d recommend for those with a sensitive stomach!

What is it like living in Houston?

Houston certainly lives up to the reputation that everything is bigger in Texas. It is an enormous sprawling city, and although that can mean long travel times, it does mean that there is always something to do here. Houston is a very international city with a great mix of people from around the world. Living near the Johnson Space Center, everything has a connection to NASA, the whole area having essentially grown out of the space program. So it’s nice to be able to live that history.

What do you miss about living in Australia?

I definitely miss the restaurant scene in Melbourne, with such a vibrant culture of great food: it is tough to find anything like that in this part of the world. I also miss the beaches – unfortunately the brown sands of the Gulf of Mexico don’t quite compare to the white Australian beaches. GS

Updated: Monday 24 June 2013