As space-exploration landscape changes, Penn State aerospace students retool their mission

PennLIve.com: As space-exploration landscape changes, Penn State aerospace students retool their mission

They grew up dreaming of space shuttle launches, counting down the numbers in their heads before the red-orange blaze sent a craft into the unknown.

Penn State aerospace student Kyle Farringer of East Pennsboro Township says he would love to be in the space program but has already accepted a job with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Middletown.

While they were in high school, learning the basic equations that explain motion, they heard President George W. Bush say America is going back to the moon. America, he said, is going to Mars by 2015. When the Constellation program picks up where the Apollo and the shuttle programs left off, America will remind the world that space is our destiny, too.

Four years ago, they began studying aerospace engineering at Penn State, a program that has produced three astronauts and scores of graduates who have worked on space missions from the ground. Even if Bush’s Martian timetable was a bit aggressive, they knew they would soon be ready to help chart the universe.

Then the target changed.

The economy collapsed. The national deficit ballooned. A new, better space vehicle became too expensive.

President Barack Obama’s speeches implore the nation’s youth to win the future, but he’s not planning for their “Sputnik moment” to come in outer space. He killed the Constellation program in October, saying it was “over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation.” NASA won’t begin building the shuttle’s replacement until 2015 at the earliest.

Private industry, Obama says, is the way forward.

Companies such as Space X are developing rockets for low-orbit space flight and satellite maintenance. They and their competitors predict a coming boom in the commercial space industry.

That boom is not here yet.

Endeavor will take off for the last time on Friday, the next-to-last-ever shuttle launch.

As 87 Penn State aerospace students prepare to graduate soon after, those who wanted to work in the space field are finding a far different landscape than they once envisioned.

Unlike many of their peers with less-technical degrees, they expect to find work. But instead of rockets, they will likely work on the “air” side of the field, building crafts that fly at a much lower altitude.

As one senior, Joe Singer, put it: “Four years ago, people were thinking, ‘I’m going to get a job in space.’ Now it’s, ‘I better think about something else.’”

We asked seniors what it has felt like to watch the change in the nation’s priorities and what they think it means, for themselves and our future as explorers.

Rocket scientists in training

Kyle Farringer, a 2007 graduate of East Pennsboro High School who is majoring in physics: “I knew I wanted to do this in third grade. I watched too much ‘Star Wars.’ ... I played with a lot of Legos. I just enjoyed designing stuff.”

Robert Thacker-Dey, from Bucks County: “By junior year of high school, I really wanted to do something pioneering. Something brand new. To me, the last thing really left that was new to people was the space industry.”

Singer, a 2007 graduate of Pequea Valley High School in Lancaster County: “We had to do a career survey in seventh grade and aerospace came up. ... My senior year, I built a [remote-control] airplane for my senior project.”

Thacker-Dey: “I didn’t even realize it was rocket science until halfway through my freshman year.”

Singer: “I wrote a paper about the future of space flight two years ago. To submit it for a conference now, I had to revise it thoroughly because so much has changed.

“I get the impression people are confused with what the direction of space exploration should be. We’ve changed it from, ‘We’re going to the moon and Mars’ to ‘an asteroid’ to ‘a point in space where it’s easy to get to.’”

Farringer: “They get going on one thing, and then they cancel it. They just don’t stick with anything.”

Singer: “If we as a nation stated we were getting to Mars by 2025, say, and really committed to it, people would support it.”

Farringer: “I would love to go back to the moon, but there’s no momentum for it anymore. There’s so much we don’t know about our universe yet.”

The work:
Thacker-Dey: “The work is so much harder than I would have guessed coming out of high school. If you had told me it would take me 12 hours to do a project and I still wouldn’t be done, I would have said you were crazy.

“There have been assignments where I’ve stared at the page for five hours straight and not been halfway done the first problem.”

Farringer: “Junior year is when they try to weed you out. You’re pretty much swamped. You can’t keep up with it. Last year, I remember pulling eight or nine all-nighters to get [things] done. You have to form groups and really rely on one another to get things done.

“The guys I study with are my best friends.”

Thacker-Dey: “They set you up with these huge computer programs when we’re working in [coding] languages you barely know and you have to have it done in two weeks.”

Singer: “I have two minors in the college of liberal arts [political science and religious studies]. I think the workload is pretty consistent across the university. ... People who don’t enjoy engineering stuff will tell you engineering is hard.”

Thacker-Dey: “You have to be able to accept failure and understand that you’re not always right.”

The future:
Thacker-Dey: “We had the same design for the shuttle since the ’70s. It’s good that we’re currently starting to build momentum for the next generation of vehicles. It’s bad to cancel the shuttle without something to replace it.”

Singer: “I was in D.C. a couple )of) weeks ago on a congressional-visit day for a student aerospace association. ... Congressman [Todd] Platts said we need to make sure we don’t have duplicate programs doing the same thing. There’s a bunch of NASA programs doing the same thing.”

Thacker-Dey: “Most people not in aerospace say it’s more of a luxury and not a necessity, especially where we are. We have a huge amount of deficit and a government that doesn’t always work properly.”

Singer: “Private industry has to get past the point of people trusting them.”

Farringer: “You’re not going to make a profit off knowledge. That’s not the way it works.”

What’s next?
After graduation, Farringer will go to work at Pratt-Whitney in Lower Swatara Township, testing jet engines.

Singer will begin a three-year engineering rotation with G.E. Aviation. A month after he goes to work, he’ll start classes for his master’s degree.

Thacker-Dey is in the interview process for two jobs: working on F-35 jet engines for a government agency on the air side of the field, and a private space company that is developing inflatable habitats for people in orbit. The company is conducting tests, including one at the International Space Station.

Thacker-Dey: “[The private company is] the job I always wanted, but the [government job] has all the benefits. It’s a great package and they’ll pay for grad school.

“I think once I have a government job it’s easier to move around, and with the government, your pay scale doesn’t decrease. ... I want to be a propulsion engineer for NASA, but they don’t have any entry-level openings right now. If I start with [the government job], I could change later.

“If you offered me the choice right now, I’d probably take [the government job].”

Farringer: “Really, no one I talked to got a job on the space side. It’s really all with air.”

Singer: “One or two people have leads in space, but I think most people in my class will end up in the air side.”

Robert Melton, director of undergraduate studies for Penn State’s aerospace engineering program: “We certainly have students in my spacecraft-design class who are finding jobs in the space side.

“Students say, ‘I want to work on a mission that sends a man to Mars.’ Well, the chances of working on that mission might not be great, but there are a lot of other things: private space exploration, satellite projects, global imaging.”

Singer: “After my sophomore year, I interned at the Aberdeen Proving Ground because I thought experience in government work would give me a head’s-up when dealing with NASA.

“[Now,] if there’s a point where I’m working in space technology, it’s going to be in private industry.”

Farringer: “If there’s going to be another space race, it will be between private companies.”

Singer: “I’m a practical person. I don’t want to work in an industry with so much fluctuation.

“If NASA came to me today and said we’d like to offer you a job, I probably wouldn’t take it because of the uncertainty about where the dollars are going to go.”

Farringer: “I don’t know what my career is going to hold, to be honest with you. I have a feeling NASA is going to keep declining. I guess commercial is going to pick up. But with the way the industry is going, I doubt I’ll work in it.”

Thacker-Dey: “I see myself as a very positive person. Just because you tell me I can’t do something doesn’t mean I won’t do it one day. It doesn’t matter if I have to wait 20 years, 30 years. This is what I want to do.”