Allan Rutter: 00:15
Howdy everyone, welcome to Thinking Transportation. Conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another. I’m Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Allan Rutter: 00:30
So a few short weeks ago, the world turned its attention to lunar spaceflight for the first time in 50 years, with the successful mission of the Artemis II, its four member crew, a new spacecraft, a new rocket launch system. Today, we’re going to talk about industrial needs, terrestrial and extra, as NASA and the United States plan for the establishment of a permanent presence on the Moon and later on Mars. Dr. Nancy Currie- Gregg is the head of the new Texas A&M Space Institute, professor of practice in the Departments of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University. Joining Nancy is TTI’s own agency director, Greg Winfree. Welcome to you both.

Greg Winfree: 01:15
Thanks so much, Allan. Great to be here with you.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 01:19
Yeah, looking forward to the conversation.

Allan Rutter: 01:22
Nancy, first, how does a young woman who grew up in a small town in Southwest Ohio and graduates from The Ohio State University end up in Army aviation?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 01:34
So, very interesting question. Of course, Ohio is kind of the cradle of astronauts, if you’re not aware. At one point, Ohio had produced more astronauts than any state in the nation. And just north of my little town that I grew up in– which is Troy, Ohio, just north of Dayton, Ohio– is Wapakoneta, Ohio, which is the home of Neil Armstrong. So I certainly had a lot of role models. John Glenn, of course, from the great state of Ohio. But as you might be aware, when I was young, little girls didn’t grow up to be military pilots and astronauts. Luckily, the Internet didn’t exist. And I know that sounds comical, but there was nothing I could Google to say, you know, what is the path for a young woman who wants to pursue a military aviation career? It wasn’t available. So luckily, none of my teachers nor my parents ever squelched that dream. And when I was in high school, they started letting the first women fly in the military. And when I was in college, they picked a first class of female astronauts. So literally, as I was walking my path, doors were opening right in front of me. When I was much younger, I thought, oh, they’d open many years ahead of time, but it was just in the nick of time. And so I just had a calling to serve our country. My dad was a bombardier on B-29s in World War II. I had his flight jacket. I used to sit in his little tiny office and look at all of his World War II pictures. And so I just had this love of aviation. My dad and I used to go out to the airfield on the weekend and watch planes take off and land. So literally, my earliest memories from the time I could walk, I used to dream about flying.

Allan Rutter: 03:09
Wow. So Ohio is to astronauts what Virginia is to presidents.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 03:13
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Allan Rutter: 03:16
So five years after graduating from Ohio State, you earn a master’s in safety engineering from UFC. How’d you choose engineering and safety together?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 03:28
Thanks for asking that; nobody’s asked it that way because there is a connection. Not only did the doors to allow females open just in front of me, but months before I graduated from The Ohio State University, the Army changed what had been a longstanding requirement for 5’4″ stature for all the pilots. I’m five foot. Typically, and I could say this as career army, typically the army is not the service that jumps out in front of everybody else and is innovative. But in this case, they were. And they went to anthropometric measurements because if you know anything about anthropometry, which is the study of body measurements, stature has nothing to do with flying, right? It has to do with seated eye height, arm length, leg length, you know, functional reach. And so they went to anthropometric measurements. And believe it or not, it met all those measurements. So I was able to get to Fort Rucker, Alabama, and enter flight school for the first time, literally living my dream.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 04:29
And one day we were getting ready to go out to fly, and I was sitting at a table, and I was flying with two other Army lieutenants, who had just graduated from West Point, and an instructor pilot. We had briefed up, we were getting ready to walk out to our aircraft. Another instructor pilot walked over to our table, and he was flying Air Force officers. And the Air Force officers at the U.S. Army flight school had a requirement that you could only have two students to one instructor. And one of his students was sick. So he said, “Captain, give me one of your students today. I’ll fly them and you can just fly with two students.” So my instructor looked around and, “Oh, Nancy, you go with them.” So we go out and we fly, and I flew first period uneventful. I’m now in the jump seat, running the checklist. It was a warm day, the doors were open, and we were flying in an airfield where there were parallel runways, four parallel runways. So two in left traffic, two in right traffic. And to this day, when I hear these words, it makes my heart stop in any aircraft or spacecraft. And I always brief people on this, only use these words if we’re about to have a really serious event. The first one, first word is “Oh,” the second word begins with an S. When I heard that, I looked up. And what I saw out the right door was an aircraft extremely nose high in a right raw yaw and starting to roll to the left. They were coming right at us. So we did an evasive maneuver. When we leveled back out, I looked out the door. The aircraft had crashed, inverted in the airfield between the two lanes.

Allan Rutter: 05:57
Wow.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 05:57
So they made a call for Medevac to come out. We circled until the Medevac came out. And when they announced to Medevac four POBs, four persons on board, I was certain that wasn’t my flight curve. But as it turns out, we returned to the airfield, we went back into the briefing room because they wanted to sequester everybody, and especially the eyewitnesses, get statements from us. And one by one, my classmates came in. And finally, the flight commander and the chaplain came in, and I was sitting at a table by myself. It was my flight crew. And the fourth person happened to be the commander of the flight wing who had jumped in at the last minute to give a no-notice evaluation ride to the instructor who was a new instructor.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 06:44
So that accident was a combination of a mechanical failure in the hydraulic system combined with human error. And it really changed my course of my profession because, you know, everybody was a little bit worried about me and how I was going to react, but I tried to turn it into a positive. And I am terrible with names, but to this day, Lieutenant Mike Scott and Lieutenant Chris Trotter, who were newly graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, are permanently etched in my memory. And I wanted to go into human factors engineering and safety on their behalf and on the behalf of the many aviators that, unfortunately, over the course of my career I saw perish doing their jobs in an attempt to understand the risk, characterize the risk, and certainly to the extent that I could preclude other human factors-related accidents.

Allan Rutter: 07:44
Wow, that’s a dramatic story, and certainly it makes sense how that drove you to pay attention to that feature of things.

Allan Rutter: 07:52
So big transitions are part of both Greg’s and my stories too. And in addition to the story you just told, you also had a big transition going from Army aviation to being assigned to NASA as a flight simulation engineer. Tell us a little bit about that journey in your career.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 08:12
I think what’s interesting is that in my mind, I never envisioned myself as an astronaut. I mean, I just thought that that bar was way too high to cross. For many, many years, as I mentioned, women were not selected as astronauts. And it was actually a couple of my flight students. I was the one that taught aerodynamics to flight students. And a couple of my flight students said, “You ever thought about the space program?” Like, me, astronaut? And you know, I was very passionate about it, but never really envisioned myself. And at that point, I have finished up my master’s degree, and so I apply. And the way military members apply, you first apply to your military service, they screen members, and then they send them to NASA. And then you’re thrown into a big pool because NASA didn’t have a quota for military astronauts versus civilian. Definitely, Army astronauts were in the great minority at that time, because at that time in Shuttle, you had astronaut pilots and astronaut mission specialists. In order to be an astronaut pilot, you have to have a thousand hours high performance jet time and then test pilot experience. Well, nobody in the Army is going to get high performance jet time. So that made all the Army astronauts in this other category, mission specialists, of which there are medical doctors. I even flew with a veterinarian, every kind of science, math, engineering degree you can imagine. And many of those individuals had PhDs. So nonetheless, I went ahead and applied as a really young captain. And they called me and they said we’d like you to come in for an interview. Then it was a short time later, I was turning in my aircraft key after flying students. I was then an instructor pilot at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and everybody said, “Did you hear the news?” And I said, “No.” And I turned around and the Today show was playing on a loop and it was the Challenger accident.

Allan Rutter: 10:05
Wow.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 10:05
And so that happened in 1986. And so they, of course, canceled interviews. But then when they reopened it in 1987, I was called and they said we’d like you to come in for an interview. So I went and I thought that was going to be my story. How cool is this? One time I actually applied and got an interview to be an astronaut. So I was very relaxed, didn’t think I had a chance. As it turns out, I didn’t have a chance. I did get a call, “you weren’t selected,” which was not a shock to me. And I was in good shape. I had just been selected to go to naval test pilot school for the Army. I was going to be the first Army female to go to naval test pilot school. But five minutes later, the phone rang again. And it was a senior Army astronaut. And he said, “NASA wants you to come work here.” And I said, “Headed to test pilot school.” And I’ll never forget, he said, “What do you want to do? You want to be a test pilot or you want to be an astronaut?” Really want to be an astronaut. He said, “This is your one shot.” So with that, I hung up and I called the Department of the Army. And I asked to speak to my assignment officer. And I told him I’m turning down test pilot school. And there was this long pause, and I’m not making this up. He said the following: “You are committing professional suicide.”

Allan Rutter: 11:24
Wow.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 11:25
It didn’t dissuade me in the least. I said, “This is my one shot, I got to take it.” And literally within weeks, I signed in to Fort Rucker, Alabama, had the time of my life, learned all that I could, and then by the grace of God, I was selected the next time they had an astronaut selection.

Allan Rutter: 11:44
So from Alabama to Southeast Houston?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 11:48
Absolutely. And one of the first things I did actually when I got there and got established in my job is I started into my doctorate at University of Houston because I knew that if I wanted to continue this quest to become an astronaut, I needed to improve my credentials.

Allan Rutter: 12:02
Well, that is a great transition that gets us into you being an astronaut. Three years after you’re there, you get selected, you go log over a thousand hours in space on four separate shuttle missions. Tell us about moments that stand out for you during your time in space or as an astronaut, period.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 12:22
I think the first one was on my very first flight. Now you have to keep in mind I’ve worked there for three years. My job was as a flight simulation engineer in the shuttle training aircraft. And so the first flight after Challenger, STS-26, down at the Kennedy Space Center, we flew the crew the night before launch, you know, practicing landings, practicing if they had to do an abort where they lost an engine early on, they had to actually flip the orbiter around, come back and land on the runway at Kennedy. So we trained them. And before they left, they said, Would you guys like to come out to night viewing? And if you’ve never been to a night viewing, this is when, in this case, the shuttle sitting on the launch pad. Normally there’s all the structure around it, but the night before launch, they remove all the structure, big xenon lights, and it’s just this magnificent engineering marvel sitting on the launch pad. So we went out, and I remember we were sitting on this little grassy hill just looking at the orbiter, and nobody said a word. I mean, we’re just all in awe. And I just kept thinking, how cool is that? I just flew with these guys tonight, and tomorrow they’re leaving Earth going to orbit. And so on my first flight, when I was up at 195 foot level, getting ready to go into the shuttle, I looked back down at that piece of grass and said, How blessed am I? That just a few years ago I was sitting down there thinking about this incredible dream that I had to be standing there someday. And that always resonated with me. The other thing is when they actually came to get me, I was knelt down in prayer. So they kind of stepped back and waited. When I got up, they said, “Do you pray every day?” And I said, “I do, and especially on mornings when I’m about to take a rocket into space.” So I’d say that’s one of the fondest memories I have.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 14:17
The other one was on my third flight, we took up the first piece of the International Space Station. And in fact, on my first flight, we were called by President Clinton to inform us that the space station funding bill passed by one vote in Congress. So fast forward a few years later, I’m now on orbit, and I reached out and grappled the first Russian segment, grappled it with the robotic arm, made it to the first U.S. segment. Then we did uh three spacewalks to make all the electrical connections, fluid connections, and then finally came the day when we were to ingress into the space station. And so literally we were the first crew to turn on the lights. And when we got to the Russian segment, the commander called, and right next to him was a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, and the commander Bob Cabana, Marine Corps colonel, called down and for the first time said the words, “Houston, this is the International Space Station.” You know, to me, that’ll be my moon landing. You know, I was always hoping to be in that class. And in fact, when we were picked in 1990, President Bush, just a few months earlier, had said we’re going back to the moon and on to Mars. So all astronaut classes have a patch, and on our class patch of 1990, has the moon and Mars. And we were convinced we were it. We were so excited. So, kind of following up on your first question about the events of these last few weeks– I mean, I am so thankful that we are finally on a path to do what for decades we have said we’re going to do, which is to leave low Earth orbit, to go back to the moon, and then ultimately on to Mars.

Greg Winfree: 16:09
That’s right. You know, Nancy’s story is just so inspiring, and this inside baseball about what goes on around these launches and the inner workings of NASA is absolutely fascinating. But with that tremendous background, history, and experience, you’re now the director of the Texas A&M Space Institute. So, you know, this is a transportation audience. This is transportation, but this is all new to us. Tell us a bit about the institute, its creation and mission, and how you joined the effort.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 16:36
Well, let me step back a little bit and how what brought me to A&M. I was at NASA for 30 years. And one of the reasons why I finished my PhD is that I always had a dream of going on and teaching and continuing my public service and taking it into the classroom. And in large part because my hero, Neil Armstrong, that’s the choice he made when he left the astronaut office. He went to University of Cincinnati and became a professor. And I actually got to know Neil Armstrong later in life. Absolutely incredible meeting your childhood hero, which is, you know, in my stack of heroes, and I have many. He’s at the top. The most humble, quiet, poised individual I’ve ever met in my life. Still, every time I was around him, in just total awe. And so made the hard decision to leave NASA and come to A&M. Frankly, I’d looked at other opportunities in academia. And academia is kind of a different beast. And I thought, you know what? I’m good. I think I’ll stay at NASA. But I really wanted teaching to become part of a career and not just a post-retirement job. But I really thought it was leaving NASA in space behind.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 17:46
A few years ago, when President Kathy Banks called me in and said, “Well, the reason I called you in today is we’re starting up a Texas A&M Space Institute.” I was just blown away. I’d never heard of the plans. She no sooner said “space institute,” I said “I’m in.” Because I did not envision those two careers would intersect again. And so the Space Institute is being built just outside the front gate of the Johnson Space Center on 32 acres of land that we are leasing from NASA, 400,000 square foot building, two- and- a- half acre lunar scape, a two-and-a-half acre Marscape to support all of the activity that you will see in the next few years as we gear up to put bootprints back on the moon and do a series of lunar missions and then ultimately pursue a mission to Mars. And I’ll tell you that one of the toughest early decisions we had was, do we build a Marscape or not? Quite frankly, over my career– and, my associate director, Dr. Rob Ambrose, who spent a decade down at Johnson as well as the chief roboticist– we both saw, we call it the waxing and waning of Mars, where at times you couldn’t even say the word “Mars, ” and then all of a sudden, we’d be back: ” No, we’re gonna pursue a mission to Mars.” And so we felt like if we didn’t build this facility and enable research and development for Mars, it was never gonna happen. And we want to be prepared for that. So we have an equal amount of space in the building dedicated to Mars as for lunar.

Greg Winfree: 19:27
Excellent.

Allan Rutter: 19:27
What’s the relationship of the Institute and the Texas Space Commission?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 19:32
So the Texas Space Commission is something that was just started a couple of years ago. I am on the board of directors. There are nine political appointees to the board of directors. I was appointed by the Speaker of the House. Our executive director is Mr. Norman Garza, and of course, he worked here at Texas A&M. And so there is interconnectivity because all of this effort was an effort by the state of Texas and the legislature to put money into space exploration. So the space economy has grown in the US to $240 billion. And that estimate’s probably a couple of years old. I’ll put it in my terms. When I came into space, there were a few countries that were launching people into space and launching spacecraft. Now there are countries literally all over the world putting spacecraft into orbit, and there’s a multitude of companies, large and small, not only across Texas, but across the United States. So there definitely is a space economy.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 20:42
And in that light, the space programs are extremely important to the state of Texas from an economic development standpoint. So when companies look at where they want to be located, they want to make Texas attractive. And it goes back to… everybody thinks about the first words from the lunar surface, right? “Houston, Tranquility Base.” And Houston was one of the first words uttered. And so, how do we keep Texas at the forefront of space going into this next era of space exploration? We were blessed to have the legislature award about $150 million a couple of years ago. We spent quite a long time looking at proposals. Proposals came in from other government agencies across the state of Texas, from industries large and small, and from institutes of higher education. We awarded that money, and now they have doubled that funding. And again, it’s in the foresight of keeping Texas at the forefront of space and encouraging companies to relocate to Texas and to take advantage of the infrastructure that already exists, the workforce that exists throughout the state of Texas. And so to be able to operate within the political realm as well as very importantly relate to industry and institutes of higher education as partners in that process.

Greg Winfree: 22:12
Well that’s a great segue Nancy because that’s inspiring me with another question. How is the institute in partnership with the Space Commission interacting with those parties you just mentioned– the diverse industries, private sector groups, other institutes of higher education– and you know just getting them involved in space development and exploration. What’s the process and and how is the community of innovators coming together?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 22:37
So I’ll start with the Space Institute. We envisioned the institute as a research test and development entity to be able to do it at scale. So as we look at the lunar missions– and if you’ve been following the very very recent news at NASA on kind of their change in plans of delaying some of the very audacious, you know, boots on the moon missions– and in the near term doing a multitude of smaller missions, including robotic missions to the lunar surface to lay the infrastructure that’s required. Let me pick on one power systems. You’ve seen landers land on the moon and then within a few days you don’t hear anything. And the reason you don’t hear anything is they ran out of battery power. There is no other source of power. So we need that kind of infrastructure on the lunar surface. It’s doing all the mission doing all the technology work getting the risk out by doing these smaller class missions. And that really plays well into the mission of why we created the Texas A&M University Space Institute.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 23:49
As an astronaut I will tell you operating at scale is really important and especially when all of those multitude of pieces are coming from different entities. In this case we might have a lander coming from a company in Texas. We’ve got a rover being built by Toyota on behalf of the Japanese space agency. Well those things have to interconnect, they have to have an operational context of which they can all work together. So, for example, the suit that operates with a habitat or with a spacecraft also has to have the interoperability with that rover. And so to ensure that, you really do need testing at scale. You know what we give up there is no giant switch where we can just turn off gravity, of course, so use lighter weight suits. We can’t fill the building with regolith, regolith is a health hazard. So we’re going to fill it with materials from quarries out in West Texas and New Mexico that will give what we call “similitudes.” So the same type of traction coefficient for a fully weighted vehicle that maybe you might have in regolith with a 1-6 weighted vehicle on the actual lunar surface. So that’s where the institute plays in, and then in terms of where does the Texas Space Commission play in, they’re looking at where is the risk, where can the state of Texas assist companies in achieving these goals maybe from financial perspective or maybe from the perspective of connecting them with other resources within the state of Texas, whether it be testing capability, radiation testing like at our Cyclotron, for example, whether it be environmental control testing, all that comes into play because in order to achieve, finally achieve these really big goals that for, literally, decades we have had as a nation, it takes everybody. It’s beyond just NASA, it’s international, and Texas wants to play a huge role in that and in order to play a huge role in that, they’re really stepping up the financial incentives.

Allan Rutter: 26:01
It sort of connects as to why Texas? It speaks to our history and, as you mentioned, the state’s now not only involved in NASA’s new missions but also hosts private sector companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin and airspace manufacturers. Greg, TTI has been monitoring the advances of commercial space in Texas for a long time, what are some of the transportation issues that TTI researchers are watching about this?

Greg Winfree: 26:18
That’s a great question, Allan, and there’s probably a couple of ways to look at it. There are opportunities here on Terra Firma, Earth, and opportunities with the space program looking at at the moon and Mars. But back here on good old Earth, just some common sense practical challenges moving the equipment, the significant oversized/ overweight burdens that– and the vehicles required to carry a lot of the equipment needed to keep the space program humming–have to be on roadways and byways across the state. But obviously we’re focused here on Texas, so working with the authorities here in the state, whether it’s the Texas Department of Transportation or DPS or DMV even, and providing a coordination perspective but also the background information and technical support to ensure that the transport of those oversized/ overweight cargoes can be safely delivered to their endpoint destinations. You know, if you’re a Texan, you’ve probably seen windmill blades being delivered and what a tremendous length and oversized/ overweight that presents. So that gives you a visual of the kinds and the scale of the things that will be increasingly on Texas roadways. So I would say, that’s a key early way we can lean in, particular since we’re so strong in infrastructure. So it’s everything from logistics to paved materials, rigid pavements, flexible pavements, getting it right so that our pathways to delivery are unencumbered.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 28:16
Yeah I will say early on in the Texas Space Commission meetings, I want to say one of our first or second meetings that we had, we met with the Texas Department of Transportation, and they turned on a study to look at exactly what Greg was just discussing, and it’s transporting materials to some of the launch sites that are in Texas. It’s transporting materials for testing and manufacturing within the state of Texas. The Department of Transportion was able to turn around that study in a matter of months– it was amazing. And they looked at bridge heights they looked at the weight of the roadways, as Greg mentioned, and they had the highest priority they looked at the traffic of where it is, obviously down near McGregor Range, you know, down around the Waco area and out in West Texas. And so that’s going to be extremely important for our industrial partners to be able to have literally the roadways and the infrastructure, the transportation infrastructure, that enables their success.

Greg Winfree: 29:19
Yeah. And Allan just to loop it back, it really is multimodal. You know, we all know the roadways, that’s the most visible, because obviously most Americans are moving about on the surface, but if we look at Florida’s geographic location, the number two space state, if you see where Florida is and where Texas is, we have the Gulf in between us, right? So that means maritime pathways. We need to be taking advantage of, obviously, rail as well and clearly other smaller deliveries will be accomplished by air, and Texas is a major player in all of those modes of transportation. So getting this right is a great role and a great center position for TTI to be in.

Allan Rutter: 29:56
So another element to think about in terms of space and Texas is a matter of space tourism. We have one of those private space companies actually sending celebrities up into space, and SpaceX launches and return booster flights attract non-spring break crowds into South Padre Island. Can the two of you talk a little bit about how space tourism, what that means for Texas and for the transportation network?

Greg Winfree: 30:29
That’s a great question. You know it’s gonna bring a Disney World feel to certain parts of our state, as you’re mentioning, it is of international interest space travel particularly space tourism. So the questions remain, you know, where is that industry, where is that market headed, right? So it’s important for TTI to be out in front and working with the innovators in that space because right now we don’t know what we don’t know. The easy questions are, how do you get people to and fro? That’s been solved, it may need some tuning around the edges. But the real questions of what does that unlock –everything from increasing lodging at some of these remote locations, as Nancy mentioned, where folks are wanting to view the launches … Boca Chica and other parts of the state are not metropolitan areas, so planning in advance for hostelries and surface transport are the near term issues. But what is the growth trajectory so that we at TTI can help folks in that ecosystem maximize the opportunity is what we need to be looking at.

Allan Rutter: 31:40
Nancy any thoughts on space tourism?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 31:43
So there is Axiom that is sending tourists to the International Space Station and living on the International Space Station for weeks at a time. I would have never envisioned this, I think, early on in my astronaut career but I think it’s a natural progression of any mode of transportation. You know, you look at early aviation and then finally opening it up to not only commercial aviation but across general aviation, obviously the price point is a challenge for most individuals. What is that business model that drops that price point to a place where you know the general public could engage in those activities? I think that’s still to be determined, but I think it is in the best interest of the state of Texas to enable industries of all types, whether it be communication industry, space tourism industry, manufacturing in space… I am a firm believer that the next major business that emanates out of the state of Texas will be manufacturing in space, whether that’s pharmaceutical manufacturing, whether that’s semiconductor manufacturing, but taking advantage of that– I call it the very pure environment of microgravity– where things like as you grow a protein crystal and do pharmaceutical studies, you don’t have the forces of gravity that are aberrating that protein as it grows. And so it grows in a much more pure state and then you can target pharmaceuticals for the active sites of those proteins. So I fully believe that we are on the brink of that, and you will see commercial space stations in the next era– in the next decade– you will see commercial space stations.

Allan Rutter: 33:28
Wow. So couple that with something that you had mentioned earlier about some of the elements of preparing for boots on the lunar surface what are some of the engineering challenges that are being considered across the entire A&M System engineering enterprise about space?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 33:47
I’m gonna expand it beyond engineering because I will tell you that there are space activities across the campus, across the System, that include agriculture; the Bush school with space policy; the law school international space law; obviously, arts and sciences as well as all of engineering, so I’ll pick on a few. The food sources for any of these long duration missions that are beyond low Earth orbit. Our researchers within AgriLife have for many many years, many decades, supported NASA human spaceflight in supplying some of the foods and stabilizing that food for such a long duration. They’re not refrigerated, so they have to be stabilized. And so we have researchers that have expertise in that and some of the best expertise literally in the world in terms of the communication capabilities that are needed. Again, you need to lay an infrastructure. Communications, even on the International Space Station orbiting 215 miles above the earth, they’re basically in constant communication with the ground. And, in fact, although as an astronaut I am trained to handle pretty much any abnormal situation or emergency situation that should occur, our first step is we call the ground and if we have ground communication we rely on them because for every one of us– literally, one of us– there are hundreds or more engineers on the ground looking at that problem and deciding on the best course of action.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 35:25
You know, we’ve gotten into that mode for decades but as we look beyond low Earth orbit, and as we certainly prepare for missions to Mars, we’re gonna have very long periods with a lack of communications. You look at the last mission as they flew around the dark side of the moon, right? They were out of communications for roughly about 45 minutes. That doesn’t seem like an exceptionally long period of time, and I’m sure the astronauts enjoyed their period without communication, some silence. But you do, literally, have to be because as as I learned early on in my aviation career, if something bad happens, it happens immediately and you have to respond to it immediately. And so that infrastructure, whether it be the communication systems, the transportation systems in order to explore– and we are leaving low Earth orbit to explore let there be you know no mistake about that. And I sometimes even have to remind people at NASA of that because it used to be, we would launch, we would do payload operations, we would deploy a satellite… but our primary mission in these missions is to explore, which means the personnel on board have to be prepared (all the systems have to be prepared) to support that; all the scientific instruments that they’re going to use, they have to be extremely reliable, they have to have the operability to interface with the suit and the astronauts. The rovers become exceptionally important in order to explore longer ranges in order to drive down into the craters that we know that are there. And so it’s going to take all the expertise across all the campuses in this nation to pull together the technologies that are required for these missions.

Allan Rutter: 37:13
To come full circle we began our conversation talking about the Artemis II, its success, and worldwide attention. For both of you, what do you think that means for our efforts in Texas about space?

Greg Winfree: 37:28
That’s a great question, Allan. You know it puts back in front of us the possible, right? The realm of the possible. As Nancy said, it never falls into a background story. The shuttle was a tremendous human achievement, the space station… but we’ve been looking at the moon for eons and that’s held a lot of romanticism and a lot of passion and a lot of wonder. So to be able to achieve what Artemis II did, I think, really reignited the interest and the desire amongst the generation coming up behind us to continue this exploration mission, as Nancy put it. Now we at TTI, you know we’re transportation scientists, researchers, and engineers, so our role is a bit more plebeian, if you will, but as you’ve heard me say around the hallway: telling us that Texas A&M is going to space–dagnabbit, they’re not leaving TTI back here on Earth.

Greg Winfree: 38:21
So we’re gonna figure out where we fit in this exploration mission, and some of the early conversations we’re looking at precisely what Nancy talked about. Well if you’re gonna be traversing the surface of the moon and Mars, you’re gonna need some sort of infrastructure, you’re gonna need some sort of roadways if we’re talking long-term human habitation. So what are the technologies that we don’t know now, we haven’t deployed, we haven’t discovered for the making of rigid roadways on the moon, in one- sixth gravity, in the absence of water? What does that look like? What does that look like on Mars? And the benefit is –and this is important for the decision makers in Washington and Austin to hear– it’s not a flight of fancy for distant planets, exoplanets if you will; the technologies we learn and how to do what we do and make it apply in those harsh environments can only bring benefits back here on Earth. We’ve been making cement, we’ve been making roadways, the same way for eons. What are the next generation technologies that we can deploy that we can bring back here on Earth and make the making of concrete much less energy intensive and resource intensive and less harmful for the environment? And the same with other materials, as we look at infrastructure that can be deployed on the moon and Mars. So I think that’s where TTI in the near term leans in in partnership with the Space Institute, and I’ve been happy to have those initial conversations with Nancy and folks at NASA. And there’s genuine interest in that. So I’m happy that we’re in this space, pardon the pun.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 40:05
Yeah, just adding on to what Greg said, absolutely right. This is not about just putting a few individuals into space. It’s what we can do in space to make life better here on Earth. And I think that’s at the forefront of what we’re doing in Texas. And that’s why Texas is investing the money that they are in space, primarily for how we can better everyone’s life here in Texas. So whether it’s improvements that we can do in terms of imagery quality to look at land use patterns in our agricultural sector; you know, communication systems that we might develop for space missions that are going to have long periods of latency that could then enable communications for our medical community to remote areas in Texas. You know, at NASA we talk about spin-off technology, and it’s technologies that were developed for human spaceflight but that were then spun off to make life better here on Earth. And certainly we can point to a multitude of things dating back to the early human spaceflight missions of Mercury, Gemini Apollo, but even through shuttle and even through the International Space Station. So we’re hoping that not only what we do here in Texas in terms of supporting the national goals in space enable the success and safety of those missions, but that ultimately transform how we operate and how we live here in the state of Texas on Earth.

Allan Rutter: 41:43
So it’s pretty clear from talking to you both about this particular subject that our audience is going to be picking up on the fact that both of you are pretty passionate about your respective roles. Can you share both a little bit about why you’re excited to come to work every day?

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 41:54
You know, sometimes people ask me that, and they say “How does being a professor compare to being an astronaut?” Now I gotta I gotta tell you, when your job is to occasionally leave the planet, that’s kind of hard to one- up. So, but I can leverage that. It’s kind of funny, one of the things that I ask students all the time is, “Do I tell too many war stories in the classroom ?” Because I’m very cognizant of that. But it’s related to the subjects that I teach. I teach aerospace safety engineering, I teach aerospace reliability engineering, aerospace human factors engineering– so it’s very relatable, and they always tell me, “No you need to tell us more, you need to relay how we’re learning in the classroom, how that translates into actual practice because you’ve lived it. And so I think that’s what excites me, is that this environment gives me the unique ability to leverage literally decades of experience and to take it in the classroom, combine that with the research and development that is going on across the system and across transforming into places like TTI and combine that and enlighten our next generation for our workforce. And so I would say, you know, in terms of the last mission– I mean, it has inspired our future workforce and I’m really excited about that.

Allan Rutter: 43:20
Greg?

Greg Winfree: 43:20
Yeah, Allan, so I’m extraordinarily blessed to be in a position to have such a significant role at TTI. You’ve heard me say before, though, I may be the agency director, but I am the employee of 700 TTIers. And so it’s all about servant leadership. I’m very respectful of the 75- plus year history of this tremendous Institute, and just to be affiliated with the resident brilliance that walks the halls on a daily basis in this Institute is a tremendous honor and obligation and responsibility. So I don’t take that lightly, and that’s the day-to-day mission. But if you’ll recall, when I interviewed here nine years ago, and I was put in front of a town hall session of TTIers to talk about where I thought we could continue to move the organization, one of the areas I touched upon was space. And, you know, I had come from a natural resources company, aka mining. But when I was there, we talked about the fact that rare earth minerals are just that. They’re rare on Earth. They’re not rare in the universe. So the question I posed was, “Well, how can we work with engineering?” How can we work with other constituent parts of the A&M System and figure out how to get a device, a rocket, an aircraft to the asteroid belt and identify a platinum meteor, a neodymium meteor, and said–this is Texas–“How do we put a lasso around that sucker and drag it back here and take advantage of that?” So those ideas at the time, you know, there were some rumbles in the crowd that said this guy’s off his rocker and send him back to Washington. And then the other half said, “Boy, that’s really exciting. We hadn’t thought in that fashion.” But you fast forward the clock, and a decade later, here we are talking about just that. Where does TTI fit in the space economy with the Space Institute and with where Texas A&M is headed? So I’m up before the alarm goes off. The excitement continues. The trajectory of this tremendous Institute is extraordinarily bright and getting brighter every day. So it’s those things that really keep the fire stoked in me and make me proud and pleased to be a member of The Texas A&M University System for sure.

Allan Rutter: 45:44
Well, speaking of appreciation, I really appreciate both of you spending time with us today. And I know our audience is going to really honor being able to listen to you both. Thanks for being part of our podcast.

Nancy Currie-Gregg: 45:56
Thank you very much.

Greg Winfree: 45:56
Thank you so much, Allan. Appreciate it.

Allan Rutter: 46:01
Sixty-five years ago, in 1961, a few months after President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would send a man to the moon and back by the end of that decade, NASA announced that the Manned Spacecraft Center would be constructed in Houston, built on 1,600 acres near Clear Lake, donated by the Humboldt Oil Company through Rice University. Since the Gemini 4 flight in 1965, every NASA mission has been controlled by the Mission Control Center in Texas. It was great to hear Nancy and Greg tell of how Texas A&M institutions are going to be involved in the remaining half of the first century of manned spaceflight and in the century to come. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard or learned something, please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe, and share this episode. I invite you to join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves and the stuff we need from point A to point B. Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of The Texas A&M University System. The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau. I’m your host, Allan Rutter. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.