Posted by Davin Flateau on 2 Jun 2005 at 11:19 am.
Filed under Astronomy.
Boeing Wichita’s Ted Bates has spent nearly thirty years repairing the aging airframes in such planes as the B-52, the KC-10 and even Air Force One. After the shuttle Columbia was destroyed in 2003, NASA needed to assess the aging shuttle fleet, and Bates was tapped to apply his aviation expertise to the three remaining space planes.
“At first, I was supposed to work 40 hours, give advice and leave town.” What has evolved, he said, is an ongoing relationship in which he consults with NASA and trains a new generation of experts about keeping old airframes going.
[…]
“There’s a big difference in how those materials react with one craft that flies hundreds of miles an hour and something that flies 20,000 miles an hour. Your margin of error is a lot less.”
Bates is sure to feel a great deal of pride when Discovery finally roars off the pad this July in what is scheduled to be the first shuttle flight in more than 2 years.
Bates is 62, and says he doesn’t plan on retiring anytime soon. But as the shuttle fleet ages, so do the thousands of people at NASA who’ve been keeping them spaceborne. NASA faces a rush of retirees in the coming years, and with them will go valuable experience that can’t come from a textbook or manual. NASA is working to replace the shuttle, as well as building a whole new spaceflight program to go to the Moon and Mars. They’re going to need lots of talented, experienced engineers to pull it off. Efforts in getting young people involved in science, astronomy and engineering will pay off by bringing all of us closer to the stars.
No one said it was going to be easy - after all, it IS rocket science.
Davin Flateau
