Tess Caswell is an Environmental and Thermal Operating Systems (a.k.a. ETHOS) engineer for the International Space Station working at Johnson Space center in Houston, Texas. She was also our guest presenter for the March 18th LiveRoom chat. With 38 students in attendance, Ms. Caswell talked about her experience growing up in Alaska, and attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. Her road to NASA took her through Space Grant programs (including two flights on NASA’s Reduced Gravity Aircraft!), internships with Boeing, the NASA Academy at Goddard and with the United Space Alliance (USA) where she was eventually hired.
Her work with ETHOS places her on console for the ISS, and she is finishing her certification to be an Operator of the station’s life support systems. ETHOS Operators are also responsible for handling any emergency that arises on the Space Station such as a toxic spill, fire, or a rapid depress.
Fifteen students asked questions before the session ended. Ms. Caswell and students alike expressed their commendations of a great time. An archive of the chat has been placed in the Chat Archive accessible from the OLC Home Page.
Bonus Question
J.C. asked: Is there an optimum size for future space stations? I mean by scaling the structure up, solar panel dimensions, volume for life support, heat loss, etc. Is there an optimum size?
Tess Caswell answers: There probably is an optimum size considering all of those parameters, and I bet it’d be a really interesting engineering analysis to figure out what it is! Our biggest concern, though, when building space stations is what capacity we have for carrying the pieces into orbit. For instance, you will notice that all of the US modules of the space station look like very similar cylinders… that is because that is the radius that fits in the shuttle payload bay! For example, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was given the dimensions of the payload bay when they were building their module (the Japanese Experiment Module, or JEM), and they built it exactly to those dimensions - so tightly that the shuttle could not carry its boom sensor system up with it! The previous shuttle had to leave the boom attached to the ISS, and STS-124 grabbed it when they brought up the JEM.
No comments:
Post a Comment