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Good evening.
We're continuing with our interview of the flight control team here.
The Orbit 3 team here in the space shuttle flight control room is on duty,
and we're being joined by Ian Young, the PROP officer for this team.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Tell us a bit about the PROP position.
What are you responsible for?
There are two systems we're responsible for.
The OMS and the RCS systems.
OMS stands for Orbital Maneuvering System and that's the two smaller rocket engines
that we use once we get up on orbit to do rendezvous burns and orbit adjusts
so that we can go rendezvous with the space station
and those are also the engines we use for de-orbit burn to come home.
The RCS system is 44 attitude jets that keep us pointed in the right direction
and we use that also for smaller burns.
Sometimes we use them to re-boost the space station.
So we're in charge of the 44 jets and the hardware that goes along with that,
the two OMS engines, the propellant tanks, the propellant budget, the piping, the heaters
and everything that kind of goes along with that.
Sounds like quite a bit.
When does your work for a mission start?
About a year ahead or more than that?
For the leads, you'll get assigned a lead somewhere around 10
to 12 months beforehand to start following the missions.
We have a bit of prep time of prep prior to a flight and the last couple
of months are when we do a lot of our work.
We have some flight design folks that did a long lead part to kind of get us an initial budget,
propellant budget, and once we get closer to flight we have our propellant budget
that we put together that's a little bit finer.
They have to make certain assumptions early on so we come in
and take their assumptions and refine it a little bit.
So it sounds like the PROP role is fairly active throughout the whole mission.
It is up until, in all honesty once we get docked it's a little bit quiet for as we hand
over attitude control to the space station because they have Control Moment Gyros
that are non-propulsive.
So we save our propellant by letting them hold attitude.
Up through docking we're always using our system.
Once we get docked it's fairly quiet although we continue to re-plan if we have
to do a re-boost there's a limit on how much propellant we have on orbit so we only give them so much
so we work with folks in the space station room.
Once we undock we get kind of busy again and get ready for the flyaround so we have
to make sure we have enough propellant for that then planning for the deorbit burn.
Tell us about your road to becoming a PROP officer.
I studied aerospace engineering at Iowa State University.
I graduated in December of 2000 and when I started, I started for United Space Alliance
and they came and recruited at our job fair so I gave my resume.
My boss gave me call and invited me down for an interview.
One of my areas of interest that I put on my resume was propulsion so that got me in the door
down here and this is something I've always wanted to do since at least high school
so pursuing an aerospace engineering degree was something I knew
that would allow me to do this job.
I just happened to get lucky with the timing of everything.
How many missions have you worked?
Around 20 to 23.
Somewhere in there.
That's quite a few.
It is alright.
It's not quite as many as Lonnie, our PROP officer's now working his 100th mission.
Tell us about the parts of the mission you like the most.
The ascent is definitely by far the most dynamic so gearing
up for those is definitely the busiest or most stressful but once we get
on orbit doing our OMS burns, those are a pretty big deal,
we have to make sure everything goes right on those.
Just working with the various teams and making sure we get all of the mission objectives done.
Is there a part that you find is the most challenging?
Sometimes throughout the mission we'll get requirements that change.
We'll be working towards one plan and maybe something breaks, maybe we get asked
to do an item that wasn't necessarily on the plan so now we have to go and start back
over the process and redo everything.
But that's why we're here.
Seems like all these missions have some characteristics
and some things that change throughout.
What was it as a youngster that kind of attracted you to that line of studies?
I'm not sure exactly what attracted me to NASA but I probably credit my mom.
She was a science teacher so I think that's what got me
into the science and I was always good at match.
I enjoy engineering with the designing and figuring out those types of math problems
and I think that's how I got interested in wanting to come to work for NASA.
That's great.
I'm sure you must be supported by some folks in backrooms.
Tell us a little bit about those teams.
We have two positions in our backroom that are there from ascent all the way through entry.
One's called OREO (OMS RCS Engineering Officer) and that person is
in charge of procedures and the hardware.
Then we have a Consumables Officer and that person is in charge of the propellant budget,
making sure that we have enough propellant to do all of the items put on the timeline
that we keep updated throughout the mission and that's their job.
Do you have any advice for other young students
who might be having the same interests or thinking about a job at NASA?
Pursue it wholeheartedly.
You have to do what you love so if this is something you think you want
to do then definitely math and science is the way to go.
Engineering and studying hard is always a key to that.
Did you have any road blocks on your pursuit of this dream?
No I was actually fairly fortunate and everything just happened to line
up for me throughout my college career and just getting here.