Washington native trains astronauts in weightlessness

The feeling of weightlessness at the crest of a roller coaster ride sickens many people. Not Washington native Bobby Roe. Roe has gotten used to the feeling through his work at NASA in Houston, where he achieves weightlessness dozens of times in a single day.

Roe was born and raised in Washington, the child of Mike and Patty Roe. In his youth, he was very interested in airplanes. He earned his pilot?s license while in high school. He graduated from Washington High School in 2003 and enrolled at Iowa State University that fall to study aerospace engineering.

?I grew up around airplanes, and I liked designing things, too,? said Roe. ?Design plus flying equals aerospace engineering.?

Roe received an internship offer from Boeing in Seattle after his sophomore year in college. He also had the option of taking summer classes, which would allow him to graduate after four years. He decided to take the internship, and is happy to report that it was the best decision he?s ever made.

?Getting your first internship is the hardest thing to do, even harder than getting your first job,? said Roe. ?If you have internship experience, getting a full-time job is easy.?

Boeing was so impressed with Roe that the company invited him back the following year and the year after that. As an intern, Roe tested the structural integrity of aircraft components. Using computer simulations, he found out how much weight the aircraft parts could carry before they broke. His conclusions were later tested on small-scale models of those parts.

Roe graduated from college in December 2007. In 2008, he began working for Cessna in Wichita, Kan. That was not a good year for airplane manufacturers.

?That was when the CEOs of the big three automakers flew in corporate jets to Washington to ask for bailout money,? said Roe. ?Private jets got a bad rap back then. Nobody wanted to be caught dead with one.?

Cessna began a series of layoffs at that time. Since Roe was among the youngest employees at the company, he feared his days there were numbered. Roe survived three rounds of layoffs, and remained employed for many months later than he expected to be, but finally in the summer of 2009 he, too, received a pink slip.

The dark cloud of unemployment had a silver lining for Roe. At that same time, NASA was in need of an aerospace engineer to work on its fleet of terrestrial aircraft. It was an opportunity of a lifetime for Roe, who had unsuccessfully sought an internship with NASA in college. He said the NASA internship is the one aerospace engineers dream about.

Roe applied for the job online. After a phone interview, NASA paid for him to fly to Houston for another interview and to tour the Johnson Space Center. This January, Roe was hired.

?Being laid off from Cessna was one of the best things to happen to me, because now I work for an agency I?ve wanted to work for my whole life,? said Roe.

In his current job at NASA, Roe trains astronauts and assists space research. Some of that training and research is done in an environment with no gravity. Roe does not go to the International Space Station, but he does the next best thing. He travels in a Boeing 727 that ascends to a particular altitude and then descends. While the airplane is making this maneuver, the passengers experience weightlessness for about 20 or 30 seconds. The plane descends to a particular altitude and then begins its climb once more. During this maneuver, the passengers experience twice the force of gravity, also known as ?2 Gs.? The plane repeats this process 30 or 40 times per flight.

?Some people describe it as similar to a roller coaster ride,? said Roe. ?I?ve been a pilot forever. I think every pilot has felt something like that, when you pull back on the stick, you get ?light in the seat? we call it.?

These flights are attended both by astronauts who are preparing to spend time in outer space and by researchers who are testing equipment for use in outer space. The astronauts and researchers spend the flight in a cabin with no seats and padded walls so they can move freely in the plane without hurting themselves while weightless.

Roe has flown on these flights enough that he knows how to control his body under ?zero Gs.? Inexperienced fliers often do not.

?On their first time, they?ll go out of control and hit the ceiling,? said Roe. ?Part of our job is to help control them and give them advice about strapping their feet in. People try to swim when they?re weightless but it doesn?t work. Air is not as dense as water. We have to grab them so they don?t kick someone in the head.?

About 40 passengers go on these trips. A flight surgeon comes along because three or four people usually get sick on every flight.

Roe is responsible for supervising the experiments of the researchers on the plane, who are sometimes college students. One project he supervised dealt with measuring fuel in a container with no gravity. The fuel can?t be measured with a dipstick because the fuel doesn?t sink to the bottom as it does on earth, so more complex methods must be employed to measure it.

Apart from testing equipment under weightlessness, the researchers also test equipment for use on the moon and Mars. Once the plane nears the top of its ascent, it levels off more slowly. This creates the feeling of the moon?s gravity, which is one-sixth that of earth?s. The plane can maintain this level of gravity for 30 to 45 seconds. To achieve Mars?s gravity, which is about one-third of earth?s, the plane levels off even more slowly. This level of gravity can last for nearly a minute.

?I like working with the college students to help them learn,? said Roe. ?That?s what makes the job fun.?