Dean chats with Mark Brown a former Air Force pilot astronaut and now an aerospace consultant to companies going above and beyond.
Send us your thoughts at lookingup@wvxu.org or post them on social media using #lookinguppodcast
Additional resources referenced in this episode:
- NASA STS-28 Mission Details
- Apollo 8 - The Entire Earth (Full Mission 03)
- Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster (NBC Nightly News)
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Dean Regas: Wapakoneta. When I say that word, what comes to mind? I asked that question to several groups of 5th graders in my presentations this year, recapping my experiences seeing the total solar eclipse from Wapakoneta. And in each group, there's at least one person who raised their hand to say,
5th Grade Students: That's where Neil Armstrong was born.
Dean Regas: And I say, alright, well, who's Neil Armstrong?
5th Grade Students: He was the first person to walk on the moon.
Dean Regas: And I was like, wait a second, how do you know that there's just something about astronauts from the studios of Cincinnati public radio? I'm your host Dean Regas and this is looking up
the show that takes you deep into the cosmos or just to the telescope in your backyard to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours So great. My guest today is Mark Brown a former Air Force pilot astronaut and now an aerospace consultant to companies going above and beyond.
Okay. So maybe my survey question of fifth graders about Wapakoneta, Ohio, had a little to do with the fact that I was talking to a school in Ohio and we Ohioans tend to have this exaggerated pride in aviation and space that's like built into us from birth. But then on the other hand. Wapakoneta is more than 100 miles from Cincinnati, where I am.
I don't think many or even any of the students had ever been there. If I asked, like, what is Apollo? I don't think very many kids would say-
5th Grade Students: That's the name of the moon mission.
Dean Regas: Or, like, if I asked who was the third person to walk on the moon?
5th Grade Students: That was Pete Conrad, Dean.
Dean Regas: I also asked the students how many of them would go to the moon.
A free round trip, 10 days long. All the snacks they could eat, I threw that in. Would they, do it? More than half of the hands flew up faster than a rocket. I mean, I love the enthusiasm. I almost didn't have the heart to tell them about the one huge obstacle for me. The one thing NASA tries not to talk about too much.
The space toilets. I mean, how do you go to the bathroom in microgravity? Well, my guest today knows. I don't think I could ask him about space toilets, but Mark Brown has been up there and flew twice on the space shuttle. Well, Mark, thanks so much for joining me today.
Mark Brown: I'm Mark Brown. I'm originally from Valparaiso, Indiana, and was part of the group that helped launch the first space shuttle missions.
Flew toys on a space shuttle, was the lead astronaut on the space station program until I retired from the Air Force and NASA in 1993. Then we moved back to Ohio, and I went in a business in the aerospace community until I finally retired about 20 years later.
Dean Regas: Uh, it's one of those moments where I'm, it's hard for us mere mortals to picture.
And, and I know I asked this to every astronaut, but I can't help it. How was the view? I mean, I can't not sit on a window seat in an airplane and look out the whole time. What's the view of earth like from up there? It's
Mark Brown: Beyond words when you first get up there, your body is going through a whole lot of changes as you adapt as your gravity, you can literally feel your stomach and lower intestines sliding up into the bottom of your rib cage.
You feel like you have a large gas bubble in your stomach because your digestive system tends to shut down. You can feel fluid moving through your neck up into your face and your face puffs up a little bit. That makes you feel like you have a little bit of a head cold and your inner ear that is used to, you know, kind of measure motion and in rotation is really confused.
So, there's a little bit of dizziness that goes along with it too. And so. That transition, the weightlessness, takes about 24 hours for the body to acclimate. At the same time, you just arrived on Earth orbit, and there was a whole stack of stuff you got to get done to secure not only the people, but the vehicle for long term operation.
But somewhere in that time frame, you get your opportunity to take your first look out the window and your mouth literally falls open. The blues and the greens going over the Bahamas was one of the most spectacular things you can absolutely imagine because you can see the sandbars, the islands. And it's just breathtaking.
You look out on the horizon and the whole earth's atmosphere appears to be about two and a half inches thick. And within that narrow band of atmosphere, you can see all the colors at sunrise and sunset that we would see down here on the ground. And then as time goes on, you start to notice that you're not seeing people.
I mean, they talk about seeing pyramids and the great wall of China, all that stuff. Yeah, it's not that easy when you're going over North America, the Bahamas, Europe and so on. It's very difficult in the daytime to see signs of human life. And so, there is a little bit of a sense of separation. But then the sun finally comes down and you come back over the same real estate at night.
And it's just as spectacular because all of the cities and roads are now lit up by usually like Chicago rush hour traffic. So not only can you see the city, but you can see all the roads going and coming as the headlights and taillights, you know, light everything up. And so, you can see the Earth is alive and teeming and full of people that um, are really, you know, going about their daily business. It's a really amazing experience.
Dean Regas: Your story with space travel begins in, uh, I don't know, perhaps a familiar place, a place that taught another famous astronaut, Neil Armstrong. What is it about Purdue University?
Mark Brown: Oh, that's a great question. And there's a constant debate on campus on whether we're really the cradle of quarterbacks or of astronauts.
And I'm slightly biased as you might imagine. The real truth is it's an excellent place to get a good technical foundation in aerospace, whether it's engineering, astronautics, whatever it might be.
Dean Regas: And then you became an Air Force pilot of many different types of aircraft. Was this the general path in your mind, you know, like the natural steps toward becoming an astronaut?
Mark Brown: I started out just wanting to be a pilot because, and I'm going to date myself a little bit, when I graduated from college in 73, you know, we were still walking on the moon and doing stuff like that, and the astronauts, quite frankly, were larger than life people. You know, nobody dreamed that you could actually be an astronaut in those days.
Archival Audio: Well, Mike, I can see the entire Earth now. I can see Florida, Cuba, Central America, the whole northern half of Central America. In fact, all of Argentina, Chile. Hey, you picked a good day for it.
Mark Brown: Well, once I was in the Air Force, I actually had the opportunity to meet a number of these people. Well, we would consider famous astronauts, Armstrong being a perfect example, who's from Wapakoneta, Ohio.
And when you get to interact with them on one on one, you kind of go, well, wait a minute, this guy's not that much different than me. Probably a little, maybe a little smarter, I don't know, but same background, same parentage, same whatever. You don't have to be a perfectly straight A student, captain of the track team, you know, come from a millionaire's family or whatever.
And so that changes your perspective and at least encouraged me, since I was all excited about the space program, why not? Why not apply and see what happens. And the first time I applied, I was turned down. Um, I didn't even make it through the Air Force selection. They said I didn't have enough, uh, experience.
The second time I applied, I had already been at NASA working as an engineer for about four years. And that, that time it worked out just fine.
Archival Audio: Uh, Mark Brown was, uh, MS 3 on the flight. Uh, this was Mark's second flight. Mark was the prime arm operator to lift the U. R. Satellite out of the payload bay. Mark was also the prime individual responsible for the electronic still camera on the flight, which generated a lot of interest, particularly within the media during the course of the flight. And Mark also was the other person intimately involved with the mode experiment, secondary experiment on the mid deck.
Dean Regas: Well, and then, so you're accepted to the astronaut training program during that was that. The time frame when the Space Shuttle Challenger accident happened. I mean, what effect did that tragedy have on the astronaut corps and you personally?
Archival Audio: It was a bitter cold but sparkling clear morning at Cape Canaveral. Here are the last seconds of the countdown. Three, two, one, and liftoff. All the communications between the shuttle and Mission Control indicated everything was going fine. There was a sense of relief that the much delayed flight was finally underway. It happened just over one minute into flight. From Mission Control, silence.
Mark Brown: In my case, I actually was assigned to fly in December of, uh, 85. And we had started training, um, uh, a mission. And then in January, of course, of the following year, Challenger went down.
Archival Audio: We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded. Flight director confirms that we are looking at, uh, checking with the recovery forces to see, uh, what can be done at this point.
Mark Brown: And it was a huge shock to the entire community. First off, we didn't even know that there was something going on that could result in a failure and fatalities like that. The other thing that's important to remember is NASA in Houston is a very small community.
And so, we all know each other, our kids go to school together. Uh, very few of us had family in the area, so we spent holidays, you know, together. So, when tragedy like this happened, it was a family event, and it was very traumatic for all of us.
Dean Regas: And then part of the investigation, and you were part of that too. And meanwhile, you still have to prepare to go up.
Mark Brown: Well, we put flight training on hold. During that time of the investigation and the investigation was a real eye opener. We were sent to different parts of the country. I happened to be assigned to go work to the solid rocket motor issues because of my technical background.
And so, I went to the Marshall Space Flight Center, Morton Thiokol in Utah, and we started going through the records and found out that there had been a history. Of, in this case, O ring erosion, problems with, uh, the solid rocket motors. O rings are simply rubber rings that are used to seal off the joints between solid rocket motors.
And as you might imagine, rubber is very sensitive to temperature. So, the colder it got, the less the o rings were able to flex to fill in gaps in those joints. And so that could potentially result in a problem. And frankly, I was very surprised that more attention had not been paid to what was clearly a track record. It was a very, very bad recipe for what turned out to be a disaster.
Dean Regas: So then comes the day they put you on the launch pad and you're ready to go. Ended up flying two missions on the space shuttle.
Archival Audio: The five astronauts will be checking out a spacecraft that hasn't flown in a while. This will be Columbia's eighth flight, the first in a long time. Its last mission was just two weeks before the Challenger disaster. And it's spent a lot of the time since as a so called Hangar Queen sitting in the garage being plundered of parts to service other shuttles.
Mark Brown: I never felt safer going out the launch pad. We had gone through everything with a fine tooth comb, fixed everything that we knew about.
But even after doing that, the reality is we had done calculations through our safety system that there was always going to be a 2 percent probability of a failure. And yeah, it's kind of eye opening and It's because they're just some things you can't know a material defect, a human error, whether or whatever might be something that we just didn't know about.
By the time I got to the launch pad, like I said, I felt very comfortable. I was very well trained. I knew the vehicle had been. Scrubbed as best that it could possibly be. So, I was able to sit on the pad and literally enjoy the ride.
Dean Regas: Well, Mark, uh, it's been a great pleasure learning about your time and space and how you got there and what you learned when you came back to, thanks so much for chatting with us today.
Mark Brown: Oh, you're more than welcome. And for all of your listeners, I I'm very proud, Dean, of what you've done, uh, in your career, the way that you're reaching out and so many of those young people trying to show them that. There's a path there. If you have the passion, this is how you connect the dots and get there. And it's a wonderful ride. So, thank you very much for inviting me to be on the program.
Dean Regas: Well, let's get back to those questions I was asking the fifth graders. So go into space. They were in. We got that established. Going to the moon, totally in. What about going to the next frontier, going to Mars? It takes about three days to go from the earth to the moon.
Mars is on average a seven month trip, one way. And by the time you get to Mars, the Earth is on the other side of the solar system. So, you have to wait on Mars one year for the Earth to catch back up. Then fly seven months back home. Round trip to Mars could be 26 months long. So, when I presented that to the kids and said, who would want to do that trip?
Are you kidding me? The same number of hands went up. Every time I do talks, there is no talking these young adventurers out of it. I think the big thing is, as long as there's snacks, they're in.
5th Grade Students: What kind of snacks?
Dean Regas: Looking up with Dean Regas is a production of Cincinnati Public Radio. Kevin Reynolds and I created the podcast in 2017.
Ella Rowen and Marshall Verbsky produce and edit our show and are just now realizing where all the snacks went from the looking up break room. Sorry guys, they're in space now. Jenell Walton is our vice president of content and Ronny Salerno is our digital platforms manager. Our theme song is Possible Light by Ziv Moran.
Our social media coordinator is Hannah McFarland. And our cover art is by Nicole Tiffany. Big thanks to the students at Mason Intermediate School for providing their answers to my big questions and knowing so much already about space missions. Thanks guys. I'm Dean Regas. Keep looking up!
