Leading a New Era of Space Travel

In the first part of a new series exploring KBR’s Government Solutions business, host John Arnold speaks with Travis Fitzgerald, chief training officer at KBR. Travis and his teams are responsible for planning and executing the training of NASA flight controllers, instructors and astronauts, primarily for operations on the International Space Station. Now, as part of an exciting agreement with NASA, Travis and KBR employees are also the first to train private teams at NASA facilities — including the first all-private mission to the ISS which launched on April 8 — helping usher in a new era of space exploration.

Transcript

IN ORBIT: A KBR PODCAST

Season 2, Episode 6

"Leading a New Era of Space Travel"

INTRODUCTION

John Arnold

Hello, I'm John.

Lubna Salim

And I'm Lubna, and this is In Orbit.

John Arnold

Welcome everyone to the podcast. We are so glad you're with us. If you are new to the show, we're glad you're tuning in. And if you're here again, thank you and welcome back.

Lubna Salim

So, this is a podcast for everyone inside and outside of our business that talks about what's happening around the world and in various industries. And that keeps us all connected and in each other's Orbit. Hi John, how are you?

John Arnold

I'm well Lubna, how are you?

Lubna Salim

I'm very well. Thank you. And I'm very, very happy to connect back with you again.

John Arnold

Oh, likewise. Pleasure is all mine.

Lubna Salim

So, this super, super cool interview that you have done with Travis Fitzgerald is something that makes me, and I'm sure all of us, super ... I mean, extra proud being part of KBR. So, tell us a little bit about how it was interviewing Travis Fitzgerald, this amazing person who trains astronauts for NASA and the other mission.

John Arnold

It was inspiring. It was tremendously fascinating. Obviously, there's a lot going on in the world that's really weird and not great. Fortunately, there are some pretty amazingly positive things happening. The James Webb Space Telescope, I don't know if you've been keeping track. I belong to a Facebook group that I follow every day and they've shown some of the first images that have been on the news that the James Webb Space Telescope has sent back as it's being calibrated for action. Listeners to the show will hear more on that in the very near future, and we're very excited to share that with them.

Also exciting is that coming up on April 8th is SpaceX and private space flight company, Axiom Space — they will be making history with the launch of Ax-1, which is the first all-private mission to the international space station.

Lubna Salim

Wow!

John Arnold

And that mission is going to be making history, Lubna, thanks to the astronaut training plan and executed by experts right here at KBR. So, as a note in the interview, you'll hear that Travis Fitzgerald and I mentioned that the launch was supposed to have been on April 3rd. It's been moved a few times now, but it's now been moved to April the 8th. I was thrilled to be able to sit down with Travis Fitzgerald, the chief training officer at KBR to learn about how he got into the astronaut training business, how KBR trainers are preparing astronauts for space flight, and why it's a big deal that KBR is the first company to train private astronauts at NASA facilities. Shall we give it a listen?

TRANSITION

John Arnold

What is up everybody? This is John Arnold. I'm excited to be with you doing a space-related episode. It's been a while since we've done one of those, and you are in for a treat because joining me today is Travis Fitzgerald.

Travis is the chief training officer at KBR responsible for planning and executing trainings for NASA flight controllers, instructors, and astronauts, primarily for operations on the international space station. And I guess now we can add private mission training to that resume as well. Welcome to the podcast, Travis.

Travis Fitzgerald

Thank you. Happy to be here.

John Arnold

Yeah, happy to have you. So, you think about astronauts growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was growing up. How does one end up training astronauts, Travis?

Travis Fitzgerald

Oh, okay. So, long story. I guess I can start with how I got here. In general, we hire engineering science degrees. So, some sort of bachelors in at least in those. And then once you get hired on you start studying spacecraft systems. So, most of the time, most of us start on the international space station. Then you progress to getting certified in lessons, and sometimes in rare cases, you come become a CTO, chief training officer, like I am, and you end up leading the training for that.

But we have a whole bunch of people that do the individual training, it's training how you operate the communication system, how you operate the spacesuits and all those types of people, are all KBR employees for the most part that go through and learn the systems and then figure out how to teach people about it.

John Arnold

Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about KBR's relationship with NASA, and how that relationship has helped shape human space flight.

Travis Fitzgerald

Yeah, so KBR is in a unique situation or position. We've got a couple of contracts with NASA related to operations of the space station and for Artemis. So, the contract that I'm normally under, IMOC II is what it's called — it's where we have our instructors, planners, analysts, and flight controllers that do most of the work associated with actually planning, training and flying the international space station.

So, if you ever watch NASA TV and see mission control on that one, most of the people in that room are either KBR or their subcontractor employees. NASA itself only has a few people per group that actually do that. Most of the grunt work is done by us at KBR.

John Arnold

Right.

Travis Fitzgerald

Is a lot of fun to do it, but it basically means that we are right there with NASA whenever they're doing these new things. And we all work side by side with them. We like to claim that we're a badgeless society over here in-flight operations, that we are completely interchangeable with our civil servant counterparts and are able to do all kinds of really cool stuff from flight leads, like I am, for the Ax-1 mission to being the ones actually on console for these really cool operations that we're doing.

John Arnold

Excellent. So, we've talked a little bit about how KBR is stepping into fill a gap perhaps that NASA needs. So, in 2020, NASA picked KBR to be the first company to use NASA facilities to train astronauts. Why is that a big deal?

Travis Fitzgerald

So, yeah, it's a really big deal because we are really the only people in the world who know how to train two NASA standards for NASA vehicles, for international space station. We have the expertise as the main reason that NASA picked us. And so, we've got the same instructors and the same lessons that we teach the government astronauts.

And so, those same lessons, it really ... the whole goal of this is NASA's trying to figure out how to provide some more commercialization of low earth orbit is with that, the startup costs are really small for that. I mean, you've already got all the people, you've already got ... we know what we're supposed to teach, we just need to now apply that to a different group of people, now, private astronauts.

John Arnold

Right. So, let's talk about these private astronauts. What goes into the training of an astronaut, and what is it preparing them for?

Travis Fitzgerald

So yeah, for the private astronauts, their training primarily consists of learning about the spacecraft systems. So, how the communication system works, how the power system works, the things they're going to actually have to touch when they get up to the space station, from switches, to buttons, to handheld mics, and things like that, how that works.

And then also teaching them our ops products. So, everyone's familiar with NASA, we love our acronyms. And so, knowing what we're saying when mission control calls up and says, “Hey, I need you to go to AAT and press the number 2 on it,” they know where to go and where to look so they can actually do that.

So, it's integrating them with how we operate so that when they get up there, they're able to do the things that they plan to do while they're up there efficiently and able to communicate with the ground to get everything done in a timely manner and have a good time doing it. Because a lot of the guys that we've been training are really looking forward to this and are planning to have a lot of fun up there, in addition, doing a lot of really good research.

John Arnold

So, that leads into my next question. So, the first all-private mission to the ISS is getting ready to launch on April 3rd, has anything special gone into prepping the Ax-1 team, and will your training inform or shape the research that they're going to be doing?

Travis Fitzgerald

So, Like I said, a lot of the stuff we are focusing on is system stuff, but they —

John Arnold

Got you.

Travis Fitzgerald

— need that in order to do this research. So, they're going to be using a lot of NASA facilities on board. We've got glove boxes for them to go in and do some of their science. In there, they're actually using one piece of exercise equipment they're going to be getting on to see how the human body reacts to exercise while on board of the space station, things like that. So, we're really setting the stage so that they can worry less about how to just live on the space station and focus more on how to actually do their research. That's where the focus of the training that we've provided.

John Arnold

Right. That's awesome. What are some elements of training that maybe won't necessarily be a factor on this mission but that astronauts on other missions might experience in the future?

Travis Fitzgerald

Yeah, that's a really good question. The big difference in the future we're hoping it'll get to this point, is right now, this mission is eight- to nine-day mission. So, relatively short when it comes to space flights, at least —

John Arnold

Right.

Travis Fitzgerald

— once you get into orbit relatively short. The government astronauts are usually spending upwards of six months or sometimes a lot longer on board. But these guys are spending a short time and therefore NASA has determined, and KBR has determined, that they don't need a lot of training on how to exercise, and the physiological changes that can happen for long term space flight.

So, these guys for Ax-1 didn't get a whole lot of that training. But when we start expanding it and having longer missions, they're going to need a little bit more of that, a little bit more how to deal with the ... how your body changes as you stay up a little bit longer on board, although these guys are taking it upon themselves to do a little bit of their own little light exercise to try and maintain a little bit of that muscle mass.

John Arnold

Right. Well, I was going to ask, so in the training primarily on systems, how does that jibe with training that does go on other missions — the health and human performance aspect of a mission?

Travis Fitzgerald

Yeah. So, we do have a few lessons, a few things we teach the private astronauts that we've done for Ax-1 on how to ... a little bit of the psychology of being on board, a little bit of how you deal with it, dealing with teams because everyone go goes up as a team and then you join another team. So, that it's one crew is a team of four, then they're going to join two more crews that are already on board right now.

So, they got to figure out how that's going to operate, how you work together, how you resolve differences, and all those sorts of things that you can imagine putting a bunch of high-performing people in the same place, in a small area together for even just a few days, that can be a problem. But we're providing them training on the human-health performance side of things to help them out with that and figure out — give them the tools to be able to resolve their own conflicts and then ways to use our systems to contact people if they need more help.

John Arnold

That's outstanding. And how has this training differed for you and your teams in any way that it would have for a NASA team, for example?

Travis Fitzgerald

So yeah, that is a good question. One of the things NASA did leading up to this, and they spent, I think, two to three years figuring this out, is they've put together what training they need to see a private astronaut go through and what milestones they have to meet in order to be qualified, in order for NASA to qualify them, to be able to go to the international space station.

And so, we worked with them to figure out what is the right level of training and then in the past year have executed that training. And we're basically going through it and figuring out what they need, make sure they've met the bar, and then we report back to NASA saying, “Here's what they've done, here's where they excel,” those sorts of things, so that all sides are comfortable with them going and being on board this multibillion-dollar asset that the U.S. citizens have paid for.

John Arnold

Right. So, once a mission goes into orbit, what is your involvement? What's the training team's involvement with the process once that's happened?

Travis Fitzgerald

So, for the most part, our team is done. At this point, we've finished all …

John Arnold

Got you.

Travis Fitzgerald

… the ground training. However, a lot of our training team are also flight controllers. So, we'll also be spending time on console, for example, I'm also a capcom. And so, I'll be sitting in mission control for some of their shifts and talking to them and relaying information from the mission control …

John Arnold

Excellent.

Travis Fitzgerald

… team on how that's going. And then we've got other discipline leads who are going to be sitting console with them and helping them out from the systems perspectives.

John Arnold

And how are you feeling personally about how this whole process has evolved and this being the first all private mission working with the KBR teams?

Travis Fitzgerald

Yeah. It's gone really well. One of the things that I found interesting is that as we were getting started, there was a lot of concerns about, “Are we really doing this? Is this really happening? Are we ready to do this?” But once we got started, everyone started getting a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more, “Okay, well, we put together a plan, let's execute the plan, and let's see how things turn out.”

And as people were meeting the crew and seeing how motivated they are and how happy they are to be able to be given the chance to not only be able to go to the space station — but be the first ones to go on this private mission. So, they're highly motivated, the people are really excited, and we're able to work really closely and openly with NASA to say, “Here's what we are providing to our customers on both NASA and the private astronauts, and here's what it is. It's now up to you NASA to decide if that is good enough and whether they are ready to go.” And they eventually have said, “Yes, they're ready to go and they're ready to launch.”

John Arnold

That's fantastic. So, at time of listening, when our listeners hear this, it's going to be after the launch has happened. What's happening in the days leading up to the launch? Is there a checklist that the astronauts and the teams are going through every single day just to make sure that everything is going according to plan?

Travis Fitzgerald

Yeah. So just like the government astronauts, so right now they're in quarantine and this is end of March, they're in quarantine, so they're basically being sequestered so that they don't, one, catch any bugs themselves, any viruses or anything-

John Arnold

Right.

Travis Fitzgerald

Like that. And then also, so they don't take anything up to the International Space Station, that's just a NASA standard we have for all crews that go up there. And while they're in this quarantine, they're studying. We've provided them a bunch of materials they're looking through and reminding themselves of the training they've had. They're reviewing all the research they're planning on doing, because just like a government astronaut, their timeline, once they get on board, they've got a lot of things to do and not a lot of time to do it, and so …

John Arnold

Right.

Travis Fitzgerald

… they want to be efficient and they're studying on it, and they've got some folks helping them out on the Axiom side. They've got some really experienced folks that they're working with to get them ready.

And then as they get closer and closer to launch, they'll start — in fact, I think last week they actually had a walkthrough of their spacecraft, or they tried on their suits and they got in it, and they're checking the things out. And then as they get closer, they'll watch it roll out to the pad, they'll go do a couple of dry runs and make sure they're comfortable getting ready, getting suited up, getting in, getting out, that sort of thing. And then day of launch, they take the cars out to the pad, get in, strap in the best ride in the universe.

John Arnold

Awesome. We'll put the vibe out now that all it's going to go according to plan, everything's going to be great. And so, I want to thank you for your time. I want to know, is there anything else you'd like to add, or any parting thoughts ahead of the launch?

Travis Fitzgerald

Well, my only thoughts is how much of an honor it's been to lead the training team on this mission. We got to a lot of really talented people on the training team, and here at KBR and our subcontractors that have worked on this. And we've worked really hard on it and I'm really proud of how everyone's done. And we know the crew's going to do great. And we're hoping this helps pave the way for more missions and more companies to come to KBR and ask for training to help really show how commercialization of low earth orbit can really be successful.

John Arnold

Absolutely. Well, Travis, we appreciate it immensely, and we'll talk to you hopefully again after the launch.

Travis Fitzgerald

All right. Sounds great.

TRANSITION

Lubna Salim

So, wow! Wow, John, that was a fantastic podcast. And if we are to say what's in the name, there is a lot. Why, because Travis Fitzgerald shares his second name with my favorite author, Scott Fitzgerald.

John Arnold

Oh!

Lubna Salim

And as we hear from the episode, while Scott Fitzgerald was creating amazing characters of fiction, I think Travis Fitzgerald is creating real-life heroes. He's creating astronauts, and that was a fantastic, fantastic interview, and I was truly, truly inspired and fascinated.

John Arnold

Well, first of all, I did not know you were an F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, so that's very, very cool, love The Great Gatsby.

Lubna Salim

Yes.

John Arnold

And yeah, not to be diminished, Travis Fitzgerald — no slouch. Just a really, really amiable guy, very pleasant to talk to, but also obviously, very, very super intelligent and carries a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. Thinking about ... aside from the health and human performance side of astronaut training and the things that these people need to be able to do and withstand from a physical standpoint, knowing all of the technical aspects of what goes into space flight — just that – it absolutely boggles the mind and all the things that they need to know how to do. And really Travis and his team have these people's lives in their hands. So, it's very, very ... it's very fascinating.

Lubna Salim

It is. And he makes it sound really casual, but we know, we get the drift of it. So …

John Arnold

Absolutely. Hopefully, our listeners at home did as well.

Lubna Salim

Absolutely John. And if you would like to know more about such missions, you must follow our podcast. Also, keep track of everything that we put out on our website, on our social media, we have a whole bunch of webinars coming up from the technology solutions business unit, you can register for them at our website.

John Arnold:

Absolutely, yeah. That's kbr.com. And if you want to get a hold of us, we're at inorbit@kbr.com. We're always on the lookout for interesting stories or feedback, or if you just want to check in and say hi, please feel free to do so. But in the meantime, we hope everyone takes care, stays safe, and we'll talk to you again soon.

Lubna Salim

Bye.