Former astronaut relates exhilarating experiences to middle schoolers
By Rob Kuznia Staff Writer
For three hours, you're sitting upside down, legs above your head, waiting. When the countdown finally begins, there's a tremendous rumble that vibrates your legs. Then you feel an acute kick against your back and you're blasting off. Your body's shaking so violently from the thrust of the roaring rockets that it's impossible to read the dials on the console, or focus on anything, for that matter: it's all a just jiggling blur. The next thing you know, you're rocketing through the atmosphere at 17,500 mph. That's 25 times the speed of sound. The exhilaration of liftoff was just one of many stories and impressions relayed to a group of 250 middle school students Monday by John "Danny" Olivas, a former NASA astronaut and current high-ranking engineer for the Raytheon Co. in El Segundo. "Do I believe there's life out there?" said the Manhattan Beach resident in response to a student's question at the event, which took place at company's Space and Airborne Systems center on East El Segundo Blvd. "I find it hard to believe there's not." His presentation was part of Raytheon's annual observance of National Engineers Week, in which the company hosts a series of events for students of all ages - from middle school through college - in an effort to spark and nurture a passion for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Other events this week will include engineering games for high schoolers and Shadow an Engineer Day for college students. National Engineers Week has been in existence a long while - the inception took place in 1951 - but organizers at Raytheon say it is currently more relevant than ever as the United States struggles to avoid losing more ground to other developed countries in this realm. "If you don't get students excited about math and science by eighth grade, you've lost them," said Noel Ellis, deputy director for electronics engineering at Raytheon and the company's Engineering Week chair. Apparently, the United States has lost too many over the years. In math literacy among 15-year-olds, the U.S. ranks 25th of the 34 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Also, from 1995 to 2008, the United States fell from second place to 13th in college graduation rates, although that's the result of the other nations catching up, not the United States moving backward, according to the widely reported Programme for International Student Assessment, which comes out every three years. It's safe to say Olivas did his small part Monday to ignite curiosity. He described what it's like to look down at the Earth while on a spacewalk. From up above he could see the quilts of farmland in the American Midwest and the contrails of passenger jets zigzagging across the blue sky below. Most profound was viewing, through a pair of binoculars on the shuttle, the cloud-like nebula of a distant galaxy. "It just blew my mind," said Olivas, who now works at Raytheon's current Space and Airborne Systems chief engineer for operations and supply chain management. "I became a 7-year-old again." Olivas, 46, didn't sugar-coat answers to questions from students about some of the uglier aspects of the business. Such as: How do astronauts go the bathroom? (It involves a device that resembles a vacuum. When the waste is purged in space, "it looks like a yellow blizzard.") Or: How is the food? "For three or four days (on his first mission), I couldn't eat - the food grossed me out," he acknowledged, describing a heavily processed piece of crumbly steak with a sauce that jiggled like Jell-O. To a student who asked what would happen if an astronaut took off his glove while on a spacewalk, he delivered the gruesome answer in matter-of-fact fashion: "Most likely your hand would first freeze, then it would crack, and then all of the blood would rush out of the cracks in your skin." He shared with the students what went wrong with the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, when an explosion killed all seven crew members. In a nutshell, the shuttle was launched too early in the year, when it was still too cold. This was to the detriment of the doughnut-shaped rubber seals around the base of the rocket boosters called O-rings, which - instead of expanding as they are supposed to - ruptured. "The seals broke and the hot gas escaped, and that basically caused everything to go crazy," he said. Olivas also demystified his own foray into the realm of math and science, conceding he wasn't big on mathematics as a kid. "I didn't understand the relevance." It wasn't until he took a high school physics class that he found his passion for engineering. He went on to obtain a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston and then a doctorate in the same subject from Rice University. The event was geared largely to appeal to students whose parents might not have a career in the sciences. Such is the case for Kevin Hernandez of Fleming Middle School in Lomita, the son of a former El Salvadorian professional soccer player and current janitorial supplies businessman whose education was blunted by war. "Math is my favorite subject," Kevin said, though he added the event didn't derail his long-term plans for law school. But he has plenty of time to consider his options. In the meantime, Kevin will likely never forget the colorful stories and sage advice shared by a man who has flown on two space shuttle missions. Engineering, Olivas said, is the bridge between imagination and reality. "(Humans) can dream it, we can think about it," he said. "Engineers, and scientists and mathematicians - they can make it happen."  Follow Rob Kuznia on Twitter at