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I am a mechanical engineer who has worked at NASA Johnson Space Center for the past 15 years. I started as a contractor and 7 years ago was picked up as an official NASA government employee. I started working in the training division coming up with lessons for the first International Space Station (ISS) crews and flight controllers. I worked with the simulator programmers to insure the simulator would provide the correct failure signatures and respond appropriately to commands according to the ISS vehicle design. Then I heard there were no training manuals for the crew on the Russian systems and since the Russian parts of the ISS were going to be the first up there and most of the systems would be the first upon which we would rely, I thought what a great opportunity to help and to learn new things. So I volunteered to help out in Russia. I worked with the Russian instructors and went before the crew each monthly training session to create drawings, training manuals, and study guides in English. This was a challenge because interpreters did not know technical English so I had to put my engineering skills to work as well to determine what things were. But engineers can talk to engineers even with language barriers. I then went to support the life support systems in the engineering area as a liaison to the Russian engineers for operations. And now I support the ISS in the program office providing overall integration for the internal environment of ISS. I watch the air, water, and state of microbial quality for long-term trends insuring we are ok. I also am integrating all systems for life extension of ISS to insure we can operate through 2028 to gain the most science and engineering benefit from the orbital laboratory we have created. Over the years I have written a number of technical papers and was recently a contributing author to a space system safety textbook for space craft design. For my creative outlet I want to write children's books. So this is my creative outlet journey. I love to write and have many stories to tell.

I am a mechanical engineer who has worked at NASA Johnson Space Center for the past 15 years. I started as a contractor and 7 years ago was picked up as an official NASA government employee. I started working in the training division coming up with lessons for the first International Space Station (ISS) crews and flight controllers. I worked with the simulator programmers to insure the simulator ... More