Former NASA Engineer’s Interesting Take on Women in Science (Beth Moses!)

from
https://news.wttw.com/2017/05/11/former-nasa-engineer-s-interesting-take-women-science

And Beth Moses just went into space!

Former NASA Engineer’s Interesting Take on Women in Science
Alex Ruppenthal | May 11, 2017 1:58 pm

Former NASA engineer Beth Moses is chief astronaut instructor at Virgin 
Galactic, the world's first commercial spaceline. (YouTube / Virgin 
Galactic)


Not long after joining Virgin Galactic in 2014 as its chief astronaut 
instructor, former NASA aerospace engineer Beth Moses was asked to weigh 
in on the topic of gender.

The question was not out of left field (or outer space), given that 
women make up just 11 percent of aerospace engineers in the U.S., 
according to a 2013 study by the U.S. Census Bureau.

But the request caught Moses off guard.

“I got an email one day asking me to write a blog about my issues with 
gender in the workplace,” said Moses, who grew up in Northbrook and is 
tasked with training customers of the world’s first commercial 
spaceline. “And I wrote an email back saying, ‘Well, I guess I’ve never 
had any.’”

Moses’ resulting blog post, titled “Women in STEM – why engineers don’t 
come in pink or blue,” was a stream-of-consciousness release that she 
says still reflects her stance on the topic.

“I have never really noticed any diversity variables or factors,” Moses 
told Chicago Tonight. “Like, I’ve never really noticed the number of 
women or the number of any given minority because the projects I’ve done 
have been so global in nature. And if you stop and you think and you 
count heads, you go, ‘Oh look, there were only two women in that room.’ 
But when you’re doing the job, you never notice it. It’s just a bunch of 
engineers in the room trying to solve a problem, right?”

Moses has solved some pretty big puzzles since beginning as an intern at 
NASA in the early 1990s while still studying aerospace engineering at 
Purdue University. At NASA, she started off designing mockups for 
astronauts to test tools underwater. She eventually became the spacewalk 
system manager for the International Space Station, leading a global 
team responsible for designing and testing all hardware used by 
astronauts to construct the ISS in orbit.



“One of the things that I believe in is that if a greater slice of 
humanity can experience spaceflight, it will translate to untold 
benefits and changes on Earth. What if every world leader saw Earth from 
space? It might be a more gentle, kind planet.”

–Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor Beth Moses

This week, Moses returned home to receive the Women in Space Science 
Award from the Women’s Board of the Adler Planetarium, which has 
recognized trailblazing women in STEM fields (that’s science, 
technology, engineering and mathematics) for 15 years. The board, 
founded in 2002, also supports education and outreach programs to reach 
underserved youth – with a special focus on young women – in STEM fields.

Beth Moses (Adler Planetarium)
Beth Moses (Adler Planetarium)
Moses is scheduled to receive the award Thursday during a reception at 
the Drake Hotel. After the reception, Adler will host a group of about 
250 young women from Chicago-area schools for an afternoon of STEM 
workshops at the planetarium.

Chicago Tonight connected with Moses to discuss women in STEM fields, 
designing tools for outer space, the future of space tourism and more.



Chicago Tonight: Where did your passion for building things – and for 
space – come from?

Beth Moses: I just was always interested [in space and engineering]. 
When I was growing up, the space shuttle was launching, and it was 
fascinating and phenomenal. I was always somewhat of an engineer, even 
in my youth, I suppose. I was one of the kids that would go build the 
model raceways and cobble together whatever I could from my brothers’ 
toys, usually. People always ask me, ‘What got you into it?’ I don’t 
know. I just remember always loving it and always playing that way, and 
nobody ever stopped me, which was wonderful. I guess I was a tomboy and 
a bookworm and a little tinkerer.

CT: Did you always want to go to space?

BM: Oh, of course. Who doesn’t? It’s crazy if you don’t.

CT: Have you been to space?

BM: I have not. It’s extremely competitive, and the NASA program has 
eyesight requirements that I didn’t meet. Nowadays, I think they accept 
corrective surgery, but not throughout my career … But I’ve had the 
great honor of engineering the International Space Station. I haven’t 
gone yet, but I have my fingers crossed that I’ll get to go one day.

CT: How many women were in your aerospace engineering program at Purdue?

BM: Not very many. I was in the minority, but I wasn’t the only one. 
Generally, in the larger classes, there were a handful of women. And 
then as you got more specialized in your coursework, I was sometimes the 
only woman in a classroom of 10 or 15 males. But frequently there was at 
least one other lady in the room.

As part of Adler's Women in Space Science Award celebration, about 250 
young women will participate in an afternoon of workshops at the 
planetarium. (Adler Planetarium)
As part of Adler's Women in Space Science Award celebration, about 250 
young women will participate in an afternoon of workshops at the 
planetarium. (Adler Planetarium)

CT: What are your thoughts about the public dialogue and media coverage 
around the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields?

BM: With full respect to your profession, I find it irrelevant, really. 
At least in the projects I’ve done. So a headline says, oh, we have a 
shortage of female engineers or there isn’t much female representation 
at certain levels. But day to day, if you’re doing the job and your 
teachers and your bosses and your colleagues and those under you are 
both men and women and both local and global, you don’t notice it and 
you don’t care. You just get on with the job, right? I mean, I’ve never 
felt singled out. You just do the job. It really doesn’t matter who you 
are; it matters that you know your [stuff].

CT: Would you like to see more women in your field?

BM: I would like the aerospace field to include anyone who is attracted 
to it and capable. If there are other women who would like to 
participate, I would love for the field to welcome them. I don’t know 
that it doesn’t.

CT: How did you start at NASA, and what kind of work did you do?

BM: I started as an engineer designing mockups for underwater testing 
and then I eventually grew to lead the entire global effort that 
designed and tested all the hardware to make sure that it could be 
assembled in orbit and then maintained. And actually, I’m super proud: 
It all fit together. Not everything fit together originally. It all had 
to fit together in space even though we could never plug it all together 
on the ground. So that’s a bit of a trick, right?

CT: Um, yeah …

BM: You have to understand how the hardware behaves when it goes through 
hot and cold cycles of day and night – and is in a vacuum in the same 
time. So things like power cables get stiff, and different cables get 
stiff in different ways, and some of them shorten. So you have to 
understand, is it going to be stiff? Is it going to be too short? Things 
like fluid lines – fluid lines were the worst part of the space station 
– high-pressure ammonia lines that are designed to survive in space for 
decades, and yet a human in a spacesuit has to manipulate them, line 
them up and connect them. It would be like if your garden hose was your 
worst nightmare high-pressure garden hose and you couldn’t get it to 
point where you wanted to – and you’re in a spacesuit. So to [design] 
that, you literally put a human in a spacesuit in a thermal vacuum 
chamber and you make the hardware hot and cold and pressurized – just 
like it would be in space – and you use it in a spacesuit to learn how 
it should be built. Does that make sense?

CT: Yep, sure ... So, you’re working to develop the astronaut training 
program at Virgin Galactic. Where does that stand?

BM: The program for pre-flight training is still being developed and 
tested. So I have not started to train any future astronauts. I have 
started to consult with future astronauts about what they expect out of 
their training, what they expect out of their flight, answering 
questions, getting to know them, that kind of thing. My portion of the 
training is the training the week before you fly, essentially. We 
haven’t started customer flights, so my program will start when we start 
customer flights.



CT: Does Virgin Galactic have an estimate on when customer flights will 
begin?

BM: No, we don’t. It will be as soon as is safely possible. And after 
the conclusion of our flight-test program, we will relocate the program 
from California, where we’re flight testing, to New Mexico, and then 
we’ll start customer flights.

CT: Who are the customers that have signed up for the flights?

BM: There are over 700 of them. They are all private individuals from I 
think 58 different countries who have all paid either a deposit or in 
most cases the full price for a ticket on Virgin Galactic. The price is 
$250,000. But I’ll tell you, there’s a fallacy that they are all high 
net-worth individuals. In actuality, that’s not the case. The stereotype 
of a billionaire astronaut or a high net-worth traveler is pretty much a 
stereotype. We have future astronauts from all walks of life, all means 
– folks that have mortgaged their homes to fly with us; folks that have 
saved for a decade to fly with us; folks that have taken out personal loans.

CT: Will space tourism become more affordable?

BM: Absolutely. The price will definitely come down over time, and not 
just from Virgin Galactic, but from other companies as well.

CT: How do you compare working for NASA to your current position at 
Virgin Galactic?

BM: At NASA, I was testing and training career astronauts to fulfill a 
specific function. And at Galactic, I’ll be training astronauts for 
their own enjoyment. It’s completely different. One of the things that I 
just really, truly, personally believe in is that if a greater slice of 
humanity can experience spaceflight, it will translate to untold 
benefits and changes on Earth. Imagine what folks are going to bring 
back. At NASA, I never trained an artist. I never tested hardware for a 
poet or a business leader or a politician. It was always for a career 
astronaut. What if every world leader saw Earth from space? It might be 
a more gentle, kind planet.

CT: What are you going to say to the young women during Adler's award 
reception?

BM: That's a good question ... I do plan to touch on the meaning of 
space to humanity and the fact that space is a great unifier and that we 
are all kind of sitting at the dawn of something new – this is going to 
be a new era when private citizens can travel to space. It’s going to be 
something no one has ever seen before, and it stands to have very 
transformative power, I think. I’m also going to talk a little bit about 
my past, hopefully a humble inspiration to folks to follow their dreams.

CT: Anything else you’d like to add?

BM: Just my deep, deep gratitude for the award. I’m incredibly humbled 
by the award. The prior recipients have been CEOs and astronauts and 
women who I admire very greatly, and I’m deeply humbled and honored that 
they sought me ought and found me and chose me for the award this year.

Follow Alex Ruppenthal on Twitter: @arupp

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