Stern will be Niwot's first person to go to the stars

NASA released a statement on October 14 announcing planetary scientist and associate vice president of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Dr. Alan Stern, will be the first private sector scientist to fly aboard a commercial space vehicle, Virgin Galactic's suborbital plane SpaceShipTwo. The exciting news means that Stern will realize his lifelong desire to go into space and Niwot will have bragging rights over its first astronaut.

The mission was selected in a proposal process through NASA's Flight Opportunities program. Stern said the decision was a double revelation because, while he knew SwRI had prepared a worthy proposal and had a "decent chance" of succeeding, he didn't anticipate it being the only pitch chosen.

"For whatever reason, I am the one and only scientist in the United States who was selected by NASA to take my research on a commercial space flight," Stern said. "No one's ever done it, whether in orbit or suborbitally ever, and I'm just tickled pink."

This will mark the first time NASA offered to fund experiments to be operated on a human-tended flight. Stern, most recently hailed for his success as the Principal Investigator for New Horizon's mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, has long been a proponent of manned suborbital flights and sees his upcoming mission as just a launching point for more scientists heading to the stars.

"This is really revolutionary," Stern said. "In every other field of science, like oceanography, you can dive in a submersible or go out in ships. In volcanology, you can go out in the field to active volcanoes where it's super dangerous in poisonous gasses and lava everywhere."

But when it comes to space science, the norm has been to create automation that will do the work. But, using mechanization is expensive and can lead to malfunctions and mistakes that a human is far less likely to make.

"If automation was so great, every ocean drilling ship and every field expedition by geologists would be done by rovers or automated robot ships. It's silly. Nobody does that because it's better to have the people. It's simpler and less expensive."

NASA's criteria for consideration was that each mission proposed had to outline an improvement in technology, one that would advance the art and usefulness of suborbital flight, while justifying a person needed to be onboard. SwRI's winning proposal included two experiments.

The first experiment in the two-hour flight utilizes a highly sensitive camera to record astronomy as the vehicle travels to and from its peak altitude of just over 350,000 feet. Stern will have his hands on the camera versus operating it remotely as he has in prior space missions. This special mission will be advancing the task by testing how well astronomy can be performed looking out of the three large windows of the vehicle.

Having a scientist physically behind the camera was justifiable because the camera is incredibly expensive. In an unmanned mission, a robot would need to be invented to move the camera from one window to another, or three cameras would need to be onboard.

Stern said, "We showed from the quotes that it's dramatically less expensive to fly me and one set of equipment than either of the other options."

The second experiment will be recording Stern's own biomedical indicators using sensors throughout the mission.

Stern's prior experience as a pilot, an experimenter using the same camera equipment while on high performance flights, being the principal investigator for seven space missions, and involved in nearly 30 space missions, combined with the strong premise behind this mission's experiment, were likely what clinched the proposal's acceptance.

Two other SwRI planetary scientists, Cathy Olkin, who also lives in Niwot, and Dan Durda are Stern's backups for the mission.

The launch will take place at Spaceport America in New Mexico and is loosely slated to take place in two years. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is essentially one airplane taking off while carrying another under its fuselage. At 50,000 feet the two separate and the pilot of the dropped vehicle fires up an engine rocketing it into space at 3,000 miles per hour. To land, it glides back down to a runway.

For a portion of the flight, the sky will be black, the curve of the earth will be visible, and Stern will be weightless. But first there will be a few hundred hours of training - some to get ready for weightlessness and experiencing gravitational forces of 5 to 6 G's, but the majority of the preparation will involve operating the vehicle down to the minutest detail.

Critical backup and contingency plans will be prepared and there will be repetitive rehearsals of every task in the grounded actual space ship during the five or six months leading up to the flight.

Stern will be in his mid-60's when he actualizes his dream of being an astronaut.

"I'm not worried about it. I've flown so much in high performance airplanes that it's a cousin of things I've done before." Stern is referring to his experiences beginning in the 1990's flying in super-sonic vehicles while performing research.

Thousands of well-wishers from around the globe have reached out to Stern personally and on social media since the news became public. Stern said his mom is very excited and proud. She asked what planet he's going to. Stern said, "Of course, this is going up just barely into space and coming right back."

Stern's daughter Sarah wrote an inspirational social media post about Stern's childhood vision and his journey to make it reality through persistence and work ethic. Sarah concludes the tribute by writing, "No matter how tough your year is, remember that you have the power to dream big, work hard, and achieve your own goals if you let yourself believe in what others would say is impossible." Alongside the post is a picture of five-year-old Dr. Alan Stern, looking every bit a researcher with a kid-sized microscope.

"I expect that if you go down the road five years, there will be dozens, if not more scientists who have flown and many of them will have flown many times, hopefully myself and my group included" Stern said. In the meantime, it's Stern who's going up first.