Yi Luo
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Kristine Davis, Spacesuit Engineer, NASA, Johnson Space Center, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Growing up under the starry sky in a small town of Kansas, Kristine built an early connection with NASA and space through a local aerospace museum called the Cosmosphere.

She pursued her goal of becoming a NASA engineer during her time at Kansas State University, where she graduated with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering in 2015. During college, she was selected to participate in the NASA Pathways Intern Employment Program (IEP). Kristine was able to rotate to different groups at NASA in the program and gradually found out her interest in spacesuit design. She was specifically attracted to the human factor in the spacesuit engineering; she explained to me, “You have to put a human inside of it…so it’s like a squishier part of engineering than just the hard facts and equations and stuff.” After graduation, she started her current position at NASA as a spacesuit designer working on the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuit.

When I asked her about what keeps her returning to NASA, Kristine laughed and said it’s a combination of many factors. She is really inspired by NASA’s mission and appreciates the opportunity to contribute to the frontlines of human explorations. Working in NASA itself is also very enjoyable, she said. The Johnson Space Center and NASA, in general, have diverse teams and a great culture that “encourage[s] innovation” and “encourage[s] young engineers to get involved in technical projects right away.” Mentors and role models are very accessible and have helped her grow as an engineer.

Spacesuit design could be mysterious for many people. To help me understand what being a spacesuit designer entails, Kristine explained that she thinks of spacesuits as “human-sized spacecraft.” When the astronaut goes out for extravehicular activity (EVA), the spacesuit is the only thing that keeps them alive for an eight-hour spacewalk, so her team needs to provide all the life support for that human, including power, oxygen, CO₂ scrubbing, and toxicity scrubbing, among other things. NASA has different technology readiness levels (TRLs), which means some technologies are more ready to fly than others and have gone through different failure scenarios. Kristine’s group is on higher TRL and becoming a flight program. She specializes in the pressure garment system, the part of the suit that the human is living and working inside. The other part of the spacesuit is the life support system, which is the backpack that keeps the environment livable for the human. Kristine especially enjoys the testing in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which is “basically a big pool.” By putting weight on the spacesuit, her team made the spacesuit neutrally buoyant in the water and tested how the suit performed in a simulated microgravity environment. She also briefly explained that the collaboration between various experts on the team is a big part of her work.

She then talked about what it means to be a good spacesuit designer. They “try and think through every single failure scenario. And, if this will fail, how could it fail, what would be the consequences, and then how can we prevent that failure.” However, this doesn’t mean they are starting from scratch. When the team starts a new project, the first thing they always do is see what people have done in the past and learn from that to avoid repeating mistakes. Kristine thinks one of the most important things she learned right away as an engineer at NASA is that most ideas have been tried before in a certain way or another. After that, “the next step is to see how the commercial industry can help us.” Since the Apollo program, the commercial industry has really advanced in developing new technology that could contribute to NASA’s projects. After collaboration with the commercial industry, the team starts to do testing and improve based on the feedback. Kristine finds it very exciting to go through this traditional engineering design cycle.

For students interested in entering the space industry, Kristine first encourages you to go after your dream, whatever it is, and to share with others what your passion is and why it is your passion; this is the type of information people love to hear in job interviews. Starting early is her next piece of advice. Even though her professors in college thought career fairs were only for juniors and seniors, she still applied for 15 internships in her freshman year and got one callback from United Launch Alliance. She explained that “just being in that aerospace industry really gave me such an advantage for whenever I was ready to apply to NASA.” Internships are great because they are for a short time and get your “foot in the door.” There are a lot of companies in the aerospace industry and many support contractors that NASA uses that do the same work that she and her team do every day, so those could be a good start for a career.

A dream planted in childhood inspired Kristine to pursue a career for a lifetime. Her story reflects that persistence and passion can help students achieve their dream jobs. It’s normal to find new passion along the way, but as Kristine said, go after your dream, act early, and take initiative—the dream job is not impossible.

Highlights from the interview:

When did you first envision yourself as a spacesuit designer or engineer?

I didn’t necessarily know I was going to or wanted to work in spacesuits. But I knew I wanted to work for NASA pretty early on. I grew up in a pretty small town in Kansas. And close by, like a 45-minute drive away from my town, was an aerospace museum called the Cosmosphere, Kansas Cosmosphere. And they have a great collection of space artifacts, and they run a lot of camps and activities for little kids. So, I grew up going to the Cosmosphere and learning about what NASA did and about space. And I found it very interesting. I think the benefit of being in a small town in Kansas is every night…whenever you go outside, you get to see all the stars, and it’s very captivating, combined with all the education I was getting from the Cosmosphere about what NASA did.

What I decided is that being an engineer and working for NASA was my goal, when I was middle school age. At the Cosmosphere, they had a space camp fair and with the space camp, you learn all about NASA. You learned what the jobs were that people did, and we also got to take a trip down to Houston. During that trip, I was like, “This is amazing. I can’t believe people get to do this every day.” And so that’s when I decided that I wanted to be an engineer, and I wanted to work for NASA.

I carried that goal through high school and college, and it got me into the internship program. I got into the Pathways intern program [NASA Pathways Intern Employment Program (IEP)], and then once you’re in the Pathways intern program, it gives you a great opportunity here at the Johnson Space Center to rotate to different groups. And so, my first rotation was in flight operations and while I was in that rotation, I had friends that were over in the spacesuit group. And they were talking about how fun their series was and how they really liked how they get to combine all their engineering skills with this human function of the spacesuit. You have to put a human inside of it…so it’s like a squishier part of engineering than just the hard facts and equations and stuff. I thought that sounded really interesting, so I did my first internship in the spacesuit group the spring of 2014, and I loved it. And so, then I did another two internships following that, and then came on full-time early in the spring of 2016. 

I see you keep returning to NASA. Is it the job itself? Or is it the team, working environments, or team dynamic in NASA that keep you coming back?

That’s a great question. It’s kind of both. NASA definitely had a really great culture at Johnson Space Center and in NASA, in general. They definitely encourage innovation; they encourage young engineers to get involved in technical projects right away. And we have a really great team around us. I have a lot of role models and a lot of mentors that are really accessible and also enjoy teaching me how to become a good engineer for NASA. So that’s part of it. Also, I just have always been just so inspired by NASA’s mission. In that, I get the opportunity to really contribute on the frontlines of exploration and human exploration and so that inspires me every day. I’m really thankful that I can have a little piece of that human exploration and a little piece of the missions that are to come. 

I feel that a spacesuit, to my understanding, is still like a type of clothing, yet it also has embedded a very complicated life support and protection system. It’s more like a hybrid of human skin extension and like a code-bot machinery. It’s a very fascinating area. Could you share a past project that you were really excited about or some memorable experiences of the project you work on?

I think that’s a great description. Yeah, spacesuits—when you look at them, we always relate them to clothing because that’s the first thing that we’re all familiar with, we understand protective clothing that you wear. And they are, in a way, partly that. They’re something you put on, but they are first and foremost a life support system. And we like to think of them as human-sized spacecraft, because whenever the person goes out to do an EVA or extravehicular activity, they’re going out to be by themselves in the vacuum of space. And that spacesuit’s the only thing that’s keeping them alive for that eight-hour spacewalk. So we need everything that a spacecraft would need. We need oxygen, we need power, CO2 scrubbing, toxicity scrubbing—we need to provide all that life support for that human for those eight hours when they go out on that spacewalk.

Some really cool projects that I got to be a part of are whenever we really get to be hands-on with the hardware and get to testing. I think it’s a great opportunity to understand how the suit moves and functions and how a person can interact with it. I specialize on the pressure garment system, the PGS part of the suit. It’s the part of the suit that the human is living and working inside. The other really big part of the suit is the portable life support system, or the PLSS, and it’s just the backpack in the suit that’s got everything in there to keep that pressure garment space a happy environment for that human. We do testing in a lot of different environments that we find to be relevant to try and mimic what it’s going to be like either in microgravity or in a lunar gravity situation.

One of my favorite projects I’ve gotten to work on is when we’ve got to NBL testing. NBL’s our Neutral Buoyancy Lab; it’s basically a big pool. And we can make the suit neutrally buoyant in the water column by putting weights on the suit because the suit just in the water itself will want to float. So we put weights on it, similar to when you’re diving and sometimes wear dive belts or weights so you can float in that water column, and work on these huge-scale mockups of the space station. We did testing to understand how our advanced suit architecture well designed for planetary walking works in a microgravity environment. So, if we do use it on the space station, how will we perform. And I got to organize that test series. I did all the paperwork to get us ready in terms of safety to make sure that all the different parties are talking to each other, that our systems are interfacing with their systems, and we can be safe in the test…And then I also designed the test plan and then executed the test and worked with crew members to be able to guide them through tasks to help test out our suits. It was really a cool project that I got to have it really from start to end. And see how well our suit design works in this new environment, and then how the crew gave us feedback to then make a better design for working closer and closer to flight.

Can you talk a little bit about, as a designer and engineer, how you would usually approach a project and take initiative to find problems?

We do try and think through every single failure scenario. And, if this will fail, how could it fail, what would be the consequences, and then how can we prevent that failure. So that’s something that we take really seriously, especially with anything that’s supporting human life. I think with anything with the spacesuits, whenever we’re trying to design a new system.

Right now, for example, we have different technology readiness levels. We call them TRLs. With the technologies, there’s always the group working in the background where they’re working on lower level technology that hopefully one day will get them to flight. And then we also have flight-ready technologies that have gone through all the different failure scenarios, they’re vetted, they’ve been tested and they’re ready to go, ready to fly. Our project right now is on that track to becoming a flight program. So we are higher in that technology readiness level, so a lot of our designs aren’t necessarily starting from scratch because we already know what we want to design. We’re just now getting ready to test it, break it, figure out how it breaks, and then make it better. But not necessarily starting from scratch.

I am involved in one of those lower technology readiness level projects. We’re trying to figure out how to make an augmented reality display for the suit, which is something that we’ve definitely wanted for several years. It’s really exciting working on this emerging technology that you see a lot around us today with augmented reality. When we’re really starting with a brand-new project, the first thing to do is always see what they’ve done in the past. Because there’s a really good chance that if you’re trying to do it, someone else has tried to do it before you, and trying to figure out what did they do, what works, and what didn’t work. And what can we move forward for lessons learned. I think that’s one of the most important things I’ve learned, right away, as an engineer at NASA. Most ideas have been tried before in a certain way or another. It’s great to reach back and learn those lessons from people before you versus repeating the same mistakes.

So that was really one of the first things we did when we started this new project; we tried to learn from the past about what other projects had done. And then the next step is to see how commercial industry can help us. Since really the Apollo program, the commercial industry has really come a long ways in developing new technology, that we can lean a lot onto what the commercial industry’s doing to see if we can incorporate those new technologies or maybe take that technology and just tweak it to our needs. And then once we do that, then we really start to do testing, we see what works, what doesn’t work. And then we go back to that original design and we improve it. And then we test it again, and then we just go through that engineering design cycle. Until we’re ready to have something to take to a program to say, “Hey, would you fund this for flight?” And so, this is also a really exciting process to go through, that traditional engineering design cycle.

Being a woman, how does this identity impact your role as a spacesuit designer?

I do want to start out with I’m really fortunate in this team that I work with and have the role models around me. My branch, the spacesuit industry, NASA in general, and the people that I interact with every day, I have a very diverse team with a lot of female role models that are in positions of power and management, team leads, technical leads. So, there’s a lot of different female role models that I have within my team that I can look up to and get mentorship from. I definitely think it’s important to have a diverse team, because we all bring different perspectives and different ideas to the table.

As far as spacesuit design, our designs are not female or male in the way that we make the spacesuits, simply because our suits are just not conformal. We don’t need to make suits that are just females or males. We do make our suits, however, to different anthropometry ranges. Which tend to sometimes reflect the female or male population. So, our anthropometry range that we’re trying to reach is first percentile female up to 99 percentile male. This database of male to females [anthropometry ranges] were measured by, I think, the Army or the Air Force. And so, we use that database to try to understand how our suit’s going to fit that large population of people. And we’ve done things specifically with the xEMU design to make it more compatible to fitting the lower range of the anthropometry ranges and then make it more flexible to have the modular sizing options, so that way we can really fit the smaller ranges of subjects better. It’s not just your height, but it’s also your chest breadth, and your chest width, and your arm length, and your leg length, and your vertical trunk distance. It’s a lot of different measurements that we take into play whenever we’re trying to design a suit to fit a really large population of people.

Can you talk a little bit about general advice you have for students who might be interested in pursuing a career in NASA or spacesuit design?

The first thing I would have for advice is to go after whatever your dream is. So, if you’re passionate about NASA or about spacesuit design and really want to work in those fields, I think the biggest thing is to go for it and try to pursue as many avenues as you can.

I think the best pieces of advice that I got early on in my college career, was to apply for internships early. When you first start college, you talk to professors and when they talk about the career fair, they’re like, “Oh, it’s for juniors and seniors. You don’t have to worry about that now.” And my brother is actually also a mechanical engineer and he was like, “Oh no, you should start this soon. You should go as a freshman. And even if you don’t get an internship, you at least have the experience talking to potential companies, and you’ll know what they’re looking for the next time around.” And so, my freshman year, I applied for, I think ,15 different internships. They were all in the aerospace industry, some with NASA, some with private companies. And I got, out of the 15 that I applied to, I got one callback from United Launch Alliance. They launched the Atlas and Delta rockets, and I got an internship offer to spend a summer in Florida at Kennedy Space Center in their launch operations. So that was really such a great foot in the door. Because even though I really wanted to end up at NASA, just being in that aerospace industry really gave me such an advantage for whenever I was ready to apply to NASA.

And so, I guess that’s really my two pieces of advice. One, don’t be afraid to go for it and to share with others what your passion is and why that’s your passion. They will love to hear that in interviews. And two, to really start early—as early as you can when you’re applying for internships and opportunities, because even if it’s not exactly where you want to work, that’s the great thing about internships…it was a great way for me to get my foot in the door by taking an internship opportunity with a contractor. And I think there’s a lot of support contractors that NASA uses that do the same work that we do every day. And so that’s the other thing, too, is to look at the support contractors and even if the opportunity doesn’t come with you for NASA, there are a lot of companies now that are doing work in the aerospace industry you can look into. And then maybe your career would then progress to get to NASA.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.