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Oh.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, February 27th, and I'm Todd Kleismit, executive director of the America 250 Ohio Commission.

I am pleased to be joined by our commission chairman, Doug Price, our local America 250, Ohio Ambassador Michael Brennan, Commission member Kathy Dean Diomond, and so many other friends.

We're truly excited to partner with a city club throughout 2026 to observe America's 250th anniversary, and Ohio's unique contributions to our nation's history and culture.

For February, our state recognizes Ohio innovations and innovators.

It's also currently National Engineers Week.

And of course, we know Ohio boasts a proud legacy in scientific discovery and innovation.

Thomas Edison was born in Ohio.

We're home to the Wright brothers and considered the birthplace of aviation.

And Garrett Morgan invented the modern traffic signal, first installed here in Cleveland.

Today, when thinking of, of one of the state's most celebrated and remarkable beacons of industry and innovation, as well as a powerful regional economic engine, we need look no further than NASA's Glenn Research Center.

Therefore, it is truly my honor to introduce Glenn's Center Director and our speaker here with us today.

Doctor James A Kenyon, Jimmy, as he's, known to many of us, oversees a staff of nearly 2600 civil servants and support service contractors in an annual budget of approximately $900 million.

Prior to becoming Glenn's director, Kenyon served as director of the Advanced Air Vehicles Programing program at NASA headquarters in Washington.

He also worked at Pratt and Whitney, where he held leadership roles in business development, program management, and engineering.

Doctor Kenyon joined Pratt and Whitney after 17 years as a civilian in the Department of Defense, including six years in the office of Secretary of Defense.

Also here with us on stage and moderating the conversation is Betsy Kling.

She's chief meteorologist and anchor at WKYC.

We're in for a great conversation today.

There are so many important milestones to discuss, including recent updates on the Artemis two, test flight and more.

As they say, the road to the moon and the Mars goes through Ohio.

Quick reminder for our live stream and radio audience.

If you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you may text it to (330)541-5794, and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

Now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Doctor James Kenyon and Betsy Kling.

Will settle in everybody.

We only have about 4.5 hours worth of stuff prepared for you.

It's been a very busy morning in space.

Talk.

There were two major press conferences happening simultaneously.

Just about as I was driving here trying to listen to both.

So I was like, I know I can talk to you about all this stuff.

So first and foremost, we had a post wet dress rehearsal, press conference down at Kennedy that was addressing, all of the successes and challenges that they're facing right now with Artemis two, which is stacked.

It's back in the Vehicle Assembly Building.

And then, Administrator Jared Isaacman just decided to upend the entire Artemis program this morning.

And that became public.

So there's a lot that is happening right now under the entire umbrella of all the excitement that is surrounding space exploration and all of the role that Ohio plays in that.

So this morning, you know, unfortunately, those two press conferences kind of preceded our discussion today.

So when we sat down, I said, well, guess what?

Yeah, I think we're going to talk about that first.

So can you bring us up to date?

First of all, let's talk Artemis program as a whole.

Administrator Isaacman basically laid out a totally different timeline.

Now, going forward, can you bring us up to speed on what we're going to do now?

Absolutely.

Some big announcements came out.

And if you've been watching the Artemis two launch, right now, we are getting ready to launch.

We've taken the rocket out to the pad.

We've gone through rehearsals of wet dress rehearsal basically means you fill it with fuel.

You want to make sure all of that works.

And one of the reasons we do that is because rocket fuel is liquid hydrogen.

And one of the things we don't talk about, it's not like going to the gas station and putting gas in your car.

It's a little more difficult.

Hydrogen doesn't is not easy to work with.

First off, the molecules are incredibly tiny, so you can be absolutely airtight and still leak hydrogen like a sieve.

So you have to really make sure that you step up the ceiling on it to keep the hydrogen where it needs to go.

The second thing is that hydrogen, to get it to be liquid, has to be more than 420 degrees below zero.

So you're trying to do this on a launch pad and prevent it from leaking.

And that's how you fuel this thing.

So it's not a small feat.

We did a wet dress rehearsal.

It went really well until it didn't.

And we ended up with some leaks, and we had to go back and adjust and fix those which pushed us from a potential February launch into a potential March launch.

Just because the launch windows are what they are, and it takes a little time to do these things, and then you come up and you start looking at, okay, what do I need to do?

Is we go back for another wet dress rehearsal, and this time they replace the seal.

Worked beautifully.

In fact, the the rehearsal itself probably was one of the most successful we've seen.

It was it exceeded all expectations.

They were able to actually they said, well, we have time left.

So they went and did some other testing and things like that and recycled it to simulate, hey, what happens if we need to do this?

And, and all of that worked out really well.

So second wet dress.

Very good.

We're ready to go.

And then as they were just doing normal operations after that, they discovered a challenge with flowing helium to the spacecraft.

You need helium to pressurize the tanks in the upper stage, and to maintain the right environmental conditions.

They weren't able to flow the helium the way they needed to.

And so we had to, to to take a step back, take a pause.

And unfortunately, those places where you might look at there are a couple of different places to look at, to try to troubleshoot and repair.

You could not access out on the pad.

So we had to roll back to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

We did that earlier this week successfully is there in the pad.

Crews are working or in the building and crews are working on it.

What that means is that we're looking at at a no earlier than April launch date, but the team is working really hard and trying to get there as quickly as they can.

And, and so we're ready for that.

Now that's Artemis two, and that's going to be it's a test flight.

Artemis one was a test flight without crew.

Artemis two is a test flight with crew.

And then what we were looking at before was to take and launch crew on the third Artemis flight, rendezvous with the lander in space and actually put people on the surface of the moon.

First time since, the Apollo 17, back in 1972.

In fact, when we send the astronauts this time, this will be the first time anybody's been to the moon since 1972.

Even even if they don't land.

So first time since 1972.

The challenge here, is that one of the things you recognize with with what we're dealing with, with Artemis two and looking forward is that when you have three years between launches and it gets first off, a lot of people leave.

There's people turnover, people retire, people move on.

You also just don't have a muscle memory.

It's not something that you're practiced that very much.

And so the administrator wants to increase our launch.

Cadence wants us to be doing this more often.

And so what he announced this morning is that, one of the things we were looking at was building a larger version of the rocket, or we're not going to do that.

We're going to stick with the version we have the we know how to build that.

We're going to build more of them.

We're going to go and insert a new launch next year.

In 2027.

So we're still going to go ahead with Artemis two.

And Artemis three is going to move forward to 2027.

It's not going to go to the moon.

It's going to go to low-Earth orbit.

But it's also going to practice some things with the landers and rendezvous and space and demonstrating that.

And that's going to reduce risk, and that's going to help us be more confident and open up room so that in 2028, we're going to target the landings.

And we may even be able to do two of them, potentially two.

And so so that's what we're doing.

It's a more frequent launch cadence.

That means that we'll be better at it because we're practicing it more.

We're doing it more.

We'll get more opportunities to learn.

And that's going to help actually accelerate our exploration goals.

Well, we've said before, you know, the road to space goes through Ohio.

NASA Glenn is played a played a critical role in getting us to where we are.

And there's still more to come that NASA Glenn has teed up.

So give us a little insight on, you know, kind of you have a moment to brag a little bit on, the center that you're running right now.

What what kind of a role they've played to get us to this part right now.

Well, we've done a couple of things.

One of the biggest things we've done is, is when you look at a rocket launch like this, you've got the big rocket.

That's what you see launch.

But sitting on top of the rocket is a spacecraft.

That spacecraft is called Orion, and that's what carries the crew or will carry the crew.

Well, Orion needs something that's going to push it through space.

It needs propulsion to do that.

It's going to need power.

So the lights work and all this, life support systems work, and it's going to need communications, and it's going to need something that supplies all of those services, air, water, everything to the crew and our team right here at NASA.

Glenn is responsible for the service module that does that is being built by international partners, in Europe.

The European Space Agency and the Airbus Corporation.

But the, but but the team that's bringing that back, integrating it, making sure the requirements are right, making sure that we verify, verify and validate everything and everything is working together and then troubleshooting it here.

That team is is led right here out of NASA.

Glenn, we've got the program manager here with us today, Katie 3D.

We've got Steve Marcy's also from her team.

So they're actually here with us today.

And just a big shout out to that.

And just just because she's here and we can brag on her a little bit, Katie plays a little bit bigger role than just heading up the, ESM.

You you were part of the, engineering team.

That's during the mission, keeping an eye on things.

And if something goes awry and they have to troubleshoot, she's running the team.

Yeah, we've got.

Both of them are doing it, so good luck.

Yeah, things are going to be moving around it certainly.

I mean it's a challenge.

You've got to know immediately almost how to fix these things.

You have people that are going up with your rocket.

She had the rocket, but it was the first time.

So there's a lot of different things that can happen.

Exactly.

And different priority levels that have to be sorted through.

And that is engineering 101, right?

It is puzzle fixing, and whatnot.

So as we think about NASA, Glenn, and, you know, you're kind of new to Cleveland and in the role of directing NASA.

Glenn, what has been I'm going to do this is a two part question.

Okay.

The first question is what has been the most integral experience that you've had before you got to Cleveland, that you've been able to go, man, I'm glad I know how to handle this now.

And the second I know big questions.

Second, because that first one wasn't big enough.

You know, now that you have this changing mission in front of you, how do you, as the leader of this group of 2000 plus employees, sort through that priority list, much like the engineers have to do for the mission?

Well, so so a couple of things.

First off, before I came to Glenn, if I'm being really, really honest, I didn't spend much time in spaceflight.

My my whole career has been aviation, aeronautics, flying airplanes, various shapes, various sizes, various speeds.

But it was all about the airplane.

And so I got a little bit of exposure while I was at NASA headquarters and some of the work going on, some of the work that that went into developing the the Moon to Mars architecture, why are we going to the moon?

What are the objectives?

I got to be a little bit involved in that.

But then coming here and seeing the programs, the projects, the technical work, when you said in the flight readiness reviews or the pre reviews with with Katie and her team and with the other teams, the depth of knowledge, the complexity of the systems, how we test them in these gigantic test chambers.

Just all of that was was a revelation to me that said, wow, this is real.

This is this is hardcore engineering.

And then you also start to see not only the the government intrinsic value and, and etc.

and so forth, but you start to see the commercial potential and what this can do for our economy, what it can do for jobs, what it can do for future growth opportunities that spreads out far beyond us.

Air quotes just NASA's mission, but the overall impact that that we're able to have.

And so appreciating that and understanding that and getting to see the role that we play was was very revelatory to me.

And so, I got just a huge satisfaction out of that and just an incredible deep respect in all for the people we have at NASA, Glenn.

And throughout our agency.

But how do you lead through this?

Well, you look for your alligators, and, I'm a southern boy, and I grew up looking for alligators.

Because if you didn't look for alligators, you might find one the hard way.

So.

Right.

And and so, and so you grew up looking for alligators.

And so I'm always thinking, what's what's first or what's first right now is Artemis two.

And if we don't get anything else done, we got to get Artemis two done.

Because if Artemis two doesn't get done, the rest ain't going to get done.

And so we've got to focus on Artemis two.

But you also have to always be watching your six because these other things are coming at you fast.

And you got to be thinking how do we accelerate?

The one thing that the new administrator has been very clear on is that we need to go faster, faster.

But you have to do it because this is human spaceflight.

You've got to be very deliberate.

Cruise safety is always first.

And not just the flight.

The astronauts, for sure, but the crews that are working on this hardware as well.

Safety is always first, and you're dealing with things that are high energy, not always, you know, caustic, you name it.

Nasty stuff sometimes.

Safety first, but you got to go fast.

That's deliberate.

That's a sense of urgency.

And so having that sense of urgency about everything that we do and thinking about what's coming next and how things work together, that's how you, you stay ahead and making sure that if you do nothing else, you communicate, you communicate, you communicate, and you don't always have all the information, but you give the information you have and you give the caveats to where you don't know what, what what may be coming.

So and that that's just that's how you have to do it.

That's how I have to lead the team.

That's that's how the team has to lead me.

And and working together, we work to get that done.

But I got to tell you, you know, the alligator thing, you know, alligators can grow up to 20ft.

I do, but usually they just grow for terrifying.

I get it.

For a radio audience at home.

I'm making a smirking face right now.

And maybe rolling my eyes just a little bit.

That was a pretty good one.

You know, it's it's so funny.

I love the find your alligators.

That that is great.

We have art and design here in Cleveland.

I think they should make t shirts for you and your staff.

Find your alligators.

I love that I would totally buy one of those.

Let's talk a little bit more about Ohio and NASA Glenn's specific no alligators know about.

Well, just maybe a few, but not even the four footed guy they have.

They're kind of mutants and whatnot.

Things are things are going to be challenging, but we have this bedrock of science here, the coolest facilities.

I it is no secret I am a giant space nerd fangirl of NASA Glenn specifically.

And the entire, you know, lead up to Artemis one.

We followed the entire project because it was I went to a luncheon and was told, yeah, they're rebuilding roads in central Ohio so they can track the Orion capsule from Mansfield to Sandusky.

And I was like, I'm sorry.

I was like, yep, wait a minute.

We have the world's largest vacuum chamber.

Yep.

We have the drop tower at NASA.

Glenn, there's a wind tunnel.

Like the icing tunnel.

There's all kinds of, like, crazy things.

Can you just give our folks kind of an overview of some of the cool stuff you got?

Very cool for that.

They can they may not know about.

Yeah.

One one of the things we specialize in, at NASA, Glenn, is testing in extreme environments, extreme flight environments, whether that's extreme flight for in the atmosphere or outside of the atmosphere.

And we do this at large scale or full scale.

And so, we've got two campuses, our, our campus here in Cleveland, we call Lewis Field.

And we've got four large wind tunnel complexes that can test, we can test icing conditions.

And it's amazing that the icing is actually different depending on where you are.

If you're in a tropical thunderstorm at 40,000ft, you've got one thing.

If you're on final approach into Buffalo, you've got another thing.

And if you think about it, there were incidences involving both of those conditions.

And, and and we were able to simulate that in our wind tunnel and help with the investigations on that.

But we also have, supersonic wind tunnel and, and it's interesting, it actually goes from, from low subsonic to supersonic and all the way through the transonic regime.

And I can actually put a jet engine in there and have fuel in there and, and do propulsion testing in there, or I can just use it to test and see what's going on with, with acoustics or anything else in there.

So I can do a lot of testing across a very difficult flight regime.

But but we can do that.

We've got a very high speed wind tunnel, that can test up to in Mach four and a half or so, four and a half times the speed of sound.

Oh, and we can do that with propulsion systems and fuel and everything else, too.

And so we can test these extreme environments.

We can test jet engines and altitude conditions.

And that's the aviation side.

On the space side, you said it.

We've got the world's largest vacuum chamber that's in our Armstrong test facility near Sandusky, the world's largest vacuum chamber, which allows us to test.

No kidding.

Large scale or full scale spacecraft in the right conditions.

And we can put thermal.

So you can do you know, you're in the sun, you're out of the sun.

The temperature changes several hundred degrees.

How do you deal with that?

We can, have the world's highest capacity shaker table.

A shaker table does vibration testing.

And so if you're launching a spacecraft, it shakes.

And so you want to be able to test and make sure that everything stays together.

And then after it shakes, does everything still work?

We've got the world's most powerful acoustic chamber, which means that we can produce, sound to simulate launch environments inside this chamber.

Those.

All three of those are inside our space environments complex, which is one great big building.

And I can move a spacecraft from one to the other and do all of this testing in one place.

We also have large vacuum chambers at Lewis Field where we can test thrusters, for, for, for spacecraft and make sure that they're, they're producing the right performance, but we do it in a vacuum.

And so, so just some amazing test capabilities that we have some really cool toys.

And you mentioned the drop tower.

We have a 500ft hole in the ground.

It turns out that microgravity is freefall.

And so if you can take away all of the air resistance and everything else and just put something in freefall, you're simulating microgravity just like you would if you were flying on the space station.

We only get about 5.5 seconds here testing on the ground, but it's the only place on the ground you can test for 5.5 seconds versus sending it into space, and they were testing flames.

Like, just how does a flame react in microgravity?

I was like, I, I, I guess I hadn't actually thought about that, but that would be kind of important to know it is behavior a little bit.

Yeah.

It's and and our and our center and our and our scientists have played really key roles in understanding flame behavior, which is helping us to make sure that that the things we have on the space station and on other spacecraft, if there's a fire, we can address it.

And so having that understanding is critical, because if you don't, the tools you think might work here might not work so well there.

Yeah.

That that would again be very important.

Now it's one of those cool things.

I do want to talk about the icing tunnel because that is I got to go visit it and I think people may not understand kind of what goes into aircraft icing like literally groups will fly in, companies will fly in pieces, parts of planes to put in this icing tunnel.

Their motto is we freeze to please.

I love it.

I do have the t shirt on that one, I love that, but, you know, there's this gigantic fan, that pushes the air around in a gigantic tunnel that then goes through a gigantic group of air conditioning units to get it all around into this tunnel that I have to creep.

I have to, like, bend down to walk through it.

So it's it's long.

It's very skinny.

And you mentioned a little bit some of the importance of being able to simulate different environments for that icing.

Can you explain to everybody why icing is so significant in aerospace?

Why why it is especially significant for planes.

But some of the implications for spaceflight.

Well, you've got to deal with with with the icing for space flight as well.

Simply because you as you're traversing the atmosphere, you want to make sure that you understand that.

Now we watch our weather conditions pretty closely.

When we launch to make sure that the we try to stay out of some of those conditions, but understanding what those conditions can do and how to resolve those is important.

But it has historically been been a key to to making airlines and air traffic so much safer.

Every, deicing system that that is flying on aircraft today has been tested in our tunnels.

And so that's that's an important thing to know because, one of the things we discover is that there are so many different ways icing can occur.

It's a combination of temperature, humidity, you're flying through clouds that have different droplet sizes.

And all of these change how the ice accrete, how it how it builds up on the surface, how smooth it is, how rough it is, how it behaves.

Because of course, you're flying this ice thing through the air.

And if it's rough, it's going to do one thing.

If it's smooth, is going to do another thing.

And and all of that makes a difference.

And so that's, that's where that tunnel has really proved its worth.

And every time we think we have it saw something happens and we we have to go solve something else.

And learn something new.

And we hope that we don't ever get to do that again.

But but we also know that we've hoped that before, and we want to make sure that we keep that capability so that we can keep flying as safe as we can.

So all this technology that we have at Glenn and within the NASA enterprise as a whole has real world implications.

I think it's just so fascinating.

Things like memory foam, like who invented memory foam?

NASA did, somebody at NASA did, what are some of the other things that you are working on now at NASA, Glenn, that you think will have real world implications in the future?

Yeah, we we have.

And at NASA, Glenn, we're very proud to host the agency's technology transfer office, which was just kind of underscores the work that we do.

But but at NASA, we often, patent the technologies that we develop.

And then when we patent them, we can license them to companies for their applications.

Right now, we have over 130 active patents.

We've had, more than 750 in our lifetime.

Of course, patents have a lifetime, and they eventually expire.

But but right now, more than 130 active.

Every year we're filing new technology reports.

So far in 2026, we've already filed 16 new technology reports, many of which will result in new patents.

And so our inventors are very active, working in developing new things.

So just a couple of highlights.

Last year we were recognized with NASA's commercial invention of the year.

It was for a material called 810.

This is a high temperature metal alloy, oxide dispersion strengthened, if that means anything to any of the metallurgists out here.

But it basically places oxides in and dispersed throughout the, the metal that gives it stronger properties.

And so it's, higher temperature capable, higher strength, better creep, which means the effects of the heating and cooling in just better capability than anything that is commercially available on the market today.

We invented that a couple of years ago.

You go through the patenting process, we've licensed it.

The last count I had was 18.

There may be more companies looking at applications.

We've licensed it now to four companies to actually start producing.

Oh, and it's optimized for additive manufacturing.

So that's how you come up with it.

And so all of this is taking advantage of modern tools to do, that's an example, another example of solid state batteries developing the technologies that would allow solid state batteries that have at least two times the energy density of lithium ion, and then they don't catch fire.

Well, that's what I was going to ask is, is it going to catch fire on flame?

They don't catch fire.

And so when you think about the aerospace applications, this isn't as mature as some of the other things that we have.

But when you think about the aerospace applications more power, lighter weight, safer, great for spacecraft, great for aircraft and a lot of commercial potential.

So that's another one that we're looking at, quite a bit.

Is the compass program still at Glenn?

Oh, yeah.

Can you give a quick overview of what they do?

Because you talk about.

Well, yeah, this one blows my mind.

So compass is a we call it the Compass Lab.

It's a basically a handful of very smart people who bring in a whole bunch of other really smart people with a lot of computer simulation capability and access to databases out the ying yang.

And and what they do is they do conceptual design, if you will, you bring them a problem and say, how would I solve this?

What could I do with that?

And they sit there and they do design sprints.

They sit there and say, well, let's try this.

Well, let's try that.

And they do all of this through modeling computer modeling, but they can do anything from design a better, cheese maker or a cheese cutter to, to designing a new way to put, a base on the moon and so they can look at, well, how could I use the spacecraft differently?

Well, let me tell you the ways.

Right.

And but they'll come back, you know, in a one week or a two week design sprint with all of these ideas, with a level of fidelity that actually let you go and do strategic planning, that lets you say, well, what would happen and explore deeper and let's do a no kidding design.

But they can do all of this in that little lab.

And it's amazing.

The idea is that they turn around and they turn it around quickly.

It's really cool.

They've, they've developed like satellites.

Like, I want to take this to here.

What would this look like?

In two weeks?

They'll have a basically, here's your satellite.

This is what you should build.

Oh, the design for this out.

This is what you should go build.

Yeah.

And then, then they give it two weeks and you're like, okay.

It took me, you know, 15 years to get to this point.

Thanks for that two week project.

Bam.

Here we go.

So and we get calls from all over the agency.

We get calls from all over the industry to come in and use that capability.

So cool.

All right.

Well, we are about to begin the Q&A portion of the afternoon for those just joining our live stream and radio audience, I'm Betsy Kling, the chief meteorologist and anchor at WKYC TV and the moderator for today's conversation.

I'm here with Doctor James Kenyon.

We call him Jimmy.

He's the director of NASA's Glenn Research Center here in Cleveland.

And this is part of the City Club's America 250 Ohio series celebrating the country's 250th birthday.

We welcome questions from everyone city Club members, guests, students and those joining via our live stream at City Club.

Org or live radio broadcast at 89.7 WKSU IdeaStream Public Media if you'd like to text a question, please text it to (330)541-5794.

Again, that is (330)541-5794, and city club staff will work to get you into the program.

All right.

Do we have our first question, Dan.

Yeah, we're going to start with a text question.

Do you see opportunities to bring together the regions research institutions for collaboration with industry and NASA?

Glenn.

And can you talk about the future of NASA Glenn workforce being developed at our universities?

Absolutely.

We're always looking for, for for new ways to partner, with, with organizations.

Of course, as a federal agency, we partner with folks around the country.

But but there's something about the proximity that just makes it a little bit easier.

And, and so we do great work with, with universities all over the northeast Ohio, all over Ohio.

Great work with, with case, work with Cleveland State.

With with Ohio State is just some examples.

And then of course, we work with a lot of our industry partners.

GE is a is a huge partner with us.

But we've done, done work with a number of companies in and around all sizes and so yes, we are open for business.

We love to do that sort of a thing and, and look for partnership opportunities.

And of course, whenever we get to, we love to have students be a part of that.

If, and mine, if I make a plug.

Right, do it, do it.

All right.

So, right now we have two internship calls open.

Don't leave right now.

Wait till the things over for the students in the room.

But.

But we have two announcements for internships open.

There are a couple of different programs.

We have an internship through our office of Stem engagement.

We hire quite a number of students for summer internships, and we do it through other terms as well.

We also have a call out for our pathways interns.

And, and pathways are a little different because those interns actually become civil servants, is very competitive, but you can get in and become a civil servant.

It's more like a co-op if you're familiar with what that is.

Oh, Stem is on intern.nasa.gov.

And the the pathways is on USAjobs.gov.

Search for NASA.

By the way, both of those close at midnight tonight.

Start raining.

Yeah.

You guys have fun.

Need the campus program.

There you go.

Help out with a quick paragraph or two.

We have our first question live in the audience.

Hi.

I'm.

I'm Joan Boro.

I'm an early childhood educator, former kindergarten preschool teacher, currently at the literacy cooperative where I work as director of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library for Cuyahoga County.

As an early childhood educator, I know how critical it is that our young children have interact with, real objects, real people, real books, and have opportunities to play freely, create, imagine, mess around with materials.

So I'm just wondering what recommendations you have for educators, parents, with little ones to foster that.

Maybe engineering mindset and what how you're feeling about the status of the engineering pipeline.

And real quick, my son is a former NASA intern, so.

Yeah.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Excellent.

I hope he had a great experience.

The, I think the more you tinker, the better off you are.

Tinker toys are great.

Legos are awesome.

But but there are so many different kinds of toys out there that give you an opportunity to tinker, to think creatively, to put things together.

I think encouraging kids to do that and to play with those sorts of toys, are, are fabulous.

Sports are also good, though, because there's so much physics, there's so much understanding.

You know, I, I played baseball, you figure out how to throw the ball to get the curve ball.

You figure out how, you know, the weight of the bat and how all of that works together.

The more experiences you can have, that that you can link are always a great opportunity.

But it's all about trying to understand how to get better, how to make it better, how to improve things.

That's what engineering is at its core.

And so the more we can do that, the better off will be the the pipeline.

Today, we've got some of the smartest people in the world, coming through our schools.

It's a matter of keeping them, keeping them engaged, showing folks the opportunities that are out there and letting them see themselves in that.

That's what internships do to provide.

And that's why these are so important to us.

But but just, just even whether it's NASA or the companies we work with, the more experiences we can give.

So that they, they can get their hands in, I became a propulsion engineer because I was a co-op student in college, and I worked at a, at an airline working writing repairs for jet engines.

How cool was that?

But, but but I took the opportunity I had, and that's why I do what I do.

And so that's thinking about that, fostering that pipeline by giving students opportunities to engage.

That's what we have to do.

This question.

Hi, my name is Peter Buka, retired from Parker-Hannifin Corporation, but currently with the board of the Great Lakes Science Center.

So my question relates really to unmanned activities.

I think some of the most fundamental changes in humanity's understanding of the universe have come out of NASA data collection platforms.

Things like Webb and Hubble and other activities like that.

But I often see that these these activities take years to analyze the data.

They collect so much data, it's literally not humanly possible to analyze that data.

So my question is what role is does NASA see for AI in analysis.

And also even manning these of these vehicles that are that are out there controlling them.

To provide on site control as opposed to having a delayed control because of the speed of the speed of light.

And what are you doing now and have done in the past?

And also, what do you think you' I think AI is a huge, force multiplier here.

It does a couple of things.

First off, it does allow you more optionality in terms of controls.

If you can think ahead and get the AI platform to, to kind of prognosticate what will happen and these instances and create the option space or even in many low risk cases, do that for you?

That's where that comes in.

But where the bigger issue or challenges is, is, as you pointed out, there's so much data.

So using AI as a way to mine that data is, is a great opportunity.

We're just tapping into that now, one of the challenges that we have with AI, and frankly, it's something that has been a challenge since the dawn of of creating uncrewed or unmanned vehicles.

Is trust how do you trust it?

How do you believe it?

How do you know it?

And importantly, you build that trust through verification and validation.

And how much is enough of that and at what point?

Because you're always going to have something that doesn't quite work and you're not ever going to see it coming, because I don't know what I don't know.

And so building that trust is the challenge.

And so but I think there's a huge opportunity with AI.

We're just coming up to speed.

And I think given the amount of data and what we're learning and how quickly we're learning about, I think we're just hitting the tip of the iceberg.

Good morning.

I am working on a project called Titansofspace.org that has already started to document the early launch vehicle interviews and how they did almost.

What compass does.

The early people told me we were only 20 years old when we started, and they gave us something to do, and we didn't think about how we're going to.

We didn't think about can we?

We did it.

That's it.

So what I wondered is how many different things do you remember?

Or do you want to tell us about that early launch vehicle and other NASA achievements for the Apollo program?

We should remember.

So so it's a great opportunity.

And thank you for that question, because it's a reminder that that NASA Glenn has been around for a lot longer than than Artemis.

It was around for Apollo, obviously, and frankly, it was around before NASA.

Glenn was founded in 1941 under the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics.

And that was the group since the dawn of flight, sort of the government agency promoting flight in our atmosphere.

But Glenn was found.

Well, what is now Glenn was founded is the NACA was, aircraft engine research lab and the idea or what was the purpose was to figure out how to improve the performance of aircraft engines as part of the buildup into World War Two, so that we could win the wars over the skies of Europe and the Pacific.

Of course, that created at NASA Glenn here, what is now NASA Glenn here, a background in propulsion, aircraft engines.

After World War II, two, we had the dawn of the jet age.

We were right in the middle of all of that.

Some of the neat inventions that happened.

Like making the engine for the SR 71 work.

We figured out the the nozzle that allowed us to vary the Mach number and get up to very high speeds there in our wind tunnels.

But then you go, in 1958, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the space age, was born, and the space age, was on us.

The space race was on us.

And NASA was born, on October 1st of 1958.

And so with that, of course, then we take that heritage and propulsion, and we did a lot of the early work on liquid hydrogen.

And how does liquid hydrogen work?

How do we make liquid hydrogen work as a rocket fuel?

And that became really foundational to making the Apollo program successful.

And so what is now NASA?

Glenn has been instrumental to that work since day one.

And of course, we carry that forward.

We've worked we continue to work with cryogenic fluids.

We continue to work with, with propulsion for spacecraft.

And that feeds into the work that we're now doing today for Artemis.

And, the MMRTG also came out.

That's right.

NASA Glenn.

Let me try it.

Multi-Mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

Wow.

Is that right?

There.

Right.

So basically, that is the thing that's been used for a really long time.

It has been used right now.

Yep.

And it's on it's at Mars.

The Mars rover has a whole lot of things.

Yeah.

So, so the this is essentially and by the way, for those who may be curious about the future of nuclear, this is the history of nuclear, radioisotope thermal generators.

Probably, they, they, they, they use radioisotope decay as a heating source to produce power, electrical power.

And it's small and it's compact, and, and it lasts for a very long time, including Voyager.

And so.

So we have been building these out of NASA, Glenn.

Leading the program at NASA.

Glenn, what is now NASA Glenn, to build these power systems, these radioisotope power systems for decades and that's what's powering a lot of our science missions and will continue to power science missions for a long time.

There's something about about being able to harness, nuclear power in a very compact, very safe, very efficient way that that that makes these probes work.

And so, so we continue to do that and that that really is, and it is an exciting part of our portfolio.

Is it crazy when you go somewhere and somebody says something and you, you like suddenly go, oh my God, they actually know what I do.

Like they, they get me.

Right?

So I went, random story.

Sorry.

Real quick, I went to Santa Fe on a girls trip with some friends of mine, and we sat down at, like, this table, and the lady next to us was sitting there and, Granted, we're in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so I started seeing, you know, I was talking about Artemis and how exciting it was and all this stuff.

And I said, you know, NASA Glenn, this is what I talk about with my girlfriends on trips, right?

And the gal next to me goes, oh, you know about the Artemis mission?

You know, you know, NASA.

I'm like, yeah, I kind of do some stories and stuff like that.

And so random conversation.

She is one of the engineers that presses the pellets that run the mtg because she's at Los Alamos.

I'm like, what are the odds?

Right.

So sorry.

Quick aside.

Next question.

Hello, doctor Kenyon and Miss Kling.

My name is Chloe Amoroso.

I'm an OSTEM intern at the NASA Glenn Research Center, sitting with my friends for matrix five.

You just spoke a lot today about Earth to lunar and moon to Mars missions, and that's something I'm super interested in.

Especially when it comes to the Earth, to lunar economy.

And I was just wondering with your, you know, high level, experiences and understanding the knowledge of what's going on, how can young professionals like myself and others around here get involved in lunar to Earth economy, advancements?

So great question.

And so it starts with, so what do you want to be when you grow up.

Right.

And that's that.

I'm still wondering that myself.

So but but but there are so many opportunities.

If you're an electrical engineer or a computer engineer and you love communications, so much of what we do, with our communications, I don't have my cell phones on me, but if you've got your cell phone, that's because of space communications.

Okay.

Yeah, we have our cell towers here.

But at some point, if you're talking to somebody across the country, it's going through a satellite.

Or if you're like me and you like your satellite radio, or you watch ESPN on the weekend because you like your ball games or pick your channel that you like to watch your ball, that's all satellite communications.

There is a thriving economy there.

And one of the things we're doing at NASA is trying to figure out how to leverage that thriving economy and transition.

A lot of our communication networks through these commercial capabilities, if they can do this so well, do we need to spend our time and dime building it, or can we leverage what they do?

But you do have to demonstrate that they can actually give you the reliability and the throughput you need for the gobs of data that we talked about earlier.

Right?

So, so that's one way, if you like materials or metals, you can go and build things like that.

Because not only will those materials go into spacecraft or aircraft, but I told you about the A-10, we had a license with a company looking at it for medical devices.

And so that's part of it's not the space economy, but it's the space economy.

Right.

And so that's one of the things that we can work on.

But but we're imagining a future where we're going to have commercial space stations where they are operating these things.

And you can go rent a space, you want to go do some experimentation, and you're working at a university and you want to do an experiment in microgravity.

Go rent a space for six months on the space station up there, and you can do that.

So that's in our future.

And so those are the sorts of opportunities.

But there are so many.

There are so many.

And by the way, if we're launching all of these things and we've got these space stations, we're going to need rockets, we're going to need thrusters, we're going to need all of these things.

We're going to need batteries.

We're going to need, power systems, all of these things.

What is it that you are passionate about?

What is it you want to do?

And I bet you can find a business or a company that is looking at at least a potential commercial market, if not already a commercial market that exists today.

Next question.

So I have a personal question for you.

Oh.

So my first experience learning how to scuba dive occurred in a pool that was too shallow to truly mimic the ocean.

At that moment, I had to adapt and embrace peace.

In that time.

Where do you find peace and comfort?

Knowing the magnitude of your role and the unknowns that you experience?

Wow.

It's you should be sitting here.

Ha ha ha ha.

That's a really good question.

It's a great question, Joe, but I but I appreciate it.

Look, you and and and especially for the students, but but also it's always an important reminder for for us professionals.

And one of the things that I got reminded going through leadership, Cleveland, you know, we we have things that we have to do.

We all as professionals have people who count on us.

Betsy, you've got you've got people who are waiting on knowing what's going to happen tomorrow.

And they're counting on every word you say, especially this time of year.

It's fine.

No.

No pressure, everything's great.

No pressure.

The, the but but if you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be around to take care of others.

And so taking care of yourself is something you got to do.

And that's physical, but also mental and emotional.

And so you have to find peace.

And it's how I do that.

I don't know how effective it is.

But one of the big things I do is I get up and I go, and I pretend like I'm running in the morning.

I say that because the legs are moving.

I'm not sure I am, but but the legs are moving, and, But I get up in the morning, and I. And I go, and I, and I put in a few miles, and, and I try to do that no matter what.

Snow, ice.

I've figured out how to get to up windchills to the upper single digits.

Low teens.

And I can still get out there and do that.

And it's fine.

I haven't experimented lower, but I'm working on it.

Hopefully not this year.

The, But that's one way to do it.

I also like loud music, but but but you.

But you have to find that thing that works for you.

Some people it's it's, you know, quiet noises, some people it's water.

It's some people it's.

But you have to find that thing that works for you.

But for me, it's when I'm out on the trail.

Oh, dark, early in the morning.

It's me and the deer and occasionally a couple other little critters.

Not alligators and, but it's it's just me.

And so I get that time to kind of get into my own head and straighten myself out.

And that's, that's how what I like to do.

We have supersonic wind tunnels.

Do they have any treadmills at NASA?

We do have a fitness center.

So just just double checking.

Next question.

Hello.

My name is Desmond Sims.

I am a senior at the Villa Angela-St.

Joseph High School in Cleveland.

And I just have a couple questions.

I know that at NASA, you get many people.

You get a lot of people that apply for these internships out of different races, ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, and I was wondering from your experience and based on the experiences that you've heard, what would you say is, a way for applicants application to stand out to people that review them?

And what does NASA do to help these applicants to the best they can with financials and other struggles like that?

So I'm unfortunately, I'm going to have to defer at least a part of that, but I would I would strongly encourage you to look at internal nasa.gov.

Our internships are paid internships.

And so that's number one in terms of being able to to help with the financial part of that.

But you asked a really important question, how do you stand out.

And people are going to look for different things.

But to me, you know, it's an extremely competitive field.

So good grades, project work, extracurriculars, all of those things that make you stand out your on your normal application.

But but are you curious?

Do you have a sense of curiosity?

Do you want to figure things out?

Do you want to discover and find new things?

Are you open to learning new things that really that sense of curiosity is a big part of what drives us at NASA, always looking to discover the unknown in air and space and understand those things that we don't understand.

And we are always learning something that we haven't seen before.

And so that's really, really key.

Is that sense of curiosity.

Great question.

You should be up here to I think we have time for one, maybe two more questions.

Hopefully.

This is quick.

I'm more into the history than engineering.

And I was wondering if you just give a brief update or, historical analysis of how rockets have changed.

I grew up in the space age from v2, from World War two up to today.

Atlas, all the other rack rockets and how they compare.

A lot of kids in here don't realize what they used to blow up two years ago.

And now what you put on launch pads right now.

So you might want to just give a brief comparison if you could, a couple a couple of big changes.

One is that, you know, we've, we've often used what we call solid rocket boosters, and you kind of stuff these things with, with a solid propellant that just kind of it leaves out as it burns out.

And those are heavier.

The chemicals tend to be nasty.

And, and they're not as reliable, but but what we've gone to is more liquid.

Everything is liquid now.

And so, liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen were experimenting with liquid methane.

But these are things that are more naturally occurring in our air.

Of course, hydrogen and oxygen.

You all know that the combustion, the combustion, produces water.

Right.

But, but but also what we talked about earlier, liquid hydrogen is really difficult to deal with.

But but looking at things like liquid methane, but liquid methane is also going to be pretty difficult to deal with.

But we're experimenting to see if it's an alternative.

But but looking at, at those sorts of propellants, the liquid propellants, they're more reliable.

They are safer.

And and they're more efficient, which means that we can get more thrust when we're sending these big rockets up.

Rockets have gotten bigger.

The Space Launch System is the biggest rocket we've ever made.

And, and so that's, that's another thing that has changed, but we're also sending larger and larger masses into space, which is why we need to do that.

But probably the biggest thing is they have gotten safer.

And I say that and if I'll knock on something that resembles wood, you know, space flight is, is not for the faint of heart.

It's not for giving.

You're you're putting people on top of a whole bunch of rough hydrogen.

And we know that hydrogen is very combustible and very can be explosive.

You're launching them into space, and you have to fly.

What is it?

17 Mach 17 is, is.

And so you have to get up to 17 times the speed of sound, the pressures, the temperatures are incredibly high.

And just it's it's an incredibly unforgiving environment.

And then space itself is an incredibly unforgiving environment.

So you never want to take safety lightly, but proud of the fact that it has gotten safer and has gotten more reliable than than it historically had been.

And we just got to keep precious.

Don't don't lose focus on that.

We got to keep pressing on that, because that's going to be key to being able to, to to achieve our goals and getting people to space more and more often.

Such a great point to end on safety is a very big deal.

Thank you so much to Jimmy Kenyon for joining us in the City Club today.

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Thanks again to Jimmy Kenyon and who our members and friends of the City Club, I'm Betsy.

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