I love space.

What's there not to like about space?

My name is Erick Ordonez, and I'm a materials lab lead engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

As a materials lab lead engineer, you test anything that goes into space; we verify and make sure that it's safe to use.

The Materials and Processing Lab at Marshall Space Flight Center, we pretty much burn, break, tilt, bend any material possible to make sure it's durable.

So what we have here is aluminized Mylar.

It could be anything from a shield on the International Space Station to any tool that an astronaut would use in space.

If we're going to go to Mars, for instance, it's a six months' mission.

What happens if something happens on the trip down and you have an accident and something catches on fire?

Well, we can't take water with us, so we have to have the right materials and the right chemicals and suppressants so that we're prepared in case of emergency.

We can't turn around.

We test ahead of time so we have all aspects of the mission covered.

Success!

Failure.

This is our flammability test chamber, and what we're going to show is how flammable this test sample is in air.

We clamp our samples in, and then we have a metal wire where we put in a chemical igniter, which is basically a stick that when it heats up, it flames up.

And we hit the electricity to it, light it up, and we see if the material will burn or not burn.

One of the great things about being a materials engineer is we always have to think outside the box.

I don't know if you've noticed, I hate people thinking I'm something that I'm not.

One of my friends at work said, "Hey, you should come out salsa dancing with us!"

And I couldn't dance, and I didn't know how, and I was scared and nervous.

Everyone has this misconception that all I was going to do was sweat all over them and have no rhythm, no coordination.

I had to change that, so I started taking classes.

Three years of nonstop practice, practice, practice.

I came to love it.

Salsa dancing and engineering is very similar: you practice, practice, practice just like you study, study, study.

You break it down, just like in engineering.

I'm the type of guy that if someone tells me, "No, you can't do it," I'm the type of guy that tells you-- and shows you, not just tells you, but shows you-- "I can."

My dream was working for NASA, but my dream is not complete.

I mean, I still want to be part of the team that sends the first manned mission to Mars.

And engineers here at Marshall, JSC, JPL, Kennedy, we are so destined for greatness, and we're just waiting to bust out.

If you take what you learned and you apply it, you'll be able to do anything you want, no questions.