#9. SHAH - "A rocket scientist."

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

#9. SHAH - “A rocket scientist.”

Shah

“If someone told me I could go into space, but there was an 80 percent chance I’d die,” Shah jokes. “I’d still go.”

Shah (who prefers I use only his first name) is a literal rocket scientist.

At 28 years old, Shah works as a liquid propulsion systems engineer for a big-name company that manufactures spacecraft and space modules for NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Government. He requests that the actual name of where he works also be kept anonymous for the same reason as his name: to protect his job.

Shah was born in Riverside, California to an Iranian mother and an American father. He has short, light hair and bright blue eyes. He’s wearing a plaid button down shirt, neatly tucked in to belted pants. He is unfairly good-looking, like if Ryan Gosling was playing a scientist in a movie. It kind of makes me want to hate him at first. However, “I hope you’re an asshole” is kind of a weird thing to say to another person. And (un?)fortunately, Shah is also a nice and patient guy.

He did his undergraduate in chemical engineering and economics at University of California, Riverside and then earned a Masters, paid for by his company, in systems architecture and engineering at the University of Southern California. Right now, he lives in Los Angeles.

As a liquid propulsion systems engineer, Shah is in charge of satellite propulsion; or how a satellite moves in space, as soon as it separates from the launch vehicle to when it’s in orbit. Shah has worked on propellants and rocket engines for NASA and for communications satellites and data satellites. Some, he tells me, are classified and so he can’t talk about his work on those. I joke that he was looking for aliens.

“I was definitely looking for aliens,” Shah says, straight-faced.

As a kid, Shah says he was always good at math and science above other subjects, but he’s not entirely left-brained. He’s a far cry from the hunched, hoodie-d men of ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ a group of astrophysicists and engineers totally inept at average human interaction.

“I always liked space stuff,” Shah says. “My favorite era is the space race. I love the romance behind it.”

I really like his use of the word “romance” to describe how he feels about space. I tell him I went to Space Camp twice as a kid and dreamed of working for NASA. My Bat Mitzvah theme was space with all the tables named after planets and moons. (When we ran out of real ones, we used ones from ‘Star Wars.’) I watched ‘Apollo 13’ and read Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Right Stuff’ over and over. I wanted to be an astronaut until an eighth-grade teacher told me I should focus on writing instead; my math and science grades weren’t up to snuff.

“That’s terrible,” Shah laughs. “She crushed your dreams!”

I wave it off, “She saw a different talent in me,” I say. “You could have done it! You never wanted to be an astronaut?”

“I did,” he says. “But being an astronaut always seemed too hard. Astronauts have PhDs, they’ve climbed Mount Everest. You’re brave if you’re an astronaut. You’re a hero.”

His younger brother, who sits beside us with his sister’s fiance at the table, dutifully letting Shah and I nerd-out in semi-privacy, is also an engineer. He works in infrastructure strategy on bridges and power plants. His younger sister is a women’s right activist (Shah is in town to help her with a documentary on feminism). His mother does hotel management and construction projects. His father is in sales.

Shah says he always liked chemistry and physics and he knew people who were PhDs in chemistry, an option he considered until he realized there wasn’t really a financial future in it. In high school, he realized chemical engineering opened more doors.

Shah and I found each other’s blogs for this interview through our Tumblr followers. Like a pushy blind date, some of his followers had recommended him to me, and some of mine had recommended me to him. His Tumblr, Crooked Indifference, is a mix of space musings and hipster tidbits – pictures from the Coachella music festival, pictures of his cat, pictures of whatever quirky tie or boat shoe he’s recently acquired.

For someone whose job is the paradigm of “nerdy genius” in English shorthand, Shah is actually kind of cool.

And he works hard. He’s one of the youngest in his field and he carries a pager at all times when one of his satellites is launched; if anything goes wrong he needs to be within 45 minutes of mission control. For the month and a half the missions usually last, he works crazy hours: He gives 3 a.m. for 12 hours and then again at 5 p.m. the next day, as an example of his schedule. He is also constantly on call and can’t drink alcohol.

Recently, Shah worked as the lead propulsion scientist on a one billion dollar communications satellite for the Mexican government.

The Earth’s orbit is crowded with satellites, each with different, specific uses. Shah says communication satellites play a bigger role in every day life, than just in cell phones, citing credit card systems and gas stations.

“There was a failure in a communication satellite a while back and pagers stopped working,” he says.

I wrinkle my forehead, “And people couldn’t get their drugs?”

Shah blinks, “No, doctors have pagers. People died.”

My eyes grow wide, “Oh my god, see! There’s the difference between you and me. You say ‘pagers’ and I think, ‘Drugs’ and you think ‘Doctors.’”

Shah laughs politely. “Right. Well, the satellites create all these invisible lines that are pretty important.”

Generally, the company Shah works for builds the spacecraft and then launches it wherever the client wants. Often, the launches are in Russia because it’s the cheapest option, but some private clients have launched out of the iconic Cape Canaveral (where I did my first Space Camp program at age 9).

Shah says rocket science is divided into two categories: manned propulsion and unmanned, where Shah works. There’s a certain respectful divide between the two divisions.

A recent project, a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), is a spacecraft used to do Earth observations using a whole array of sensors. Shah’s work makes the craft move. Another, a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRS), controls how the ISS and space shuttles talk to Earth. Shah’s company was charged with the task of building one iteration of the spacecraft lineage that allows that communication; the result was TDRS.

“We build up the spacecraft and then we test the requirements,” he says. “There’s a giant chamber and we put the entire spacecraft in it. Then, it sucks the air out creating a vacuum. We can make it cold or hot, and just test the system in different environments. We usually test based on worst case scenario.”

For example, the craft is also placed on a table that shakes to simulate the rough movements the craft would have to survive being on top of a rocket while it launches.

Shah says his favorite part of his work is right after launch. For months prior, he and the rest of the team do mission control rehearsals, practicing how to go through the launch and all the phases of the mission. On the day of the real launch, Shah gets to speak into the intercom, announcing his part, the propulsion, is “go for launch.” When he’s describing it to me, his face breaks into a small, pleased smile. He’s only gotten to do it four times so far.

Shah’s excitement for space is rare for someone his age. During the era of the Mercury missions, the first human spaceflight program, the idea of exploring our universe was a point of national pride. Astronauts like John Glenn and Alan Shepard were celebrities, beating the Russians into space was a priority and NASA’s work was considered cutting-edge and endlessly fascinating.

All that died down, in my opinion, after the general public’s glossy view of the space program was shattered by the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, killing all seven crew members.

Today, it’s not uncommon to hear people question just what NASA’s budget is used for. Though the money given by the government to the space program is less than 1 percent of the national budget, critics complain that NASA’s work is frivolous. “We’ve put a man on the moon,” they’ll say, thinking space exploration is mainly about ego and colonization.

It’s not.

“It’s frustrating,” Shah says. “Every dollar goes to such profound things. Even human exploration is profound. If you read Carl Sagan, it excites you to the possibilities that are out there.”

“NASA needs better PR,” I suggest.

Shah says he and his co-workers have had conversations about that. “They need to make NASA cooler for young people again,” he says.

I mention his Tumblr, where he has a sizable following and posts a lot of content related to space. He says he also contributes to an exclusively space-related Tumblr called It’s Full of Stars, that has amassed 20,000 followers in 3 years. Shah thinks both sites help NASA’s image at least on small scale.

“They think we’re just being cocky,” Shah says, of space exploration’s critics. “But one big part about going into space is the idea of manufacturing in space. If you bring up metals and liquids, they behave differently in space.”

For instance, he mentions that on Earth, it’s impossible to get a ball bearing into a perfect sphere. But in the microgravity of space, it’s incredibly easy to do.

“We’re not going into space just to do it,” Shah says.

I mention that about a year ago, scientists in space figured out how to perfect a heart monitor for cardiac patients by working on it in zero gravity.

Shah nods, “It’s not just exploration and communication. It can be medical. It can be manufacturing. Sky’s the limit.”

The problem, he says, is that it remains in the hundreds of millions to launch anything into orbit. “The future in space for humans,” he says, “has got to get cheaper.”

“Could privatization bring the cost down?” I ask. He cites companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX.

Shah says that’s probably the best option. “I think they’re more willing to take the risks you need to take to advance,” he says. “Bigger companies say, ‘We’re not willing to try anything different because we’ve been building this rocket for 30 years.’”

The expansion of private space programs could cause bigger companies to reevaluate how they’ve been doing things for the past few decades in order to compete. As a whole, Shah says, the entire industry would be better off.

Though he works in unmanned, Shah has a lot of respect for the work of the manned division. He says manned missions are where most of NASA’s budget goes.

“It’s where all the interest and excitement still is,” he says. “There’s not a lot you can’t do with robotic missions and they’re cheaper and safer but manned spacecrafts bring all the money in. If there were robots being launched, people would care way less, even more than they already don’t care now. But you put people up in space? Everybody can get behind that.”

For an exorbitant fee, the private companies can offer space travel for recreation or leisure to “space tourists” (Think Lance Bass). Shah says the competition could ebb the “old news” mentality keeping younger engineers away from space exploration.

“This is just my opinion, but the system now is not that different from the 1960s. It’s not on the cusp of innovation,” he says. “People have confidence in the technology that they know will work once it’s up there. But because of that, the excitement people had for space has moved to Google and Internet stuff. Bright engineers used to go to NASA, now they go to search optimization. That’s where the money and the excitement is.”

Where once young people dreamed of building rockets, they now aspire to create the next Facebook or Twitter or Paypal.

Shah says the exclusive image of his job as a rocket scientist also harms recruiting for future engineers.

“People literally say, ‘It’s not rocket science’ but it’s the same science and engineering but just used in a different way,” he says. “It’s not as unattainable as people make it seem and it doesn’t have to be like that.”

“You’re downplaying it,” I reply.

“It’s propulsion work,” he says, (Yep, downplaying it). “I work with the rocket equation and with engines and with computers,” he adds most of his work is pen-to-paper over actually touching the hardware. “There are people I work with who maybe aren’t on the same education level, but they’re smart and they have the experience.”

I ask if he sits in his office scribbling math like Matt Damon in ‘Good Will Hunting.’

Shah laughs, “I mean, I do have a blackboard in my office with equations on it,” he says, seemingly embarrassed about it. “Look, a lot of the people I work with are really awkward people, but a lot of us are pretty sociable,” he says.

“Here’s what you gotta do,” I say, “You gotta go into a bar and wave your business card around like, ‘Ladies, I’m a literal rocket scientist.’”

Shah chuckles, putting his face in his hands, “I would never. I’m too modest. My friends do that to me sometimes. ‘Have you met Shah? He’s a rocket scientist.’”

I laugh, “What would happen if you just got wasted and started telling everyone there were aliens?”

“I’d probably lose my security clearance,” he says, and then shrugs, “It may happen.”