Mutahar Mehkri

Full transcript

All right, everyone, welcome to the third episode of Beyond the Blueprints. So today we have Mr. Mechery, and we're going to be asking a few sets of questions. So the first question is, what first inspired you to pursue aerospace engineering, and how did your interest evolve into space system safety specifically?

Yeah, I mean, so I would say it started when I was very young, when I was probably like a teenager or maybe even a little younger than that, probably middle school. I was very into space movies, you know, all the Star Wars movies, all that stuff. And so I was always fascinated with aerospace in general, aircraft, space travel. And so when I was young, I think I was like 12, 13, I was like on my vision board and all like the school.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Like that was always my thing was I want to be an astronaut. I want to go to space. And so it was like this long goal, like long term goal of mine.

I was a young kid. And then as I went through school, I think I naturally inclined toward mathematics and like science subjects. I tended to find more interest in them and I was doing well in them as well. So that obviously helps.

And then it became more practical in reality when I obviously got out of college. I had actually met a recruiter when I was still in college. that was with a company called SAIC, which is essentially a contracted company from NASA, which is through the Johnson Space Center, where they essentially provided safety system engineering services for JSC. So I met the recruiter.

I'd given him my resume and everything, and I kind of forgot about it. I was like, I don't know who I'm going to get this. I don't even know who I'm going to have the opportunity. So I didn't even apply.

uh like six months after that i uh graduated and everything i started actually a different job where i was working for a company like designing and manufacturing helicopter rotor blades um and within like two or three months into this job i got an email from that recruiter and he was like hey we have this opening um and then i kept reading it at the bottom it said johnson space center and i was like wait what i was just like this is crazy because everything i've like kind of wanted to do as a young kid um so i like jumped on the opportunity i reached out to him and then since I got through there it kind of just opened up doors for everything you know space and NASA related and then that's where I started off as a safety engineer and getting more into like systems systems engineering and then that's that's pretty much the story of how I've kind of gotten into the industry. Dang that's that's so cool yeah you've worked with one of the most advanced space organization NASA can you walk us through the journey and how each role shaped your perspective? Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think I was very fortunate that I did make a good connection, like I said, with that recruiter early on, because it definitely, I think, made the process of actually getting hired a lot easier, because I think there was like a rapport I had with him at that point. He liked me, he found interest in me, he got to see me face to face.

And so when I went in for the interview at that point, I think there was a little bit in his head, like, okay, I've spoken to him before. He's like, you know, someone that we're looking at already. And so that was my first job getting in as what I worked at actually was an EVA safety engineer. So EVA stands for extravehicular activity, which basically in simple terms is a spacewalk.

And so that basically is referencing astronauts when they go out in a spacesuit in a vacuum environment, and it conducts some sort of activity, whether it's for science or maintenance or whatever. So when they were in the, for the last, I don't know, 20, 30 years now, we've really only been going to the International Space Station. The last moon mission was like, I would say the early 70s, maybe 71 or something. And so since then, the only real space travel we've done is in space and predominantly in the International Space Station.

So there's regular maintenance EVAs that happen on the International Space Station. And so they'll have to go out and they have to sometimes, you know, reroute some wiring outside of the International Space Station. or perhaps there's some sort of damage and maybe they need to repair it or maybe they need to install a new payload. And so that my my main job and my main focus starting off was essentially doing the safety of the operations associated with that spacewalk.

So I would get to work with a lot of the astronauts. m times where they'd go out and do these evas um and i'd be supporting and monitoring them watching video footage we have cameras all around the eva you know listening into the radios um checking for any kind of hazards that they might might encounter, touch temperatures, checking their, you know, suit telemetry, making sure they have good oxygen, you know, there's not carbon dioxide buildup, CO2 scrubbing is happening, all of these things. And so that was kind of the basic fundamentals of that job and how I essentially started off and got into the industry. And I did that for about three years before I transitioned over to Axiom Space.

I don't know if you guys have heard of them, but they're basically the prime spacesuit contract for the new XCMU, which is essentially like the, where we want to make a new spacesuit to go to the moon and go to Mars and kind of, you know, look past just like low orbit. So they're making a new spacesuit at XCM Space. And so, and they're the prime contract for NASA. And so I got to, I worked with them for about a little bit more than a year and I did some tool safeties and a bunch of systems engineering associated with that, which was a you know that was a chaos in itself So you know I think part of your question was like roadblocks and things like that And I think starting at Axiom was very chaotic There a lot of it a high pace you know it like we got to deliver by deadlines And so it was a kind of a shift from more like a, the government to more of like a kind of where a private contract we're private and we're trying to win these like contracts and we want to meet these deadlines.

And so I did that for about a year plus. And then now recently I'm actually partnered with intuitive machines where they have essentially a completed contract for the lunar terrain vehicle. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with that, but that's basically a rover. That's going to be a manned rover that we're trying to put on the moon.

0, is we're trying to bring people back on the moon. Part of that mission involves putting a lunar terrain vehicle, something that the astronauts can sit in and drive around in and cover a lot more ground and then be able to retrieve samples and do any kinds of scientific studies that they want to do up there. So I've been working on that project currently. And it's been, once again, like an incredible experience.

I've got the opportunity to meet Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmidt, who are two ex-Apollo astronauts who have actually stepped on the moon and being able to get their feedback of several more astronauts as such. And it's just been a very cool and just a very unique experience. And so there's a very high-paced situation where there's a lot of work we have to kind of roll out quickly. But then there's also times where it's a little bit more slow and dull.

So the whole process, definitely, there's been some hiccups and roadblocks and things along the way. But overall, I would say it's a very fulfilling role. It's something that, even through the chaos, you're having fun. You're enjoying it because it's something that's just so cool.

You're doing space-related things. And so that's kind of the whole story with kind of traveling through my career and all the different experiences that I've had. I see. You mentioned monitoring astronauts during EVA missions, like around how many people are monitoring like one person at the same time?

Yeah. So I would say there's I'm trying to fool like maybe 20 ish people in the flight control room. and each and so each there's like a desk essentially that's assigned per like discipline so there's going to be like a desk that just for like spark for example spark is like the the power control part of the iss and then there'll be like a desk that's just for the iss safety side of things and then there'll be people that are just monitoring the structures of the facility and so um there's a total of maybe i want to say like 50 to 100 people total that are on console, paying attention, watching, but they all have their own specific roles. So, you know, one person's whole job is really just to make sure that we don't lose power in the facility, you know, we don't have any leaks, and another guy's role is to make sure there's no leaks, and like the oxygen, you know, and where they have, you know, a good habitable volume for them to return back into the International Space Station.

There's, you know, somebody else's job is to make sure the structure is not, somebody else's job is to make sure there's no meters hitting, you know, so there's a lot of analysis that goes into making sure that throughout the process of orbiting, they don't go out during the time where there could be like some sort of meteors that could hit them. So everybody has like a specific role involved and we all work in conjunction. And my, like, for example, my specific role was really just to monitor the actual EVA, like the person itself. And so it was really me and there would be another person.

And so it'd be like two people job, like a prime and a backup. And it just depends on, you know, it fluctuates. You could be a prime for one mission and you could be a backup for another. And it really just depends um but essentially our role would be we're just watching the astronaut and our whole job is just to make sure that he's perfectly okay and he survives and there's nothing um you know damaging that could happen to his health and so um there's a ton of people working on it but in terms of just specifically watching the astronauts it tends to just be uh like the two people that are assigned and then obviously overall everyone there is cognizant you know so they're all like if this if they see something we didn't notice they're going to be you know they're going to still bring it forward and and you know be proactive about it yeah and i assume that if one person messes up their part there will be like a fail-safe to counteract it yeah exactly and so there's there's a lot of like checks in place and so you have like i said a primary and a backup so the primary is watching and monitoring everything and then if he misses something you have a backup and then on top of that um there's like regular built-in checks that we have in what we call like the procedure documents.

So when they're going out to conduct these EVA operations, there's a set of procedures they have to follow. And we kind of build it in there that we have what's called like buddy checks. For example, like we'll have one of the astronauts ask the other astronaut, like, you know, if you're doing all right, do you need any help? We'll have what's called glove and hap checks, which is essentially like, you know, look at your gloves, like you have any damage on your gloves, because that's kind of the more common areas where you might get a leak.

You know, when you're constantly touching things with your hand, there's a higher probability you might end up getting like a pinch in your glove and then there could be a hole and that's where a leak could happen. So we'll ask them regularly built into the procedures, you know, check your gloves and check your half half is essentially like the helmet absorption pad. It's essentially a pad that sits around the back of their neck and it kind of absorbs some of the sweat that they have and some of the excess water because there's constantly water looping through the suit to keep them cool. There's a little pipe for them to be able to drink if they get thirsty.

And so there could be situations where you might have a water leak within the suit. And that can be problematic as well, because if there's a water leak and maybe the suit's still functioning generally the same, but there's just been a lot of excess water in the suit, it could kind of get caught up around the mouth part. And it's not like in an environment where there's gravity, where water would just fall down. In a zero gravity environment, you could literally just have a bubble of water that just traps around your nose and your mouth.

And now you're trying to move away from it. And you're actually drowning in like a very small amount of water. And so we've actually had a situation happen like that. There was actually an astronaut called Luca.

I'm having trouble with his last name, but I think it starts with a P. And that was actually an EVA where he almost drowned within the suit because there was a leak within the suit. And so part of what we do as EVA safety is we're constantly, you know, checking up on them and we have it built in within the procedures to do like regular 30 minute 60 minute you know checks And then we have what called like a MER manager who essentially constantly checks in with all the different disciplines throughout the EVA So she go in and or whoever the manager is at the time will contact you and be like you know have you noticed anything Is there something of concern? Have you been keeping up?

Is there anything that we should be? So so there's always people that are constantly, you know, doing these checks to make sure that, you know, if somebody does kind of doze off, like there's other fail safes in place to make sure that, you know, proper safety is being maintained. thank you so you earlier mentioned about the lunar terrain vehicle um so what are like some of the most exciting things that you've worked on and what are also some challenging things yeah i mean it's i feel like the whole project has been very um you know interesting and you know it's been amazing um my specific role with system safety is essentially what i do is i do an analysis of the entire vehicle and I'm assessing for all of the hazards, like everything that could possibly go wrong with this vehicle. You know, we could have a collision, for example, driving around on the moon.

You know, you might hit a crater or a big rock. So we make sure we do an analysis of the hazard avoidance system, kind of like when we have with these new like Teslas and these cars, like it'll kind of show you in advance, like that there's an object in front of you. So we do some sort of analysis on these subsystems that we've designed and put into these vehicles to make sure that it will actually respond in a timely manner. And, you know, it'll provide that hazard avoidance alertness to the crew member.

And so we do an analysis on all the different subsystems of the vehicle. You know, we do an analysis on the touch temperatures, for example, is the vehicle itself, is it made out of a material? Is it designed in such a way that if they just, you know, grab onto things, are certain parts of the vehicle going to get too hot or too cold? That could potentially damage the suit, which could, you know, of course, harm the crew member.

and so some of the challenging things I would say is when we go in and we sit at what's called like an SRP which is like a safety review panel and we bring forward all these hazard reports and we discuss you know with this panel that like we have all these things that we've assessed and we have all these controls in place and a control is essentially like how you're stopping the hazard from happening so if we say we're stopping a collision hazard from happening well the way we stop it from happening is we have a hazard avoidance system and we have these alerts and these auditory tones that are going to go off and that's how they're going to know there's going to be a display and it's going to be visual and there's going to be colors, a red flashing color that tells them, you know, they're going to hit something. Maybe we've built in some programming into the vehicle that kind of breaks on its own, like an automatic brakes type system. And so we present these controls to the safety review panel, which is like the NASA board. And they will then tell you like, okay, we approve this to move forward.

And you know, you can continue with a design progression. So part of the difficulties and the challenges is are like when you, as much as you may think you assess for everything, there might be things you haven't assessed for because there's just so much that could go wrong. And so when we sit in these safety review panels, there's times, you know, it's like a huge board of people, about 10 people are actually on the board, like the voting board, but there's like 50 participants that are going to be giving you critiques. They're going to be critiquing your control strategy.

They're going to be telling you, what did you think about this? What did you think about what if you're going down a crater? You know, Is it going to be able to do a hazard avoidance and detection of something that's maybe like a crater? I mean, what if there's not very good lighting?

Have you accounted for your system to be able to detect things that are very far into the distance or things that are not there's not good lighting around them? Is it going to be able to detect it? And so there's so many little, little nuances of like potential things that could go wrong and you don't sometimes think about it all the time. And that tends to sometimes be like kind of the biggest challenges is like thinking about all the different possible ways that something could go wrong and then trying to come up with trying to design and implement some sort of a strategy that, you know, is fail safe.

Like, OK, I need to have some sort of system and some sort of control strategy in place that no matter what happens, you know, this hazard will not take place. And so I would say those are those have been kind of the major challenges we have recently completed. So there's three phases, by the way, of an SRP. So you go through phase one where you present all your hazards and you present a control strategy.

Then you have a phase two where you have verifications to those controls. You show how you verify the control strategy in place. And then by phase three, you're like fully done and you're ready to launch. Right.

Until you get phase three approved, you can't even set anything up in space. So we've actually just recently, like about a couple of weeks ago, I'd say, you know, finally got our phase one approval done for our current project. And so that was a big milestone for us. And so so far we're so now we're kind of gearing up and getting ready for a phase two.

And so hopefully within the next, I would say, two to three years, hopefully we can get this LTV fully certified and and hopefully onto the moon. And so that's that's that's our plan right now. Good. Yeah.

So I'm curious, how do you simulate space conditions on Earth to test systems that will eventually operate on the moon? orbit? Yeah, that's a great question. So yeah, absolutely.

I think one of, so the biggest difficulty really is the gravity. I mean, you can probably simulate mostly everything other than, I don't want to say mostly everything, there's a lot of challenges, but obviously gravity is gravity. So it's hard to simulate that other than kind of some of the things I talked about with like the NBO and things like that. And so that gets difficult, but you can, you can use vacuum chambers to get an idea of what it would be like in like a no atmosphere environment uh we do a lot of testing for like a rock yard so we essentially design these these huge like acres of land and we like use like uh we design like these rocky kind of areas or or sometimes it's easier to just find like a really rocky deserty area in like i don't know arizona or something and we would take our vehicles out there and we run it over various different types of terrains and then you're able able to kind of get an idea of what it would be like if it was on some sort of a rocky place.

And then we do these tests and, you know, like complete night pitch black areas, because like, obviously on the moon, even though we have headlights and everything, depending on where you're at, it could get very dark, depending on the angle of the sun. And, you know, the time of orbit, we do a lot of radiation testing, essentially, putting them into these chambers, we do a lot of temperature testing. So you essentially like heat something up for and see how hard how hot you can get it Obviously there an analysis process first and then there also an experimental process Sometimes analysis experiment can have some discrepancies based on external factors and variances variables And then we do a lot of structural testing. So, for example, we have carbon fiber material that we're using to design the frame of this car.

Not the frame, sorry, the frame is titanium, but I guess the hood and the fenders and all that. And so we do a lot of structural testing on it, vibration testing. saying, you know, we pull it as much as you can, you crush it as much as you can, and you're able to get a general idea of how much load this car is going to be able to withstand, how much, you know, heat, how much freezing, you know, lack of temperature actually is able to withstand, how it's going to behave in a zero atmosphere environment. So we're able to do quite a lot of simulation to be able to get an accurate, you know, idea of it.

Obviously, it's never going to be exactly like the environment because the moon is just a completely different place. But using these tools and you know kind of leveraging all of the different experts within the industry we're able to get a fairly good idea of it thank you so also about like space risks what are some like underestimated risks that people like typically don't think about when you know you're going to space yeah I would say probably the one of the biggest ones are sometimes the The smallest hazards are sometimes the most dangerous hazards. So, for example, a sharp edge hazard is something that we take very seriously because it's something that people tend to not think would be that big a deal. And I don't mean like sharp edges and like like a knife or something like obviously a knife is very clearly sharp.

But sometimes it's really just even like a pointed corner on a tool like there could be like a scooping tool that we have to kind of scoop up samples from the moon. and that may have like the edge of it may have like a really pointy corner and it seems like it's not that big a deal but there is a like a wild chance that somehow if that you know if you were to drop it in a certain angle or to slip out of your hand it could puncture some part of the suit now obviously we have you know structural you know design requirements that we meet for the suit so the suit is made to be very strong and structurally sound but there is there is a chance that slight cuts like that could actually end up creating a leak in your suit. And then that could be catastrophic. And so one of the big risks that I think sometimes like a common person doesn't think would be that big of a deal is actually some of those smaller little things that's like, oh, there's a sharp corner here.

Like, is that really that big of a deal? And it's like, it actually could end up being a really big deal. So we have to monitor those things and make sure that that specific corner even is meeting the kind of the radius requirement you know and it has like a fillet on it to some certain some diameter or radius and so that would be you know one example of that yeah i see i see so with artemis commercial partnerships and like ambitions for the moon and mars what do you see is the biggest opportunities for young engineers in the next five to ten years let's say yeah i would say some of the biggest opportunities right now like this is a great time to get involved in the space industry i think um you know there was a there was a period i don't know if you guys you guys might be too young to remember this but when i was young when i was in like middle school and and like early high school uh nasa somewhat got defunded and so like the shuttle program shut down um i think i remember around like 2010 11 there wasn't much happening with nasa and a lot of people got laid off and um when i used to say these things like i want to work at nasa and everything a lot of my you know mentors or my elders would advise me like you know nasa's kind of on the down right now maybe this isn't the best career field and obviously i still pursued it um and but conveniently for me when i got out of college like nasa was booming again because of spacex because of all of these new space companies that have kind of arose within the recent years you have blue origin now um you have you know firefly you have the all you know intuitive machines action space you know so many of these private companies have kind of blown up and they've taken the privatized aerospace too like you have i don't know if you guys heard of the news where there was like the kb perry launch into space um and like you have private astronaut people willing to now pay like hundreds of thousands sometimes millions of dollars to you know space companies to take them up to space so you might there might be a time where people start actually like the way you buy a flight ticket people start paying for like tickets to go see space and so i think this is a really good time where the space industry is really booming. It's really growing rapidly.

There's a lot of excitement about going to the moon. There's a lot of excitement about going to Mars. And so for a young engineer right now trying to get into this industry, I think number one is a really good time to do it. And number two, you know, prioritize obviously the basic stuff like, you know, math, science and all that.

And try to start working on projects, you know, like real student level projects that you can do with like maybe building some sort of CAD model or building, doing some sort of like ANSYS modeling and kind of getting involved into how some of these, you know, systems work. And then obviously the last thing is always like reach out to people and try to get internships and things like that. Because there's definitely a lot of growth in the field and there's a lot of opportunity for aerospace engineers, for systems engineers, even mechanical engineers. because, you know, NASA, at the end of the day, like for any rocket or suit or really anything to function, it needs to have all of the disciplines, right?

You need an electrical engineer for the wiring and the electrical components. You need somebody in avionics to be able to design the computers and the hardware and the chips and all that. You need, you know, someone who's, you know, really good with thermal, that understands thermodynamics of the system, structural engineers that can, you know, work on the structural design of it. So it's not just aerospace.

You can be an electrical engineer. You could be in computer science. You could be in mechanical. You could be a lot of different sub-disciplines of engineering and still have plenty of opportunity in this field.

And so, yeah, that would be my advice for young engineers. Yeah, well, that's all the questions. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys reaching out. Yeah. So, yeah, thank you.