Release #: Vol. 84, No. 3
April 01, 2015
Our Stories: ExpressJet Pilot Helps Bring Mars Visit a Little Closer to Reality
By John Perkinson, Staff Writer
Cruising altitude for airline pilots can run as high as 43,000 feet, but Capt. David Witwer (ExpressJet) has had reason to tackle heights far above that. When he wasn’t navigating his way to Newark, N.J., the Houston, Tex.-based, ERJ 145 pilot was managing engineering projects for NASA. Until four years ago, Witwer’s responsibilities included support for space shuttle operations and the agency’s more recent plans for a manned mission to Mars.
“I was always fascinated with flying,” says Witwer, who earned his pilot’s license under the guidance of a Texas A&M professor and mentor he befriended while attending the university. With a degree in aerospace engineering, Witwer became a government contractor working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Witwer says that, contrary to what some might think, nearly 80 percent of those working at the command post for NASA’s astronaut corps are contract employees.
Shuttle Service
As an employee for Lockheed Martin and later Science Applications International Corporation, Witwer spent the early years of his NASA tenure assigned to safety and reliability working groups supporting the space shuttle project. He was specifically responsible for evaluating piloting tasks associated with the landing phase of shuttle operations. This required the upkeep of training guidelines, checklists, flight rules, and other directives. He updated Mission Control handbooks and maintained webpages to address topics like best practices for spacecraft reliability and maintainability.
To spice things up, Witwer also worked as a controller in the Mission Evaluation Room for 50 of the space shuttles’ 135 missions. In a famous scene from the movie Apollo 13, a team of engineers is tasked with using a box of odds and ends, which would be available in the space capsule, to design a device the astronauts could construct to transfer power from the lunar module batteries to those in the command module. Although not always that dramatic, Witwer says that’s exactly the kind of task he and his fellow engineers performed. On numerous occasions, this group would apply its problem-solving skills to help shuttle astronauts and other flight controllers make the necessary adjustments to ensure successful missions.
And during their 30 years of service, the Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor shuttles transported, recovered, and repaired satellites; allowed those on board to conduct zero-gravity research; and made the International Space Station possible. However, there were also some dark moments in shuttle history.
On Feb. 1, 2003, Witwer manned the console when Columbia broke up during reentry. An investigation would later reveal that a large piece of foam fell from Columbia’s external tank, which fatally breached the spacecraft wing. Witwer assisted with what NASA called the “return to flight” efforts for the two years that followed the accident.
Needing Some Air
After years of working in research labs and simulators, Witwer began to get restless. A friend had recently been hired by Continental Express (now ExpressJet) as a pilot, and Witwer decided to follow suit. He had the requisite certificates and flight hours, so he tendered his resignation as an aerospace engineer. However, his boss convinced him to stay on as a part-time employee and work as an engineer on the days he wasn’t flying.
“They called it unscheduled professional status,” he says. On his days off, he was back at the Johnson Space Center, perfecting procedures and weighing the human factors and other considerations associated with low-orbit space flights.
Man with a mission
In 2005, NASA began to shift its focus from shuttle operations to a possible return trip to the moon as a precursor for a manned mission to Mars. The agency dispatched numerous orbiters and rovers to send information back from the red planet. To move forward with this plan, NASA initiated the Constellation Program and began developing the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle as a means to travel to Mars.
Once again, Witwer was called on to provide his expertise. “My team was given the dimensions of the cockpit and told to fill it,” he says. The Orion Cockpit Working Group conducted research and made recommendations for optimum-size windows; the best hand controllers; the ideal number of displays; the appropriate labels, checklists, and alert systems; and anything else the group could think of that would be needed. “We produced a number of mockups and simulated displays to better illustrate what we were proposing,” notes the ExpressJet pilot.
Unfortunately delays and budget overruns added to the challenges of the project, and the recession of 2008–2009 certainly didn’t help matters. U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech at the Kennedy Space Center, saying, “By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow.” But he recognized the uphill battle of funding this kind of endeavor at a time when fiscal conservatism was the mandate. Several months later, Congress passed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, shelving the Constellation Program and leaving only the most current contracts in place until the federal government revisits the value of space exploration.
Despite these setbacks, NASA still plans for future Orion launches using the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket being developed at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. With this 70 metric-ton propulsion system, Orion will be able take humans to deep-space destinations such as an asteroid and eventually Mars. In fact, NASA plans to launch Exploration Mission 2, Orion’s first manned mission, as early as 2021 to take a two-person crew for the first time to a captured asteroid in lunar orbit.
In 2011, Witwer accepted a downgrade to consultant status as others in the space program were laid off. Now married with a two-year-old daughter, his reduced work schedule was actually a blessing. In 2014, with further cuts, he was forced to “hang up his protractor” as funding levels could not support further work. However, Witwer continues to fly for ExpressJet. He serves as his pilot group’s Communications Committee chair and is a member of the Scheduling Committee. In his free time, Witwer enjoys aerobatic flying, a skill he developed while flying with that influential professor from his college days.
But the Texas native fondly remembers his 17 years at the Johnson Space Center. Witwer watched with pride as NASA launched an unmanned Orion four-hour, two-orbit test flight on Dec. 5, 2014, authorized before the passage of the 2010 legislation. And like all Americans who remember NASA’s proud legacy and its historic Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, Witwer anticipates the day when the United States will once again launch humans into space, a day when we will once again journey to infinity and beyond.
Not That Orion
The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle that Capt. David Witwer (ExpressJet) worked on should not be confused with NASA’s previous Project Orion. While both are considerations for manned deep-space missions, Project Orion proposed using nuclear pulse propulsion, an approach that has proved problematic. Research continues at Penn State University.
This article is from the April 2015 issue of Air Line Pilot magazine, the Official Journal of the Air Line Pilots Association, International—a monthly publication for all ALPA members.-###-