Ben Blaser

Gene Kranz and me

• Who I am

My name is Ben Blaser and I am currently a senior at the University of Wisconsin – Madison majoring in Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics. Back at UW I spent time with Formula SAE and AIAA, worked in the Engine Research Center and enjoyed going to Badger Hockey games. I have known for the longest time that I wanted to be an engineer, but I had no idea that I would get to work for NASA: and before graduation to boot.

How I got my job

The first time that I tried to apply for a co-op here I didn’t get it. But everybody knows what you are supposed to do if you fall off a horse, right? The following Fall I noticed that NASA-JSC was going to be at UW’s Career Fair. I polished up the ol’ résumé and talked to the guy standing at the booth. We ended up talking for a while and then he asked me if I was interested in an interview for the following day. The interview went great and a few weeks later I received an offer to go to Houston as part of the cooperative education program.

Life at JSC

Landing the shuttle simulator (which is why it looks sideways)

Johnson Space Center is simply an amazing place to work. It is very inspiring working with people who love what they do. For my first tour I am working in DM32 which is my group’s mail code. The mail code breaks down like this. The D stands for Mission Operation Directorate, the M stands for Flight Design and Dynamics Division, the 3 stands for Orbit Dynamics Branch, and finally the 2 stands for Orbit Flight Dynamics Group. My group is in charge of two front room flight controller positions: FDO (pronounced fido, like the dog) and Trajectory as well as many backroom positions that support the front room. I was very lucky to start my co-op tour just before the launch of STS-115; I was able to OJT (On the Job Training) in Mission Control during the rendezvous and entry! STS-116 launched in my last week of my tour and I was able to OJT the ascent!

My main project was a computer program called MAEG which is short for Multi-Anchor Ephemeris Generator. The program reads state vectors and other pertinent trajectory modeling information to create an ephemeris spanning the time interval defined by the anchors. MAEG was an amazing project; I was able to apply knowledge from school such as Orbital Mechanics, linear algebra, and computer programming while learning so much more.

I also had the opportunity to work on a couple of other projects and attend tour and lecture events around JSC that showcase some of the exciting things that are going on here at NASA.

Life in Houston

Garret, Madi, Erin and me for the Coop Advanced Planning team

Houston is a big city. I am not going to lie to you about that. But JSC is tucked away in Clear Lake and it doesn’t feel like a big city, at least not to me . Co-ops get together and play guitars, there are intramural teams for a lot of sports, pick-up games for even more sports, card nights, poker nights, karaoke night, LAN parties, other “social gatherings”, museums, concerts and the list just goes on and on. There is so much going on that you need to plan for a night in instead of trying to find something to do. There are enough co-ops down here that you are certain to find someone with the same interests as you.

Contact information

That is my story about the NASA-JSC co-op program. If you have any questions about JSC, University of Wisconsin, anything else mentioned above or want to talk to someone who has been down here before, shoot me a message at bcblaser@wisc.edu and I’ll get back to you.