February 27, 2002

Sherri: Good afternoon everyone out there in world-wide Web land. My name is Sherri Jurls and I would like to welcome you to the Johnson Space Center here in Houston, Texas, where we are broadcasting live in support of National Engineering Week. And today we are spotlighting a very special guest that we have with us today. His name is Anthony Bruins. And we're also supporting Black History Month as well.

And Tony is a system engineer in the Mission Operations Directorate Branch out here at Johnson Space Center. And he is working on the Advanced Projects and Analysis Office. An engineer of great talent and we are very lucky to have him here today.

Now he went to the University of Houston here in Houston, Texas,

where he got his Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. But that's just a brief overview of Tony. And we would like to ask Tony, if you'll take a few moments, and tell us about yourself, where you're from, how your career path led you here today. And that sort of thing.

Tony: Okay, how I got here today was basically through hard work and determination and someone gave me an opportunity. I grew up in Houston, Texas in a predominantly area called Fifth Ward, which was basically the ghetto. And I was always motivated to want to have something better off for my kids some day. And but those trials and tribulations in that particular environment developed the hard tenacity that I have or the persistency, determination and the perseverance skills that I needed to do things better.

So I ended up going to the University of Houston where it took me seven years to get out of school. I worked two jobs and took a full load of classes. So it was one of those scenarios that I was determined to better myself.

Sherri: Wonderful. Now what made you choose engineering?

Tony: Well when I basically started out in college, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I was more of a athlete, played varsity football in my junior year, I played varsity baseball my freshman year. So I wasn't in class a lot. So my thing was I'm going to make it out of the ghetto on an athletic scholarship. And that didn't pan out because I ended up getting hurt in the Astrodome, so I couldn't take any of the scholarships.

So reality set in and then I realized that I had to go to school here in Houston because I was the oldest at home of five brothers and sisters, so I needed to stay home and help my mom out with the bills and stuff. So when I got to the University of Houston, I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I knew that I needed to get into a job that would be financially sound, being that I had come from an environment where we had to make ends meet by any means necessary. So how I got into engineering, I just asked what fields would be financially stable and someone said engineering. Then I saw a group of guys in line in engineering so I said, "Okay, I'm going to go to engineer."

But I realize now that I'm older, that if I had to do it all over again, I would probably be a psychiatrist. Because engineering is great and it's fun, but if I had to tell the students anything, do not select a field because you think you're going to make a lot of money in it. Select a field that you have a passion for and desire, and you'll make the money.

But I still get an opportunity to do what I want to do per the psychological aspects of it, but I do it with dogs. I have learned how dogs think. And the paradigm shift is that dog training is not having the dog trained, dog training is having the human trained to learn to think the way the dog thinks.

Everybody's training the dog. It's not the dog that needs to be trained, it's the human. It takes me a minimum of three to five minutes to train a puppy off leash to come sit, stay down, and heel. It takes me a minimum of four to six hours to train a human on what I did with a puppy in five minutes.

So I spent seven years of my life learning how to think like a dog. So now what I'm attempting to do is educate people on what I call canine communication and control, C3, and teach them that you have to do the paradigm shift instead of thinking that the dog should learn to understand your language, you should understand the dog's language. Which animals communicate via body language and voice tones.

Sherri: Well it was a very insightful to learn about where you come from and how you've made it through school and through college and chosen the career path that you have now. But now you're obviously at work at NASA. Can you tell us about some of the engineering projects that you are working on here at NASA?

Tony: Sure. The building that I work in at Advanced Projects, I conceive an idea with another gentleman named Dr. Robert Rice from the Institute of Semantic Science. And we conceived an idea of a 3D interactive virtual human, which when you talk about the human body anatomy and physiology, you're talking about the somatic aspects of the body.

So this project is called the Somatic Sciences Simulation. Now the Somatic Sciences Simulation, "S3", is a 3D interactive virtual human. It's anatomically precise, it's biomechanically accurate, it's physiologically realistic, I can sever the bones, I can sever the nerves, I can simulate disease, dysfunction and trauma. I can determine metabolic rates. I can simulate what's going to happen to the body in zero G, one-third G, one-sixth G, 0.38 G which is on Mars, and it works on diverse computing systems.

We did a demonstration where we showed a virtual human moving in a virtual space suit running on a Pentium III Workstation, and we can also operate it in virtual environments where it's functional and interactive.

And so what it was, was novel way of doing [spacent] design or cognitive designs for advanced spacecraft, where we would basically -- what we call virtual and rapid prototyping. Where you would build a little, test a little, build a little, test a little, but you're doing all this in the computer. You're designing, you're developing and you're testing in the computer before you cut any hardware which saves time and money.

And how we came up with the idea was that prototype suits here at the Johnson Space Center range from $700- to $800,000. Then when we get those suits in, they don't fit. So I said well why don't we reverse engineer how we do this? Why don't we learn to design suits and cockpits and look at human factors or ergonomics from a virtual aspect of it? From a human center design. In other words, let's build a suit around a human. Let's build a cockpit around the human.

That's [where] we can show the human is going to behave in the environment so that when it's time to cut the hardware, we've gone through all our failures. So that's my primary project that I'm working on. I had an opportunity to file for the application patent, which will be called 3D Systems Simulation with a Virtual Human in the Loop.

And the virtual human, being a system's thinker, the virtual human is just only one aspect of the diverse technologies. I take technologies and I integrate them and I put them together to make a system. So I have the virtual human, I have data capture/visualization types of technologies that can make 3D virtual environments and 3D virtual objects which I put the human in there. Now I've got a human, virtual human, virtual objects and a virtual environment.

Now I have what you call integrated systems. I'm seeing how everything works together as a system, therefore engineers and scientists can design, develop, and test their concepts and designs on a computer before they cut their hardware. They can go through 95% of the failures within a month, design changes that took months can be done in days or hours.

So everybody in America is doing virtual and rapid prototyping. They use it in the automotive industry, they use it in the ship-building industry, they're using it in the roller-coaster industry, they're using it in the entertainment industry, and it's proven that it saves time and money and cut your development time down at least 50%.

So it's an out-of-the-box type of idea. Now I had an opportunity this week to talk with a gentleman from DARPA, which is the Defense Advanced Research Program Office, represent DOD. They look for out-of-the-box ideas. They look for ideas that are going to revolutionize. Well I got a follow-up meeting and I presented him a program that I call the Voyage of the Human Spacecraft.

Because the space suit is basically a spacecraft. It has propulsion systems, electrical systems, power systems. But we know that in order for us to go to Mars or even beyond, that we must be able to sustain our most precious commodity, which is the human body and do it in real time. So that's why I took the two, made the paradigm shift, and called it the Voyage of the Human Spacecraft.

And we want to monitor it from an evolution-to-revolution approach where if we start to look at these technologies, we will have what we call a sensor garment that has sensors on it that captures position and orientation of the astronaut in the space suit, loads and forces, muscle fatigue. And we want to be able to wirelessly pump that down into Mission Control where we have to use another piece of technology.

As I stated before I'm a system integrator, I take this, I take this, I put it together. I take this, I take that, I put it together and it all supports the vision of a virtual human in a virtual spacecraft. So we have to monitor it, but we want to be able to monitor it in real time in the Mission Control Center.

For example I would have scanned in the astronauts that's wearing it, and I have his anthropometric data on the screen. We have technologies that we could scan him in photo-realistically where he looks exactly like himself down to the hair follicles. And now I take the [sensor gun] that he's wearing in space that's capturing his movements and etc. And on the screen, you will see astronaut So and So and everything that's going on with his body.

And then you can play with the simulation to look at what if. Well what if you keep moving his arm this way for the next 30 minutes? Then we'll see that on his body, that muscle is going to get a cramp right there. So we would utilize this for predictive modeling to play with this.

So one of the things the guy from DARPA was interested in the fact that okay we can use it for space, but they were interested-, we can use it for the soldiers. So we have a follow-up meeting with them this summer and we'll see how it goes.

Sherri: Wonderful. Well I want to remind everyone out there that we have the next 45 minutes with our special guest Tony, who is an engineer here at Johnson Space Center. And you can submit your questions that you would like for Tony, to ask, to the following email address: questteam@hotmail.com, and those questions will come right into us here, and Tony will have the opportunity then to answer your questions.

And with that, let's go ahead and read our first question. Clark is a 6th grade student from Panama City, and, Tony, he wants to know why did you choose the area of engineering that you did, systems engineering, and what exactly is that?

Tony: Well basically systems engineering and systems integration is the thinking for the 21st century. I had an opportunity to accompany Astronaut Bonny Dunbar, who's on the National Science Foundation board of directors, to a meeting about five years ago at the National Science Foundation.

And at that time, they were revamping the engineering and communications curriculums where they wanted kids to be more creative, more innovative thinkers and they wanted them to think system which means: big picture. They wanted them to be able to use their imagination and visualize concepts. That's the systems aspect of it, a big picture. A systems integration aspect to it is: What are the components that you need to make that big picture become a reality? That's the big picture.

And the reason why I chose engineering was because I'm more of the curious type, the daring type, the lets's-risk type of guy, and engineering, I learned was an art that uses science and it's never done the same way twice. So it would allow me to explore or experiment per what we call intelligent fast failure.

Now intelligent fast failure is a theory that was developed by Dr. Jack Matson at Penn State University. Dr. Jack Matson has written about me in two of his books, one called "The Order of Innovation using Intelligent Fast Failure" and the other one is called "Innovate or Die". And he writes about how I have utilized the theories of intelligent fast failure, which I'll tell them about, in my workplace.

So intelligent fast failure is basically instead of doing one thing, you have several ideas. And most kids, I've learned, are afraid to fail. Failure is unacceptable. But I will tell the kids that they have to understand that failure is a learning tool. And we're not saying or advocating that you go out and fail purposely because we do that enough unconsciously as well as consciously.

What we're saying is as an engineer, as a scientist, as an inventor, you must experiment with different ideas. And to experiment with different ideas in a linear fashion, or should I say experiment, if you've got 10 ideas and you want to test them all, but your process is okay I'm going to take one idea, I'm going to modify it, I'm going to adjust it, I'm going to modify it, oh, that's not a good idea. I'm going to pick another idea.

Well we call that slow stupid failure. And we're not saying that the kids are stupid, we're saying that it's just a coined phrase of slow stupid failure. In other words, what that is taking you too long to get to an answer. So to get to the answers, we encourage, start to encourage the kids to do intelligent fast failure, where you take five, six, seven ideas simultaneously and work them all at the same time, that accelerates your learning, because you're going to get to the knowledge acquisition curve more quickly where you're going to find out what works and what does not work.

And that's what we want to teach kids to do is they get through the failure results quickly before the low confidence comes or the low self-esteem comes. When you're failing fast, you're learning. And then you're going to come away with a whole different set of ideas, different set of ideas where you can do cross-fertilization and you keep failing. And that's what Albert Einstein does, that's what Thomas Edison did, that's what any inventor, like anybody out there who is pushing the unknown, they were failing in the unknown until they mapped it.

So that is how I became a systems engineer, because visually I'm an intuitive type of person. I can visualize things, and then I just reverse them to see what would it take to do it.

Sherri: Okay. Well Nancy, thanks for writing in. Nancy's an 8th grade student and she wants to know what you like best about working at NASA?

Tony: What I like best is the freedom to explore. The freedom to push the unknown, the freedom to ask why not. Because that's what the agency was built on, exploration. That's what the agency's built on, innovation and being pioneers and explorers. So I like the fact that I get to work on things that people dream about working on in a specific area.

That's stuff related to space. This is the United States Space Agency, and so that's what I love most about my job, is to be able to work on things that are going to support the astronauts into outer space. It's a unique job.

Sherri: I agree with you completely. I enjoy that aspect of it as well. Aaron is a 5th grade student from Louisiana and Aaron wants to know what were your favorite subjects in school?

Tony: My favorite subjects in school, I didn't really even apply myself in school. School, high school became easy for me. My favorite subjects were math and science, definitely science because I like to explore different things. Math was because I just love playing with numbers. It kind of reminds me of money. And English.

I had a hard time learning to speak proper English. I could write it, but because I grew up in an environment where it was slang conversations, when I got to the workforce, it was very hard for me to master speaking proper English. So English, math and science and of course gym, were my favorite classes.

Sherri: Oh, that's funny. Okay well Christian is a 6th grade student and Christian wants to know Tony, did you ever want to be an astronaut?

Tony: Yes I did. But as I, when I got here, I found out that I wasn't interested in going back to school for one, and I realized that a lot of astronauts had Ph.D.s and doctorates or whatever. After 7.5 years, seven years of school, two jobs, I had enough. And I thought about going back to school to get a master's, or a Ph.D., but I wanted to basically, I wanted to do research for myself, instead of somebody else.

So, that's kind of what made me choose to do these things.

Sherri: Okay so a lot of you out there might be wanting to be astronauts, or not sure if that's something you want to do. But if you do want to find out more about how to become an astronaut, in case you are interested, you can go to the spaceflight.nasa.gov Web site, and please note there is no www in front of that. It is just spaceflight.nasa.gov and you can read all about how to apply to become an astronaut.

Okay, our next question comes from Adam, who is a 5th grader in Texas. And he wants to know do you ever get to work with any astronauts?

Tony: Well yes. I find it a very interesting opportunity because I'm working with astronauts to understand the problems in the space suit. As I stated before, we were utilizing the S3 project or the virtual humans to look at new ways of designing space suits.

Well, since then I have had the opportunity now to work with the Air Force. The Air Force is interested in the virtual human to support F-16s. So as a result of that I get to interface with astronauts who are pilots as well as other guys in the Air Force. And the mentality that the Air Force has is they want to immerse you into the environment of the pilot or the astronaut.

So this year, once I started working with the Air Force, I ended up getting a flight suit. So I'm very close to working with the astronauts. I have my own flight suit. It's not very many engineers who have a flight suit. So I get to play around and look at different things in the T-38. With the Air Force, there's a possibility that I might get to fly on an F-16. And all these things I felt were blessings to me because I did want to look at being an astronaut, but I know that the line is so long for flying, that I'm content just working on developing technologies with them or flying in a T-38 or F-16. That's good enough for me because I know that there are hundreds of guys who are being flown and with the possibility that we only might have three people on the Space Station, and I've been here 17 years, and I think that I'm happy enough just to work with them and try to work on technologies to help them.

Sherri: Okay. Well Adam, thank you for your questions. Timothy is an 8th grade student and Timothy would like to know do you have any words of advice for kids about school and working for NASA?

Tony: Yes. My advice is that the new NASA, NASA right now is going through change. The new NASA, I know per my organization that I'm working in, the mission operations director, operations research and strategic development branch, if we're the future, we're looking for a certain caliber of individual. We're not looking for people who are not go-getters, we're not looking for people who don't have ideas, we're not looking for people who are afraid to risk and fail. We're looking for people who want to explore.

We're looking for people who want to use their imagination. Because the future NASA is going to take upon a different direction than the existing NASA. So my advice would be go to college, definitely. But learn to think. It's very, very important that you learn to think.

I last week went to three schools in National Engineers Week, and I realized that the kids are having problems learning to think. The kids are having problems learning to listen and focus. Those are basic characteristics that the students must possess if they want to work for the new NASA, especially if I'm a manager.

I'm looking, if I'm a manager, I'm looking for kids who have worked their way through schools, I'm looking for kids who have risked, I'm looking for kids who've failed. I'm looking for kids who have been out there and gotten a taste of what it's like to be in the real world which is applications, and not theory.

So the new NASA, if I'm a manager, I'm looking for kids who want to walk the edge, and not afraid.

Sherri: Well so all of you students out there who are planning your long-term goals, there are different programs available at Johnson Space Center, available for you to participate in. And some of those programs are at the high-school level, for instance the SHARP program is just one. And at the college level, we have a co-op program where you can come work for NASA and generally you'll get at least some credit through your college for that participation. And on top of that, you'll get the work experience that Tony was saying is so important along with your academic studies.

If you are interested in any of these programs, as you're planning your future and your career path, you can find out more about them on the education Web site, and that Web address is education.jsc.nasa.gov. And that's listed here on your screen. And again please note, there is no www in front of that. And that education page will show you all the different educational programs that are available to you here at Johnson Space Center.

Well let's go to our next question. LaTanya wants to know who is your favorite person in honor of Black History Month?

Tony: Wow. That's a tough question for me. There are several people. From the Frederick Douglass's who were out there revolutionizing things, taking risks, to the Benjamin [Bannagers] who are out there becoming inventors. So I don't have a specific person. Anybody out there that are doing creative and innovative things that have laid their life down to take the risk to make the world and society a better place, those are the individuals that I admire and model myself after. Because it's very important that we make a difference in humankind, whatever that may be. And to me we have no other purpose in life but to make a contribution.

And so those people that are making positive contributions to leave a legacy to help the young people coming along, are the people that I admire.

Sherri: Okay. Regan is a 6th grader from New York. And Regan wants to know what projects are getting most of your times these days at work?

Tony: There are several projects. The S3 project or the 3D System Simulation Virtual Human in a Loop is my primary project. I'm constantly now out attempting to commercialize it, trying to get these technologies into corporations. Because anywhere there's a human in a loop, where people are doing, making 3D models whether it's aircraft or houses, I want to talk to them. Because NASA's role is use of taxpayer's money to not only develop technologies for space, but it's for spin-offs into industry.

So I spent a lot of time now working to get the project out into people's hands or knowledge of those particular projects, and I spend a lot of time working with kids. This year will be my second year where I'm going to have seven co-ops. I had-, not seven co-ops, seven high-school students. I had two last year. So I have seven high-school students who I will be mentoring for a month, and their job is to come in and see what it's like to be a real engineer.

I will spend the first week with them, teaching them what their assignments are letting them know what the product that I'm expecting from them and interfacing with various engineers, and after that they're on their own. Their role and their task is not to come to see me unless they have a problem because excuses are unacceptable in the real world. So I put them in a real-world situation, and they have to work on a minimum of seven projects.

Sherri: Wow. So you really challenge them.

Tony: Yeah.

Sherri: Okay, well for those of you who might be interested in having a volunteer or mentor to participate in your classroom activities, Johnson Space Center does have an education outreach program, and you can read more about that program on the Web site that I gave you just a little bit earlier: the education.jsc.nasa.gov Web site. And again that's the Education Outreach Department, and you can talk with them about selecting the most appropriate employee out here at Johnson Space Center to interface and mentor with your students.

Okay, well reminding you, for those of you just joining us, we are broadcasting live from the Johnson Space Center here in Houston, Texas in support of National Engineers Week. We have a very special guest with us, Anthony Bruins, and we are also supporting Black History Month. So we are supporting Anthony and very honored to have him here today.

If you do have questions for Anthony, who is an engineer here, you can submit them to the e-mail address questteam@hotmail.com. Those will come right in to us and Anthony will have the opportunity then to answer your questions. So with that, we are going to go back and take our next question.

Dana and Cheryl are 9th grade students and write in, in your bio that you mentioned failures a lot and you've also talked about failures a lot today. They want to know if you think that's the best way to learn?

Tony: Well that's a good question, because I had the students, the high-school students that I have with me, that's one of the questions that they have to tell me, is hands-on application, which involves risking and failing, the best way to teach innovative design? Or is it memorization, knowledge retention?

And what I have learned and what the students have informed me is that hands-on, where failure is involved, is the best way to learn because it's a multi-sensory experience. And multi-sensory experiences-, once you fail at something, you're going to learn something. But you're utilizing your senses. You get to feel that failure. You get to hear that failure. You get to see that failure. Now it becomes ingrained into your subconscious mind.

So innovative design, they have shown me and proved which I already knew the answer, but the real world involves risking and failing applications. So failing, not purposely, but failing as you're going through the unknown, the students have shown me, is the best way.

Sherri: Well in talking about all of these failures, you mentioned earlier that the folks in Mission Control train over and over again with all of these different scenarios because failures do happen and they do need to be prepared.

Well we have a very short video of Brian MacDonald who is in the Flight Controller's Office, and he is also an engineer. And we want to share that with you, just another opportunity of engineering-type jobs available out here, plus this ties in quite nicely with all the failures you were talking about. So let's watch.

Lori: Hi, I'm Lori Keith with NASA Quest. I work at the Johnson Space Center here in Houston, Texas. Today I want to share with you an area of careers for engineering you might not know about: NASA flight controllers.

Now we all know that scientists and astronauts are important to their job, but the flight controllers are the backbone of every mission. It's their job to monitor and maintain what they call the health of the vehicle; whether that vehicle is the ISS or one of the shuttles. And if a problem arises, it is their job to figure out how to fix it or how to work around it.

Their jobs are crucial to the success of every NASA space flight mission. And on that note, I would like to introduce you to:

Brian: Hi, I'm Brian MacDonald, and I'm an ISS flight controller with an aerospace engineering degree. I'm here in a historical power control room where 32 years ago the Apollo 11 craft landed on the moon. And in that time, we've come a very long way. The ISS, when complete, will be the second brightest object in the night sky and will have a living area of approximately 1800 square feet.

It's my job, as an Attitude Determination and Control Officer, or ADCO, to fly the spacecraft. Now of course gravity determines where the spacecraft goes and how fast. But it's my job to make sure that we're pointed in the right direction. And that pointing or attitude is very crucial because that is what helps to maintain the power balance and maintain communications with the ground.

As an ADCO, I monitor the ISS Attitude Control System which uses control moment gyroscopes. These gyroscopes harness the power of a spinning wheel to control the attitude without the use of rocket fuel, which is expensive and difficult to transport to the space station.

Sherri: Well I hope you enjoyed that short video clip of Brian. Again just another one of many different types of engineering opportunities available for you out here at Johnson Space Center.

Go ahead and submit those questions. We've got about 25 minutes left, so seize the moment. You are joining us right now, go ahead and ask those questions. We've got Tony here available to answer them while we are all spending this time together.

Our next question comes from Marcy who is in Miss Holkum's 8th grade class. And Marcy wants to know where are you in the advanced space suit you've been working on that I read about in your journal?

Tony: Right now I'm in the process of trying to find funding to do this particular endeavor. Right now a lot of the funding for research and development at NASA is on hold because we've got to get the Space Station built. So a lot of R&D money that would have been utilized for advanced projects are now being utilized to get the Space Station built.

Sherri: R&D, meaning?

Tony: Research and Development.

Sherri: Okay.

Tony: Now being an innovator, and believing in my idea, I got to get out and go hustle and find my own money. So as I stated, DARPA is interested in this particular project. And so if we can utilize the same type of technologies that DARPA would be interested in to protect the soldiers, the same type of technology that we would utilize to protect the astronaut which is starting with a thin sur-garment. We would build it from the human out.

And so I'm constantly out there trying to find money. I'm not depending on NASA, I'm not depending on anybody. I believe in what I have and it's my job as engineer to go out and find money if there's no money in-house. So that's where I am on that.

Sherri: Okay, great. Lori is an 8th grade student and she wants to know what is nano-technology and is NASA using it right now?

Tony: Nano-technology is-, well first let me tell you about micro-technology. Micro-technology is very, very small. When you think of micro stuff, you think of small stuff. Well nano is 10 to the -9. If it's nano, you can't see it, but yet it's small enough where it's movable parts, it's movable machine, mechanical systems that are small.

NASA is just now getting into nano-technology. We have a couple of professors from Rice University who NASA is working on, but we're looking at more of the nano material producing, the nano materials in quantity, utilizing some of [FARK] jet type of processes in our facilities here. So we're not so deep into the nano-electronics or whatever, it's more we're looking at right now the nano materials. So yes, we do plan to use nano.

Sherri: Okay Zena is a 9th grader here in Houston, and Zena wants to know where are you in the S3 project, because it seems really cool to her.

Tony: Well where I am right now is, as I stated earlier, I had a meeting with the gentleman from DARPA. As a matter of fact, this gentleman for the last question that was asking about nano and micro, this guy works in the micro-technology office. So he was very interested in utilizing, or should I say follow-up discussions to utilize the S3 project, because what we would have to-, right now I have everything, neural, muscular, skeletal except for head an neck.

In order for me to be able to track the physiology aspects of the astronaut or the soldier, I would need to do the head and neck, I would need to do the visceral components, which it will support pre-breathe, which means I need to model the cardiovascular system and the respiratory system. I need to look at muscular pathophysiology, which is basically the effects of atrophy in micro-G to the muscles.

I need to look at skeletal pathophysiology, which is basically the bone demineralization in micro-G. I need to look at neurophysiology, which is basically the reflex reaction time. Then I need to look at cardiovascular physiology which looks at the volume fluid shift in the body. So I still have to finish out the entire body inside and outside.

And if I can do that utilizing [MIMS] or micro or nano-technology and [inaudible] electronics, basically what I told and proposed to him was if you need a difficult problem to challenge, where he wants to push the envelope, using MIMS and micro and nano, there's nothing more complex than the human body.

So I proposed an idea to him by using MIMS and nano-technology to emulate the biological processes of the human body's structure and function at the cellular level. And if you can do that at the cellular level, one of the things that I explain to him was that it would support bioterrorism. Because we would now know what the effects of an agent on the body at the cellular level; therefore with the S3 project, we can develop the counter measures and simulate what the [body's] going to look like and develop therapy and to remedy those particular projects.

So that's where I am with the S3 project.

Sherri: Okay. All right, Melvin writes in from Ms. Holkum's class, also 8th grader. And wants to know if you found it hard or difficult to get where you are today with such a hard childhood?

Tony: Well no, the hard childhood prepared me for the struggle. My childhood was, I can't say that bad, I didn't get the things that I needed, but I got the things that I wanted. Should I say, no, I got the things that I needed, not the things that I wanted. And so that in itself taught me about discipline. That taught me about making sacrifices and that taught me about going without.

So those hardships prepared me for the real world, which is application, it's not theory. And so if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change anything because the struggle is what made me what I am today.

Sherri: Tara is also in Ms. Holkum's 8th grade class and she wants to know if the Caesar database is still being added to and is there any places they could check out examples of it?

Tony: The Caesar database from my understanding, I haven't been tracking it lately, they should be through with the Caesar database. I believe it's about 20 to 25,000 different individuals, American and European civilians, that have been scanned in. And if you want to learn more about the Caesar project, you go out to the Wright Paterson Air Force Base Web site, that is where the project originated from.

And one of the things that we could do is take those 20-25,000 people who have been scanned in for the anthropometric data, and put it on our S3, our virtual human, and we can show you 20-25,000 different sizes of individuals.

Sherri: Wow. Okay, Sidney wants to know where you see yourself five years from now.

Tony: Oh, five years from now, I still see myself working in a lab or working on developing technologies. Hopefully having some money to have finished the S3 project. Working on MIMS and nano-technologies and basically being one of those individuals that kids or co-ops or future NASA or young employees that come in and ask me, "How did you do that?"

So I now want to be able to teach the kids how I did what I did. Because this particular project has been on the Discovery Channel, it has been written about in NASA tech briefs, it's been written about in Popular Science Magazine, it's been written about in Computer Graphics World Magazine. And this year we were written about in Atlantic Progress out of Canada. So we're getting some international exposure.

So I feel that I have something to say as an innovator, as a scientist, as an engineer. I've been there and I've done that, not "can I do it." I've done it. And now I want to share it with the kids on how I've done what I've done thus far.

Sherri: Well we were talking about nano-technology earlier and you were describing to us what it was all about. Jerry has a follow-up question to that. He says, well if you can't see the nano parts, how do you build them?

Tony: Well you, basically you will build them in a lab and you would have on glasses that magnify. And basically you would have robotics building and assembling the chips. Now the nano-technologies is basically, in your existing systems now you have your process and you have your CPU, you have your data, you have your sensors, you have your power. All those are individual.

Well imagine, as I stated, at the micro level, you're making it small and at the nano level, you're making it smaller. But imagine that in all five of those things that I've just mentioned, on one chip.

Sherri: I can't.

Tony: That's where nano is.

Sherri: Oh my goodness. Okay. Well, Louis, well actually I'm sorry, Margene wants to know if the space suit that you were talking about earlier is still being used right now?

Tony: Yes. For those interested in following the flight, you will see that particular space suit when they're out doing EDAs to service the Hubbell. That particular space suit weighs 275 pounds, and so we ended up basically looking at different ways of doing space suit design.

Sherri: Is this the space suit right here?

Tony: Yes. That's the EMU, Extra Mobility Unit. And it basically as I stated before, it's a space craft. And you have to maintain the human in that particular space craft. Now the astronauts make that look very, very easy. But that is very, very difficult, because you've got the various rings at the shoulders and the wrists, and you can't get fluent wrist rotation or shoulder rotation because those pieces of hardware are stationary. And you use it in training also.

Sherri: This is what.

Tony: So this is an example of the astronauts using the space suit in training. And the same processes were they're practicing that particular simulation on orbit and so they've got a thorough understanding of how their bodies want to be positioned in the space suit. And I will tell you now that if you think your body is flush against the space suit in space, it's not. The astronauts have to, even in their training under water, they have to wedge themselves in a corner so that they can stand still, and now they're working against those bearings and those rings and that's where all the muscle fatigue and the muscle strains come from. And that's why they wanted us looking at different ways of building space suit design and that's when I said, "Well let's reverse engineer it. Let's build it around the human instead of building a space suit and now putting the guys in it."

With virtual [and wrapper] prototyping, I can stand in that space suit. This is fit check what you're looking at right now. An astronaut's got to check out the hardware. Where with technologies we can scan in the astronaut, we can scan in the EMU, and now we have a virtual EMU and we have a virtual space suit. Now we can make that virtual human move within that space suit and show where it hurts in the computer.

Sherri: Wow that's fascinating.

Well that was live video footage that we were looking at of astronauts actually training right now out at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.

Okay, I want to remind everyone, we have about 10 minutes left, so take this last opportunity to submit your questions for Tony to answer at questteam@hotmail.com. Okay, the next question is from Ann. And Ann writes in, I noticed on your biography that you like dogs. Do you think a dog will ever fly in space?

Tony: Well dogs have already flown in space. Dogs were flying in space in the ‘60s, the Russians were the first one to put a dog up. I think his name was Laka, something like that. But I feel that one of the things that I would like to do is as we get science from the Space Station per what's going on with the astronauts and other pieces of science, is that we can't forget about the animals, for the veterinarians. We need to be able to understand what are the effects of micro G on animals.

If we were to ever get off this planet, I'm sure people would want to bring their animals. So yeah, I can foresee in the future that we, Air Force or somebody starts to look at what are the effects of micro G on all the animals. You've got to start with rats, and they might do a dog or something. But I would love to participate in that program if it was coming to NASA.

Sherri: Okay. All right, Michael from Ms. Holkum's 8th grade class, thanks Michael for submitting your question, says, Tony, I read your field journals and where do you get ideas for projects like the S3 and space suit and wireless communications and everything?

Tony: Well ideas, they're intuitive. I get all my ideas just come from my intuitiveness. Now a lot of people might ask well what is intuitiveness? Intuitiveness is basically where I would sit down and I would think about something. I will think about a problem, and I will try to imagine it, and I will try to visualize it. And then I'll just sit and watch what comes into my mind.

I quiet my mind and I listen. And that's how I come up with ideas. I visualize. I use my imagination. Einstein will tell you and has stated that imagination is more than knowledge, because imagination encircles the world. And so for any of those who have looked at any of Einstein's work, you will see that Einstein's ideas were based on his imagination and him visualizing things.

For example, Einstein said, "Well I wonder what it would look like if I was traveling-, what the world would look like if I was traveling at the speed of light"? He used his imagination and he came up with his ideas and theory by-, it wasn't based on some experimental deduction, it was based on his intuition and imagination. And Einstein was the kind of guy, he was a scientist that believed in God.

He believed that God wouldn't play dice with the universe. Where his colleagues, such as Neil [Borg] would believe, would say, "Well how do you know God wouldn't play with the Universe?" But Einstein used his imagination to come up with his ideas. So I would encourage all of you guys, use your imagination, visualize what you want to do, which is the system, and have the heart and the courage and the determination and persistency to make it happen.

Sherri: Okay. It's a great way to get ideas. Using that imagination, being still and quieting your mind and seeing what bubbles up. Okay, Roxanne is an 8th student and she wants to know what is virtual and rapid prototyping?

Tony: Virtual and rapid prototyping is basically where you can design, develop and test your designs, your concepts or your ideas in the computer before you even cut the first piece of hardware. That's the virtual aspect. You're doing it but you're not doing it. You're doing it in the computer then because you want to see what works and what does not work. Not build a piece of hardware and then for example a prototype suit, now give it to the astronaut, as you saw on the fit check. They have to try that stuff on and the prototype suits don't fit.

So doing virtual and rapid prototype, we could scan in all the existing space suits that we have now and scan in astronauts and see where it doesn't hurt, where does it hurt, etc., and develop requirements for a new space suit, and then prototype that on the computer. That's virtual and rapid prototyping. The rapid is fast.

Sherri: Stephanie is a 6th grade student and she's got a three-part question. She wants to know of all the projects and jobs that you've worked on, which one was your favorite, which one was the most interesting and which one was the most challenging? So let's start with the first on, what's your favorite one been?

Tony: Well to date, my favorite one has been the S3 project. And that was my most complex one. Because understanding what's going on with the biological processes and structure and function of the human body, the human body is the most complex entity in the world. So what I learned about the human body and I learned about MIMS and nano-technologies that can give me readings on it in real time, I helped to solve one of NASA's most complex problems, which is how do I monitor the body in real time, in space?

What are the changes that's going on? How can I develop counter measures to bone demineralization or muscle atrophy? By developing this simulation, and it was a team effort, it wasn't just me. I was the guy with the vision, I had to go out and find experts in certain fields and I integrated their stuff in it. So that was my most complex problem and it's still my most complex problem.

My next project that I will say number second would be the Mission Control Communicator. We have a problem with Mission Control because we're wired up. Where if we're going to go into looking at doing operations different in the future, I envision that the flight controllers should be able to understand what's going on in Mission Control, but he doesn't have to be at Mission Control.

So that's how I came up with the idea with the Mission Control Communicator, which was basically let's look at some Star Trek technology. Let's look at push to talk, how we can talk. And to date, I didn't get funding for that, I got the money to do the requirements and the design, but the contractor basically went on and put his own money on the table and now they are deploying communicators in Asia.

So the doctor who I was working with is going to give me one next month or in May to play with. So that was my second project.

Sherri: Oh how fun.

Tony: I can't remember the other question.

Sherri: Well you've addressed the most challenging portion and your favorite portion, but what about the most interesting overall?

Tony: I would have to say it's the S3 project. I, by trade as a system engineer, system integrator, I had the opportunity of hanging out with Dr. Robert Rice who's a physiologist and anatomist. I learned how the human body functions. And I would tell the kids that I learned that stress will kill you. You must be able to keep your equilibrium or your homeostasis in balance. Otherwise it triggers things in your genetics.

For example, if your parents have high blood pressure or diabetes or whatever, when you're stressed, you trigger these things at the cellular level which causes you to have problems. So I have learned that the human body is the most complex and the most interesting because if we can emulate the biological processes of the body, we can develop technologies that act like the body, for example, self-healing materials, because our skin heals, then we're arrived. And that's where we're trying to go.

Sherri: Okay. I think we have time for one last quick question and this is kind of to end on a light note. Ed writes in, if we were to take dogs up into microgravity, wouldn't they shed and then wouldn't that be a concern for us?

Tony: Well we would understand that that's one of the requirements that we would have to look at per developing a space suit for a dog. It would have to be something that deals with shedding. But if we were to take the same approach that we're taking for space suits at the human center design, look at it from a dog center-, if we would build a suit that would fit the dog like we're envisioning a new suit for Mars has to be like a Danskin, then there's no shedding because everything is skin-tight.

So we would do the same. We would use technologies that we use for the human space suit, for a dog space suit and it will be conforming to his natural motion and movement.

Sherri: Well we want to thank and give a special thanks to Mrs. Holkum's 8th grade class for submitting such wonderful and challenging questions. We are very glad that you joined us today. And for all the rest of you out there, thank you for submitting your questions as well.

We went through as many as we possibly could in the time we had today. Hopefully we were able to answer your questions online on the Webcast today. This Webcast will be archived, so if you want to go back and review some of the more detailed information that Tony was talking about, if you missed it or were trying to take notes, you will be able to go back and replay this archived Webcast on the quest Web site.

Well on behalf of the Distance Learning Outpost, and NASA-Ames Quest, we want to thank you all for joining us and helping support National Engineering Week. We challenge you to keep studying hard, keep participating in extra events like this, that expand your knowledge beyond the classroom environment.

We will be having another Webcast tomorrow at 1:00 o'clock Central Time, in support of National Engineers Week. We hope you'll be able to join us then. Until then, goodbye from Johnson Space Center.