Garland, Texas, native Ben Stahl is unfolding the next chapters of his life as his fourth and final cooperative education tour ends at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Stahl has spent much of the past two years working on out-of-this-world projects at NASA -- from studying air flow around a launching Space Shuttle to preparing tests for the next generation of human spacecraft.
"I could not have had a better experience than the one I had at JSC. My goal is to make sure that I am doing something that I love day in and day out. Right now I have hopes of training to be a flight controller," Stahl said. "I would like to be a flight controller or flight director in Mission Control when that [first] person does take the first steps onto Mars."
Stahl was born in Dallas and raised in the metroplex by parents Mark Stahl and Cindy Howard. In 2001, Stahl graduated from Naaman Forest High School in Garland. He currently attends The University of Texas at Austin majoring in aerospace engineering. He is expecting to graduate in May 2006.
Stahl started his first student tour at NASA in fall 2003 with the engineering group who models the movement of air surrounding the Space Shuttle as it accelerates to 17,500 miles per hour. There, he used computer analysis to determine the behavior of the air around the Space Shuttle's external fuel tank.
Stahl's second tour was in summer 2004, where he worked with the Mission Control team that plans the Shuttle's orbital flight path. He performed computer simulations to verify a flight rule regarding onboard Shuttle navigation errors.
Stahl's third tour was in spring 2005 working with a group in engineering at JSC who design spacesuits and spacewalking tools. He was in charge of the design, development, certification and implementation of a high-pressure nitrogen cart. The cart was designed as a back-up system to fill tanks on the Cure-in-Place Ablator Applicator tile repair tool, a type of in-space caulk gun that was developed to dispense potential heat shield repair material for the Shuttle.
This summer, Stahl worked with the Mission Control team that analyzes and plans the Shuttle's climb to orbit after liftoff. One of his tasks was to devise a method to simulate a certain Space Shuttle main engine failure in the abort capability software used in Mission Control during launch. Another one of his tasks was to develop a part of the computer simulation code that may be used to test capabilities of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), a vehicle planned to be the next generation of human spacecraft.
"My most memorable experience at JSC was the launch of STS-114 (Discovery's Space Shuttle Return to Flight mission). It is the culmination of so much of the work that I have been a part of during my employment at NASA," Stahl said.
The NASA Cooperative Education Program allows college students from around the country to better prepare for their careers by supplementing classroom learning with valuable real-world experience. This extremely competitive program allows approximately 150 students from more than 40 universities to alternate semesters at school with working at JSC in paid, full-time positions directly related to their field of study. Not only does the program provide students with great work experience, but it helps them decide what kind of work they want after graduation.
For more information on the JSC Co-op Program, visit: coop.jsc.nasa.gov/index.html
For student information about the Cooperative Engineering Education (Co-op) Program in the College, go to: ecac.engr.utexas.edu/students/coop/; interested employers can go to: ecac.engr.utexas.edu/employers/coop/index.cfm
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