Fall 2001

         For Astronaut Kenneth D. Cockrell (B.S.M.E. '72), commander of two shuttle missions in the last four years, flying has been a lifelong, all-consuming passion.

          "I saw an airplane when I was five years old, and got bit by the bug. It never quit," says the man known around NASA as "Taco." Cockrell is at a loss to explain the nickname. He likes Tex-Mex food, sure, but what Texan doesn't?

          If the origin of his colorful handle is mysterious, his fitness for the task is abundantly clear. Degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering. Naval aviator. Naval test pilot. NASA research pilot. Astronaut since 1991. Recreational sport pilot. 8,000-plus hours in the air logged, and counting. It's the résumé of someone born to fly.

          Cockrell, 51, who was born in Austin, grew up in nearby Rockdale, Texas bent on a career in military aviation. In 1968, he enrolled in The University's mechanical engineering department. An M.E. degree, he felt, offered the widest overall employment potential, although he also took a number of aeronautics-related courses.

          After UT, he went on to earn a master's degree in aeronautical systems at the University of West Florida. He received his commission through the Naval Aviation Reserve Officer Program at the Naval Air Station, Pensacola in 1972, and became a Naval Aviator in 1974. Between 1974 and 1987, he flew hundreds of missions in A-4, A-7, F-4 and F/A-18 aircraft, including extensive tours of duty aboard the carriers USS Midway and USS Constellation.

          By 1987, he could see a desk-bound managerial post in the near future that offered few chances for flying. Restless, eager to stay in the sky, he made the hard decision to leave active service five years short of retirement. Meanwhile, he'd applied for the astronaut program through Navy channels and been consigned to a long waiting list.

          While he was engaged in the complicated process of resigning his naval commission, NASA called. Still no astronaut openings...but would he consider a position as a civilian research engineer at Johnson Space Center? 
Cockrell completed the paperwork and headed straight for Houston. He was working there when called at last to train as a pilot astronaut in the class of 1990-91.

          A decade later, he's one of the space program's most seasoned veterans, with four missions under his belt and a fifth he's set to command in April 2002. He's flown all four American orbiters and logged well over a thousand hours in space. Last February, he commanded the Atlantis Shuttle mission flight to ferry Destiny, a 3,750 cubic foot laboratory module, to the International Space Station.

          Flying a shuttle is comparable to flying any other high performance aircraft, he maintains. The cockpit, with its illuminated panels and banks of switches, doesn't look all that different from that of a sophisticated fighter jet, though the spacecraft does handle differently. It's sluggish in roll-that steep rotation about the central axis needed to execute a turn. On the other hand, it's highly nimble in pitch (the up-and-down motion of the nose), a necessity for the precision landings it must make. The only other time the craft is actually "flown" is to rendezvous and dock with satellites or other objects in space. "Once you're on orbit you're just hanging there," he says.

          "There" is some 200-250 miles above the Earth's surface, coasting at 17,000 M.P.H. with gravitational and centrifugal forces perfectly balanced. 
At launch, the crew braces for the rough blastoff securely strapped in their bolted-down seats atop 4.5 million pounds of explosive fuel. Eight and a half minutes later, they're in orbit, ready to begin the adventure of 10 to 14 days in space. On Cockrell's watch, that means quickly shedding NASA's state-of-the-art space garb for the 70-degree tee shirt and shorts environment he prefers.

          A typical "day" (as measured from zero at liftoff) begins when the crew-snug in sleeping bags hung from "wherever" -awakens to the sound of canned hip-hop music chosen by Cockrell's 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son. Astronauts get eight hours to sleep, although with 16 sunrises and sunsets each 24-hour period, a good rest doesn't come easy.

          The rousing wake-up call is followed by two hours of personal time to "clean up, use the toilet, fix some breakfast." Space food has come a long way from the early toothpaste-like product. Today's astronauts consume military-style rations and freeze-dried vegetables in a more or less normal fashion, heating or adding water to the meals in a small galley area.

          They also check their e-mail for updates from Houston Ground Control, and catch up on correspondence. Each crew member has a laptop computer. Additionally, the laptops are networked together, with one acting as a server to the Orbiter's ground communications system.

          The rest of the crew's "day" will be spent working- perhaps with a shared lunch break-until they take their last, late meal and retire to their sleep sacks. Tasks might include anything from sending two people outside on a spacewalk to entering the Space Station itself, as a group, to help the crew there.

          On the February mission, Flight Engineer Marsha Ivins deftly manipulated the shuttle's robotic arm to lift Destiny out of the cargo bay and maneuver it into position, working blindly from voice commands given by spacewalkers Tom Jones and Robert Curbeam. Cockrell operated the computer driving the complicated bolting and latching system. He himself has never stepped out into space, although he would love to. That's a job reserved for Mission Specialists. Neither the mission commander nor the pilot (Mark Polansky, on the last flight) will ever experience that tremendous view from behind a thin face shield. NASA considers the possible loss of a flyer to a spacewalking mishap an unacceptable risk.

          The Atlantis crew spent much of their time aboard the Space Station. There, they worked with their counterparts-two Russians and an American-on joint projects. And they learned a thing or two about weightlessness while floating throughout the Station's vaster spaces.

          "In the Orbiter you think you're an accomplished Zero G person. But the fact is, you're always touching something, and you don't realize the difficulty of functioning smoothly and accurately when you don't have something to touch," says Cockrell, who admits they were "klutzes" at first.

          Weightlessness has its temporary side effects on the body-including heightened metabolism. "You burn a lot of calories in space," Cockrell says.

          You also get taller in orbit, as the spine stretches out due to the absence of gravitational pull. That stretch can cause pain as muscles adapt to their new position. Cockrell, who's 5'8" on the ground and gains about an inch and a half, experiences back pain as well as some nausea for the first two days: "It all clears up magically on Day Three." Not everyone feels the effects in the same way, he adds. If life in Zero G requires some accommodation, the adjustment on re-entry is even more severe.

          "When you make the landing, you've been in Zero G for 10, 12 days; so the slightest G feels like a lot," he explains. "You come back and one G feels like three or four. As you get close to the ground, you have to really fight the nausea. You're so sensitive to the motion of entry you get nauseous from it. So it's a mental game as much as a piloting skills game. Probably more so."

          Today's astronaut program, indeed, is foremost geared toward the mental challenges of space. Gone is the punishing physical regime of the early 1960s. "We know the environment now, and we realize that it's nothing too extreme," he says. Instead, crews train as a group for specific missions, learning to work together under stressful conditions.

          Cockrell is excited about next April's flight, which pairs him with pilot Paul "Paco" Lockhart (M.S.A.S.E. 1981)-a fellow Longhorn. "It'll be Taco and Paco in the cockpit!" he grins.

by Rae Nadler-Olenick