By Stephen Whitaker | The Eagle
On Saturday, visitors from across the country and school groups from as far away as Jourdanton, near San Antonio, came to the Texas A&M University campus to take part in a free festival, based on physics and not barbecue.
While the Troubadour Festival went on in neighboring Bryan, a physics and engineering festival, including science and circus acts to teach Newtonian physics, was going on in College Station.
For many the highlight of the day was a chance to hear the story of Aggie astronaut Col. Mike Fossum, Class of ’80. Several hundred people packed into one of the lecture halls in the Mitchell Physics Building on Saturday afternoon to hear Fossum talk about his experiences in space as well as his current job as chief operating officer of Texas A&M’s Galveston campus and superintendent of the Texas A&M Maritime Academy.
Fossum visited with The Eagle and shared stories of his growing up in McAllen, his early love of science and the space race.
Fossum also shared the story of how he ended up attending A&M and the help of a friend from McAllen in making that possible.
“By the time I got accepted, the regular dorms and residence halls were all full,” he said. “I came up for my new student conference in the summer of ’76 to try and find an apartment, but they were also in short supply. I looked for two days and I walked around the campus as the sky went dark and said I got to go home. I don’t have anywhere to stay.
“I got up in the morning and I was walking to my car and I heard someone call my name from back behind me. It was Earl Gallagher, he was two years older than me and he was from my Boy Scout troop in McAllen. He was in the Corps [of Cadets] and he was up here for summer school. He said, ‘You’re coming? That’s great.’ I told him [about not having a place to live] and he said, ‘You need a dorm room, join the Corps, you are guaranteed a dorm room.’ My whole life changed.”
After four years at A&M, Fossum graduated in 1980 and joined the Air Force. In his speech at Physics Fest, Fossum shared his Air Force experience and how it helped him down the path to space since he became a flight test engineer.
“The Air Force offered me a scholarship to study engineering and agree to be commissioned for four years,” Fossum told the audience. “I jumped into the Air Force and I heard about this opportunity to go to test pilot school as an engineer, not a pilot, and learn to be a flight test engineer. When I got to test pilot school, I knew that the dream of flying in space had become real and I knew this was a possibility that could be one of those angles that could help me stand out. I was No. 1 in my class and the week I graduated from test pilot school I immediately started applying for the astronaut job.”
Physics Fest is presented annually by the Department of Physics and Astronomy in partnership with several other departments on campus including aerospace engineering, atmospheric sciences, biology, chemistry and mathematics. The event is free to the public.
Fossum had a chance to walk through the festival and see some of the activities they had for kids to do that teaches them physics.
“I’ve heard about it before and Tatiana [Erukhimova] invited me a few years ago to come and I couldn’t make it but I made it last year and I was overwhelmed at how much is out here.” Fossum said. “It’s so exciting with over 200 different hands-on activities and the way they bring this down to the young people, the young kids, children that are here with their families. A&M is making science fun and it’s exciting. I wish something like this existed when I was a kid because I was a science geek. I was motivated to learn how to read books because the pictures were intriguing and I wanted to know what it said.”
Fossum became interested in space when he was 11 years old and watched Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.
It took Fossum 13 years from his first application to be selected as an astronaut in the class of 1998. In the time between his first application and getting accepted as an astronaut, Fossum went from active-duty Air Force to Air Force Reserve and went to work as an engineer at NASA in the early 1990s. Fossum’s role at NASA was to help design what would become the International Space Station (ISS).
“After 13 years of applying [to be an astronaut], I was selected at age 40 and people say, ‘Oh, how could you wait so long?” Fossum told the crowd. “I wasn’t waiting a day. I was working my tail off. There were things to do. I was on a mission in the Air Force. I was on a mission at NASA to figure out how we could build this space station. How we could design it so it would be very, very reliable, so the crew could figure out how to put those pieces together in space.”
When Fossum finally reached space, he said it felt like his 12-year-old-self living out his dream. Fossum worked as an astronaut for 19 years before retiring from NASA in 2017.
Fossum spent more than 194 days in space and undertook seven spacewalks totaling 48 hours. His first spaceflight came in 2006 as a member of STS-121, the first shuttle mission to fly since the Columbia disaster in 2003. As part of STS-121, Fossum made his first spacewalk, eventually conducting three spacewalks on the first mission.
“Spacewalking is the most outrageous thing humans can do,” he told the audience. “You’re in a self-contained spaceship. It’s inflated to 4.3 pounds of pressure, pure oxygen. It’s thick. It has to protect you from temperatures roughly plus and minus 250 degrees and you’ve got to work out there. Spacewalking also doesn’t use legs. It’s hands hanging on to things. I loved doing it. It was intense. Each spacewalk was about six and a half to eight hours outside. You are in the suit a while before you go outside and stuff. It’s a long day.”
Fossum made a second trip to the ISS in 2008 and made three more space walks on his 14-day mission. For his final mission in 2011, Fossum served as ISS commander at the same space station he had helped design 20 years earlier. He conducted his final spacewalk on that flight and also watched the final launch of the space shuttle from the ISS.
Fossum is excited to see NASA’s latest mission, Artemis, returning man-to-moon exploration and ultimately exploration of Mars as the ISS nears the end of its run. Fossum will be at the launch of Artemis II on Wednesday as he is good friends with mission commander Reid Wiseman.
“The first pieces of the space station were launched in ’98. People took up permanent residence in October 2000. We’ve had people up there continuously,” Fossum said. “But the Space Station has a limited lifetime. It was designed for a 30-year-life. It’s showing some wear and tear right now. The work we’ve been doing in low Earth orbit, a lot of it is proving the technology that we need to go beyond low Earth orbit.”
Fossum has lived out his dream of space flight and now he has a new dream, helping students who come through the A&M-Galveston campus reach their dreams.
“I’ve got another mission now. I lived my dream. My dream is helping students like the ones filing into this auditorium live their dreams,” he said. “I hope there is another Aggie astronaut someday, but in the meantime I want to be part of that. I can touch the future by encouraging them, by challenging them, by making sure there’s a good, solid, positive team that’s there to help them be successful. I get to touch the future through these young people, and there is no higher calling for me.”
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