By Richard Tew NASA/JSC Correspondent for The Post Newspaper
Movies have an uncanny way of inspiring viewers to explore new horizons, to think outside the box and to consider different things.
NASA/JSC’s newest flight director Chris Dobbins says it was while watching the movie “Apollo 13,” with his father when he was 10-years-old which piqued his interest in a future career in the space program.
The 1995 blockbuster movie, directed by Ron Howard featured a star-studded cast including: Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Bill Paxton and Ed Harris.
The movie relives the inspiring story of the Apollo 13 mission, the seventh crewed mission for NASA which launched in 1970. The mission would also mark the third mission sending astronauts to the Moon.
Dobbins says he was inspired by the work flight engineers did in helping save the imperiled astronauts when their spacecraft suffered an oxygen tank explosion while attempting to prepare to land on the surface of the Moon. The spacecraft was damaged but the crew, consisting of astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise managed to pile into the much smaller lunar module for safety. The hobbled module would eventually return its crew safety to Earth.
“A lot of people see (Apollo 13) and say ‘I want to go to the moon as an astronaut,'” said Dobbins. “I really looked up to the guys on the ground who got the job done.”
Dobbins would go on to earn a Bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering degree from from the University of Michigan spending his last summers while in school working at the Johnson Space Center as a Co-op student. He says his experience walking into Mission Control as a student was a rewarding experience.
“I just fell in love with the whole Mission Control thing,” said Dobbins. “I was shocked learning how much it met my expectations without knowing what went on here on a day-to-day basis. I really enjoyed the people and just the way they worked.”
After graduation and completing the Co-op program, Dobbins was hired as a flight controller and worked with Environmental and Thermal Operating Systems (ETHOS) and as an Emergency Consumables Manager (ECOM). He worked on missions involving the International Space Station (ISS) and with other space flight vehicles including the Boeing Starliner during its uncrewed test flights.
Dobbins says through the years working in the Mission Control Building, trainers and mentors would ask if he ever considered applying for a flight director position. The flight director is in charge of a team of flight controllers during missions to space and also while monitoring the ISS each day.
“My initial goal was to just be in the (Flight Control Room),” said Dobbins. “I thought it was the coolest thing to be able to watch the way teams here worked, how they solved problems and how they made decisions. I kind of just wanted to be a part of that.”
Ultimately Dobbins decided to apply for the flight director class which consists of extensive training for the role. Dobbins says each flight director class will start with anywhere from a few hundred, to upwards of 1,000 applicants. Most will be cut along the way through the interview process whittling down the class to a proverbial handful. In his class, there were just seven who were hired for the flight director class. With his promotion, this makes him NASA/JSC’s 102nd flight director in the agency’s history.
“That process started probably a couple of years ago. I was seriously thinking about ‘is this a job I want?'” said Dobbins.
Having just completed his first couple of weeks as a flight director, Dobbins eyes milestones in space exploration like the new Artemis Program and the potential it holds for sending humans back to the Moon before going further into the solar system.
“I think I will see the next person or persons land on the Moon. Most people alive today have not seen that,” said Dobbins. “In my lifetime, this is the most confident I have ever felt about us being able to pull off something like that.”
When he is not writing on NASA/JSC, Richard Tew teaches Irish dance to kids and adults in Clear Lake. Learn more at http://www.tew-academy.org.
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Photo cutline: NASA/JSC Flight Director Chris Dobbins was recently promoted to flight director, making him the 102nd flight director in the agency’s history. Photo by Richard Tew/For The Post Newspaper.
