By Richard Tew/NASA Correspondent for The Post Newspaper
Few people know what they want to do in life from a young age. Still others say they do and don’t succeed. Heidi Brewer, JSC’s 106th Flight Director did both.
Brewer says one of her first words as a child was “Moon.” Our closest celestial neighbor would be something Brewer would learn a lot about in years to come.
“Way back when I was a very little child, even before I had learned to speak all the words, my mom loves to tell the story that when I was young, she would hold me up against the window to look out the window and see the moon,” said Brewer. “One of my favorite words was moon and I pointed to the Moon, so I think it started well before I knew it.”
Brewer says she was always fascinated with the stars. Star Trek The Next Generation was one of her favorite TV shows. It was her interest in the cosmos which led to her mother, Dr. Rosario Gerhardt, a professor at The Georgia Institute of Technology, sent her to space camp.
“So that really led to my decisions of how I decided to go to school and what I wanted to study,” said Brewer. “So when I went to space camp.”
While at space camp, Brewer says participants were arranged in groups and were led through group activities and also worked on simulations of activities an astronaut or engineer might face working at NASA.
“So one of them was a crew member,” said Brewer. “The second one I was down in mission control and helping you run it from the ground. And so kind of seeing those different perspectives was really helpful to me, and kind of learning how all of these things went into preparing missions and what it was like to experience it from both perspectives.”
Brewer says the team building and problem solving aspects of the camp proved beneficial after getting hired years later at JSC.
When she wasn’t studying math and science, Brewer says she was active in the band, first playing the trumpet before switching to the clarinet. She would go on to play in middle school, high school and college. She even considered majoring in music. Ultimately Brewer would take the path to aerospace and earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in music from Georgia Tech. She says the competitive nature of her years of experience in band helped her with her ambitions for a future in the space industry.
“The word ‘compete’ is an interesting one because in reflection, I would say it resulted in building characteristics that were useful to becoming a lead in space operations,” said Brewer.
After college, Brewer landed a position with Delta Airlines where she worked as a structural engineer. There Brewer assessed structural damage to aircraft.
“When your flight got canceled because of maintenance, my job was on the other side to look at that aircraft and decide whether it was safe to fly,” said Brewer.
In 2007, after a year at Delta, Brewer applied and was hired at JSC as an Instrument and Communications Flight Controller (INCO) team member supporting the former Space Shuttle program. After working as a flight controller for a number of years, she applied for and was accepted as a flight director. The training, which can last over a year, takes new flight directors through a series of classes and training simulations in order to give them an overview of the various systems the International Space Station is equipped with. This enables flight directors the ability to assist astronauts when they are on board the ISS during a mission.
“To be a flight director you need to have insight into all of the various systems,” said Brewer. “We are there to make sure those operations happen smoothly and safely.”
All flight directions are allowed to choose a call sign for their team. Brewer chose the name “Alliance Flight.” She says the name comes from the multi-faceted approach to existing and future space exploration, be it with other countries or commercial partnerships with private space exploration companies.
“One of the best things about working with other people is that you can kind of challenge each other and think through problems together and get new ideas,” said Brewer. “One of the keys together is building trust ahead of time and finding a way to communicate.”
When she’s not working at JSC, Brewer trains for and participates in Ironman Triathlons. She also likes to read books, particularly biographies highlighting triumph over adversity.
“The thing I learn most from reading biographies and auto-biographies is that everyone has struggles,” said Brewer. “I enjoy learning from other people’s experiences and seeing how they ran into things and how they overcame them or what they thought about them.”
Looking ahead, Brewer says there are many existing programs and new ones on the horizon for the future of space exploration.
“On the one hand I am really excited about what I see on our plate right now, and that’s all incredibly motivating to me, but at the same time I don’t know what other goals we might have ten years from now,” said Brewer. “There will be new things that are inspiring and exciting that we can all work together to do.”
Photo cutline: JSC’s 106th flight director Heidi Brewer recently celebrated her achievement with family and fellow flight directors. Pictured with Heidi (right) is her niece Imogen Lovell (Left Photo by NASA/JSC.
