If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.
“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.
On Episode 106 Bob Zeek and Stacy Hale talk about how students can build and fly hardware to the International Space Station as part of a program called HUNCH. Students in over two hundred schools across the country are doing hardware manufacturing, soft goods training, software development, culinary science and creating videos for station. This episode was recorded on May 8th, 2019.
Transcript
Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Episode 106, “Student-Built Space Hardware.” I’m Gary Jordan and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast we bring in the experts, NASA scientists, engineers, astronauts, educators all to let you know the coolest information about what’s going on right here at NASA. So today we’re talking about the way students can actually build and fly hardware to the International Space Station it’s part of a program called, “High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware” of course, it wouldn’t be NASA if you didn’t have acronyms, so we just call it, “HUNCH” it’s a program that’s grown quite a bit over the years, starting with just a few schools making space tools and growing to over two hundred seventy schools in many states, doing hardware manufacturing, soft goods or fabrics training, software development, culinary science and videos, the list goes. Note, we mentioned than seventy schools a few times in this podcast, but we’re just talking about the schools at the Marshall Space Flight Center, there’s over two hundred or so based out of the Johnson Space Center. So with us to talk about all things HUNCH, are the cofounders of the program, Bob Zeek and Stacy Hale. They tell the tale of how HUNCH got started and how it’s grown, what the students are actually doing, and how the stuff they do flies to the space station, and what to expect in the program within the coming years. So here we go, everything HUNCH with Mr. Bob Zeek and Mr. Stacy Hale, enjoy.
[Music]
Host:Bob and Stacy, thank you so much for coming on today to talk about this HUNCH program.
Stacy Hale: Sure. Glad to be here.
Host: So it’s funny because every time I hear — I hear HUNCH, you know, you have to think acronyms, we have to — we have to condense this thing into an acronym. Did you plan out that it would be HUNCH first and then, kind of, went back and be like, how can we turn this into an acronym? How did you figure where the acronym HUNCH would come from?
Stacy Hale: So, yes, we were about half way through the first year when — in realizing that, hey, this thing was really working out well, what are we going to call it?
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: And so I sat down at my desk and I started thinking about high school students or students and what are we doing and just ended up with HUNCH.
Host: Nice.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: Yeah, high school — start with H and then go from there. We know we’re dealing with High Schools, we know we’re dealing with NASA, let’s make something; but the idea is that it’s high school students united with NASA to create hardware, and there’s that action in there, right? There’s high school students and they’re doing something with NASA.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: Yes.
Host: And that’s really what this is all about, can’t wait to really get into it, but you guys are here for a reason, right? You’re not necessarily local to Houston, are you?
Stacy Hale: So we’re in two hundred one schools.
Host: There you go.
Stacy Hale: Across the nation in thirty two different states, so we’re not local.
Host: Okay. Where you guys based?
Bob Zeek: I’m a Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
Host: Okay.
Bob Zeek: And Stacy, he is local, he’s Johnson Space Center.
Stacy Hale: I’m Johnson Space Center.
Host: You are Johnson?
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: Okay. Very cool. Yeah, and you — so, Bob, why are you in town then, is something going on for HUNCH?
Bob Zeek: Well, this is our Annual Year end Awards Event so —
Host: Big deal.
Bob Zeek: — this Saturday coming up we’re doing a live stream to recognize all of our students across the country, so.
Host: How many students?
Bob Zeek: We’ve got over, what? Two thousand this year?
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: Two thousand some odd —
Stacy Hale: Two thousand three hundred.
Bob Zeek: Two thousand three hundred.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: And quite a — how many schools? Seventy?
Stacy Hale: Two hundred one schools.
Bob Zeek: Two hundred one schools, yeah. I have seventy in my area so that’s why so.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: There you go. Yeah, okay. So I’m sure it didn’t start off with two thousand students and seventy schools, I’m sure you had some humble beginnings, so — and you guys are cofounders, right?
Stacy Hale: Correct.
Host: You figured this out together.
Stacy Hale: Right.
Host: So where did this all start? How did HUNCH begin?
Stacy Hale: So HUNCH began the summer of 2003, I went to go spend three months at Marshall Space Flight Center and one of the challenges that they asked me to help them work on was the fact that they had a room that was their trainer that was an eight foot by ten foot closet, and this is where they trained their payload flight controllers to oversee payload operations on the International Space Station, and at the time, I was a Deputy Program Manager for the Space Station Training Facility. So I’d gone up there, and we were looking at this room, and the thought hit me, what if I had all the drawings to build the three quarters of a billion dollar training facility that we have here at JSC? So what if we just made a copy of that or — and so the thought hit, well, what if we have students just reproduce a copy of this? And that’s kind of how this thing started.
Host: Okay. Yeah, you were looking for, I guess, a way to do it lower cost, but then sort of expanded, besides the cost, besides to this opportunity. Now you have students that otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to do something — to physically get their hands and have engineering experience, it kind of has this snowballing effect where you have this need, but then you find out, along the way more people can benefit.
Stacy Hale: Yes.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: It was a big shock to see how much of a benefit it was to students and to teachers and —
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: — the schools and school districts.
Host: So what you were doing at the time, what was your job at the time while you were going to figure this out at the Marshall Space Flight Center?
Stacy Hale: So the Deputy Program Manager for the Space Station Training Facility, we were moving out a development phase into a sustaining phase; so it was actually kind of looking for a new job to go do.
Host: I see.
Stacy Hale: And so that’s why I went to another center because promotion wise you kind of need to have multicenter experiences; and so I had gone over there, but this ended up being the career that I would keep doing until I retired.
Host: Okay. And, Bob, what about you, what were you at the Marshall Space Flight Center?
Bob Zeek: I met Stacy — I knew Stacy a little bit prior to his visit to the Marshall Space Flight Center because we were integrating equipment from Marshall on the payload side into his building here at JSC, and we were basically putting the express racks into the system, they’re trainers, these were simulated trainers, and we were sending eight of those here and we actually held one back, which is how we started in the closet, I guess if you’d call it that, if you think we started our company in the garage, we started our organization in a custodial closet. So we had pictures on the walls, representing just four bays and in those four bays, one of those is the express rack and the express rack is the main rack that holds payloads that they go into space. It’s an eight over two, they call it eight single or, you know a quad or a whole rack with two service doors down below; so we were sending all of our payload flight opts people to Houston to train to see the environment of space station and it was very costly. So we held that rack back, put in that closet, and started training our people local and from there is where the HUNCH thing really, really, blew up and got bigger, we went to another room and to another room, and now we’ve got a full rack — a full U.S. lab trainer with a node, plus another lab behind it, which is a multipurpose lab so.
Host: Okay. And that’s sort of the relationship between Johnson and Marshall; it sounds like Johnson Space Center is more focused on the vehicles, the International Space Station itself and Marshall focuses on the stuff in the vehicle.
Bob Zeek: That’s correct. The payloads, right.
Host: So the express rack is kind of like a — think of it like a fancy wall inside the space station, it’s a wall, but you can put stuff in it.
Bob Zeek: Yeah.
Host: And it’s meant for things to operate, whether it’s — whether it’s, you know, life support equipment or whether it’s a science investigation and that’s your payload.
Bob Zeek: Right. That’s it.
Host: And that’s your focus.
Bob Zeek: We sell it to the kids like it’s visually, the size of a Coke machine.
Host: Okay.
Bob Zeek: With the door open — door off it’s a big cavity and these lockers plug and play in the rack and then from there you do all of your umbilical’s, your data, your power, your gas, your waters, and that’s what we train, we train the opts people just like we train the crews so they have the thorough understanding of how that payload operates.
Host: So then how’d you get from working with the payload to, you know, where’d you start with the schools? What were some of the first schools and students that you reached out to? Hey, we have this brand new idea, you know, would you be interested?
Stacy Hale: Yes. So Bob had a couple of schools somewhat close and felt he had connections to it. Me, I didn’t really know where to go down here; so I called NASA Education and I said, hey, I need to talk to some schools about doing — about fabricating some metal items, how should I go about pursuing this? And they said talk to the Career and Technology Education Director, the CTE Director, and so I did and she set up some meetings with some teachers and we found a teacher at Clear Creek High School who was actually running a wood shop, but in the back of the wood shop was these — what looked like fancy drill presses and they turned out to be milling machines, and so that’s how it started.
Host: Clear Creek, Clear Creek is here, right? It’s local to Houston?
Stacy Hale: Yes, just south of NASA.
Host: So that was one of the first schools in HUNCH was Clear Creek?
Stacy Hale: For JSC it was.
Host: For JSC. Okay. So Marshall had a couple.
Bob Zeek: So we had two, the first year we had three schools, we had the two at the Marshall area which were Brewer High School in Sommerville, Alabama and then we had a Huntsville Center for Technology, which was a Career Tech Center where all the high schools were feeders.
Host: Okay.
Bob Zeek: And they would pull their school — students to that school and they were machining and welding and, you know, auto mechanics, and painting, and sowing, and graphic arts. So all those were there available for us to use and that was the first school that actually machined the front and rear back plate of the locker. Where Stacy’s school down here did sheet metal and bending and riveting, and they fabricated those, shipped them to us and then we went to the Brewer High School where we did the welding’s, we welded the shell to the back plate and then, Lo and be behold, we had a pretty good looking locker. Actually twenty the first year —
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: or twenty four I think.
Stacy Hale: Robust. Very robust.
Host: All right. So you had — like you said, you had these designs, you knew what you wanted to build, you went close, you went to the local Houston area, the local Huntsville area and found places that you can manufacture these items, they just happened to be schools, and then you had the students actually doing it, that’s kind of where the genesis of this.
Bob Zeek: That’s it.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: Okay. So it seems — I mean, obviously, because its grown — was it successful from the beginning or did you have some hurtles?
Stacy Hale: It was a very successful.
Host: Okay.
Stacy Hale: The career and technology directors, they were very eager for this partnership, the teachers were very excited over it, the students were very excited over it, it wasn’t something that we had to sell, it was something that I think everything was hungry to become a part of.
Host: Okay. So how did it start to grow then? Did you have the same idea of finding schools with the manufacturing capabilities and expands, what were some of the first steps of expansion?
Stacy Hale: So this first project was the single stowage lockers that can hold science experiments for the express rack and then — and then the next year we wanted to go bigger and actually try to make some — well, some racks, some training racks itself and so the goal here, right? Is to get out of the closet, to try to build a complete training facility so — which they needed racks and a facility, not only has racks, but it has utility output panels and generic luminare assemblies and many other type of things; so the second year I expanded to Houston Independent School District and Cy Fair Independent School District and where all did you — you expand in more capability — you did electronics?
Bob Zeek: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: You created that generic payload simulator.
Bob Zeek: We did. In fact, we had the first, one of the first High Schools there in Huntsville, had one of the early first 3D commercial grade printers.
Host: Oh, wow.
Bob Zeek: So our doors that were metal, we turned those into plastic, 3D printed plastic, and then populated those into electronics so we could do — switch movements in, you know, light LED’s and give it some physical, you know, operation.
Host: Okay.
Stacy Hale: Right.
Bob Zeek: And I ended up —
Stacy Hale: And that second year there was a problem with the express rack, tell him about that.
Bob Zeek: Yeah, this was a live, a live fix for on board space station. So in that express rack, there was a part called a “water valve” which controlled the water flow through the rack, which was not considered to be a orbital replacement unit, which I call it, “ORU” and so we had no way to train the crew on how to do that. So we, HUNCH, developed all the bracketry and all the guts inside the rack that hold that valve, 3D printed that valve, and mounted it to the bracket, and then had procedures written for the crew on how to remove, dissemble, replace, and you know, pop — you know when they get into space, put the new one in. So that was really our biggest, biggest booster to say, hey, HUNCH is real so —
Host: All right. Yeah, it’s operational. So was the idea that the — you had the designs, gave it to the students — going back to the beginning of the program, right?
Bob Zeek: Right.
Host: You had the designs, give it to the students, they did it and then you flight certified it, that was the idea?
Bob Zeek: That’s it. That was a Boeing product.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: And Boeing was nice enough to share our idea to get the High School kids to do it.
Host: Cool.
Bob Zeek: And we did it in an expeditious turnaround, I mean, rather than having we’re out of contract with Boeing, and, you know, getting money transferred, I think we did it in probably less than a month.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: Which is unheard of.
Host: Exactly. Yeah, that’s kind of the central idea here, is there’s a lot of people that are benefitting from this, the companies are benefitting from this, the students, NASA, you know, you’re actually replace something.
Stacy Hale: Right.
Host: You’re replacing a critical component on the space station.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: With this program.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: So then it keeps expanding, right? Because right now HUNCH — HUNCH is more than just finding the manufacturing capabilities with nearby schools and printing hardware, there’s more to this program, so how did — Where did it go from there?
Stacy Hale: Sure. So towards the end of year two, the question came out, well, could be expand where there was no NASA? Because we were doing well at Marshall, we were doing well at JSC, and so could we go to a place where there’s no NASA center? And so we ended up going to a small town in Montana called, Laurel, Montana and we got a really good teacher there that was very excited about and dedicated to her students, and so that year we proved that yes, this can work where there’s no NASA. The concept really was if someone — if a NASA employee, if a contractor wanted to be able to go back to their hometown and make this happen at their hometown, like when they went home for vacation or something like that, would it be feasible to do that type of thing? And so that — year three, we proved that, yes, that’s a very doing able thing, if someone wanted to be able to share NASA to their hometown then they could do that. A couple of years after that the National Lab became a thing for the International Space Station, and I was asked, can we go have students create payloads for the International Space Station? So we went to Colorado and Wyoming, and some other places where there’s really not a big space influence, and we created a program called, “Extreme Science” because students would come up with concepts and we’d go fly them on the zero gravity plane, and then experiments that wanted to be picked up by other organizations like cases or CubeSat folks they could then utilize those student teams to create an experiment to go fly; and so we’ve flown over four, five different experiments to the International Space Station, but we’ve also picked up — we’re now the only provider of class one single stowage lockers, and we’ve provided sixty stowage lockers to the International Space Station. We’ve made over seven hundred different items that will fly to the International Space Station of which almost five hundred have flown already. Anywhere from hardware, to cargo transferred bags, to even food, we now have a culinary program running — closing out its fifth year, where students, the JSC Food Lab says, hey we would like a side dish, either a vegetable or fruit to add to the crews’ menu selection, and so we have a competition. We had over for the schools across the country compete and — talk about that. You’re more into that then me.
Bob Zeek: Yeah. It’s regional, so we had Regional Cook offs, I think in the February timeframe, and at Marshall we host about probably eight or ten schools local and then that winner, they are evaluate with a big panel, it’s very — it’s very culinary like, they plate their food, but then they’re not just doing earth food, they’ve got to learn the space mechanics, the food science of it, so they communicate with the JSC Food Lab, here, on the Nutritionals and oh, you know, the low salt, you know the, fiber contents. So the dessert entre, the design has to meet that criteria, then it has to be, you know, either a hydrateable or an MRE type of packaging, so they have to learn about the salability of the food, and is it going to stick to their fork when they eat it, you can’t have a cracker and break it because crumbs are going to go everywhere, so it has to be a pudding like texture to stick, you know, maintain the requirements to fly in space. So Regional Cook offs are February and then they’re evaluated by a panel of judges and then the finals are in April, and this Saturday at our event, we’re announcing the winner for this year’s event.
Host: So right now at the time of this recording, we’re recording early May.
Bob Zeek: Yeah.
Host: Right now, I mean, this is sort of the end, but it goes through, I guess the winter season through the beginning of the year.
Bob Zeek: Yeah. Yeah, we operate on the school year.
Host: On the school year.
Bob Zeek: Basically from Labor Day on to right now to May so.
Host: There you go, yeah. Okay. Well that’s perfect, right? While the students are in school, let’s do this program and actually get stuff done, and that’s kind of what I’m hearing, is when you’re doing this program, and this is like part of the operation, this is part of like how we do stuff on the space station, like, like, students are providing these stowage lockers, they’re providing these — the hardware, I’m sure the food — does the food fly?
Stacy Hale: Yes.
Bob Zeek: The food flies.
Host: The food flies. They’re eating the students’ design, that’s awesome stuff because it’s not — it’s not just, you know, wow, we’re doing this for fun. No, we’re doing this and then we’re going to use it, we’re going to make the most out of it.
Bob Zeek: It basically gets the kids out of that scenario of, I’m willing to take a tech class to build a barbecue pit, maybe or — it’s live work. So they get the whole gimmick of business and industry. I mean, they’re helping with the procurements, they’re communicating with other schools, some of our parts, they’re made all over the United States so they have to come together and fit, so they have to communicate via Skype or, you know, email and just like a company does, and then those procurement we have QA, we have specs they have to meet, they have to be certified, and all of those different little elements of getting a piece of hardware to space, and they’re doing it in High School.
Host: That’s right.
Bob Zeek: And they’re getting NASA on their resumes, and that’s our biggest, biggest reward to them is they’re getting information they can forward themselves, you know, in the future with to —
Host: Right. If you have that on your resume before you even go to college, it’s hard not to pursue something in that field.
Stacy Hale: Right.
Host: It kind of stimulates that.
Stacy Hale: It opens eyes.
Host: Exactly.
Stacy Hale: It creates curiosity at least.
Host: Like, huh this is cool, I could do this for the rest of my life.
Bob Zeek: Yeah.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: So we’ve talked about hardware, we’ve talked about some of the culinary projects that are going on, there’s other things that HUNCH students are doing, right? And I, kind of, wanted to go through them all before we get to the process but even designing, designing hardware is part of it, right?
Stacy Hale: Absolutely. So sometimes the vehicle office asks us to design something, they asked us to design a galley table and the manufacturer galley table, every time a crew comes down there’s a debriefing and there’s always a, life would be better, my quality of life would be better if I had a little widget that could do something; and so those type of concepts from the crew get handed over to engineering students in High School, and so their job is to come up with a solution, to create that widget. And so that’s what we call, “design and prototyping” and we had thirteen hundred students across the United States working on solving problems like that this last year.
Host: Do you remember a particular design something — like an issue and then what a student did to solve it?
Stacy Hale: So yes, like — we have a tape dispenser.
Host: Okay.
Stacy Hale: Okay? So that it would be a one handed operation, you know, here you set your tape dispenser, it’s weighted, tape dispensers are heavy, they sit on your desk, you want a piece of tape with one hand, you go grab the piece of tape and tare it off, right? So in space, you need a tape dispenser too that will do that same type of thing, but the weight won’t help you, right? So it needs to be attached to something, so they designed that. We’ve made a better foot restraint because the current foot restraint astronauts were complaining about, so we modified — we created a ball foot clamp that clips on to a handrail, but it also has many degrees of freedom so it doesn’t make the astronaut have to keep his ankle in a weird position, okay? And so there’s many things like that.
Host: Yeah. That’s huge. Hey, I designed something that astronauts seem to use every day.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: That’s cool to put on a resume.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Bob Zeek: Then manufactured and then flown in space.
Host: Yeah, oh, yeah. There’s the whole process, is that part of the HUNCH process too?
Bob Zeek: It is.
Stacy Hale: Oh, yeah.
Bob Zeek: It is.
Host: You manufacture it?
Bob Zeek: Yeah, he’s talking about now some of those products are done now with ultimo high temperature 3D print, which meets the flammability requirements for space and I brag because it’s in my area, but it’s —
Stacy Hale: And it’s done by what school?
Bob Zeek: It’s done by a middle school in Trenton Georgia
Host: Really?
Bob Zeek: Middle school students are helping design and, you know, run the machine and, you know, clean the parts, and we send them back, bag them, tag them, and they become flight products [laughter] so this is pretty impressive [laughter]
Host: Yeah, I wasn’t — I wasn’t doing that in middle school.
Stacy Hale: Yeah, I wasn’t either. [Laughter]
Host: What a great opportunity. It’s really cool. Another one is sown, sown articles, that’s actually soft goods and this is actually something that I don’t — I think when we say, “soft goods” and I think we throw it around quite a bit, you know, it’s pretty common here, but what are soft goods just in general?
Stacy Hale: So soft goods are sown products, you might think of them as textiles, if you’re deeper into that type of product or organization, but so Family and Consumer Science classes, typically Fashion Design classes that are in High Schools are — unfortunately, our stuff’s typically white, not much fashion associated with it, but it’s structural sowing, and so what’s really interesting about that is that we use the same semi industrial sewing machines that if a student was going to go get a Fashion Design Degree, they would have to take a semester and be proficient at sowing on most likely the exact same sewing machine they’re going to use in High School because that’s the equipment we’re going to put in their High School so that they can sow the type of things that we use.
Host: What are the type things that we use?
Stacy Hale: So we use cargo transfer bags, they’ve — we’ve made ninety six sleeping bag liners, that have gone — that will go to the International Space Station that every crew member, every U.S. Crew member will sleep in; spend their entire time there, in these liners. We made a crew quarter organizer, which is kind of like right at home, you’ve got — you’ve got your shelves that you keep your clothes in, so this is a fabric bag where they keep their clothes in, they go and exchange clothes and put new stuff in it. Their toiletries, we made a toiletry kit for them to put in their, you know, bedroom thing.
Host: Yeah, it keeps going back to this, but I’m just — I’m just blown away by it, is just the practicality of the whole thing; so you’re designing stuff that are needed, that need to be produce in generally higher quantities, is what I’m assuming, right?
Bob Zeek: Yes.
Host: So something that you can just produce with however many students, and just pump them out, ship them up to space, and now all of these different students can say, I designed a robust material that was Flight Certified and is used all the time on space stations.
Bob Zeek: That’s correct.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: I just — I love that. Another one that I think is cool is it’s a little bit different because we keep talking about hardware, but video and media, so what are they doing in that area?
Bob Zeek: Video and media, pretty interesting; we’ve got a competition, like that culinary competition, we come up with a title and they do a five minute video where they take NASA footage or any information they can pack into their little edited video and they kind of dumb it down for their peer levels. So there’s students, they take all the fancy words out and regurgitate it in their form of — their interpretation and they give us a great video on a product or a title, a topic of a title, or even farther, we’re starting to take crew procedures now and make little window boxes on an app. So rather than the crew having to read everything, they can kind of hit the button and it kind of shows the element of the tool they’re going to use or maybe even how they — the rack looks and where they’re going to integrate their hardware to, and it’s just little things like that so, it’s pretty impressive.
Host: There’s that practicality again, not only you’re design the stuff, but you’re designing how to work with stuff.
Bob Zeek: Right.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: That is cool.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: All right. One final one is software, actually designing software, getting the computer and doing stuff, what are the students doing there?
Stacy Hale: Okay. So we run this out of Ames Research Center in California and so there’s several different type of applications we’re trying to create. One is an individual’s crew schedule; today the crew looks at a schedule and all of the crew members schedule are in woven together, and so wanting students to create an app that would just pull out one crew members schedule so they don’t have to look through everything. We have another app that’s associated with virtual reality that if they’re trying to do a repair on something, they could have a virtual kind of training session to work through it. What other apps are we looking at it?
Bob Zeek: Let’s see, we’ve got the tracking app.
Stacy Hale: Oh, yes.
Bob Zeek: For stowage, tools thing, you know, like a garage, you set a screwdriver down, well, you go back to look for it because that where you thought it was and in space they tend to float around, so they’re using to use Bluetooth and RFID tracking software to help locate maybe scan a whole rack to see if it’s if that rack, even if it’s not in sight, so that’s quite a challenge, but that’s a great application that carries year to year in expands.
Host: Yeah. A lot of documentation on that.
Bob Zeek: A lot of documentation.
Stacy Hale: So a student or a school doesn’t have to do the entire app, they can do a section of the app and because this is on the worldwide web, many students can be working on the same app, but different parts of it and then the software gets combined to work together. And then we’re going to put a server on the space station that will run student software so that these apps will be available to the crew members.
Host: Oh, that is cool. I think, even though — you know, you said if you put a screwdriver in your garage and it’s there, I mean, still can’t find it [laughter] I could probably use it for my garage.
Stacy Hale: Yeah it floats away too. [laughter]
Host: Yeah, yeah, I don’t know how, I don’t know how it does that. All right. So a lot of different things that students can get into, it’s not just a manufacturing, there’s a lot of different skills that they can do. So if I were a student or if I were a teacher and I wanted to be a part of this, where do I start?
Stacy Hale: So you would go to the HUNCH website, NASAHUNCH.com and you’ll find a tab for forms, and on those forms you’ll see a statement of work And you just have — you apply with a proposal saying, I’m interested in culinary, I’m interested in design and prototyping, I’m interested in making hardware, or soft goods, or videos, and then you submit that and we’ll get back in touch with you.
Host: So when’s a good time to do it, based — I mean, it sounds like it’s happening, the program, from the start of the school year to the end, but when’s a good time really to submit the application?
5>> Any time’s a good time.
4>> Okay.
Stacy Hale: But before the school year is typically better.
4>> Yeah.
Stacy Hale: Because then we could put you in a place and make sure people are lined up.
Bob Zeek: So we review those and basically, each school is really proficient, like a subject matter expert in whatever criteria, you know, they’re proposing; so we try to generate a task to their subject matter expertise and so we have to have time to go out to the school, we generally visit every school and, you know, meet the instructors and make sure they have the requirements to do the task that’s associated with what we’re —
Stacy Hale: We want them to succeed.
Bob Zeek: We want them to succeed.
Host: Right?
Bob Zeek: So we’ll place equipment in schools too, sometimes basically and, you know, we do every — I mean, we basically, it’s no cost to the school, is what we’re trying to say.
Host: Yeah, but the idea is to make is school successful.
Stacy Hale: Right.
Bob Zeek: Right.
Host: — if they’re going do a product we want them to actually. You want it to work.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: All right. So a school supplements an application, you guys gloss it over and say, yes, this is something that we can absolutely help you with, what are the next steps until the school is actually ready to start the program?
Stacy Hale: Okay. So it depends on what they’re doing.
Host: Okay.
Stacy Hale: If we’re going to send them material, then we have to have a Space Act Agreement in place because the government’s really picky about sending out its property to others, and so we have to have a contract in place and that’s called a Space Act Agreement. If there’s not going to be any property exchanging hands, if it’s going to be like a video or culinary, then there’s no property being exchanged so we can just — they can start being a team member immediately.
Host: Okay.
Stacy Hale: But if they’re going to manufacture things for us and we’re going to provide some cutters and raw materials, then we need to get a Space Act Agreement in place.
Host: Okay. And then once that’s in place you can actually start doing stuff, so how does that work, how does a school start becoming a part of the HUNCH program? What are some of the first things they do?
Stacy Hale: Okay. So we have different — for hardware we have different parts that need to be fabricated.
Host: Okay.
Stacy Hale: So they can go look at — in that folder and pick out one or two parts that they want to make that year. Soft goods, it’s a similar type of thing, we’re looking at doing these four different projects which one would you like to cut out and assemble?
Host: Okay. The idea is that they can go, I guess online, right? And chose a folder of something that makes sense to them and then design a curriculum around that and execute it through the time that they’re allotted.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely. Right.
Host: Okay.
Bob Zeek: So then after that, we get them situated and then we do site visits, so I’m technically a mentor to the students, but I don’t each teach the students, the instructor does that. So we’ll do a kick off, we have a kick off video and then, you know, kind of an inception of, this is why we’re here, this is what we’re doing, this is what you’re going to benefit from it, this part’s going to fly on the space station or end up as a simulator or mock up depending on, you know, where we are, and so we move them throughout the years, spot visits, Skype, Zoom, whatever it takes to keep the project going.
Host: Yeah, I was going to say because now this thing has been growing for quite some time so it’s going be hard to visit seventy schools in a year, right?
Stacy Hale: Right. Sure.
Host: So maybe a lot of the new guys, I’m guessing you come out and visit and get them set up.
Stacy Hale: Right.
Host: Get the ball rolling, but yeah, I guess a lot of the electronic connections can help too.
Stacy Hale: Right. We’re also finding mentors in different parts of the U.S. Folks that want to give back to the community, and they can also become part of the HUNCH team and work with the local schools in their area.
Host: Oh, okay. So not just the schools and the teacher’s —
Stacy Hale: Right.
Host: — participating and yeah, I mean, that’s a lot for you to do, I if you really want this thing to grow people can really — and that’s a great way to engage.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: Yeah. So what kinds of — what kind of volunteers are you looking for, what qualifies as a mentor?
Stacy Hale: So someone that has experience, either in engineering and design. Someone that has been a machinist for a considerable amount of time and now they’re retired or maybe they’ve been in textiles and they want to help in soft goods.
Bob Zeek: Software. A lot of engineers work with our software students and
Host: Okay.
Bob Zeek: — if a project lead the way are a lot of the areas that they engage in so —
Host: Wow. Okay. All right. I guess, yeah — do they help them — do the volunteers help the students throughout the year? Getting them —
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Bob Zeek: Yeah.
Host: And making sure it’s successful and actually something that will fly to a space station by the end of the time that they’re done with the project?
Stacy Hale: They do. They do.
Host: Okay. So then — I mean, this is probably an important part, but once students have designed or they’ve sewn a bunch of those stowage compartments for a space station, what happens, what happens to the time where they have a final product and they give it to you and, put this on space station, please, what happens then?
Stacy Hale: Okay. So with that final product comes paperwork.
Bob Zeek: Lots of paperwork.
Host: Lots of it yeah.
Stacy Hale: Because NASA or the federal government doesn’t do anything without its paperwork, right?
>> Of course, yeah.
Stacy Hale: And so the paperwork says, yes, we’ve measured this, we’ve tested this, we’ve assembled it in this type of way, and so people are stamping off, people are initially and dating that these type of things were done, so it comes, it gets an inspection and then it gets put into bond and stowage until it goes and flies.
Host: Okay.
Bob Zeek: It’s not — the students, we certify the students how to do their own QA with leadership, and then it comes and gets — we kind of checked here and verified and then gets into bond and stowage, so the students, like I said, learn that whole system of fabrication and, you know, procurement and QA so —
Host: Yeah, the fun part —
Bob Zeek: The fun part, yeah.
Host: — of actually designing things and then the not so fun right.
Bob Zeek: That’s right.
Stacy Hale: That’s it.
Bob Zeek: That’s right.
Host: But that’s the work, right?
Bob Zeek: That’s the work.
Host: They’re getting exposure for that. Yeah, so, you know, once thing fly to space station, and I’ve seen really cool photos of hardware, where the students actually get to sign it.
Stacy Hale: Oh yeah.
Host: Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty special and they get — like the astronauts take pictures with it and stuff like that, so it’s meaningful.
Bob Zeek: That’s the big — so we try to get that information back to the students.
Host: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: You know, if we have a locker, generally we sign a locker because it’s got nice places to sign.
Host: [Laughter] yeah, a lot of space.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: And that was something Stacy had in his mind that that was — it’s the first — not everybody gets to sign hardware, a few people do, you know, but not the students that worked on it.
Host: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: So that locker has a serial number on it, so we have them sign a registry, as well as the locker, so if that serial number shows up in flight with a crew member we can trace it back and then try to get that picture with a crew members signature when they get back, congratulations and, you know, another momentum type thing for the students.
Host: Oh, that’s cool.
Stacy Hale: The ink from that pen is also tracked.
[Laughter]
Host: Oh really?
Stacy Hale: It really is.
Bob Zeek: That’s right.
Host: Everything.
Stacy Hale: Everything, right? On paper, they know — they just don’t sign the locker, but they have to print their name on the piece of paper and then sign the piece of paper because you have to document everything that goes on a piece of flight hardware.
Host: Yeah, makes sense.
Stacy Hale: So [laughter]
Host: Yeah, it’s got to be Flight Certified.
Stacy Hale: Right.
Host: Everything, including the ink.
Stacy Hale: Right including the ink.
Host: So students designing hardware, sending it up to the space station, this is all great stuff, and there’s a lot of projects, but as this thing keeps expanding, I’m sure you need more projects; so there’s — this whole section that I discovered about, I guess, partners or clients, sending ideas, like, hey, this would be a cool thing for students to build, this would be a great way for students to get involved, so partners can do that too, right?
Stacy Hale: They can. Absolutely. And we’re expanding out of only being in the International Space Station, we’re also supporting Orion and Gateway and —
Bob Zeek: Have a Deep Space Habitat Marshall, which is a Mars mission long duration space station habitat, so.
Host: Yeah, designing stuff for Mars habitats.
Bob Zeek: Right. So yeah. So —
Host: Yeah, that’s really cool.
Bob Zeek: It is.
Host: Yeah, lots of different elements to really make this thing come together and it’s a very practical and it’s a program that has a lot of folks that actually benefit. So, you know, we’ve already mentioned thousands of students, seventy something schools that are a part of this, what’s next for HUNCH? Where’s HUNCH continuing to grow and it already sounds — you’ve already eluted to it’s beyond the space station right now, right?
Stacy Hale: It is.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: It is.
Host: So where’s it going?
Stacy Hale: So HUNCH, we eluted to mentors and so mentors and partners is how we need to expand in the future. We have some partners with Haas, which is a machining company, which fabricates machining, with Mastercam, which is a CAD/CAM software company, other different companies like, Apple, we have different partners, but we also — we need to better understand how to work with volunteer mentors And to create a network of volunteer mentors across the continent of the United States so that we can — we can reach more schools, more students to be able to do that because they need local support for the expertise and we believe that’s going to be a the right way to go.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: We’ve been working on that over the last couple years and that’s a large reason why we’ve modified the way we’re recognizing students and teachers at the end of the school year, so that we can also bring in everybody else.
Host: Okay. Yeah, what a wonderful — what a wonderful thing to see all that hard work and, you know, actually celebrate it by the end.
Stacy Hale: Yes.
Host: So coming with near term opportunities, I talked about this a little bit before, but actually applying, you know, we’re taking in May now; this podcast may come out sometime in the summer.
Stacy Hale: Sure.
Host: Is that enough time to look at the proposal and start HUNCH by the beginning of the school year, 2019? Or is — you know, is that a good time or do you, you know, we need a little bit more time to promote this?
Stacy Hale: No, that would be perfect.
Host: Oh, wonderful.
Stacy Hale: Any school that came in, we could get them going either with a test run of something if it was a manufacturing type of school or if it didn’t require a space act, they could definitely just come in running.
Host: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: Yeah.
Host: All right. So, you know, Stacy, you’re going to be retiring by the end of this year, right?
Stacy Hale: [Laughter] I am. I’m retiring.
Host: Well, congratulations, sir.
Stacy Hale: Thank you.
Host: Yeah. How many years with the program then, with HUNCH?
Stacy Hale: So it’ll be seventeen and a half.
Host: Wow.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: Long time. And you’ve seen it from, you know, from inception to where it is now and oversaw the growth.
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: Looking back on it, how do you feel?
Stacy Hale: I feel good about it.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: I feel very good about my team, that my team’s ready to take this thing over and it’ll keep — it’ll keep growing and it’ll keep doing what it has done for the last seventeen years.
Host: That’s wonderful.
Stacy Hale: Yeah.
Host: That’s wonderful. Bob, are you ready to keep going?
Bob Zeek: I’m going. I’m actually older than Stacy [laughter] but he got started earlier so —
Host: All right.
Bob Zeek: I’ve got to fill out my shoes and go another at least four, five years so [laughter] but yeah, I see it growing too. It’s amazing, I mean, you know, we’ve never really turned anybody away that I’m aware of.
Host: Oh.
Bob Zeek: We had a few that we’ve had to drop because we just didn’t get the commitment, but —
Host: Sure.
Bob Zeek: It’s really amazing how it’s grown to where it is and then, you know, with the future getting mentors and businesses and industries involved, at the steak level with the School Board and everything, it’s really a good, iconic and teaser to get kids into STEM.
Host: Yeah.
Bob Zeek: You know, talking about the acronym, STEM came on about the time we were starting and I use to call it STEM, but I was, “See It, Think About It, Engineer It, Make It” when the STEM came in, “Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics” we kind of found HUNCH and that’s the acronym we lived by and it’s been good.
Host: Yeah.
Stacy Hale: It has been good.
Host: So yeah, I mean, it’s been a number of years for sure. So I mean, looking back on it, is there any — is there any moments that stick out of maybe a student that — I don’t know, just had the right face at the right time, some sort of expression or a student that you saw be a part of HUNCH and do great things later, anything that’s really come into mind?
Bob Zeek: I’ve got two.
Host: Oh yeah. Go for it.
Bob Zeek: I mean, two — I’ve got one that’s actually working in aerospace now, that kind of took over that lab that we built in Marshall Space Flight Center, but I’ve got one here in Houston that’s actually a flight controller as well. And so we’ve got — we’ve got document evidence of probably thirty, forty that are in the system.
Host: Oh, wow.
Bob Zeek: Doing successful things aerospace wise and the rest move on, we tracked them with a metric at one time, didn’t we?
Stacy Hale: And we’ve hired two of our students. One student was in a Fashion Design class, she went off and got her Fashion Design — got a Bachelors in Fashion Design and then we need to increase our soft goods, and so we offered her an opportunity to come work for us. Another young man was in Design and Prototyping and Extreme Science, and so we were expanding and put out — put out the opportunity and we hired him. So yeah, I can — we have another student that was in the program at Cy Fair for three years she went off to Colorado School of Mines, got a Degree in Engineering, she’s now working down in Florida, working Ballistics for an aerospace company. So there’s literally hundreds of students that we could talk about that have gone through the program and that are in aerospace, but there’s so many more, when we started tracking — for a couple years we started tracking, where are our students going? So 94% of our students are going to college, 5% are going straight into technical careers, and then one didn’t — 1% kind of was still trying to figure out where they are.
Host: Sure
Stacy Hale: Right? And so, but you look at 94% going off to college, and of that 94% we’ve had about 68% going into STEM, and so we want to encourage them to go do what they’re going to enjoy doing for a significant amount of time in their life, and so whether or not it’s going be technology, because we need technology, we need people that can machine, we need people that can assemble or else we’re not going to make space vehicles if we have don’t keep that — for machining, the average age of a machinist in the United States is about 57 years old, okay? If we don’t — if we don’t encourage students to go into machining areas, we’re going to be hard pressed to be able to make spaceships, let alone lockers and other things that are going to go inside these spaceships. So everybody seem to think that blue collar’s is the way to go, but the reality is there’s many great jobs available in trades or white collar is the way to go.
Host: Right. Yeah
Stacy Hale: Right? Instead of blue collar.
Host: Right.
Stacy Hale: But there’s a lot of great opportunities out in the trades and in blue collar’s.
Host: Yeah, for sure. So HUNCH has that ability to inspire students to go in different paths, it has the ability to continue those space station operations, it has — I mean, there’s a lot that this program is doing and just with, you know, a couple thousand students and a handful of schools, couple dozen of schools, you’re doing all these great things and inspiring generations of different workers so —
Stacy Hale: Absolutely.
Host: It’s a proud moment. So, guys, I really appreciate your time for talking about HUNCH today, it’s definitely opened my eyes just talking — beyond what I can see online, it’s definitely opened my eyes to the background to the growth of the program and the importance of it. Stacy, congratulations on retirement.
Stacy Hale: Thank you Gary.
Host: Bob thanks for joining with us.
Stacy Hale: Thanks for having us.
Host: Of course.
Bob Zeek: Our focus is to inspire the next generation and I think we’re doing that so, absolutely.
Host: It’s great stuff. I appreciate your time.
Stacy Hale: You’re welcome. Thank you.
[Music]
Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. Hope you enjoyed learning everything about the HUNCH program, here, on today’s podcast, if you want to know more about it or apply for it, we have a website: NASAHUNCH.com summer’s a pretty good time to apply, so right about the time, I guess, now that this episode is being released, would be a good time to check out that program, see if it could be brought into your school. NASA.gov/STEM is a good resource for all things education, you can follow some of our education sites on social media, including the NASA EDU sites, NASA Johnson, we send out a couple of things, NASA HUNCH, also, you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook, then YouTube actually has a little HUNCH channel, you can see some of the student videos from there. Use the hashtag #askNASA on any one of your favorite platforms to submit an idea, make sure to mention it’s for, “Houston, We Have a Podcast.” This episode was recorded on May 8th, 2019. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Norah Moran, Pat Ryan, and Flo Gold and thanks to Mr. Bob Zeek and Mr. Stacy Hale for coming on the show. We’ll be back next week.