NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams appears to hold the sun in her hand while on an extravehicular activity.

State of the art technology can come from the most unlikely of places. Conventional thinking dictates that leaps in innovation would come from large corporations or organizations, but it also occurs in the garage basements of tinkerers and fabricators who have a passion for technology.

For NASA, the future of space tech isn’t a monopoly. In 2003, NASA created the Centennial Challenges in order to spark the interest and development of new advancements by students, garage engineers, small or large organizations, and any inventor who craved for the opportunity to expand mankind’s grasp of the universe.

Epicstream had the chance to interview Sam Ortega, manager of the Centennial Challenges from 2011 to 2015, at Dragon Con 2015 in Atlanta. Sam has been with NASA since 1987, starting as a structural stress analyst, and taking on various roles before being named the manager of the Centennial Challenges program in 2011. He shared the following insights with us.



Interview with Sam Ortega



Sam Ortega

This interview was conducted, edited, and condensed by Brian McCormick.



What brought you to the Centennial Challenges Program?



NASA was starting to scale back the shuttle program and had been running the Centennial Challenges for five years. We wanted to put more energy into it, and see if we could get more results and leverage off the capabilities that are coming from there. So NASA made it a larger program, and named myself to be the program manager to elevate it to a new level. So we started to look to see where we could penetrate and get a bigger return of investment on prize money being put out there.



How do you decide the challenges? What goes into the selection process for the different categories (Flagship, Keystone, Alliance, and Quest)?



When the program was first started, we had different categories… we have since backed out of that. Since then, we have created a roadmap for NASA. The roadmap dictates what technologies we need 20, 30, 50, and more years from now to do our exploration endeavors, whether it is go to the Moon, Mars, or Europa… and there are some technologies we don’t have yet, and so we are really trying to look to see how quick we can develop those technologies in the best fashion that most benefits NASA as well as the nation.

Being a federal agency, we develop technologies, and it is available for our commercial partners to use as they go out to do commercial exploration as well. The federal government isn't really allowed to compete against a commercial opportunity. So I feel a lot of times, we are the pathfinders, we will develop a new technology that our commercial partners can go out and leverage and take advantage of.

So we look at the roadmaps and we see what our technology barriers are, and then we look out into the commercial space industry, and we get a good a feel for what their technology barriers are. Will we find a match? That’s some place where we can take advantage… and benefit ourselves and the nation. So that’s how we go out and select the areas for competition… on what would be the most viable and productive places or technology sectors to do a challenge to create technologies that will benefit everybody.



How do you balance between choosing what technology NASA develops with your own engineers versus what to reserve for a challenge?



That’s a good observation there. What we do is called make or buy. We do those make or buy decisions all the time within the agency. The levels we work at within the engineering world have a hierarchical aspect of technology readiness levels (TRL).

So a TRL 1 is "I have this great idea” and you’re just talking about it. TRL 2 is "I’ll put it on paper and do some analysis and calculations". TRL 3 is still kind of doing the stuff on the lab bench. On TRL 4-5-6, you’re actually starting to make something, and it’s starting to kind of work… and TRL 7-8-9 is you get it to a point where you’re flying, and in TRL 9 you’re running it and using this technology.

So what we do with Centennial Challenges is down in the 5-6-7 range, right where it’s out of the lab. We want people to demonstrate it and show that it can work, but it’s probably not ready to put into space use, so we’re trying to develop this technology, we’re getting it to a maturity level…

NASA makes a selection for a new technology for new missions, and then they’ll reach back and say, “What kind of technology did you develop back here with Centennial Challenges?”… and we try to take advantage of those lower TRL's and build them up… in the make or buy selection.

So if it’s a buy selection, our commercial partners will maybe look back and see, "OH MY GOSH, that little company did a great thing, we are going to subcontract with them and use their piece of technology with our larger technology to do a large object that can work”… and that’s one of the reasons why I am so fascinated coming to events like Dragon Con, or going to other events throughout the country where we have the opportunity to interact with technologically creative artistic people.



How do you convince someone that is not necessarily an engineer to enter this competition?



Well, that’s from doing conversations with people and get them to understand from the past 10 years, over 25% of competitors have been students, the other 75% aren’t. Of that 75%, it’s getting the story out and letting people know it’s not all engineers. A lot of our technology is open for anybody who is creative, for anybody that is a maker, a hacker, or an innovator. As long as you are curious and willing to try and fail enough times to succeed, you're in... We have that discussion often, “How do you get to the right demo to solve a problem?” and it comes from going to events like Dragon Con.



What do you think is the most successful, fascinating, or unexpected outcome from the Centennial Challenges program?



My favorite is when I see something that can benefit NASA as well as the nation… We did a competition for an astronaut glove… so the astronauts when they are on an extravehicular activity event (EVA), they are in the big white suits. Well, what you are really in is a big balloon, because it’s pressurized inside to 14 PSI, like atmosphere, and the vacuum of space... there is nothing out there. So it’s as if you take a surgical glove and you blow it up… and when you bend a finger, it pops back up.

Well, that’s what the astronauts are dealing with. They are trying to bend their fingers in their gloves, but the fingers want to be straight. So after 8 hours of grabbing tools and turning things, and picking things up, and moving and placing them, they will come back, and their fingertips will actually be bleeding or bruised, and their nail beds will be damaged and potentially fall off. So we ran a competition and said, “Hey, if somebody can build me a better astronaut glove, we will award you $250,000”… and we ran a competition. So the guy who got 1st was an unemployed aerospace engineer… he took over his dining room table and started making gloves, and sure enough he entered the competition and won.

Even more compelling is that 2nd Place winner. So Ted Southern went off designing. He is an artist in NYC. He makes pieces for Cirque Du Soleil, Broadway production places, and he makes the wings for the Victoria Secret models. He is not the person that NASA would give a two million dollar contract to build an astronaut glove, but by running a competition like we did, he was able to take an advantage of that. He has always been fascinated by the hand, so he entered the competition and made 2nd Place…

Then he started a space company. Next thing you know, he makes astronaut suits and sells them to other companies. They sell to a company in Spain that does high altitude balloon flights… and NASA is paying him to make full IVA suits for our use in commercial crew ventures… one to replace the orange pumpkin suits that astronauts use. So it’s really compelling to see that the solutions can come from all different gambits, whether it's an artist or engineer, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care at all where the solution comes from. I will pay prize money to any individual that can win the competition.



What new or advancing technology excites you the most for the future?



So definitely out of manufacturing and advanced manufacturing… there’s 3D printing. There’s also new technology associated with composites. Those are all pretty fascinating. I’m excited to see we are just now rolling out the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge. All of our competitions can be found at www.nasa.gov/challenges.

So all of them will be laid out there, and to me, (additive manufacturing) is a really burgeoning technology sector that can grow dramatically very quickly… and it’s going to grow with these makers that are coming out with these new ideas, whether they are printing food, printing plastics, or metals. We have started taking advantage of that, and we have actually created a whole 3D printed rocket engine… built faster with just as good performance as before… with less parts and less work required.



Seeing as we are at Dragon Con, what is your favorite science fiction show? Star Wars or Star Trek, or perhaps something else?



I’m old school. I’m more Ray Bradbury. So I’ve always loved his writing even as a kid. I’m an avid reader, that whole thing that was going on in the book (Fahrenheit 451)… Also, I like Bradbury. I’m big into him.

To learn more about NASA’s Centennial Challenges, you can visit its Website, and follow them on Twitter or Facebook.