Binnie GS '78 and Linteris GS '90 reflect on experience as astronauts

“You know, you see the pictures on magazine covers, but the eye is so much more dynamic than any camera or video, and it ... lasts for five minutes,” Binnie said.

For Binnie and fellow astronaut alumnus Greg Linteris GS ’90, experiences at the University served as a springboard that, quite literally, launched them into space. Binnie is now a test pilot at Scaled Composites, a company that designs, manufactures and tests aircraft. He formerly served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years as a naval aviator. Linteris flew as a payload specialist on two of NASA’s missions and has spent over 471 hours in space.

Getting to Space

linteris, who graduated from the University with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1979 and then graduated once more 11 years later in 1990 with a Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering, said that he did not have plans to become an astronaut as an undergraduate.

Space was something that he had been fascinated by while growing up, he said, but he did not seriously consider it as a career until much later in life.

“I think I was like most kids who had pictures of spaceships on their wall and thought it was neat to be an astronaut; and I grew up in the ’60s, so NASA was going around promoting,” Linteris said.

Linteris was also chosen to work as a payload specialist on a flight conducting combustion experiments, which was his main area of research. According to Linteris, fire is easier to study in space due to the lack of gravity.

“I think the key here for me was that because I found something that I really loved and really cared about, I could give it my all. I could work really hard, and it really turned me on to science in a way that hadn’t when I was taking my courseload,” Linteris said.

Binnie is well-known in aeronautics as the test pilot for SpaceShipOne, a high-altitude private research rocket with a structure that allows it to glide and land in a similar manner to an aircraft.

Binnie broke world records in 2004 by flying SpaceShipOne to an altitude of 367,442 feet, an altitude never previously reached by a private spacecraft. SpaceShipOne won the prestigious Ansari X Prize in its day.

Binnie did not arrive at the University until after completing his undergraduate work at Brown. In 1976, he came to the University’s Forrestal Campus to do graduate work in aeronautical engineering. He recalled that at that time there were a number of shuttle testing campaigns and that the University was heavily involved in the research.

“When I was at Princeton, these Navy guys would come up from ... Maryland, not too far away, and they were test pilots, and they were coming up as part of their curriculum,” Binnie said.

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Since then, he heard stories about aircraft carriers and time spent flying, which opened up possibilities for a career as a test pilot. Following his time at the University, Binnie joined the Navy and eventually studied to be a test pilot.

Binnie served in the Navy for 20 years, participating in four tours on aircraft carriers and flying in Operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf War. Following his service in the Navy, Binnie began working with aircraft design companies in the Mohave Desert and eventually joined his current company, Scaled Composites.

A View from Space

both astronauts said that their travels in space offered a unique perspective on life on Earth. Binnie is one of only three pilots who have flown into space alone. He recalled the moment after blastoff when the motor shuts down and the vibrations and shrieking sounds of the rocket motor disappear.

“I’ve always likened it to the ‘holy trinity’ of space flight,” Binnie said. “Then it’s just like you stepped over a line into an entirely different dimension and the instant kind of calm of weightlessness. And it happens just in a blink. You snap your fingers, and you go from this really aggressive environment that shakes your senses ... and in the next blink, all of it goes away, and you’re weightless, and all the tension that was there just disappears.”

Linteris said that seeing the beauty of Earth redoubled his urgency to protect it.

“When you orbit in an hour and a half, you really get a feeling that it’s not a big place,” Linteris said. “It’s a very contained place, a very small place and a very beautiful place, and [you get] this overwhelming feeling of needing to take care of it.”

On one of Linteris’ trips, problems with one of the fuel cells risked explosion. The crew had to turn off the fuel cell, cut back other non-essential uses of energy and quickly head back to Earth.

“If we lost another fuel cell it would be very difficult to come home,” Linteris said.

But rather than being fearful, Linteris said he can still remember the excitement he sensed.

“I remember vividly floating to a window and looking at the Earth and saying to myself, ‘I’m really here, I’m really in space, this is really happening to me. We’re going be okay,’ ” Linteris said.

“I looked out at the Earth, and I just thought of how lucky I was to be there and how there were all these hundreds of thousands of people on the ground who had worked to make this mission possible,” Linteris said. “And all of a sudden I got this feeling — it felt like a warm liquid was being poured into my body as I looked down and thought how lucky I was to come from a place where everything works, where you can build space and people can work together to do these difficult things.”

Neither Linteris nor Binnie felt fear during their trips to space. Instead, each said he felt the enormous responsibility of doing his own job right.

“I think most test pilots feel this way,” Binnie said. “There’s a concern that there’s so much that can go wrong, and so much that you control and an awful lot that you don’t. And I think every test pilot goes into these ... just saying ‘Dear God, please don’t let me screw up.’ ”

Space Tourism and the Future of Space Research

according to binnie, there is a developing market for private space tourism. Binnie’s company is developing five-minute flights for tourists, making it possible and affordable for an increasing number of people.

Binnie said that short trips to space could appeal to millions of people, and he added that he hoped that the price of traveling to space will eventually become as low as the price of a car. He even suggested the possibility of creating an orbital hotel in the future.

In fact, Binnie said there are already hundreds of people who have signed up, paid and received centrifuge training to visit space. People of all ages visit space, Binnie said, though he noted that due to the cost of space tourism, most visitors are generally wealthy.

“There’s a mini market out there, and within a couple of years, I think we ought to be entertaining them,” Binnie said.

Linteris’ view of space and energy research extends far beyond the private sector and into the future of the planet. He said that with more money for scientific research “a lot of the problems we face are all solvable.”

There is a potential link between private research on space travel and scientific research on the future of the environment. If, as Binnie suggests, space tourism becomes popular within several years, a greater number of people will be able to experience what Linteris did during his first flight: the overwhelming sense of responsibility for protecting Earth.