Streetsboro native dreams of space – Ravenna Record Courier

Kenneth Smith named to Forbes' '30 Under 30' list By BOB GAETJENS Staff Writer Published: August 1, 2017 4:00 AM

When Streetsboro native Kenneth Smith left college early to help his family out, he was a biochemistry major. Now he has dreams of going into space.

Named earlier this year to Forbes Magazine's "30 Under 30" list, Smith became enamored of space travel while volunteering at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland during his break from college and has since been pursuing his dream of becoming an astronaut.

"I went from thinking I was going to cure cancer to being like, 'I want to go to space,'" said the 27-year-old, who's now stationed at NASA's Langley Research Center.

Smith said he was "very surprised" to be named to the "30 Under 30" list and is unsure who nominated him.

A structural dynamics engineer at Langley, Smith said he's spent parts of the past four years, on and off, working for NASA in different capacities. He worked at Langley for three semesters during his undergraduate career, spent the summer of 2015 at Kennedy Space Center, spent the 2015-16 academic year at Glenn Research Center and is now at Langley.

He also worked for Space X, Elon Musk's commercial company aimed at sending citizens to space.

"I wanted to go to grad school, and they weren't really looking for someone to go to grad school," said Smith of Space X. "My end goal is to be an astronaut. With the competition out there, you at least need a master's."

While at Space X, he said he worked on one of the company's spacecrafts.

"When I was at Space X, I was working specifically on the analysis and development of the Dragon Version 2 crew capsule," he said.

The Dragon capsule is designed to transport humans into space and was the first commercial effort to transport cargo safely to and from the International Space Station. The company announced earlier this year that there are plans to fly two private citizens around the moon in late 2018 in a Dragon capsule.

Smith said he thinks he's about 18 months away from completing his preparation to become an astronaut. At that point, he said he should at least be eligible to be chosen for a flight.

"I'm working on a few things," he said. "To become an astronaut is tricky. People so randomly get chosen."

He said his strategy is to gain as much relevant experience as he can to strengthen his astronaut resume. He's seeking his pilot's license, SCUBA license and more. Having experience in extreme conditions, such as the antarctic, is another key to being chosen. Although he hasn't made a trip up north, Smith said he's hoping his expertise with the equipment will help.

He's also participating in a botany program at Virginia Tech to prepare him for heading into space.

"If we're going to create a civilization on Mars, you're going to have to have some botany skills," he said.

Founding the Akronauts

While working toward his undergraduate degree in aerospace systems engineering with minors in math and physics at the University of Akron, Smith founded the Akronauts, a club aimed at furthering aerospace technology while providing students a lab for honing their skills.

Though Smith left college early, he was able to return and earn his degree.

Smith said the club's goals mirror those of the space program. Each year, the club participates in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition, in which students fly rockets into suborbital space and recover them afterwards.

Smith said teams were judged on whether the components of the rocket were "fried."

"They're really big right now into making things reusable," he explained.

In his current job, Smith said he works for NASA analyzing its spacecraft produced by Boeing and Space X. He said he's a member of an analyst team that inspects crafts for safety. Space X and Boeing also have analyst teams, and the teams combine their data to make spacecraft as safe as possible.

"We have our different analyst pools," he said. "The commercial companies are sending up our astronauts; they're NASA astronauts."

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Streetsboro native dreams of space - Ravenna Record Courier