Gregory Reid Wiseman received his Bachelor of Science (1997) degree in Computer and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his Master’s degree in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2006. He became a naval aviator in 1999 and graduated from the Naval Test Pilot School in 2004. He was selected as a NASA astronaut candidate in 2009 and flew to the International Space Station in 2014.
Reid sat with ECSE head John Wen for an WebEx interview on July 9, 2024 (the day after Hurricane Beryl hit Houston). The following is an excerpt from the interview.
John Wen: Hi Reid, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule, especially right after Hurricane Beryl, for this interview. You grew up in Maryland and you came to RPI in 1993 and received your Bachelor's degree in Computer and Systems Engineering in 1997. What inspired you to pursue a career in engineering and what made you decide to choose RPI in particular?
Reid Wiseman: I loved building models, flying remote control airplanes and playing with LEGO bricks, Capsela, and Lincoln Logs. I also loved trains and planes and construction equipment. I learned in high school a little bit about engineering and I realized that engineering embodied what I loved. What brought everything together was math and science; it was creation, and it was execution. In the 1990s, computers were all the rage. My brother had an Apple II at home and video games were becoming big. I still remember in Chemistry class in 10th grade, a smart kid who had grown up in Poland, was talking about this thing called the Internet and what this thing would do in the future. All of us, we had modems and dial-in bulletin boards, we thought he was completely off his rocker. All of that got me excited about computers. I thought engineering sounded amazing and I wanted to learn more about computers. I knew I wasn't as interested in the programming side, the computer science side, I was more interested in the microprocessor side. I had looked up Computer Engineering degrees in U.S. News & World Report, and it listed RPI as the top. I applied to four schools, Naval Academy, RPI, Virginia Tech, and Penn State, and I picked RPI as my home. I also had a friend from high school who was at RPI and he was enjoying it. It was an extremely hard school, and I wanted that. I didn't want to go to college just to get a degree. I wanted to go to college to really challenge myself.
John Wen: What made you choose Navy ROTC while you were at RPI?
Reid Wiseman Going back to middle school, I wanted to be in the Air Force. I wanted to fly jets. That was the big dream. My brother was in the Navy, and I was out visiting him in San Diego. While in California, I saw two F-18s cruising out over the Pacific Ocean. I thought, wow, I bet they're going to an aircraft carrier. And that sparked my interest in the Navy. As I started to think more and more about the Navy, just being at sea, being away and making your own decisions, leading people, that seemed like the right fit for me. RPI had a very strong Navy ROTC presence. It also had a very strong Air Force ROTC presence. In the end, I went with the Navy. Maybe my brother had an influence on that, but I think that was really my decision. When I first got to RPI, my freshman year, I wanted to go into the Marine Corps. I was with all the Marines, doing all the Marine early morning runs through campus and all their physical activities, the pull ups, etc. I was a tiny kid, so it was hard for me. After a few months, the Marine advisor pulled me into his office and said, Reid, I think you should not go in the Marine Corps. And that was the end of my Marine aspirations. I went into the Navy all-in.
John Wen: In some of your speeches, you mentioned that while you were commissioned on an aircraft carrier, you brought a copy of the textbook of COLD, Computer Organization and Logic Design.
Reid Wiseman John, give me 30 seconds. [Reid left the session and came back with a book from his shelf.] This is the book I took, Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals by Morris Mano and Charles Kime. I really fell in love with this, designing a microprocessor. I realized it's way harder than I ever thought it would be, but the initial stages of AND gates, OR gates, NAND gates, and putting together designs and logic diagrams; the binary thinking about the way all this stuff works together, making adders, making time clocks – I just I loved it. I absolutely loved it. It's like doing a Sudoku puzzle to me, it’s so much fun.
John Wen: Now we can use similar quantum gates in quantum computers, for quantum logic.
Reid Wiseman Those kind of gates are amazing. I started reading up on the quantum computer after I was up there for the Commencement. I still don't even really process it.
John Wen: So why did you bring the textbook with you to the carrier?
Reid Wiseman Mainly because I guess it's more of a distraction from the fact that I was doing this one thing that was about as far removed from that side of my brain as possible, which was flying fighter jets off an aircraft carrier in combat. For me, this [type of book] is relaxing, and it's a way to exercise a different part of my brain and try to stay sharp on some of the stuff that I learned at RPI. I really enjoyed it. That was what I wanted to grab and read.
John Wen: That was amazing. What do you remember about that course or other courses that you had at RPI?
Reid Wiseman That course was taught by Professor [George] Nagy. The first thing that I remember is his enthusiasm for teaching and then his difficulty in hearing. Students would ask a question, and he would just keep rolling right along, but I think the reason that that worked out so well for me, is probably three different things. Professor Nagy for sure, just because I think he's so passionate. Second was the content. That was the first class at RPI that was really my major. Freshman year was great. I loved relearning calculus. I liked relearning physics. I had never done calculus based physics, so that was a true treat to get to actually see calculus at work in physics. But it was really in COLD, Computer Organization and Logic Design, where I got to focus on my major. The third thing for me was that's also the first time that I met the people that were in my major teaming together, studying together. There were a few brilliant people. Craig Romei, who was a Navy submariner, was a good friend. He could do wire diagrams like nobody's business. He already understood everything about capacitance, resistance, Ohm’s law. He was like my tutor in that class. And then my roommate for all four years, Marc Eigner, that was where I really started to see his true brilliance at work. He really didn't even need to go to class. He was so smart, he already knew the answer. It was fun to work with those two folks in particular.
John Wen: Did you have any time to participate in any clubs or other extracurricular activity?
Reid Wiseman To be quite honest, ROTC was the thing that took up almost all of my time. I was interested in student leadership organizations. I was interested in the Union. There was a group at the Union that would bring in rock bands for concerts. I volunteered and I helped those folks out. I played a lot of racquetball and was on the racquetball team. I wasn't very good, but I had a lot of fun. We went to Boise, Idaho, West Point, Penn State. It was neat to get out a little bit.
John Wen: That’s great. Could you describe your career after you graduated from RPI?
Reid Wiseman I got commissioned from RPI and I went straight to Navy flight School in Pensacola, Florida. I had never really flown an airplane before. Although there was this one guy at RPI, I don't remember his name, that had a private pilot's license. Before I went to flight school, we went and rented a plane and flew all around the Adirondacks. It terrified me in that airplane. I thought we were going to die multiple times as he performed stalls and showed me the effects of wind coming low over the mountains. But in the end, he was just doing normal things. I just had never been in a small airplane before. I went to flight school and I started flying the T-34, which is a single engine prop airplane. It was just like computer organization and logic design where, for the first time, I was doing something and it was just easy. I loved it. I didn't even need to think about it. I was just doing it and it came very naturally. From Pensacola, Florida, I moved to Kingsville, Texas, which is way down south in Texas almost on the Mexico border. That's where I learned to fly jets in the T-45. That took about a year. That was much harder, much more intense and intimidating, but it went well. My grades were great, but that was where I started to also feel some fear mixed in with the joy, like night formation flying, close to another airplane. Then from Kingsville, Texas I moved to Norfolk, Virginia. I flew F-14s for four years, met my late wife, and then moved to Patuxent River, Maryland. I went to the United States Navy Test Pilot School and flew approximately 30 different aircraft. Then I flight tested the T-45, F-18s, and I did a lot of work on aircraft carriers. That was the most fun flying I've ever had in my life. I went back to Virginia Beach for a staff tour with the Navy and that's where I got picked up soon after for NASA. In 2009 I came to NASA and have been in Houston ever since.
John Wen: Is it like in the movie Top Gun?
Reid Wiseman I remember being in the movie theater watching Top Gun, so that probably influenced me to go fly the F-14 because that thing was just amazing looking, but it was very difficult to fly. For Top Gun 2, several of my friends were the advisors on that movie. I know the guy who did all the flight tests, the former Blue Angel. A lot of my friends helped write the script for them. So Top Gun was as close to my real life as a movie will ever get for being in the Navy. There was movie magic going on, but a lot of the commentary, the way they spoke, the things they were talking were exactly on the money. And the sheer amount of physical demand was realistic. Just like anything, the first time you do it, it's hard. When you've done it a hundred times, it gets easier and when you do it a thousand times, you don't even think about it. But you learn very quickly what the limits of your body are and it's different every day, what your diet is, how much rest you got. At the beginning of every mission in a fighter jet, you do what's called a g warm-up maneuver where you pull 4g and then you pull 6g and you warm up your body and make sure you're doing well. And some days you would go and pull 6g and the world would shrink down to a soda straw, and you would be a little bit lightheaded and see stars. You're thinking, OK, today is just not my day to be able to go do this because you don't want to induce loss of consciousness, g-loc, that could be a deadly problem.
John Wen: When did you decide to become an astronaut?
Reid Wiseman I don't think that you ever decide to become an astronaut. I clearly had thought about it as a kid. The Challenger disaster was formative in my mind. RPI was formative, too, because George Low has a strong link at RPI. Apollo 13 came out while I was at RPI and they did a viewing in the big Freshman lecture hall, DCC 308. I remember that I was thinking, oh my god, this is completely awesome. So that definitely helped build it up. Then I went and flew, and I liked flying. Then I became a test pilot, and I liked bringing the engineering side into the flying.
John Wen: A lot of students and kids say I want to be an astronaut one day. How should they go about it?
Reid Wiseman: For an undergrad student or a kid in the 5th grade, the core thing that you need to do is to find something that you love doing. I went through computer engineering and then I was a pilot in the Navy. I loved it. If those aren't the things you love, don't do those in an attempt to be an astronaut. Find the things you love to do and do them as well as you possibly can. The other side of it is you have to be able to be a good crewmate. You have to get out from behind the desk, from behind a computer. You have to go for a hike. You have to go do a team sport or go camping with your friends. Those sorts of ingredients are critical when you're going to spend six months of your life in a small spacecraft with five other people. I think these two ingredients are the primary critical ingredients: find something you love, and then get outside and do stuff.
John Wen: Could you share a little bit about your experience as an astronaut. What are some of the most challenging mission projects or tasks that you had to deal with?
Reid Wiseman: I'll start with the basics of being an astronaut. For a NASA astronaut going to the International Space Station, you have to learn to speak Russian. You have to learn how to operate the robotic systems on the Space Station. They're not small little robots, it’s a very, very large robotic arm, the SSRMS, the Space Station Robotic Manipulator System. You have to learn how to spacewalk. You have to learn your systems to a fairly good degree, not to an engineering level, but to an operator level, where you have to understand how your impact on the system can change or if the system starts to fail, how you can correct it. You have to learn about emergencies - what happens if there's a fire or a leak. Looking across those five categories of things that we have to do, by far the most physically and mentally demanding is spacewalk training and spacewalking. Spacewalk training is physically demanding. It's not as mentally demanding because you're not going to die if you mess up. You're just going to be embarrassed by your grades. But when you're outside the International Space Station, and you're doing a real spacewalk, they're seven hours long, and you have a myriad of tools on you, and you have some extremely expensive equipment that you're either upgrading or fixing because it broke, and you're looking at this hundred billion dollar spaceship that you're crawling all around, it's very intricate and detailed and elaborate and fragile – you don't want to hurt it. The other side of that is you're just one mistake away from killing yourself or your crewmate, and all of that combined together, it's like ketchup. Ketchup is supposed to be the most intense flavor that the human mouth can sense. It goes to all five quadrants immediately, and that's what spacewalking does. It maximizes your physical, it maximizes your mental. When you come in after seven hours outside, you're just done. There was nothing left of me. I had no physical strength left, I had no mental strength left. All I wanted to do was sleep.
John Wen: Wow. Do you worry about space debris at all, like we see in some movies?
Reid Wiseman I don't think I worry about it the way you worry about a tornado or a hurricane, but you see its presence all the time. If it's big enough to do damage to the Space Station, it's tracked by ground and they'll either slow or speed up the Space Station to change its orbital period just a tiny bit to get us out of the way. But when I went out for my first spacewalk, I was shocked. There are thousands of little tiny dings. We had a chip in our window, like when a rock hits your window on the highway, and it creates a bullseye. We had one of those occur on our cupola windows when I was up there, so I saw the effects of it all the time. Looking ahead for Artemis, and our Space Station as well, if you plot out the risks to the loss of crew, the chart is off the scale for space debris. The impact of space debris is by far the highest risk in the mission, which is shocking.
John Wen: I wouldn't have guessed. The space seems so big, and you have these little things flying by, there should be a lot of room.
Reid Wiseman: But it's just the kinetic energy involved, which is pretty impressive.
John Wen: Yes, I can imagine. From your perspective as an astronaut, how has space technology evolved, and how do you see the future of space technology?
Reid Wiseman There's a little bit of a misnomer that space operates on futuristic technology. That is categorically false. We operate on robust, proven, resilient technology. On the International Space Station, most of the computer technology backbone is nearly archaic. It's incredibly resilient to radiation hits and that's critical for us. Looking at Orion, the spaceship I’m going to fly, underneath the top layer, there is a lot of redundancy. Now we're running Ethernet and RS-422 and everything looks a lot more modern, but it's still archaic compared to what you can do in the next five years with your phone. Where the technology has shifted is people have thought of new ways of operating, like Space X figuring out a way to fly a booster back, turn it around, and launch it again. That's a dream come true for all of us. Creative thinking, getting outside of our comfort zone, thinking about new ways to solve problems, that is the coolest part right now for the industry. There are a lot of young minds that are getting very excited about space flight again because Space X has reinvigorated everybody that there's a different way to go and do business, and I love that.
John Wen: You mentioned Space X. There are of course other companies such as Blue Origin and Boeing, and other countries getting into space. How do you see the future evolve? Where is NASA’s role to navigate through this increasingly crowded landscape?
Reid Wiseman From our [NASA] perspective, we tried to seed the crowd. I think it was 2003 when NASA gave Space X a huge contract for commercial resupply of the International Space Station. With Blue Origin, we're paying them to work on a lander for the moon. We're also doing commercial landing missions where we are putting out contracts to private companies and saying, hey, can you build us a lander and get this payload there? We don't care how you do it, just get this payload there. So I think that is the model for any government agency going forward. We should be exploring the unknown. We are spending taxpayer dollars so we need to do what is right for the American taxpayers. We should be there to cover a gap when private industry can't be profitable and try to create new marketplaces. When that's created, we should hand those off to private companies to develop and to exploit and to continue American leadership in all aspects. Space is just one small area where the U.S. should continue. It's a leadership role, but it's a very visible area. People talk about NASA versus Space X, Blue Origin, Firefly and all these different companies, but it's really a cooperation. Many of my good friends work at Space X and Blue Origin, and I talk to them all the time. They're incredibly talented. When I go down to where they're assembling the Space Launch System Core Stage in Mississippi, all the Boeing engineers are all just young Aero undergrad folks, and they're assembling this giant rocket; it's really awesome to see.
John Wen: Can you share a little bit about the status and outlook of the Artemis II mission that's coming up?
Reid Wiseman: It's really hard to put together a spaceship for the first time that you're going to put humans on. We're going through the road bumps right now of new systems. Our environmental control life support system is new. Our batteries are new. As we test and get closer to launch, we find out there are little flaws in the system, little design flaws, and we need to go back and correct those sorts of things. I always joke that no rocket ever launches early and very few launch on time. I think September of 2025 right now is looking very optimistic. I don't think it's very realistic. But that doesn't bother me. That's always what I expected. We also are wrapping up our investigation on what happened on the Artemis I heat shield, which if you don't follow space, you have no idea what went on there, but we definitely had some design flaws on the Artemis I heat shield that we'll have to decide what we're going to do, either fly a different profile or build a new heat shield. That'll be a time hit if we go one direction or the other. But aside from that, the neat thing is I get to go around our country and the world and look at all the hardware that's built. Our core stage is built, our solid rocket boosters are built, our spacecraft is built, our launch escape system is built, so all of it is there. Now we are testing the systems and correcting what's not working correctly and then we’ll go fly. For Artemis II, we're going to launch out at Kennedy Space Center, orbit the Earth, and then head out to the moon, 250,000 miles out, 250,000 miles back. It'll be a nine-day total journey. I wish we could go tomorrow. I absolutely can't wait to go do this. And we need to do it. We've been to the moon before, but it's been 50 years. We need to get out of Low Earth Orbit, start getting comfortable being far away from planet Earth, and learn to live and work out there.
John Wen: You mentioned that one of the challenges and one of the main tasks of being an astronaut is to operate the International Space Station robot arm. There's been talk about using more robotics and automation in space, and we have seen success of robotics in remote exploration such as Sojourner and Curiosity. How do you see the balance between sending humans vs. robots for space missions?
Reid Wiseman I use a hiking analogy. You're sitting at home, you're on Instagram, you see some beautiful picture of a mountain vista. You think to yourself, oh, that's beautiful, I wonder where that is, I wonder what height that is, I think I really want to go there. And then you fly yourself out there and you're in this little town that you've never been to before and you find a little restaurant that you love with great food and you meet a few people and you love this place and then you go to the hike. And then you realize there are different flowers and different vegetation, different insects, and what the wind feels like -- is it cold, is it hot, is it humid, is it dry? All of a sudden, you're learning all this and it was sparked by one picture. I look at the robotic precursor sort of like that. I can't wait for us to put spacecraft down on the moons of Saturn, and they're going to look at one little spot on a moon of Saturn. Or Mars, we've covered a tiny bit of Mars. And even our Moon, I feel like we have explored the entire Moon, but we've really only explored this tiny area [showing the gap between two fingers], like Manhattan. That's about the breadth of the Moon that we've explored and getting humans there and letting our brain and our eyes fill in all these gaps and think about things that we couldn't think about otherwise. I think that is the grand human existence. Something sparks our curiosity and then we go solve it. I definitely think that 99% of the exploration of our solar system is going to be robotic. But if we aren't filling it in with these beautiful human brains and minds and eyes, then we're missing almost all of the picture.
John Wen: That's very inspiring. Thank you so much, do you have any advice for current and future RPI students who may want to follow your footsteps?
Reid Wiseman: I say it all the time when I talk about RPI, it teaches you failure resistance. For the first time in many students’ life at RPI, they probably have met failure and had to overcome it in an academic sense. Just knowing how to study as hard as you can and get up the next day and continue on. Just learning how to sense failure and overcome that failure. I think we are living in a society now where failure is a bad word. People would rather take the straight and narrow and not ever experience any sort of pain or failure. That is just not how we grow. We grow by trying new things. If those things don't work out, we have something to fall back on. So the thing I would like most to say to RPI students is when you walk out of there with that undergraduate degree from RPI, it’s like you have climbed that mountain and no one can ever take that away from you. However high you get, if you fall back down, that's your floor now. You have a degree, a four-year degree from an amazing school and no one will ever take that away from you. So go out and take some risks. Try some things that are outside the norm and see if they work for you. If they do, great. And if they don't, change your path, regroup, and go at it another day. I think that advice works across the board, but I definitely think that would resonate with an RPI student because they know what success looks like, and I guarantee they know what failure feels like and they know that tomorrow is always a better day and usually from failure comes your best successes.
John Wen: This is wonderful. Thank you so much Reid. I’ll let you go – I know you have trees to cut down and debris to clean up!