Out of This World

Parsippany native Garrett Reisman joins SpaceX, a private California company that will resupply the International Space Station.

Posted October 10, 2011 by Frank Moriarty

AP Photo/John Raoux.

As a budding flight enthusiast growing up in Parsippany, Garrett Reisman watched his family’s copy of a Super 8 movie about Apollo 11 so many times that he nearly wore out the film. After earning a PhD. in mechanical engineering from Cal Tech, Reisman entered the U.S. space program and became an astronaut. He eventually flew on three shuttle missions and spent more than three months working in the International Space Station (ISS). Stephen Colbert interviewed Reisman in space in 2008 and later had him as a guest on The Colbert Report.

It’s hard to top that resume, especially the part about being on Colbert, but Reisman is determined. Earlier this year he left NASA and joined SpaceX, the private California company that in 2008 signed a $1.6-billion contract with NASA to resupply the ISS after the shuttle program ended, in July.

“We already have a rocket and a spacecraft that brings cargo to the space station,” Reisman says. “My job is to convert that and get it ready to carry people. I’m very confident that we’re going to be an order of magnitude safer than the space shuttle…We’re not concentrating on doing spacewalks or having a robotic arm or…land[ing] like an airplane. When you do something that complicated, you operate closer to the edges of what is safe.”

Space travel may seem a low priority in an era of budget slashing, but Reisman has a different view. “There will always remain desires to explore and go further,” he says. “There will still be a kid in the backyard looking up at the stars. That’s never going to change.”
 

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