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An OBJ reporter finds an Ottawa-influenced project at NASA's Johnson Space Center

The e-mail was short and to the point: Arrive at the entrance using the enclosed map to get there. Bring my passport and my driver's licence. Above all, avoid wearing a skirt and high heels.

Despite the formalities, though, I took comfort in knowing the agency I was visiting is a veritable public affairs machine.

I also knew an international journalist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston would get a tour that – one could almost say literally – was out of this world.

A 10-year drumroll

One person I met recently through my research was Ottawa resident Ron Davidson, director of space operations for Guigne International. An experiment he's been working on since 1998, the Space Dynamically Responding Ultrasonic Matrix System (or Space DRUMS), finally got a berth on the STS-126 flight Nov. 14.

The facility, once completed in June, will design materials in space that are difficult or even impossible to manufacture on Earth.

"We can actually make parts in space or on the moon," he said. "By making them in reduced gravity ... we make them with less power, and these can be higher-temperature resistant material. (We can make them) stronger, harder."

NASA and other agencies have spent about two decades trying different methods of manufacturing in space. The idea was to suspend an object in a chamber and then use magnetic, electrostatic or acoustic beams to buffer the object into place.

But scientists discovered the object tended to jump out of the beams too easily. Mr. Davidson's company – used to working with acoustics for mapping the seabed for drilling purposes – developed a 12-sided chamber with acoustic nodes scattered around its edges.

As soon as the object in the centre tries to move away, the nodes snap it back. Space DRUMS can hold up to a baseball-sized object inside. With no gravity pulling it down, the object can have different densities on either side.

"The big thing is the science we're going after; the types of things that we're trying to fix," added Mr. Davidson.

"The first pellets that we'll have up there in June are really focusing on a new heat shield for the shuttle . . .

"Another project we're interested in is the heat insulation for jet engines: noise abatement. Infrared glasses is another project we're looking at."

Around the same time Mr. Davidson and I first touched base in September, I did a story about NASA and met Marty Linde, a landing support officer for NASA's Mission Control, over the phone.

At the end of our chat, he said he appreciated my interest and offered me an inside-track tour of his workplace, the Johnson Space Center.

It was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Spacecraft shenanigans

There was justification for going to Johnson in flat shoes and pants – I was going to be climbing into the same simulators as the astronauts.

Shortly after my arrival, I ascended the ladder inside a mock shuttle and sat in the pilot's seat. Through the window I could see a tour group strolling through a viewing area perched far above the floor.

But their view had nothing on mine – NASA has several trainer shuttles scattered around the Jake Garn Simulation and Training Facility at Johnson. I was in a 'fixed base' procedural trainer, a spot where astronauts can figure out where the buttons are and, perhaps most importantly, where the bathroom is located.

It felt cramped in the shuttle, and it was hard to imagine a crew of seven living in such close quarters.

I then climbed into the Russian Soyuz spacecraft mockup. I shoehorned myself into the seat and laid back, stuck in a permanent squat as my feet touched the spacecraft floor. A seat was on either side of my elbows.

How on Earth can three spacesuited astronauts avoid claustrophobia in this spacecraft? I asked myself.

Ground control to Major Tom

The answer, of course, comes with training. Indeed, the vast majority of Johnson staff are devoted to astronaut support rather than being astronauts themselves, and many work with Ottawa aerospace companies and offer tours to their representatives.

The most visible staff are those in Mission Control, who monitor spacecraft systems and astronauts from computer consoles in Houston. I sat in on a training run in the shuttle control room, watching mission controllers grapple with the loss of an engine and a computer during a simulated launch.

There was a certain intensity to the discussions going on, but never a sense of panic. Such training scenarios are common, apparently, and in an aside Mr. Linde joked to me, "This is completely normal for NASA."

Looking back to peer ahead

There's an underground effort going on at NASA right now, focusing on where to go next after the shuttle retires around 2010. And although the extent of Canadian participation beyond the shuttle is unknown – elections in the United States and Canada have thrown a bit of uncertainty on this, experts say – Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield said there should be plenty of work for everyone.

"If you listen to president-elect (Barack) Obama, he's very much invited international participation in the follow-on (Orion) vehicle to more of an extent than the current president," Col. Hadfield said to me in his Johnson office.

"And so, if anything, I think that just further opens up opportunities for Canada to pick and choose."

Good news for Ottawa aerospace companies indeed, but at the same time it was odd for me to stand in the Apollo mission control room that day and think about the last missions to the moon. They were entirely American-run. n

• View a photo gallery of Elizabeth Howell's visit at www.tinyurl.com/insideNASA

• View a video of astronauts in action at www.tinyurl.com/astronautvideo