PSU HOSTS ANNUAL AEROSPACE EXPO “EVERYBODY IS NEEDED IN AEROSPACE” PHILIPPA MASSEY While much of the city was preparing for Halloween, Portland State’s engineering students and space enthusiasts met at the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science to discuss, lecture and share the latest ideas and topics in aerospace. The Aerospace Expo brought together the Pacific Northwest aerospace community in a hybrid setting where more people attended online than in person, given it was a rainy Saturday in Portland. The event highlighted new and upcoming projects and updates on previous projects such as OreSat, Oregon’s first satellite launch, previously covered by the Portland State Vanguard. “A student-run event like that… it was crisp, it was well done,” said Stuart McClung, Program Planning and Control Office chief of staff for the Orion program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “Hybrid stuff is tricky to do between having people in person and folks online, being able just to handle the logistics and getting all that executed, I thought that went really smooth.” McClung, who was a keynote speaker at the Aerospace Expo,
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described his personal work, highlighting how working in the aerospace field has impacted his life and career. “Through circumstances, I ended up with the opportunity to work in aerospace and then in human space flight,” he said. “There’s an astronaut up in orbit somewhere taking advantage and using a piece of system or a piece of hardware that I helped build. There’s this thing that kinda hooks you in your soul, that says ‘I want more of that.’” “Pick airplanes,” McClung continued. “Aircraft work is really cool, but you don’t necessarily know who’s flying in your airplane. All of a sudden you get these things that are usually the hardware that you had something to do with… it’s one of the really interesting things about working at NASA. Depending on your job, you get that very personal connection.” McClung is currently working on a program to return to the moon titled Artemis. The first planned launch is a test flight with no crew members on board. “We’re getting ready to launch
PSU Vanguard • NOVEMBER 9, 2022 • psuvanguard.com
