Sun Bound
A man from Mars sent his work to touch the sun.
Seriously.
Mars High School Class of 1998 graduate John Schmitmeyer designed hoses that are part of the cooling system for NASA's Parker Solar Probe.
The $1.5 billion mission, launched Aug. 12 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, is expected to shatter spaceflight records and send home ground breaking insight as it travels to and through the sun's corona.
Schmitmeyer said since NASA first contacted his team at Cleveland-based Hose Master in 2010, everyone has been enthusiastic about the project.
“But it didn't feel as special until everyone else started talking about it,” he said. “(The probe) will provide an entirely new understanding of how our sun works. It's really neat to be a part of that.”
A Middlesex Township native, Schmitmeyer earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from University of Dayton. He worked in the automotive industry a bit before joining the team at Hose Master's headquarters.
Hose Master, which employs about 450 people, designs and manufactures metal hose and expansion joints.
In 2010, Schmitmeyer was a product engineering supervisor when the company was approached by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which manages this mission for NASA.
Schmitmeyer, the designer, at first worked with about a handful of people to produce designs first using 3-D modeling software.
The assignment was to custom design four all-metal hoses to transport coolant to and from the probe's solar panels to keep it cool as it approaches the sun.
According to the NASA Website, the probe at its closest approach, will travel through the 2,500-degrees Fahrenheit heat of the outermost atmosphere. Yet the spacecraft's payload will be near room temperature.
“The solar panels would melt without (coolant) going to and from them,” Schmitmeyer said.
Although the bulk of the products designed at Hose Master are made of stainless steel, these particular hoses are made of Inconel, an alloy of nickel containing chromium and iron, resistant to corrosion at high temperatures.The application of these particular hoses is outstanding, Schmitmeyer said, but he has worked on hose designs that were significantly more intricate and technically challenging, including some that had applications in the nuclear power industry.After the hoses were designed and tested in-house, NASA did its own series of testing in multiple forms on about a dozen prototypes, Schmitmeyer said.“The inspections and paper work weighed more than the hose,” Schmitmeyer said, noting that eventually more than 30 Hose Master employees, ranging from machinists and welders, to those who sourced the tube, would contribute to the project.“This really was a team effort,” he said.The design got approval in 2016, and the company got word in July the probe would be launching.The actual liftoff was delayed a number of times before it was successful at 3:31 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 12.“I actually missed the launch,” admitted Schmitmeyer, who has since seen video and photographs.NASA gave him and his team a patch to commemorate the occasion.Schmitmeyer, who now works in the manufacturing side of Hose Master, said he appreciates the ethics of his employers as well as how this job fits his personality.“I'm a mechanically inclined, hands-on person who likes to find creative solutions to problems,” he said.Linda Schmitmeyer, his mother, said ever since John was young he was interested in building and technology.“He was a Lego maniac. And he never built a house. Rather he'd build cars that were powered or airplanes,” she said.Both John Schmitmeyer's father, Steve, and brother, Luke, also are engineers.Steve Schmitmeyer worked for about 14 years as a civilian engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. So, John Schmitmeyer, as a child, was exposed to aviation. And, at one point, saw a space shuttle. John Schmitmeyer's uncle built a part of the braking system for a space shuttle.John Schmitmeyer still returns to Butler County frequently so that his parents can see his son, soon-to-be 3-year-old George.Linda Schmitmeyer said George already is showing signs that he, too, could be headed toward a career in engineering.The solar probe “is expected to be in service seven years,” John Schmitmeyer said. “By then George will be old enough to know it's up there and understand it.”
Launch: 3:31 a.m. Aug. 12Site: Kennedy Space Center, Fla.Vehicle: Delta IV-Heavy with Upper StageAt closest approach, Parker Solar Probe will hurtle around the sun at about 430,000 mph. That's fast enough to get from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute.Parker Solar Probe will be immersed in the coronal plasma (an ionized gas of electrons, protons, and heavier ions), where temperatures can reach more than 1 million degrees Fahrenheit.However, the coronal plasma has such a low density that the heat transferred to the probe's heat shield is primarily from sunlight, which will heat the shield to about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.On the final three orbits, Parker Solar Probe will fly to within 3.9 million miles of the sun's surface — more than seven times closer than the current record holder for a close solar pass, the Helios 2 spacecraft, which came within 27 million miles in 1976.This is the first NASA mission named for a living individual, Dr. Eugene Newman Parker.<b>SOURCE: NASA</b>
