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The New Shepard 38 crew with Stiles, third from left.

Laura Stiles (AeroEngr MS’11, PhD’13) recently received the opportunity of a lifetime – a trip to space.

A �鶹ӰԺ aerospace master’s and PhD graduate and director at Blue Origin, Stiles has more than 12 years of experience at the company. Her roles have included capsule parachute design, mission CAPCOM responsibilities, and most recently, leading training for their New Shepard suborbital astronaut program.��

While most Blue Origin’s astronauts are paying customers, earlier this year, after a previously announced crew member fell ill and could not make the trip, she was asked if she was interested in filling their slot aboard New Shepard 38. The answer was an easy yes.��

What is it like, seeing Earth from space?

It’s a surreal visual. We see pictures all the time and you know conceptually what it’s going to look like. But it is such a stunning view to see Earth from up that high. It’s just incredible. It’s still a bit indescribable.

What is the trip experience, from liftoff to touchdown?

Liftoff is super loud with lots of shaking. Leaving the pad, you see the reflection of the engine’s flames on the ceiling of the capsule, which is really dramatic.��

As soon as you lift off, the G forces start increasing, and you are starting to feel the pressure on you from that acceleration. It builds and builds and builds, and it's an overload of every sensation.��

At main engine cut off, we also turn off many of the systems that make noise inside the capsule, so it goes from a very physically demanding and loud environment, to feeling no sensation of gravity and it being incredibly quiet.

Then it's about 10 seconds before the capsule physically separates from the rocket, and there's springs between the two vehicles, so you get kind of kicked into the front of your harness.��

I had a brief sensation of everything feeling upside down, because now the pressure is on your front side where the harness is holding you. Your brain is trying to parse together the view, which is already confusing, because you've never seen it in your life, and now gravity feels like it flipped, too.

You have about four minutes of weightlessness. As soon as I took the harness off, it was just free floating and the most peaceful and surreal sensation I have ever had.��

Coming back is intense, and so fast. It goes from microgravity to about 5.5 Gs so fast. I could feel my eyelids closing and my lip was starting to droop. It gets much harder to breathe as your chest weighs 5.5 times what it normally does.

The whole trip is only 10.5 minutes and it's so physically intense. Even with very few physical movements in the capsule, it still is very physically intense.��

How were you selected to go?

Stiles with Smead Aerospace Chair Hanspeter Schaub after touchdown. Schaub was Stiles' PhD advisor at CU �鶹ӰԺ.

I’ve been on the New Shepard program for 12.5 years, with several years in the role of training the astronauts.��

There’s always been a behind the scenes conversation about what we would do if someone had to drop out. We have swapped people before, but with a couple weeks’ notice.

This time, we didn’t find out until three days before that a customer was sick. While normally we would look for another customer to fill in, it was just so late in that flow that no one could make it.

So, the question became, “Who is on site right now and not in a primary launch crew role.” I’m in a management position and the pieces came together at the right place at the right time.

Do you worry about something going wrong on the flight?

I’ve been so involved in the design, testing, and launch of the vehicles that I trust the systems and the backup systems very deeply.

It is spaceflight, and it’s inherently risky. I internalized that risk a long time ago. It’s something I’m willing to have in my life. I’m a skydiver. I have a different risk threshold than other people.

We’re very transparent with the customer – here’s the list of every hazard we’re aware of and how we mitigate those hazards, but this is spaceflight and it’s risky.

A few days after your launch, Blue Origin suspended the New Shepard program to focus on the NASA Artemis Moon Missions. How has that changed your job?

It's been such a whirlwind. I had a team of 55 people, and the whole New Shepherd and BE-3 engine program was about 700 people. It's been a big effort to redeploy everybody to different parts of Blue Origin.

I’m going to join the lunar permanence team, supporting the long-term strategy for how we build up infrastructure and get people to the Moon.

NASA just announced a change to the flow of the Artemis missions where they've added a new Earth orbiting rendezvous they're calling Artemis 3. That's the project I'll immediately work on. From there, I think it'll switch to more of the long-term vision and strategy for presence on the Moon.

You started at Blue Origin in a front-line engineering position. What led you to leadership?

My first role at Blue Origin was in a recent graduates rotation program. That let me try out a bunch of different roles.

I ended up doing mechanical engineering on the parachute system. I had a background in skydiving and parachutes, and it was the right skills at the right time.��

We were still a pretty small company. Parachutes was my main job, but I would fill in on other things, like mission control for launches, from one of the initial rotations I did.

In 2018, Blue Origin decided to make a whole organization dedicated to launch, operations, and maintenance. That’s when I started in a manager role.��

Becoming a manager, there's some basic training they give you, but I don’t know that I was super prepared. It was a small team that I started with, 4-5 people, and then we grew it and grew it until it became 55 people. It’s been a really rewarding job.

What should current students looking to work in commercial space do to be on the right path?

You can come into Blue Origin, SpaceX, or any of these companies with such a range of backgrounds. We need every discipline of engineering.��

People fret about, “Should I do aerospace, or mechanical, or something else?” It doesn't matter to some degree. Do what you love, and you'll be able to get to that destination.

For people who are in the academic world and are getting a PhD, doing hands-on, practical things is a huge skill set Blue Origin looks for. You're not just a thinker, but a doer.��

There's a reputation for people with PhDs that we’re always in thought-land and can't make decisions. It’s good to show you have some experience with building things or hands-on practical applications.