You’ve got to be a good operator: an interview with Ethan Atwell
The following are excerpts from an interview with Ethan Atwell the founder and director of SpaceForTrades.org, a nonprofit initiative working to bring tradespeople to space. This volunteer-run initiative aims to connect tradespeople with opportunities for direct operational involvement in space, with key focus on space analog research, payload design/operations, spaceflight certification training, and eventual spaceflight. The text has been edited for style and clarity.
To start, can you tell me about how you came to create SpaceForTrades?
Atwell: Sure. Part of it is, I’ve always been fascinated by space, but I didn’t go to college. So, as much as I love space, I kind of kept it at arm’s length most of my life because I had this false belief that I couldn’t be involved in it. Fast forward 20-some years after high school, I was working in a number of different trades, some qualified, most not qualified. I started going to trade school in a career technical education institution formally called you know, like vo-tech, or vocational schools. I was starting to understand that this was kind of its own entity, skilled trades. That it wasn’t just, you know, getting a job and going into the workforce—there was so much more complexity in it. I started to dismantle some of that conditioning. I realized I could actually go to college if I wanted to, and I could actually be involved in space.
So at 45, I started to think about getting my engineering degree and trying to go and work at NASA—that conventional approach that a lot of people take when they want to get involved in space. As I was doing that, the pandemic hit, and I wasn’t able to go sit for my entrance exams at the university. But, I had already been through two full time certification programs at my trade school, one in drafting, and rapid prototyping, and then another in machining and product development. I realized that there was so much that I could do with what I had already learned, what I already trained for in all of my previous professional occupational experiences, and that maybe I didn’t need to actually go for that degree. I could maybe get started on something now.
Coincidentally, at that same time, I was also getting introduced to the analog astronaut community and making connections there. One of the core values that we espouse in the analog community is this concept of JEDI space—this is “just equitable, diverse and inclusive” space where we’re trying to get as much diversity invested into this endeavor as we can. We all know—and even the government space agencies have been catching on—that the more diversity you have in the crew, the more creatively they solve problems. And we’re all very much interested in bringing more of that wherever we can.
I started to see that the trades have helped build this whole endeavor of humanity as becoming a multi-planetary, spacefaring species. Trades have been in that backbone of making that happen. You know, we’re the people making the parts to make the rockets to send other people to space. We’re the people working in the cafeterias fueling the workers who design, test, and implement and deploy these systems. But that terrestrial support network, as I call it, has never actually had access itself to go live and work in space.
And having that support network in space could be very useful…
Atwell: Right, working in the capacity as a tradesperson, you know, it’s this pure operator role. What we train to do is operating systems and operating machinery. We train to do that technician level work here on Earth. It’s what we typically think of with trades, like hard hats and wrenches, construction, industrial work. But, that’s just scratching the surface. You’ve also got your welders, your plumbers, your electricians, your drafters. You’ve also got culinary artists, you’ve got cosmetologist, you’ve got phlebotomist, you’ve got EMTs. You’ve got this underrepresented demographic of people who haven’t actually gotten to go live and work in space. And yet, we’re so qualified for that environment.
I always like to use the example of NASA astronaut Jessica Meir on this point. When she was interviewed after coming back from her tour on the space station, one question she was asked quite a bit was what she felt made for a good astronaut. Her answer was always, “You have to be a good operator.” Because most of what you’re doing, while you’re in space, you’re not getting to work on your own research, you’re having to work on other people’s experiments, to run their experiments, get their data. So, you’re making sure to quickly train up and learn how to work on this system, how to maintain that system, or how to fix another one. So you have to be a good operator. And when I’m hearing this, I’m thinking, why aren’t trades people in the mix? That’s what we do. That’s what we want to do—we like to get in there with our hands and do the thing.
And I’m just like, well, surely somebody else is thinking about this? But, I’ve been looking around it for the last two and a half years and I’m still not finding anybody. So, I want to have that conversation. We need to strike down some of those false limitations, one of those being the astronaut selection processes. Whether it’s government agencies or commercial enterprises, everyone has college degree requirements. At the very least a four year degree, but usually a master’s degree. But when we look at the three main stages that go into spaceflight, you’ve got launch, you’ve got the spaceflight environment, and you’ve got your safe return home. Nobody goes to college to learn how to perform those three stages. It’s all training. So, again, why aren’t tradespeople accounted for in those qualifications? Because, you know, we, that’s what we do.
It does make sense to focus on getting different types of skill sets into space. I mean, even just in the past couple of years, people have become more aware of this idea of “essential workers” and the fact that society relies on all these different types of workers who normally don’t get the limelight. A lot of science fiction even focuses on blue collar labor in space, like, I think Alien is about contract laborers…
Atwell: That’s what I was thinking… getting tradespeople in space isn’t my original idea. That’s something that’s been in our science and our sci-fi for a long time. We see it more recently in the Star Trek universe, Deep Space Nine—on the Enterprise, you’ve got a mixologist, you know, a bartender. You’ve got these people that are working in trade environments providing these skills, goods, and services. It’s just accepted and nobody thinks twice about it. Why haven’t we incorporated that into our actual space effort?
So, what has your experience been like reaching out to different groups? Have people been open to this idea, and what have those conversations been like?
Atwell: The analog community is very open. The Analog Astronaut Community was founded, essentially, by Dr. Sian Proctor, and she and a couple of other people gave a name to this diversity and inclusion idea that’s so important to JEDI space. So they were very open to it. There’s also Sensoria Space, which is an organization that focuses on giving access to underrepresented groups. They reached out to me—I was kind of in the process of getting to where I felt qualified to apply for a mission and they reached out to me and said, “we want you on a mission.”
I just came back from our Second Annual Conference at Biosphere 2 and in Arizona—the first in-person conference that our group has had. And when I was there, people were coming up to me saying, “You’re that guy, the trades guy! I wanted to talk to you, let’s get some time together and talk because I got some things I want to ask you about.”
And what about the commercial space companies, have you had any luck talking to them?
Atwell: I may not have the qualifications or the acumen to speak directly to the CEOs or someone of that level, but I can speak to somebody that’s an engineer at a company. They’re working with trades people under them, so they can start finding ways to help give more access to the people under them. Or, people that are working in the marketing area, they say “oh, yeah, we could represent this better because this is happening at our company.” So you know, it’s kind of about influencing more though the grassroots.
Of course, then you get to government agencies, and that’s going to be the much harder nut to crack. It’s a much more involved process to accomplish anything. I work for state and local governments. So I understand that on a personal level, how difficult it can be to influence those bigger wheels. But you know, it’s grassroots, it takes time.
Do you think sending tradespeople to space is an opportunity to kind of get rid of the hierarchies that we have here on Earth? Down here, someone who’s like an investment banker is heavily rewarded and given lots of status in society versus say, a welder or a plumber. But, when you go to space, different skill sets are much more valuable. Like if you’re living on a lunar base, being an investment banker obviously isn’t going to be as useful as someone who can actually maintain your home.
Atwell: This part of the SpaceForTrades mission statement. We want to establish clear, inclusive and equitable pathways to space research and operations, but also we want to build representation for the capabilities, potential, and the human value of trades people. We have a tendency in our societies to kind of look at tradespeople through that derogatory mindset—that they’re the manual laborers, the unskilled workforce, the lay people, that they all work in dirty wrench-turning jobs.
And, some of that is true. If you’re a plumber, you’re not going to be working in a pristine environment all the time. If you’re an auto mechanic, you’re going to be working with greasy parts, and all that. But just because that’s an aspect of the environment doesn’t mean that that’s an aspect of the individual human being. That individual is most likely in that trade because of a technical or mechanical aspect that draws them—they have an inclination towards that work. There’s also societal aspects to it. Maybe their father was an electrician, and their grandfather was an electrician, and now they’re following that forward as part of their own identity. This is what makes them feel valuable to their community—they’re learning these skills, just like their father and their father before them, or their mother.
When we have a settlement on Mars, we’re going to have the same thing there—people are going to bring their unique capacities. You know, one of the things we celebrate here on Earth, in western society, here in the south Midwest, is senior prom. That’s a big tradition. When it comes time for prom, the girls and the moms get together and make their gowns for that event. And what goes into doing that are skilled trades—you have to have a skill in tailoring and knowing how to sew, how to make patterns, how to choose different materials. My father had a custom automotive upholstery shop when I was a kid. So you know, I learned how to use a sewing machine, how to take things apart and make patterns and put them back together. From him, I learned how to do all that.
Those are skills we’ll need to have as we go into space, even if they’re not typically considered space skills. Of course, we need to have life support systems. We need to have chemical engineers. But we don’t stop and think about some of the other things that help us with a sustainability mindset, like sewing and other crafts. We can reclaim those parachutes that we need to get to the surface safely. We can reclaim that material, use it to make clothing, use it to make other things that we need with the few resources we have in-situ.
My hope is that by bringing tradespeople into the space environment, it shows how important these skills are. It can change our perspective on how we look at occupations here on Earth. If we see Joe the plumber or Joan the plumber in space, maintaining all those vital systems, it shows that those roles must be important because it’s a huge investment sending that person there to do that. So, now, maybe we look at the plumber that comes to snake our drains every couple of months—now we look at that guy with more respect. He’s in that job not because he didn’t have ambition or wasn’t smart enough to go to college, but because he’s really good at what he does. He knows that system; he keeps it working for us so that we can focus on doing our thing.
Yeah, it’s funny that some people in commercial space haven’t really caught on to this idea as much, as you said. Especially because these Silicon Valley tech sector types often say, “Oh, you don’t need to go to college, I dropped out of Stanford and I became a millionaire anyway.” And so you think they’d be receptive to the fact that you don’t need specific academic credentials to have value.
Atwell: Well, I think they will be. They just—someone needs to actually get them thinking about it. And I think that’s kind of where I’ve come into this. If I can’t be the policymaker, if I can’t be the decision maker for a lot of these executables, I can at least be the person putting that seed of thought into somebody else’s mind and letting it germinate. And let him say, “you know, I remember talking to this guy about this thing, and I’m going to try and find a way to incorporate more of that in what I do.” And, you know, maybe it’s a bit naive and innocent, but you know, it is what it is and people seem to be receptive.
Yeah, I hope so. And what do you see happening in the next couple of months, the next year, what are you going to try to accomplish?
Atwell: Right now I’m kind of coming back to the personal side of all of this and trying to reprioritize getting on a mission, because that’s going to be essential for what I need to do with the organization. Because in all of this, I also want to achieve things for myself just for the experience, I want to get on an analogue mission, I want to do that, say that I’ve done that and have that experience, and let that fuel me forward.
This month, I’ve started breaking ground on mission planning myself, saying, “okay, why don’t I just design my own mission for tradespeople that’s built around trades.” I can at least be working to put this mission together built around my experience in the workforce. I used to work for a wireless Internet service provider as a field tech and installer. Looking at NASA’s Moon and Mars objectives that they just published, I see how much of it fits in line with what we are qualified to do—we go out and install infrastructure, deploy that infrastructure, bring it online, test it, and come back. As a field crew, that’s our bread and butter.
So that’s kind of the premise of this multi-phase mission plan that I have. We have a crew that goes out and does something like that—to be kind of a small, lean, mean kind of outfit that goes out quickly, does this at minimal expense and comes back. And then we take that crew, and we give that crew different training, like emotional intelligence training. Then, we take that same crew back out, maybe to the same facility, maybe to a different one. Try to keep those variables as minimal as we can. And then do the same mission again, because that’s realistic. From that we glean data about what works, what training helps—with a few missions you can very much fine tune that system, and finalize that system for future use.
And eventually, we can go to NASA or ESA to show them that, here we’ve actually done some research bringing tradespeople into a space environment, a controlled environment. And here’s what happens—we can make that case for those higher levels to start incorporating tradespeople into their programs.
