He turned a lost job into a life-changing ‘space-age’ career

Posted on 26 May, 2006, by bcpress

By Kelley Lannigan
Press Staff

When Bill Beckum made the decision to enroll in the machinist program at Calhoun Community Jr. College in Decatur, Alabama, he never dreamed that one day he would be rubbing elbows with astronauts from all over the world. The Jacksonville native, who now lives in Macclenny, resided in Alabama for years and was a long-time employee of the Dunlop Tire Company.
In 1990, Goodyear bought the Dunlop location in Alabama and closed the plant. Mr. Beckum was 47 years old and suddenly found himself without a job.
At the time, according to Mr. Beckum, when a plant closed, the federal government had programs in place that allowed employees to enroll in college level courses to earn degrees that qualified them to work in other areas. He chose the machine shop program at Calhoun.
“I figured I’d get out, get a regular job punching a clock somewhere working nine to five building whatever and then going home like other guys,” he recalls of those days.
But fate had different plans for the enterprising Floridian. While Mr. Beckum was completing his courses, recruiters from Boeing Aerospace visited the school looking for future team members to work on the space station simulation project at the Marshall Space Flight Center in nearby Hunstville, Alabama.
He was hired right out of school and immediately joined the Boeing team.
The small scale model of the future International Space Station the engineers and machinists eventually built is now on permanent display in a lobby of the U.S. Senate in Washington.
The first full scale component of the space station that Mr. Beckum was assigned to work on was the waste disposal system. He worked with a father and daughter team of engineers from the Netherlands, who formulated the prototype design. His team would take these plans into their shop and start constructing.
The prototypes were installed in the regular employee bathrooms on the site.
“You have to test what you build to know if it works and to identify problems with the design and the components.” explained Mr. Beckum. “There’s no better way than the real deal.”
When someone visiting the site asked for a drink of water, the standard answer was always, “Just don’t get it from Bill.”
“Actually, the water from the filtration units on the waste disposal system was more pure than the water from your kitchen faucet,” he says.
Bill Beckum is proud of the fact that today’s contemporary technology for kidney dialysis systems has been adopted from the waste disposal and filtration system he helped build for the space station. He points out that many such developments related to space research go on to have wider applications in the public sector.
He also helped on the air support system, building a large stainless steel sphere with numerous connecting lines attached to a main computer.
A computer-dictated simulation of the sphere’s inner climatic environment. If, for example, four astronauts were present, the computer calculated the proper mix of oxygen and nitrogen fed through the lines to sustain that number of people and measured the removal of carbon dioxide.
While Bill Beckum was being challenged daily in his job as a machinist with Boeing and loving every moment of it, another unexpected challenge arose.
A memo circulated stating that NASA was looking for recruits to work as training technicians in the simulation tank with the astronauts. Candidates would become NASA-certified scuba divers. Mr. Beckum felt he had to try.
He also know he would have to get in shape to pass the Navy fitness exam required to even apply for the position. He quit smoking and started running.
The Marshall Center’s huge tank originally built during WWII for torpedo testing now is used to train astronauts from all over the world. Submergence in water is as close to zero gravity conditions in space as can be simulated on earth.
Bill Beckum waited and then the good news came – he had been chosen. He would be the only one from the original Boeing team to complete the NASA scuba certification and go on to train astronauts.
It took four months of training to earn the certification. Mr. Beckum was able to successfully complete the task while still working his regular job.
Then he entered a whole new world.
When astronauts suited up in full space flight gear, attached themselves to a mechanical arm and entered the tanks, Bill Beckum, in radio transmitting scuba gear, was there beside them in the water.
The training was intense and closely monitored. Astronauts must have an intimate knowledge of the space station and know how the entire structure functions.
“In zero gravity, the mechanical laws that we understand on earth are completely different,” says Mr. Beckum.
“Water simulates what it’s like to move in outer space. Physical objects in space behave much differently and the astronauts have to learn how to anticipate and compensate. They also have to be technicians. They must know how every part of the space station works and how to repair it.”
Even in the midst of such intense work, there were funny occurrences, many of them the result of cultural differences.
He recalls the first time a team of Italian astronauts was brought in to become familiar with the tank. They spent an afternoon freely swimming and getting acquainted with the tank’s features such as the location of the decompression chamber.
One member of the team was a woman. When the swim was over they all climbed up on deck and immediately stripped off all their clothes and started drying off. An American astronaut fluent in many languages hurried over and quickly explained to the team that in the United States, men and women went to changing rooms, separate changing rooms, to remove or change their clothes. The female astronaut just laughed, threw a towel over her shoulder and marched naked through the flight center to the locker room without a care in the world.
By 1992, Boeing had fulfilled its contract with NASA to develop, design and build the working prototype of the space station. Mr. Beckum’s work with the project was finished. With the different components built and tested, the designs were then put into production at three facilities across the United States.
Six years later, in 1998, the first two modules of the space station were launched on the space shuttle and the assembly of the station began. The first crew arrived in 2000.
“It was the experience of a lifetime, says Mr. Beckum. “Who gets to be in contact with so many astronauts from around the world on a daily basis? Hardly anyone. I was lucky.”
There was only one regretful thing about his experience. The project’s chief engineer, George Wishart, with whom he worked closely and came to admire, died before seeing the completion of the space station.
“My only regret is that George didn’t see the station go into space,” he says. “Otherwise, I have this to say about my job at Marshall Space Flight Center. It’s the only job I ever had that I would have done for free.”