NJ Starz: Garrett Reisman Hometown: Parsippany

By: Steve Sears

It’s an amazing photo – taken from a million miles away. Garrett Reisman’s photo from space of Parsippany

 Dr. Garrett Reisman, a United States astronaut, had the opportunity and he grasped it, taking a photo of his hometown of Parsippany from space. “You can see Route 46 and you can see 287,” he says. “But you can't see that with a naked eye. It's just kind of a grayish blur. And by the way, you only have a couple of minutes because you’re flying over it so fast – you’re moving at 17,500 miles an hour. So it was tricky, but I got it.”

Reisman’s excitement over his field is evident in his voice. His dream as a child reached fruition, and now he is helping others with their ambitions through teaching. He had his mentors, and he’s become a mentor for many.

Reisman was born at Morristown Memorial Hospital, and was raised in Parsippany. His dad, Robert, who passed away in 2002, had a huge influence on him when he was a youngster. “It’s amazing,” Reisman says. “He never pushed me to go into the same field or pursue the same interest that he had. But, now looking back, I became a mechanical engineer, and ended up going into aerospace just like him, despite the fact that he never overtly pushed me in that direction. But I think subconsciously I just wanted to be like my dad because I just had tremendous respect for him, and he was my biggest role model.” Reisman’s mom, Sheila, who lives in Florida, was another big supporter of his as he grew up, as was his sister, Lainie, who now lives in Washington, D.C.

Space flight, and life as an astronaut, fascinated Reisman since he was a child. “I remember I had the Super Eight movie of all the Apollo missions, and I used to watch that thing over and over. I just loved everything about it, and I read every book in the Lake Hiawatha Elementary School library that had anything to do with rockets or airplanes. But I never thought I’d become an astronaut because – and stop me if you’ve heard this before - my mom is scared of flying.” The situation was remedied, however. “I eventually got her to fly with me in a small plane out here in Los Angeles. “I told her, ‘I'm taking my dad and my sister, so all three of us are going up. You don't want to be the only one left - that's a miserable life! So why don't you come on in so we all go down together,’” Reisman says with a laugh. The single engine plane ride returned to the runway it took off from safely. “We actually ended up having a nice day. We flew to Catalina Island, got lunch and came back. That logic actually worked.”

In addition to is dad, Reisman mentions that he had some outstanding teachers in the Parsippany public school system. Among them was his Parsippany High School Physics teacher, Jerry Vandervoort. “Still to this day, as I'm teaching as a professor now at USC (University of Southern California), I'm still using what he taught me as a high school student. He inspired me, and definitely if it weren’t for him, there's no way I would have been successful in my career as an engineer.” And Gary Vittorio, his wrestling coach at Parsippany High School, taught him a lot about being a leader and follower, a good teammate, and how to be a good person.

Reisman attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergrad and was mentored by professors Joe Bordogna and Bill Hamilton, and then headed to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he met his doctoral advisor, Christopher Brennan. “One of the great things was a lot of them were able to make it to my (Endeavour) launch and be there as invited guests,” Reisman says. “That was like a great opportunity to say thank you.”

Also at CalTech, Reisman met his wife, Simone. In fact, she was his flight student prior before they started dating. Both are the proud parents of an 11-year-old son, Buster, and a daughter, Bixby, who is 4.

Prior to his initial 2008 launch into space, Reisman took part in Neemo5 as an aquanaut, where he spent two weeks underwater. He explains. “That was part of a training exercise. We call those analogues, where we kind of put ourselves into situations or environments that are extreme and somewhat similar to what we will face in space, and that helps just because you can simulate things and you can practice and train. So we searched for these opportunities, and one was this Neemo mission where we lived at the bottom of the sea for two weeks, and because we're saturated with nitrogen, there's no quick way to come back. You have to go through a lengthy decompression process that takes about a day. So really, we're about as far away from a hospital should something go horribly wrong when we're down there, as far away in terms of time as you are in the space station. So that's a real thing, you putting yourself in that kind of isolation. And that was helpful in getting that mindset, and plus it was a whole lot of fun.”

STS-123, the Space Shuttle Endeavour, was his first orbit venture on the morning of March 11, 2008. He was delivered to the International Space Station for a 95 day mission and, while there, he walked in space for the first time. “Rick Linnehan was my partner,” Reisman says. “It was kind of a crazy mission for me. That was my first time being up in space, and three days into the mission I have to go out and do a spacewalk.” When he first opened the hatch, he said, “Whoa, that's cool!”

Reisman describes the “walk.” “You're out there doing work. You're  kind of like a mechanic. You're attaching cables and turning wrenches and doing that kind of work, but you're wearing this ridiculously cumbersome suit. The suit itself is very familiar; how it fits you is exactly the same as it was down on earth. And then you look over your shoulder and you see the entire East Coast of the United States flying by below. There's no way to prepare for that. You're going back and forth between something very familiar and something completely surreal at the same time. and you try to ignore the surreal and focus on getting the work done, because it's a lot of pressure when you do spacewalks. The time and the progress that you make out there is incredibly valuable to NASA.”

His whole crew left him behind on the space station for a subsequent three months for Expedition 16 and 17. The former was commanded by Peggy Whitson, and the Flight Engineer was Yuri Malenchenko. He was with that duo for a month. “Our crew got a lot of work done. We we're working pretty intensely through that whole period, but we were having a lot of fun, too. That was great.” Next, Russian crewmates, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, joined him for Expedition 17. “That was a little different. I was the only American up there, and I was kind of doing my thing and they were doing their thing on their side, and there were some days we’d go the whole day without seeing each other. But we still were a pretty close knit crew. I had some really interesting experiences with those guys, and I’m still friends with them too.”

STS-124, the Space Shuttle Discovery, was next for Reisman, which returned him to earth in June of 2008, but STS-132, Space Shuttle Atlantis, headed back with Reisman on board to the International Space Station in May 2010. Following his space flights, he worked with SpaceX and currently serves as a Senior Advisor and consultant for them in addition to his USC teaching duties. “I had different leadership positions there in the company (SpaceX) and worked directly for Elon Musk.”

His Astronautical Engineering teaching at USC is something he finds very rewarding. “It is very rewarding in a different way, especially when I have students that get really interested in the subject. I've had a number of students go off and work at SpaceX and Boeing, at Axiom Space and Blue Origin, and when they come back and they talk about how the stuff that I taught them was useful and helped them on their careers, that is really nice. So, it's kind of coming full circle.”

Reisman, who with fellow astronaut, Mike Massimino, hosts a podcast called “Two Funny Astronauts,” is partnering with the Monmouth Museum at Brookdale Community College on a new Air and Space Wing. “I'm donating a lot of my personal items for that exhibit,” Reisman says. “That'll be coming up and we'll probably do a ribbon cutting and some kind of opening later this spring.”

To learn more about Reisman, visit his website at www.garrettreisman.com.