Orange Coast College alumni Alexandra Coultrup did not, as a little girl, find herself drawn to the stars. She did not gaze at the Milky Way, imagining that someday she would journey to distant planets. And yet outer space, and more specifically, the highly complex systems and technology that make human spaceflight possible, has captured Coultrup’s attention, igniting a passion that has led her down an unexpected career path, and a gratifying personal journey.
When Coultrup began her higher education at Coast in 2012, she chose aviation science as her major, hoping to someday become a commercial airline pilot. One class changed her plans. “One of the classes I took at OCC was called ‘Introduction to Human Factors and Crew Resource Management.’ The professor was an adjunct at the time, and he was also a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University,” she explains. “It was during that class that I realized maybe I don’t want to be the pilot ... maybe I want to be the person who designs systems to keep the pilots safe.”
Designing systems with the goal of promoting safety and ease of use within engineered structures is more broadly referred to as “human factors and ergonomics,” a scientific discipline that combines many different disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, industrial design, user experience, and more. The goal? To optimize both human well being and overall system performance in any number of industries, including those in transportation, medicine, agriculture, technology, and consumer product design.
“In the modern world, we’re so surrounded by devices and tools we can use that really separate us from our physical surroundings in many ways, and it’s easy for us to be like, ‘It’s all invented. The problems are all solved,’” Coultrup explains. “But I learned from that class at OCC that the problems are not all solved, and we still have many weaknesses and limitations as human beings. I got excited about human factors because I realized that it was a way to help people.”
The decision to switch her career plans led Coultrup to apply for transfer to Florida Institute of Technology, where she received a partial scholarship to row for women’s crew, and where she completed a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication and Journalism and, later, a master’s of science degree in Aviation Human Factors. From there, it was an easy jump to switch her focus from traditional aviation to commercial space travel.
“Florida Tech is located on what is commonly referred to as the ‘Space Coast.’ By the time I started my master’s program, all of my friends were working in the space exploration industry. They’re working at NASA and at commercial space companies, building rockets and cutting-edge space hardware. And I get to step out onto my driveway and watch the rocket launches whenever I want,” she says. “I started thinking to myself, ‘I’m sure astronauts have needs and requirements in human factors. And I’m sure there’s many technological and psychological requirements for the design of the space station and for future space missions.”
Mars Research Station
After graduating with her master’s degree in 2019 from Florida Tech 一 as well as completing certificates in Aeronautical Space Engineering and Global Commercial Space Programs from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and International Space University 一 Coultrup moved to Washington D.C. to work for Nanoracks, a private aerospace company that has the distinction of being the first company to commercialize the International Space Station and currently is working toward creating privately owned commercial space stations.
But her interests in human factors, and a desire to someday apply for a doctoral program in human factors with an emphasis in space psychology, spurred Coultrup last year to apply to be part of an analog mission with a team of her peers at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah, which is owned and operated by the nonprofit The Mars Society. “There's a handful of these analog stations at different places around the world. The goal of an analog mission is to be analogous to the experience of living in space,” she says. “Obviously, we cannot perfectly replicate it here on earth, but each analog research station has a different level of realism to it, different levels of fidelity.”
While the MDRS is a relatively low fidelity station, perfect for first timers, it does offer the type of isolation and geography ideal for simulating a Martian environment. Coultrup was part of a crew of six, officially titled “Crew 245” but also self-dubbed “Team Patamars” after a type of historical sailing vessel once used for long voyages. The crew included a mix of graduate students and young professionals with diverse backgrounds. “We had three aerospace engineers, a biologist, a geologist, and myself with a human factors and journalism background. It was a really healthy mix.”
The team conducted several experiments over the course of their two-week stay at MDRS, making sure to closely follow protocols that would replicate real space practices as closely as possible. “A lot of the rigor that comes from pretending you’re on Mars, and really feeling like you’re actually immersed in a real space mission, we had to intentionally build into our processes,” Coultrup explains. “For example, we had our simulated space suits, so we would not go outdoors without suiting up. And we would pause for 30 or 40 minutes for our ‘decompression time’ for the change in atmospheric pressure. There were all of these rules that we had to abide by.”
Coultrup’s own research focused on her crewmates’ daily routines and preferences for leadership styles. She also assisted other crew members with their research, including geo-mapping rock formations, soil sampling and hydroponic gardening. Much of this research was done while using heavy extravehicular activity (EVA) space suits, adding an element of realism that is crucial to replicating the challenges that may face future space travelers. “For me, studying human factors, I took notes about range of motion and how challenging it was to sit down and stand up when sampling the soil. I ended up providing recommendations for perhaps a different tool that we might use for reaching down to the soil if our suits were to be even bulkier with a full life support system,” she says.
For Coultrup, one of the bigger surprises was how physically taxing it was to maneuver while wearing an EVA suit. “I was going on a two- or three-hour hike carrying 35 to 40 pounds of gear. It was a lot. The suit had a whole fan and air circulation system built into it, in addition to its structure, which was pretty heavy,” she explains. “I thought ‘Okay, well, it's just a pretend mission. How tired will I be?’ I was genuinely surprised by how physically exhausting it was.”
As for her own research, Coultrup learned that the crew’s routines were significantly altered in an analog environment. “I basically learned that people predicted they would keep their schedules on Earth pretty well on the station, and we definitely didn’t,” she says.
Future Missions
Coultrup hopes to apply for future research missions with the same crew, possibly for longer periods of time and in even more remote locations. “Other stations around the world are completely enclosed, completely airtight, even such that there are no windows to the outside lighting from the sun. Instead, artificial lighting sets crews on the cycle of a Mars day rather than the 24-hour Earth day” she says. “There are two stations in Antarctica 一 Concordia Station and McMurdo Station 一 they’re isolated and small. People go there for a long duration and it is an extreme environment. And there’s one on a mountaintop in Hawaii, where the rough terrain simulates what scientists hypothesize some geologic features on Mars would look like.”
For now, Coultrup is happy to have been given the opportunity to further her research interests, and to be a small, but important, part of the efforts that will someday send human beings on missions to Mars and beyond. “If I can do scientific research that might one day help someone have a happier day when they’re out in space, that might one day help someone complete a physically challenging task in a way that doesn’t hurt themselves or others, and doesn’t result in a multi-billion dollar accident, then I will have accomplished my goals,” she says.
As for one day traveling to space for real? Coultrup hasn’t ruled it out. “My answer to that question changes every day,” she says. “One to two hundred years from now, people are going to be living on Mars permanently, intending to live out their natural lives there. They will have their own whole new culture that’s separate from the culture of Earth. For now, though, going into space is very dangerous. So I don't know if I would want to go into space for a long duration. But, I might want to go for a short time ... probably.”