Astronaut Butch Wilmore Speaks to TCE Students
After spending 9 1/2 months in space, astronaut Butch Wilmore didn’t need to make any more travel plans. He could have just stayed in Texas with his family, relaxed, and caught up on everything he missed while he was gone.
But Wilmore has a bigger mission than anything he’s done while flying. He wants to use his platform to inspire others. It’s the main reason Wilmore returned to the University of Tennessee on Tuesday afternoon and spoke to a room full of students from the Tickle College of Engineering.
“These students are the future, so anything that I can do help someone is what it’s all about,” said Wilmore, 1994 graduate of the UT Space Institute (UTSI), where he received his master’s degree in aviation systems. “This university exists for them and for what they can achieve and for the betterment of humankind. We don’t know what’s going to happen out of these students sitting here. They all have the potential to make a positive impact on the world.”
Wilmore’s return to his home state of Tennessee came less than a month after the Mount Juliet native’s prolonged trip to the International Space Station (ISS) concluded. Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams were expected to be in space for just over a week when they launched last June aboard Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. But after the Starliner experienced issues getting to the ISS, NASA decided it was too dangerous to carry anyone back and the capsule returned empty. Wilmore and Williams eventually returned to Earth on March 18 in a SpaceX capsule.
“The thing I was most concerned about was my daughter, Logan. She’s in her senior year of high school, and Dad’s not gonna be there. That was the thing that concerned me the most, because I wanted to take part in sharing that with her and I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to,” Wilmore explained to the TCE students. “But again, it’s about focusing on things that I can control. I will do my best to do my best. Things that I cannot control, why am I going to fret over that? It’s a waste of energy.”
Words of wisdom
Wilmore, a US Navy pilot who joined NASA in 2000, spent nearly an hour answering questions from TCE students on third floor of the Zeanah Engineering Complex. The topics ranged from his space travels to his military career to his advice for aspiring aerospace engineers.
Asked about what kind of research he performed in space during his latest mission, Wilmore said it involved stem cells.
A student who normally talks to friends and family when he’s stressed asked Wilmore how he handles stress when he’s isolated in space.
“I think that is born over decades of compartmentalization, pushing everything else out, all the issues of life, things that are taking place,” Wilmore said. “I can tell you what, flying into combat and doing those things I did way back really trained me to lock everything out and focus on what’s happening. You have probably heard it before, but there’s nothing more important than what you’re doing right now.”
“There are some medications that for whatever reason, for smaller children, the medications work great. You get into older adult ages, same medication, different amount, it’s not dissolved into the body the same. Why is that?” Wilmore said. “So, we’re doing capillary flow experiments to figure out why that is, which is really fascinating science.”
Inspiring future generations
Caroline Bringhurst spent four years in the United States Marines Corps before enrolling at UT. The 27-year-old junior, who is studying biomedical engineering, cleared her calendar to make time for Wilmore’s visit.
“I got a lot of encouragement from his talk about the challenges of engineering itself,” Bringhurst said. “As a Marine veteran, taking classes with younger students is a huge challenge for me. So, coming here and hearing that he went through similar things is really inspiring. It gave me encouragement that if he can do this, I can do this.”
Wilmore stressed to students that he “wasn’t anything special,” and his work ethic and dedication were essential components of his career success.
“I’ll tell you what I was told when I first got to NASA as an astronaut—know everything and perform it well, which is impossible, right? You can’t do that,” he said. “But you set high standards and high goals, and you do the best you can to know everything and perform it well, though you know you can’t attain that. It’s about doing the best you can with the God-given abilities you have.”
Once Wilmore was finished speaking, Matthew Mench, dean and Wayne T. Davis Dean’s Chair of the college, surprised Wilmore by announcing he will be receiving UT’s Distinguished Alumni Award in the fall. The students rose to their feet to give Wilmore a standing ovation as he processed the news.
Wilmore consistently expresses his pride about being a UT alum, even during his missions in space. He credits the education he received from the university for launching a career that has exceeded even his wildest expectations.
“It laid the foundation,” said Wilmore, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the UT baseball game on Tuesday night. “I say that I started my astronaut training in third grade, and it sort of built from there, and the University of Tennessee is where I got one of my master’s degrees, and I would not have been selected as an astronaut had I not had the foundation and the credentials that come along with having that master’s degree from a special place like the University of Tennessee.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, [email protected])