Bonnie J. Dunbar
Bonnie Jeanne Dunbar (born March 3, 1949) is an American engineer and retired NASA astronaut. She flew on five Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1998, including two dockings with the Mir space station.
For the biologist, see Bonnie S. Dunbar.
Bonnie J. Dunbar
50d 8h 24m
A graduate of the University of Washington, where she earned a Master of Science degree in ceramics engineering, Dunbar became a senior research engineer in Rockwell International's Space Division, where she designed the equipment and manufacturing processes used to fabricate the ceramic tiles used in the Space Shuttle thermal protection system. In 1978, she joined NASA as a flight controller / payload officer, and was a guidance and navigation controller for Skylab during its de-orbiting and re-entry in July 1979. She was selected as one of the nineteen astronaut candidates in NASA Astronaut Group 9 in 1980. She flew in space five times, on the STS-61-A, STS-32, STS-50, STS-71 and STS-89, and trained in Russia as a cosmonaut.
Dunbar left NASA to become the president and chief executive officer of the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where she was involved in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for high school students. From 2013 to 2015, she led the University of Houston's STEM Center and was a faculty member in the Cullen College of Engineering. She became the John and Bea Slattery professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University in 2016, and was the Director of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI) there from 2016 to 2020.
Early life and education[edit]
Bonnie Jeanne Dunbar was born in Sunnyside, Washington, on March 3, 1949, the oldest of four children of Robert and Ethel Dunbar. She has two younger brothers and a sister. Her father was a United States Marine Corps veteran who returned from World War II and purchased 40 acres (16 ha) of land in Outlook, Washington, through a lottery for veterans in 1948. She grew up on the farm, could drive a tractor when she was about nine years old,[1][2] and she helped her father repair tractors.[3] The Future Farmers of America did not accept girls so when she was nine her father started a 4-H club so she could show cattle, which she did until she was eighteen,[2] although she was the only girl.[3] In October 1957, Dunbar and her parents gazed at the night sky, looking for Sputnik, the first artificial satellite.[1] She became fascinated with space, reading science fiction novels by H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, and following the real-life exploits of the Mercury Seven.[3][4] In 1962, the family went to the Seattle World's Fair, which showcased an imaginary ride into space, a science pavilion and the Space Needle.[1]
Dunbar attended Outlook Elementary, a small rural school that went to the eighth grade.[3] When she told the principal that she had an ambition to one day build spacecraft, he recommended that she learn algebra.[1] She attended Sunnyside High School, where she took physics and chemistry and math algebra, trigonometry, analysis and precalculus classes. She was a member of the math club, debate club, speech club, and Latin club. She played sports and was a cheerleader for three years.[3][2][4] Her high school career guidance counselor advised her that since she grew up on a farm, she should marry a farmer and have children. Dunbar ignored her and turned to her physics teacher for career advice instead. She scored high marks in spatial ability and English on her SATs. Boys with similar scores in spatial ability were steered towards science and engineering, but these were not considered options for girls.[3]
After Dunbar graduated from high school in 1967,[1] she wanted to attend California Institute of Technology or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, because that was where many astronauts had gone,[4] but the former did not yet accept women as students, and the latter was unaffordable.[2] She was accepted by the University of Washington, which also offered her financial assistance under the National Defense Student Loan program.[4] She became the first member of her family to attend college.[1] Neither Dunbar nor her parents were aware that she had to select a college within the university and could not take classes on anything that interested her. She was interested in the Romantic poets like Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats, but she still wanted to build spacecraft, so her physics teacher advised her to study engineering.[4]
As a student at the University of Washington, Dunbar took heavy course loads, but also served on the Engineering Student Council and played on its baseball team.[2] As a freshman, she aspired to join the university's Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) unit, but it did not accept women then. Instead, she became a volunteer for Angel Flight, a coeducational military support-oriented organization.[5] She worked as a waitress at the Greek Pastry Shop on The Ave and in movie theaters in the University District.[2] She joined the Kappa Delta sorority's Sigma Iota chapter as a sophomore.[6] James I. Mueller, the dean of the ceramics engineering department, heard that she was interested in space, and he had a grant from NASA to develop the ceramic tiles used by the Space Shuttle thermal protection system.[3] He persuaded her to change her major from aeronautical engineering to ceramic engineering, and during the summer break she became part of his team conducting X-ray diffraction studies of some of the different forms of silica fibers that were being considered for use in the tiles.[4][7] She graduated with her Bachelor of Science degree in ceramic engineering. in 1971.[1] She did some graduate work at the University of Illinois.[3]
Engineering jobs were hard to find in 1971, so Dunbar accepted a position as an office manager at a Seattle linen-supply company. Two months later, she secured a position in the computer services division at Boeing through her experience in writing programs in Fortran IV. Boeing trained her in COBOL, and she went to work at the Boeing Renton Factory. After a year and a half, she got a call from Mueller, who informed her that he had secured a grant from NASA, and asked if she would be interested in graduate school.[1][3] The grant was for investigating the use of beta-alumina solid electrolyte in batteries, and Dunbar researched the kinetics of ionic diffusion in sodium beta-alumina, with Suren Sarian as her advisor.[4] She received her Master of Science degree in ceramics engineering from the University of Washington in 1975.[8]
In 1975, Dunbar was invited to participate in research at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Oxfordshire, as a visiting scientist. She researched the wetting behavior of liquids on solid substrates. Before she left for England, she had already accepted a position in Downey, California, as a senior research engineer with Rockwell International's Space Division starting in October 1976.[4] Her responsibilities involved developing the equipment and processes required to fabricate the Space Shuttle thermal protection system tiles that she had worked on as an undergraduate.[3] She served as a Rockwell's representative on Kraft Ehricke's evaluation committee on prospective space industrialization concepts,[8] and she was Rockwell’s Engineer of the Year in 1978 for her work on the thermal protection system.[2][4]
NASA career[edit]
Flight controller / payload officer[edit]
NASA issued a call for applications for pilot and mission specialist candidates on July 8, 1976. For the first time, women were encouraged to apply.[9] Dunbar was one of 8,079 applicants. She was selected as one of 200 finalists, and was asked to report to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, for a week of interviews and evaluations, commencing on October 17, 1977.[10] She was not selected; instead of a call from George Abbey, the Director of Flight Operations, she received one from Carolyn Huntoon. However, Abbey offered her another job at JSC. Joe Cuzzupoli, the vice president at Rockwell, advised her to accept; her promotion prospects at Rockwell were uncertain, since she was the youngest member of her group, and if NASA did not work out she was always welcome to return to Rockwell. In July 1978, Dunbar joined NASA as a flight controller / payload officer. She was a guidance and navigation controller for Skylab and monitored its de-orbiting and re-entry in July 1979. Afterward, she returned to her payload operator role, preparing for the upcoming STS-1 Space Shuttle mission.[3][4]
Dunbar noted that all the women accepted in NASA Astronaut Group 8 in 1978 had M.D. or Ph.D. degrees or had nearly completed one. She therefore embarked on earning a Ph.D. in mechanical/biomedical engineering at the University of Houston. She took classes for two years. Her research project involved testing rats with hind leg suspension as a means of simulating the effects of a microgravity environment. The rats were kept at the Life Sciences Laboratory (Building 37) at JSC. She would dissect their femurs to study the bone, and measure their strength in the Instron machines in the Structures and Mechanics Laboratory (Building 13).[2][4] Her thesis on the "Effects of antiorthostatic kinesia on Sprague Dawley rat femur fracture toughness and concomitant alterations in metabolic activity" was accepted and she was awarded her doctorate in 1983.[5][11]
Post-NASA career[edit]
Dunbar left NASA to become the president and chief executive officer of the Museum of Flight in Seattle.[36] She founded the Washington Aerospace Scholars program, an online distance learning course for high school juniors run in partnership with NASA and Washington state.[37][38] She expanded participation in the museum's Aviation Learning Center, Aerospace Camp Experience and Challenger Learning Center. The museum's K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs were expanded to reach nearly 140,000 students per year.[37] The museum's collections and exhibition spaces were expanded and she oversaw the construction of the T. Evans Wyckoff Memorial Bridge. The museum became a Smithsonian affiliate and was re-accredited with the American Association of Museums. She handed over day-to-day management of the museum in April 2010, and officially left the museum on July 1, 2010. She attempted to acquire a Space Shuttle for the museum.[39][40] In this she was unsuccessful, but the museum did manage to acquire NASA's Full-Fuselage Shuttle Trainer for its 15,500-square-foot (1,440 m2) Space Gallery.[41][42]
From 2013 to 2015, Dunbar led the University of Houston's STEM Center and was a faculty member in the Cullen College of Engineering.[37] She became the John and Bea Slattery professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University in 2016,[43][44] and was the Director of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI), a joint entity in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and the Dwight Look College of Engineering,[45][46] until 2020, when she was succeeded by Tracy Hammond.[47]
Personal life[edit]
Dunbar married Ronald M. Sega in 1988. He was a major in the United States Air Force Reserve and an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.[5] Sega was selected for astronaut training with NASA Astronaut Group 13 on January 17, 1990.[48] They later divorced.[5]