#164: Dr. James Kenyon (NASA Glenn) — To the Moon, Mars and Beyond, From Cleveland — The Future of Aviation & Space Exploration

Dr. James Kenyon, Director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio

The road to the Moon goes through Cleveland. With a budget of approximately $900 million, a staff of more than 3,200 civil servants, over 725 patents, and over 120 R&D 100 Awards, Glenn — under Dr. Kenyon's leadership and in accordance with NASA's mandates — is providing integral support to Artemis, NASA’s mission to return us to the Moon, overseeing the service module that will propel the Orion Space Capsule out of Earth’s orbit and around the Moon.

Founded in 1941, Glenn Research Center has led NASA’s electric propulsion development efforts and been integral in many of NASA’s most famous missions transforming aviation and space exploration — from Mercury and Apollo to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station; playing important roles in robotic exploration missions, including the Mars rovers and Cassini’s mission to Saturn.

Prior to becoming Glenn’s director. Dr. Kenyon served as director of the Advanced Air Vehicles Program in the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, led advanced programs and technology at Pratt & Whitney, and worked for 17 years in the Department of Defense where he was responsible for strategic planning, policy guidance and management oversight of DoD aerospace science and technology programs.

This conversation tapped into my latent childhood love and curiosity for exploring the great cosmos around spaceship Earth — Dr. Kenyon and I explore his passion for aerospace and path to NASA, the history and evolution of the Glenn Research Center, and its significant impact here in Cleveland, his reflections on leadership, decision making and talent, and ultimately what’s on the horizon, for exploring the unknown in both air and space.

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LINKS:
Connect with Dr. James Kenyon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-kenyon-204174172
NASA's Office of STEM Engagement: https://www.nasa.gov/glenn-stem/

NASA's Internships:  https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/internship-programs/

Doing Business with NASA Glenn: https://www.nasa.gov/glenn-business-and-partnerships/
NASA Glenn's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nasaglenn/
NASA Glenn's X: https://twitter.com/NASAglenn

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Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:00:00]:
We've got a very ambitious agenda right now to to put people back on the moon sustainably. Yeah. We get asked, well, we went to the moon in the sixties seventies. What's the difference, right? Haven't we already done this? We went there last time to beat the other guy there. This time, we're going there to stay. And that's a fundamentally different paradigm. And you got to think about getting up there and staying there a little bit differently. And then we're using it not only as a as a basis for scientific discovery and exploration, but then also as an analog to allow us to learn how to live and work further away from planet Earth here.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:00:40]:
So that maybe one day we can take people on to Mars or or beyond. So that's a different way of looking at it. But that's the agency's ambitious agenda right

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:50]:
now. Let's discover what people are building in the Greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders, and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the genuine privilege of speaking with doctor James Kenyon, director of NASA's Glenn Research Center here in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded back in 1941, Glenn Research Center has led NASA's electric propulsion development efforts and been integral in many of NASA's most famous missions. From Mercury and Apollo to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, playing important roles in robotic exploration missions including the Mars rovers and Cassini's mission to Saturn.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:45]:
Today, with over 725 patents, Glenn is providing integral support to Artemis 1, NASA's mission to return us to the Moon, overseeing the service module that will propel the Orion Space Capsule out of Earth's orbit and around the Moon. With a budget of approximately $900,000,000 and staff of more than 3,200 civil servants, Doctor. Kenyon is responsible for planning, organizing, and directing the activities Glenn in accordance with NASA's mandates. Prior to becoming Glenn's director, Doctor. Kenyon served as the director of the Advanced Air Vehicles Program in the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. He led advanced programs and technology at Pratt and Whitney and worked for 17 years in the Department of Defense where he was responsible for strategic planning, policy guidance and management oversight of DOD Aerospace Science and Technology Programs. It is hard to overstate how fun this conversation was for me. Tapping into my latent childhood love and curiosity for exploring the great cosmos around spaceship Earth.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:51]:
Doctor. Kenyon and I explore his passion for aerospace and his path to NASA, the history and evolution of the Glenn Research Center and its significant impact here in Cleveland, Ohio, his reflections on leadership, decision making, and on talent, and ultimately what is on the horizon, no pun intended, for exploring the unknown in both air and in space. So please enjoy my conversation with doctor Jimmy Kenyon after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by John Carroll University's Bowler College of Business, widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the region. As we've heard time and time again from entrepreneurs here on Lay of the Land, many of whom are proud alumni of John Carroll University, success in this ever changing world of business requires a dynamic and innovative mindset, deep understanding of emerging technologies and systems, strong ethics, leadership prowess, acute business acumen, all qualities nurtured through the Bowler College of Business. With 4 different MBA programs of study spanning professional, online, Boler College of Business provides flexible timelines and various class structures for each MBA track, including online, in person, hybrid, and asynchronous. All to offer the most effective options for you, including the ability to participate in an elective international study tour, providing unparalleled opportunities to expand your global business knowledge by networking with local companies overseas and experiencing a new culture. The career impact of a bowler MBA is formative and will help prepare you for this future of business and get more out of your career.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:30]:
To learn more about John Carroll University's Buller MBA programs, please go to business.jcu.edu. The Bowler College of Business is fully accredited by AACSB International, the highest accreditation a college of business can have. Well, Jimmy, thank you for joining us today.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:04:50]:
Excellent. Glad to be here.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:51]:
So I was thinking about where the the best place to start would be. And what came to mind was if NASA was to come up in conversation and as people's minds naturally sort of drift to the the greater cosmos beyond us and then begin thinking through the the actual complexities of of what it takes to build a vehicle that would allow us to safely traverse that frontier. I wouldn't imagine that Northeast Ohio, you know, comes to mind as this focal point of innovation in, in aeronautical research and electric propulsion and space energy, but apparently it should.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:05:27]:
Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:28]:
And here we are.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:05:29]:
Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:29]:
So I'd love to start with with kind of that at a high level, you know, how is it that that NASA Glenn came to be? What is the reason for being, and what is the work being done to support our exploration of the unknown in air and in space?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:05:44]:
Sure. So NASA Glenn was founded in 1941. It was, originally founded as part of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which preceded NASA. It was actually formed in in the late 19 teens to really provide some sort of government guidance, some sort of government push for aeronautics and aviation. A big part of that was was, of course, world war 2 and everything else is where aeronautics and aviation really started to take off. So the original center was a Langley Research Center, which is down in Hampton Roads. But the NACA continued to expand. And as we were coming into World War 2, they were looking at this and they said, well, we need to do something in aircraft propulsion.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:06:27]:
That's gonna be a driver for capability. The Germans were really pushing on that very hard. And so aircraft propulsion was something we were gonna need to work on. And at that point, the 2nd center, which was, at Moffett Field is the Ames Research Center, had been stood up. But only a year or 2 later, Glenn was formed specifically as the Aircraft Engine Research Lab under the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the NACA. And that's what we did. The goal then was to advance aircraft propulsion technology to give our flyers the advantage in the skies during World War 2, was part of the World War 2 build up. And so they developed and built capabilities for testing aircraft engines, testing them at altitude, developing performance, creating performance, and all of that to try to help out with that war effort.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:07:15]:
When you look back historically, you know, sometimes you get asked, well, why Cleveland? And Sure. Well, a couple of different reasons. First off, Cleveland was big in aviation at the day. Cleveland Airport was one of the most advanced in the world. It was the home of the world famous Cleveland Air Races. There's a great old photo of what is now the Glenn Research Center. It's got a kind of a semicircular shape to it. That was a big parking lot.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:07:40]:
Jam packed with cars there for the for the air races. So we've got the aviation history. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:46]:
I mean, even the the Wright brothers, not too far from here.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:07:48]:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And on top of that, Cleveland, of course, has been a manufacturing hub. With steel production and manufacturing, there's a huge world war buildup of manufacturing that needed to be there. And then, the one other little nuance is that aircraft engines in those days looked a lot like automotive engines. They're piston engines, right? There are companies, the Allison engine company made diesel engines. They made locomotive engines. They made airplane engines.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:08:19]:
And so, there's a nice synergy there as well. And so, so, a lot of reasons why this was a good place to be. I as I understand, it was competitive, and Cleveland put a good foot forward. Yeah. But NASA or the NACA at the time decided to create the Aircraft Engine Research Lab right here, and then develop that capability. Now, after world war 2, we start to move into the jet age. We continued that work. The NACA Center moved into the jet age.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:08:46]:
And then in 1958, after the launch of the Sputnik by the Soviet Union. Yep. NASA was formed. The National Aeronautics and Space Act created NASA. What is now NASA took in the NACA and combined it all into one one group. And, of course, once we did that, then, again, that capability transformed and started to look at going into space. But the focus has stayed the same in many many ways. It's propulsion.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:09:14]:
We still work on advanced aircraft propulsion. Yeah. Including things like hybrid propulsion for hybrid electric propulsion systems for big aircraft, right? Electric propulsion systems for urban air taxis, these electric air taxis that could take off and land vertically and take people around major cities. Right? We still work on those sorts of capabilities. We do propulsion for spacecraft. We don't make the big rockets. But once the spacecraft is outside of the Earth's atmosphere and is flying around, we work on the propulsion systems for that. Yeah.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:09:47]:
All of these things need power, and they go hand in hand. And so we work on power for aircraft. We work on power for spacecraft and looking into the future, working on power for, say, the lunar surface. We've continued to advance. We've gotten into communications research, and we we drive communications technology development for the agency, for NASA, and looking at what the future is going to be there as well. All of that requires materials. So we do a lot of work in advanced materials, but especially materials for extreme environments, for really, really hot things because we're making engines and propulsions. Right.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:10:19]:
And we're making communications technologies. And then then we also do things that are pretty extreme extreme, like shape memory alloys for tires to go over a lunar surface. Right. And then finally, we do a lot of work in terms of space environment testing, which comes out of our propulsion work. We need to be able to simulate the altitudes to get the performance of the propulsion systems right. And so, we've developed the capability to be able to do that on multiple scales. For aircraft engines, be they conventional or electric, as well as for electric propulsion systems that might drive a spacecraft or

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:53]:
a satellite on orbit. Wow. It's incredible. The the breadth of it. And I I know we'll we'll we'll spend some time unpacking it. Before we do though, I wanna layer on a bit your your own personal journey as as part of this whole endeavor. You know, one of the fun things is through this podcast, a lot of the folks that I get to talk to who really are working on, you know, a plethora of problems from a 2 Guernsey milk production to beer manufacturing to zinc battery storage to precision surgical tooling. A lot of them when they reflect on their childhood and early early life Did not imagine that they would be working on the problem that they're working on now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:35]:
I think often drawn to the common answer to the question, what would you like to be when you grow up? And often, you know, it it's around this exploring space in in an astronaut sort of way. So you might be the first person on the podcast who I don't know what you were contemplating when you were younger, but if that was your answer to that question. And so I'd love to just hear a little bit about your own path and where your interest in all of this stems from.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:12:00]:
So I was gonna be a pro baseball player. Alright. Then I was gonna be a rock and roll star. Yep. And in both cases, ambition outran talent. Okay. So now, what are you gonna do? I grew up in the World War. I I or the Cold War rather.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:12:13]:
I grew up in the Cold War. We watched the the movies. Top Gun, of course, Iron Eagle was a favorite of mine because I happen to like Air Force airplanes a little bit more than those big wings on the F fourteens, but but grew up in the cold war. I wanted to fly fast jets. Yeah. I grew up in the country. You would see, near near a big lake with a dam and and the pilots would come and fly exercises every now and again near the dam and you'd see them fly over fast and low. And I wanted to fly fast jets.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:12:43]:
Unfortunately, I found out that in high school that I was not going to be able to do that. I was medically disqualified. But so what are you going to do? Well, by that time, I already knew I wanted to be an I just knew they worked on airplanes. Yeah. And I also knew that engineers tended to get jobs and could make money. So that was a good thing, right? So you can get a job. And, and so that was my motivation. As luck would have it, I grew up in the state of Georgia.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:13:15]:
The public school, technical school there happened to be one of the best in the world at Georgia Tech. And so I went to Georgia Tech. I learned what it meant to be an aerospace engineer. And I have done it basically ever since then. I love everything about it. Now, talk about what we do at Glenn in propulsion. Well, it's funny. I was not studying propulsion.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:13:38]:
I was studying composite materials and structures for helicopter blades or spacecraft or whatever. But then I went through a program called CO OP, Cooperative Education, where you alternate work and school terms, and you actually work for a company for some period of time. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. They stuck me in propulsion. And and at the time, it felt like stuck me in propulsion. Yeah. Yeah. But down there, they actually let me work on things.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:14:06]:
And I would walk by jet engines being built and I'm trying to figure out what I'm looking at and just that struck me and I kind of enjoyed it. Really liked it. I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning. And, and I mean that. Yeah. And, I believe you. Yeah. And but as I was coming out and looking for jobs, I got a call from the Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:14:31]:
They were considering me, well, the guy told me on the phone, they were considering me for a couple of jobs. 1 was composite structures, 1 was propulsion. And, they ended up picking me for propulsion. And the rest, as they say, is history. I worked in propulsion at Wright Patterson for Air Force Research Lab, Spent some time in the Pentagon working on a lot more than propulsion, but propulsion was part of my portfolio. Went off after that, left the government for a little while, worked for a jet engine manufacturer, and then came back to the government at NASA headquarters. Again, the portfolio was bigger than propulsion, but propulsion was in it. And and then I got the phone call that was asking me to come up and spend a little time in Cleveland at Glenn.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:15:08]:
And and, of course, we do a lot more than just propulsion, but our focus largely is propulsion. And so, it's been a wonderful journey as part of, the propulsion. We've sometimes just called it the Propulsion Mafia, you know. Once you're in, you know, you can try to get out, but they keep pulling it back in. Yeah. And that certainly has been reflective of my career. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:30]:
Well, I I think it it might have been at the the Greater Cleveland Partnership where you had done your your keynote address, and I I think I heard you describe in the context of Glenn that you can kind of capture it as once you get into space, then what? That's right. That's really the focus and crux of of the work that that you're doing at this point.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:15:50]:
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And you poked at it a little bit earlier, but, you know, one of the things and one of the reasons why we're not maybe as recognizable to many is because we work on the things we work on. Nothing flies without propulsion, power, and communications, which is what we do. So we're involved in everything NASA does. But when you look at a spacecraft, you're not looking for the propulsion system. And when you look at an airplane, you're not looking at the engines hanging off the wings. So we're not the first thing you think about, but you're not flying without us.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:16:22]:
Right. And so prerequisite. That's right. That's right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:26]:
So I think, you know, we could many hours talking about all the different kinds of technologies involved, but I'd pose just at a high level. What do you feel are, in the history of Glenn, kind of the the most salient and exciting accomplishments? And then with an eye towards the future, you know, the most powerful implications of the research being done today?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:16:46]:
Yeah. Well, I can give you my impressions and I've got 3,200 people who would give you a different impression of what the most salient accomplishments were. Many of them that that they accomplished. Glenn really pushed jet engine technology early on for military, as well as for civilian. And in fact, Glenn, as you probably know, if you follow the Aerospace industry, the single aisle market is undergoing a huge revitalization. They're putting engines on these airplanes that are 15 to 17% more efficient. That's operating costs, that's fuel burn, that's emissions. Look at it in whatever lens you want to look at it.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:17:28]:
That's goodness. NASA was part of that. NASA worked with the engine companies developing those technologies that are going into that. And NASA drove at the early stages some of those technologies, the advancement that allowed those companies to take it on. I think that's a huge but but it goes back before this this latest iteration. It goes all the way back to the dawn of the jet age and even before that. NASA's really contributed to aviation and the advancement of aviation for our nation. Yep.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:17:57]:
When it comes to spacecraft, a lot of work in the early parts of the programs with Centaur. We've touched everything from Mercury to Gemini and on to Apollo. We've been part of all of those with various parts that we've been able to supply. It's a great thing to know that that you were part of that. And, whether it's the materials that we've developed, we've tested a lot of a lot of those propulsion systems, upper stage rockets we've tested in our facilities and now with satellite technologies. We've driven the development of the thrusters that are now flying on all of our satellites. And so so it's it's it's when you think about how much we depend on satellites for communications, whether it's your, satellite radio or or watching a football game on a Sunday afternoon, we depend on that. And we just take it for granted, but somebody invented that and worked on that.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:18:53]:
And a lot of that technology came out of Glenn. So it's it's a neat thing to reflect back on.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:58]:
Yeah. I mean, it's it's all fascinating. In the context of all that, one of the things I was curious about is how you think about risk. Mhmm. Knowing that at a high level, NASA kind of manages an R and D budget that kind of dwarfs even many public companies' you know, ability to to invest in in that kind of of research and development. Under this umbrella of propulsion, energy, and communications, The amount of things that you could research, I meant, is is endless. And so what is the the process through which that you think through, you know, the opportunity costs of exploring one path over another and just the kind of higher level thinking around strategy, if you will, with regards to to research. And, you know, at the end of the day, where the expectation is, we're gonna try and ship something, you know, into the air and outer space.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:19:51]:
Yeah. It's it's an interesting thing. And and one of the things because I I've spent my whole career in research and development. And one of the things that I've learned is to never say never. I've eaten those words a couple of times because you have really smart people doing incredible work. But what you have to look at is you have to take a step back and kind of place yourself in the context of what's going on in the world. You know what technologies we're developing and what things were advancing, And you can go out and talk to your researchers and they'll give you a dissertation on why it's important and what it does and everything else. But then you have to kind of take a step back, blur your eyes.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:20:28]:
But there are so many things that go into how we look at our strategy and how we think about our strategy. One of them is embedded in the agency strategy. We've got a very ambitious agenda right now to put people back on the moon sustainably. Yeah. We get asked, well, we went to the moon in the sixties seventies. Why? What's what's the difference? Right? Haven't we already done this? We went there last time to beat the other guy there. This time we're going there to stay. And that's a fundamentally different paradigm.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:20:57]:
And you gotta think about getting up there and staying there a little bit differently. And then we're using it not only as a as a basis for scientific discovery and exploration, but then also as an analog to allow us to learn how to live and work further away from planet Earth here, so that maybe one day we can take people on to Mars or beyond. So that's a different way of looking at it. But that's the agency's ambitious agenda right now. It's a bold agenda. And so what does that mean in terms of the kinds of things that we're doing and how do we advance that? By the same token, what's going on in the world with our other part of our market, aviation? There's a real drive toward sustainability. And like I mentioned before, it's good for our planet. It's good from an emission standpoint, climate change, pollution, but it's also a business decision.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:21:52]:
If you can burn 15 to 20% less fuel or 30% less fuel, that's operating cost right there. And that turns into and translates into ticket prices for people. That's a driver. And so, how can we catalyze that? How can we advance that and help support our industry to be able to do that? And then lean a little bit further in than maybe they could do on their own. So looking at sort of the macro, what's going on in the world? Where are you going? Going back to space. There's this, we're talking about going to the moon and Mars, but you've got a commercial industry now with some new players who weren't there just a handful of years ago. SpaceX and Blue Origin come to mind, especially, but there are others as well. And you're seeing a lot more private investment because there's a market there.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:22:41]:
The years of work and discovery that NASA have done, whether directly or indirectly, have reduced risk, have paved the way, have allowed us to understand what it takes to fly in space, especially in orbit. Yeah. So the companies can now look at it because companies have worked beside us. They build the rockets, they build the satellites, so they are learning, too. And so when you look at all of that and you think about what's going on in aviation, our strategy to go to the moon and Mars, and what's going on in the commercial space market, you say, okay. So what is our role? What is our niche? Where can we make the biggest impact? And that's where you focus. You put that alongside, well, what are our core competencies? Well, everything needs power. Everything needs propulsion.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:23:22]:
Everything needs communications. What are the needs going to be in that larger architecture? For example, here coming up soon, we're going to be launching commercial payload services to the moon. It's a part of what we call our Commercial Interpayload Services project. They're gonna be putting commercial companies launching landers to the Moon. And then there's a vision that companies will eventually be able to create a business case for putting their technologies, their capabilities, whether it's manufacturing or or other things on the moon. That's not gonna happen if they don't have a power infrastructure. Yeah. So what do we need for a power infrastructure? So we've got people looking at, well, what does that mean? What are the power levels? What are the right technologies that are scalable so that you can build up to that? But you gotta do it at a reasonable scale first or we'll never be able to afford it.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:24:14]:
You can't, you know, boil the ocean in one shot, you know. And so you gotta be able to to figure out how to do that. And but that means that, well, scalability's gotta be part of your strategy as well. And so that's how you feed into that strategy development is is thinking through what are those needs looking at the macro scale? What are those places where industry may not be able to go off and do it on their own? They need government help, government direction, even sometimes just government guidance and thought leadership. We can help with that, and we can help with the risk equation. And then where does that align with our competencies? It can be straight aligned or or an adjacency, an offshoot of our competencies where we can contribute to that equation.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:56]:
Yeah. I'd love to go a little deeper on this relationship between, you know, the work NASA is doing and and the the private sector work and knowing that the maybe the the perception of, you know, SpaceX 2 decades ago as a fledgling company maybe was not taken as seriously as it is today and the evolution of the role and the opportunity for for startups who, you know, again, in the context of of just this podcast, you know, typically operating at a much smaller scale, much earlier stage of their existence as an organization, where the opportunity is for for those kinds of entrepreneurs with ambitions to positively contribute and impact space and and all the work that's being done and where on the flip side of that, where the government needs to take the risk.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:25:41]:
Right. Right. We looked at this. I was part of an interagency group that looked at these sorts of things a number of years ago. And and one of the questions we asked was, what is the appropriate role of government in research and development? Obviously, national security is 1 because okay. Fine. Another though is is public good. It's where there's an overarching benefit to the public that the government needs to drive and maybe commercial industry can can get there on their own, but but the business isn't gonna drive them there without somebody guiding and leading and incentivizing.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:26:16]:
Right? And so, public good is another one. And then another one gets into places where there's an economic opportunity, an opportunity to spur our industry, our US industry to lead. But the risk may be too high for a company president to walk into the boardroom and ask for the investment. And that's also a place where it can be an appropriate role of NASA to work on the technical risk, especially if we can drive it for the industry and not for this company or that company, but we can drive it for the US industry to be able to advance. So those are those are some of the key roles that you look at. Now, that applies across the board. Those are the Yep. The majors, those are the supply chain.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:27:02]:
That's the startups. But how do you specifically because you're you're kind of asking, well, what if you're one of these startups and venture? How do you get involved? It's interesting. There are a couple of things and Yeah. And Glenn is really good at this. We help to lead the agency in terms of technology transfer and engaging with small businesses. One way is that we have an active intellectual property portfolio. Our researchers invent things and they patent them. Yeah.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:27:29]:
Well, why would a government patent it? You can't really draw royalties. Well, not a lot of royalties. But why would you use the government ever patent something? Well, the idea is to create intellectual property that we can work with companies to look at and to to see that opportunity and to use. And so a lot of what we do is nonexclusive. So you have a right to use this invention for your application. Your application is your proprietary information. It's your data. It's your concept.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:27:58]:
You own it. But that fundamental technology you are incorporating, you don't own. And this company over here can use that for a different application. And so it creates an opportunity. So we have an active intellectual property portfolio. It contains anything from sensors to measure things, to communications, waveforms, and technologies that you can do for communications to advanced materials, material chemistries, and material production properties and techniques and things like that. And so, so one of the things that we can do is get out, work with small businesses, work with startups, work with some of the entities we have in Cleveland, like Nottingham, Spur, and Jumpstart that that support these these incubators on how to get the word out about our innovation portfolio so that these companies can see what's there. They can license it.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:28:52]:
We have very favorable terms on the licensing. For start ups, we don't even charge for a research license to evaluate the technology. We don't even charge any sort of a licensing fee. It's given to them free for up to 3 years to go figure out how they would apply it and use it. So that's one way. And and we have a number of we've got a strategy laid out, and and we hold events to try to do that. But but we also work directly with companies that come and engage and talk with us. Another way is through a much larger government programs called Small Business Innovation Research.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:29:23]:
And the idea is, how can we engage small businesses, including start ups, to bring their innovation? Very favorable intellectual property terms as a government contract, but very favorable in intellectual property terms. There's an offshoot of that called Small Business Technology Transfer, where the business needs to partner with a university as well. But but again, very similar terms. But it starts off with a phase one award that says go do some concept development and bring us back something that looks promising. And if that starts to pan out and looks good, you can compete for and win a phase 2. And and that can be up to a $1,000,000. The phase 1 is, I think, a 150 or $200,000 now. And don't don't quote me on the numbers because I Yeah.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:30:08]:
When when I first engaged, it was a much lower number, but I know that the numbers have increased and and I'm trying to remember exactly where they are now. But but the phase 2 is is a bit more because now you're actually gonna go build something and test it. Right? And try it out. Yep. And then you've got an opportunity that you can turn into a business. And this is your concept with a little bit of government funding. It's a little bit tougher to get because we put out topic areas, but companies can engage with the government. They can engage with NASA.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:30:36]:
They can engage with NASA Glenn and talk about areas where they think there's innovation and where we see, especially if we start to see multiple places or we have big companies saying, hey, I need something that looks a little bit like this. Yeah. We can put out topics where people can bid against them and develop their ideas into viable products. And we've seen success stories there, and we've seen companies start there and grow into midsize companies. We've seen companies start there and become suppliers to primes. We've seen companies start there and get bought by the primes. So there's a whole lot of different models, but these are opportunities for

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:20]:
brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio, Impact Architects has helped 100 of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you 2 are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or power your own business, please go to ia.layoftheland.fm. The link will also be in our show notes. From your vantage point, you know, with a full awareness of, you know, across propulsion, power, communications. If you could issue a request for startups where you would love to see, you know, entrepreneurs focus, time, attention, resources, are there pockets where there's a dearth, you know, from the the government side where you'd you'd love to see people kind of try and fill that void?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:32:46]:
One that never gets old is materials. There's always a need for higher strength, higher temperature, more capable, more durable materials. That can be at small scales for some applications. It can be for at large scales. And then being able to get to those with a domestic supply chain. There are certain materials that aren't available in the US. But if your technology depends on them, now we're dependent on a foreign supply chain. Some of them not necessarily in friendly parts of the world.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:33:16]:
So those sorts of things. Energy storage. Energy storage. Energy production. Energy storage. How can you move energy around that's related to that? It's a place where, you know, domestic supply chains are hard, but there's always a drive for smaller, lighter weight, higher power capabilities. The safety that goes with that. How do we make sure that, for example, batteries flying on airplanes are safe? If you've got ideas, that's not a bad thing to have.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:33:47]:
And so, those are a couple of areas. When we start thinking about things like urban air taxis, electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, and we call it advanced air mobility. But these are things that can fly a couple of passengers, 50 or a 100 or 200 nautical miles. Do it all electric. Now you're getting into maybe small motors or the the components for small electric motors. Some of those can be hard to come by. And so there's a lot of interesting ideas on on ways to do those sorts of things. Now, people think of all sorts of other things.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:34:23]:
Sensor Technologies for Health Management has always been something that has advanced and has seen a lot of advancement from small businesses. Manufacturing techniques that large companies can use to expand their manufacturing or accelerate their manufacturing. So there are a lot of different things. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:39]:
Yeah. When you talk about some of what feels to me on the periphery of sci fi and sci fact, you know, with vertical takeoff and landing and and these kind of electric air vehicles. I'll pull in one of the the perennial points of conversation with with folks in the area, which is you mentioned over 3,000 folks at the facility. Where are these people coming from when you think about talent and retention? What what is the the philosophy from NASA's perspective about how to how to recruit and retain and and possibly even train up folks who who don't even work at NASA, but could work at the complimentary organizations, some of these enterprises that are working with NASA.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:35:17]:
Right. Well, there are multiple parts of this. Right? One is our own recruiting and retention. And we really try to go out and engage universities. We try to engage in different events and conferences. We have our processes that we need to follow. We're a government agency. We have to be open.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:35:33]:
We have to be equitable and fair. But the key becomes, how do you get people then to see that and to apply? We do spend some time and focus on organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Engineering Society for Indigenous Americans, and other groups, Society of Women Engineers, Women in Aerospace, various groups that they try to work on diversity. Diversity is a big part of that. The more people we have with different backgrounds and different perspectives gives us different ways to look at problems and solve them. We need that. We're solving the hardest problems in the world. The hardest problems that physics can throw at us. We need as many different perspectives and ideas as we can get, And diversity is how you get to that.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:36:24]:
And so we take that very seriously in our recruiting efforts, and we go out and engage like that. So part of it is the recruiting, and then part of it is the pipeline. Because when you go out recruiting, you need people to recruit. And it starts early. We work STEM engagement activities. We've got an activity that we did this past summer. We worked with 1 of our couple of our community supporters, the Ohio Aerospace Institute and the AeroZone Alliance, which are business advocacy groups and working in aerospace here in Cleveland. And and we worked with them in the partnership with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to create opportunities for up to a couple of dozen students from CMSD to come out and have a summer experience much like an internship at Glenn.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:37:11]:
That is a way to do that. That's awesome. We also we have a robust internship program with multiple ways to get there. And typically, in the summer, we'll host somewhere on the order of a 150 interns at Glenn during the summer. And some of them get into a program that rotates them and brings them back over and over. And so we'll have 30 or 40 interns at a time even when it's not the summer. And so that's an incredible part of our pipeline. Those are people who know us.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:37:40]:
They're working on problems that are similar to us. And we can recruit a lot of those. Our, contractors who work with us on-site recruit a lot of those. And many of those, even if we don't recruit them and retain them, they end up in our suppliers and the companies that work with us, the companies that are building spacecraft, the companies that are building aircraft and engines. So it's a good tool to catalyze the pipeline, not just for NASA, but for the aerospace community. So we do that. We partner with universities, Ohio State, University of Cincinnati, Case Western, Cleveland State, and and a number of other universities to also work on research projects together. And when we're doing that, we're engaging professors, we're engaging students, and that's part of building that pipeline too.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:38:27]:
Oh, that's very cool.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:28]:
So all in, what does success mean to you? You know, what is the impact that you hope to have in retrospect?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:38:35]:
Well, so there are a lot of ways to ask that question. And one is, well, as Glenn. Right? And to me, I see Glenn I sometimes talk about Glenn as the utility company for the agency, the utility company for NASA. Yeah. Power Propulsion Communication. Right? Success to me is that Glenn is providing the best that we can to enable NASA's missions. And that we're doing it in a such a way that the agency is coming to us to manage stuff, to lead stuff, to drive things because they know when you come to Glenn, you're going to get it done. That is success to me from a mission standpoint, that we're delivering and enabling NASA's missions and making NASA's mission successful.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:39:16]:
From a community engagement standpoint, we're working with our companies to build a community around us where our people want to live and work. That is a great community, a vibrant community where where their families are and they are, and and they wanna be here, and people around the agency wanna be here because this is a great place to live and work. And then for our people, which to me is the biggest and most important thing. It's about fulfillment. Right? At the end of the day, do you feel like you came in and made an impact? You made a difference. NASA people really, really are passionate about the mission. They want to make a difference. And so if I can create an environment where they can come in and feel like they have an opportunity to make a difference, and they're motivated and inspired and they make a difference, then I'm doing my job.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:40:12]:
And I can go home feeling fulfilled at the end of the day.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:15]:
What is the most challenging part of the work that you do?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:40:20]:
I keep keeping up with my calendar, to be very frank with you. It's it's time. It's time. There are more things that I want to do that I think we can do, then there are hours in the day to do it. There are lots of resource constraints. If we had a bunch more people, we could probably do more faster. If we had a bunch more facilities, we could do a bunch more faster, but we're a government agency. We we work through the budget process.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:40:51]:
We advocate to cover the mission and and get things done. But at the end of the day, even advocating for those resources takes time. And so I just it's such an exciting mission. I just want to do more. And the biggest constraint that I don't have any way of getting more of is time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:07]:
Right. The only strictly winning resource.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:41:10]:
That's right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:12]:
What do you wish more people understood about the work you're doing that they don't?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:41:17]:
I think the biggest thing that I would like for people to understand about it. Well, well, 2 things. 1 is that it does impact their lives. And we talked a little bit about it. You know, satellites today are there because of some of the work that our people have done over the decades. But we depend on them so much. The communication technologies like your phone Yep. That was worked on by people who were working communications technologies and and developing that.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:41:47]:
And, yes, very innovative companies have figured out how to put these into practice and make markets out of them. But that technology started somewhere. We're doing research to figure out how to cure cancer. We're doing research to understand how radiation impacts people. We're we're doing research to understand how our climate is changing and forming and and evolving in our planet. We're doing research that is really impacting people's lives. Whether it's the air quality around them or the water quality or the economic availability of things and goods and services that they enjoy. Yeah.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:42:25]:
That's one thing. The other thing, and especially for those who are a little bit younger, is that, and by the way, you can do this, too. These are human beings, just like everybody else walking around the City of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. These are human beings who grew up, they were kids, they had dreams, they were passionate about math and science and how things work. And they went off and they learned a little bit about it. And now they're scientists and engineers who are literally coming in rewriting laws of physics and changing the world. But they're just normal human beings like you. And so you can be part of this too.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:03]:
Yeah. I love both those sentiments. I I think it's to me, it feels really important to stress that idea that it's it's so hard at the onset to discern what the future implications of the research you're doing today are, but every technology that that we use, you know, from these mics, you know, depended on some research in the past that and the implications of which you just can't really know. But the lesson is that research is important.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:43:28]:
That's right. But research is done by regular people. I grew up on a farm in South Georgia. Okay. I've worked in peanut fields. I worked with pigs and cattle. And here I am at NASA Glenn, you know, and I've seen things and done things. I've watched launches go off.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:43:48]:
I've watched jet engines be tested. I've been upside down in the back seat of an F16 and I have a 9 gs pin that I earned. But I'm a kid who grew up in a small town in South Georgia and worked on a farm. And so, yeah, you can do it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:05]:
Well, I know there's a million things we can still talk about here. Of the things that we have talked about, are there things that we haven't talked about that you feel are particularly important that you would like to call attention to, you know, in reflection on both your personal journey leading NASA Glenn and and just more broadly the nature of of the work that you're you're doing

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:44:24]:
there. Let's talk a little bit about the future. Yep. And where things are going.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:28]:
Absolutely.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:44:29]:
We talked some about the agency's vision to go to the Moon and then on to Mars. There's a lot of exciting stuff happening. Next week on Monday, well, Monday in the wee hours of the morning. So, whether you call it Sunday night or Monday morning, we're launching what we call the Peregrine 1. It's a commercial lunar payload services. It's a lander that's being developed or was developed by a company in Pittsburgh called Astrobotic. NASA is buying payloads and integrating payloads on that. It's a commercial launch.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:45:00]:
It's a commercial company doing commercial things, but NASA is going to get a ride on it. And that's kind of a cool thing. Yep. And in February, Intuitive Machines is gonna launch their first lander to the moon. So we're gonna have companies putting landers and things on the Moon that in the future, we're gonna be able to use. When we put people on the Moon, they're gonna have stuff there to work with. That's kind of a cool thing. But those launches are starting next week.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:45:25]:
We're getting ready for Artemis 2. Artemis 1 launched a little over a year ago, took the first human rated spacecraft to the Moon since 1972. It did a nice loop around the Moon, got some great imagery, came back. It was a test flight. We tested a lot of systems on it and we are learning a ton from it. This is helping us to improve and get ready for the next launch. Well, the spacecraft, the Orion capsule that went around the moon and that will carry humans when we go back is currently on a truck on its way to, Armstrong test facility in Sandusky. It should be here early next week and we're gonna do environmental testing to make sure that that spacecraft is ready to take humans.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:46:06]:
Yeah. There are parts of the flight envelope we didn't test last time because we weren't gonna need it. We're gonna test those parts of the flight envelope now and that's gonna be happening in the next coming weeks months. So that's an exciting thing right here in Northeast Ohio. Another part of our Moon to Mars agenda is building a space station that's going to orbit the Moon. Just think about the flexibility that's going to give to allow people, the staging people to go to the surface, staging stuff to bring back to Earth. It's going to be awesome. We are providing the thrusters, the propulsion system that will allow that Space Station to stay on orbit around the Moon.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:46:43]:
We start qualification testing at Glenn here early this year. Yeah. So, another big milestone that's happening right here. Next week, I'm going out for the rollout of the X59. It's, gonna be NASA's first X plane to make it to flight, manned X plane to make it to flight in a very long time. We're gonna do the rollout. You'll get to see the airplane with its paint job. It's pretty slick.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:47:07]:
And that's gonna be an important stage as we start ramping up into the ground testing that will eventually lead to the 1st flight. But we're going to do the rollout next week. So a lot of big exciting things coming up in the next weeks months and then a big one that everybody in Cleveland ought to be tracking is the Eclipse. Yeah. April 8th. I think my fact finders and historians found that the last time an eclipse found any part of Ohio was 18 06, 3 years after the state was founded. Oh, wow. Right? And, 18 06, this is the first one since then and it is going right over Northeast Ohio and Cleveland.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:47:45]:
And it's a rare thing to have an eclipse go over your community. It's an even more rare thing to have an eclipse go over a NASA center. And so, this is going to be a really cool opportunity to connect our community with, you know, people connect with space when they see the eclipse and and to connect that in our community with NASA is is a huge opportunity. And so, April 8th and we're gonna have a big festival downtown. We're actually it's gonna be a 3 day festival. We're going to have a NASA village, right out in front of the Great Lakes Science Center where we host our our visitor center. We're going to have a stage set up. We're going to have performances including science anticipating senior leadership from NASA headquarters is going to be there.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:48:34]:
And then I'll certainly be spending a lot of time there as well. And so, we're just excited about that and see a huge opportunity there to engage our community in what we're doing. So some exciting things come up here in the very near future.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:46]:
Well, I imagine when when you reflect on one of those pillars of success to you, which is the fulfillment of the people that you get to work with, I can't imagine that's a very difficult one because the work you're doing is so inspiring and so ambitious and just so important. It's very cool to hear about. So I'll bookend it here with our traditional closing question, which is unrelated to anything we've talked about, but is for your favorite hidden gem in the area in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, something that that other folks should know about that that maybe they don't?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:49:18]:
Well, that's an interesting question. And I I will I will start with, I have been at Glenn for a little over a year and officially moved here with my family less than a year ago. Yeah. So we're still relatively new to the area.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:30]:
Oh, welcome.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:49:31]:
And I can tell you that that's that's tough because there are so many things and some of them not so hidden. You know, I love the the metro parks. I love the trails. I'm a runner or maybe that's an overstatement, but I work real hard at it. Yeah. And just the trails and and and even running in the city is such a beautiful thing. Our waterfront and our lake and its different moods, it's neat to experience

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:54]:
that. It's pretty magical. Yeah.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:49:55]:
It is. It really is. Those aren't exactly hidden, though. But a couple of things that maybe are a little less obvious when I think of hidden gems, I start of the places that where you connect with people and often that's over a meal. And so, probably one of my favorites is BOSS chicken and beer. Why do I say that? Well, I have celiac disease. So, I have to stay away from gluten. I have to be gluten free.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:50:21]:
And that can be hard because there's a lot of things with wheat and barley and rye and things like that. But Boss Chicken and Beer, has a very, very good gluten free menu and excellent food and it's a funky little place. They've got a few locations around. I always go to the one in Berea. Yeah. Yeah. They're on Front Street. And so, that's one of my favorite hidden gems.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:50:43]:
Right down the street is a place called Cornerstone Brewery. It's really hard to get good gluten free beer. That's the place where you can get good gluten free beer and and a good gluten free menu. And then I would say one more because you asked for 1, but I can't do just one. But is, Big Mouth Bakery in Rocky River, gluten free donuts. And, right around Easter time, they'll have a punch piece. And so, it's kind of a cool thing. So just funny how they always, they all come back to food for me, but that's okay.

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:51:14]:
One of the cool things about Cleveland is as far as food and culture, and those two things go so hand in hand, this is a great place where you can find that. And so, it's an awesome city. I'm sure all your listeners know that, but I'm gonna state the obvious. It's just an incredible city.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:33]:
Yeah. Well, Jimmy, I just want to thank you for coming on, sharing a little bit more about your story, the work you're doing. Genuinely, it's it's really inspiring, and and hopefully, you know, many more will be aware of it. And if they wanted to get involved or learn more or anything else, where would be where would you direct them?

Dr. James A. Kenyon (NASA's Glenn Research Center) [00:51:51]:
I would start with nasa.gov and go exploring and learn about our mission. We're part of a big agency that's doing incredible things. And then from nasa.gov, you can find all you wanna find about Glenn. That's a good place to start. And then there are ways you can find to reach out and to engage in some of our programs and projects from there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:11]:
Amazing. Well, thank you again. Excellent. Thanks so much. That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to [e-mail], or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or at sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:36]:
And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show.