Retired Major General Finds Balance As NASA Engineer
Retired Major General Finds Balance as NASA Engineer
In many ways, the military and NASA couldn’t be different. Frank Batts has managed to navigate both worlds with precision, grace and just a bit of humor. After serving as a major general in the Army National Guard, he made the transition to working on computers as an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
“They’re opposites, but that keeps me balanced,” Batts said. “In the Army, you’re out there blowing things up in the field. Here, you’re trying to build electronic computer components.”
Batts is a senior data-systems engineer with the Advanced Measurement and Data Systems Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He has been at Langley for 34 years and has seen the tools of the job change.
“Technology has changed tremendously,” said the 63-year-old Batts. “When we started out in the eighties, we were all using proprietary operating systems on real-time computers that were not widely used or understood. Now we’re pretty much using PCs for our work.”
In addition to his NASA career, Batts served his country with distinction in the armed forces – and made history along the way. He retired from the Army National Guard in 2012 as a major general and commander of the 29th Infantry Division in Fort Belvoir, Virginia - the first African-American to hold that post. He also served in the West Virginia and Tennessee national guards.
The adventure begins
Batts’ journey started in 1976, when he was accepted at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro and joined the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) there.
While at the university, Batts entered a cooperative program with the Union Carbide Corp., working in a gaseous diffusion plant in the nuclear division. After graduating from North Carolina A&T, Batts worked fulltime as an electrical engineer with Union Carbide, and as an engineering officer in the West Virginia National Guard.
“Initially when you get out of college, you’re competing with engineers from other schools,” Batts said. “I found out pretty soon that regardless of what school you came from, it got down to who can really deliver projects on time and on budget.”
Batts was pursuing a master’s degree in electronics engineering at North Carolina A&T around the time IBM introduced personal computers. He was told PCs were a fad and not worth investing in, but he glimpsed the future and got on board.
“It looked like to me it was the way to go,” he said.
But then in 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania experienced a partial core meltdown, releasing radioactive gas into the atmosphere.
The incident changed his professional trajectory, as the Union Carbide-run K-25 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where Batts was working, enriched uranium for nuclear power plants.
“Prior to Three Mile Island there were plans to construct nuclear plants all over the country, and K-25’s future was secure,” Batts said. “After Three Mile Island, all of those plans were dropped; we had more enriched uranium than was needed and K-25 was slated for closure.”
That meant he needed another job. While looking to move on, Batts found that NASA Langley was using a computing system similar to the one he used while he was with Union Carbide. He sets his sights on Langley, and has been on center as an electronic engineer since 1984 .
Two worlds in one
Batts’ military and NASA worlds were peacefully cohabitating until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Batts was soon activated and from May 2004 through April 2005, served with the 54th Field Artillery Brigade Headquarters as the mobile liaison team chief in Kabul, Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
“With the Army comes the leadership responsibilities. I managed a few thousand troops, and that’s no fun. I make an effort in my career at NASA to stay on the technical side rather than on the administrative side of things,” he said with a laugh.
What is fun for Batts, besides getting in more rounds at the golf course in his spare time, is serving as an example for engineering students though NASA’s outreach programs.
Batts, as the first engineer in his family, said he realizes the importance of recognizing those who blazed the trail for others.
“I have to pay homage to the people who came before me,” he said. “Before I was able to command a battalion, there was some else who commanded one, and did a credible enough job so that I had an opportunity.”
Batts also enjoys the reaction of people when they learn he works for NASA.
“There’s a lot of prestige that goes with working at NASA,” he said. “When people find out you work at NASA, they seem to look at you a bit differently.”
Eric Gillard NASA Langley Research Center
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