The Singing Space Traveler | Dr. Alexandra Kemp

This week on Aspiring Martians, I’m joined by Dr. Alexandra Kemp, aka The Singing Space Traveler, an aerospace human-factors engineer, bioastronautics researcher, educator, opera singer, NASA Solar System Ambassador and aspiring commercial astronaut.

Alex currently works as an Advanced Human Factors Systems Engineer at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, where she helps tackle a deceptively complicated problem: how do we design aircraft and aerospace systems around the actual humans who have to use them?

Because a system can work perfectly according to the mathematics, physics and engineering and still fail if it does not work for the person sitting in front of it.

Alex’s path into aerospace has been anything but conventional. She began in communications and classical vocal performance, spent eight summers attending Space Camp, later earned a master’s in aeronautics and space studies, and eventually completed a PhD at Purdue University focused on aerospace human factors.

We talk about the surprising similarities between opera and engineering, what human-factors engineers actually do, why mentorship and representation matter in aerospace, and how Alex’s lifelong interest in human spaceflight has evolved into research conducted in microgravity.

That includes a deeply personal project examining ways to potentially reduce blood-clot risk during spaceflight, an area of research Alex pursued after losing her mother to pulmonary embolism. Her work now uses parabolic flight, ultrasound and wearable technology to investigate how humans might be protected during future missions.

It is a conversation about engineering, performance, curiosity, loss, mentorship and what happens when seemingly unrelated parts of a life eventually begin fitting together.

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A huge thank you to Alex for taking the time to join me today and for sharing her journey, curiosity, and perspective. And of course, thank you to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project, even when I start wondering whether our future Mars settlements are going to need an opera house before they need a second grocery store.