‘Space cowboy’ marks 50 years at NASA with award
JSC employee has seen it all, says he’s ‘ready to go to Mars’
The International Space Station gallery was dimly lit as gaggles of people laughed and camera flashes reflected off display cases chock-full of memorabilia spanning two decades.
It’s fitting that Victor Murray’s party Thursday — celebrating 50 years at NASA — was held in this part of Space Center Houston, the museum side of Johnson Space Center. The number of space station astronauts he’s kept safe over the years are seemingly countless. But frankly, it would have been just as fitting if his party stretched into every nook and cranny of the museum’s 250,000-square-foot facility.
Over the last five decades, Murray has worked on every major space exploration program since Apollo.
He worked a 21-hour shift before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the moon in 1969. When Apollo 13’s oxygen tank exploded in 1970 — forcing a mission abort and putting the astronauts on board in grave danger — Murray and his colleagues made sure the fix that brought them home would withstand the extreme conditions of space.
He was there when the first space shuttle launched in 1981, and he watched as the last space shuttle returned to Earth in 2011.
He was around for the 1986 assembly of the Soviet Union’s Mir, the first space station in orbit, and had a front row seat to the construction of the International Space Station, a magnificent engineering feat that began almost a decade later, in 1998.
But the 74-year-old isn’t done yet.
“I want to see the first astronaut on Mars,” he said.
Humble beginnings
Murray was just a kid in Barbados when the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union began in 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik satellite.
At the time, his Third World home had no televisions, he said, so he had no idea that the countdown to a human touching the moon had begun. But even without this knowledge, his lifelong — and seemingly unattainable — dream of flying already was fast-tracking him to a career in spaceflight operations.
“Without knowing any better, I liked the fact that you could get on a plane and get somewhere quicker,” he said. “It’s just fantastic.”
Murray was 19 when he boarded his first flight, destined for New York and a career in the Air Force. He wanted his own set of wings.
Luckily, he enjoyed every minute of it.
“It was amazing,” he said, the thought of that first flight lighting up his eyes and bringing a smile to his face almost six decades later. “I was in awe of everything that happened.”
Between 1963 and 1967, Murray flew on planes, jumped out of planes and even trained flying personnel for the physiological hazards — mainly hypoxia, a deficiency of oxygen in the body — associated with flying.
But as his Air Force career came to a close, he wasn’t sure what the next step would be.
Then, someone he served with in the Air Force suggested Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the likes of Alan Shepard, Pete Conrad and John Glenn were putting their lives on the line in America’s quest to get to the moon.
It took some convincing, but Murray eventually decided to pack up his car and drive east from where he was stationed in California to the hot, humid and unknown land of Southeast Texas.
History was about to be made. And Murray was about to play an integral role in it.
Safety first
Before astronauts can rocket out of the Earth’s atmosphere, they first must get comfortable working in the inhospitable environment of space.
They need to get used to the weight and feel of the suits they’ll use on their spacewalks: how long it takes to walk several feet, how to grip tools through bulky gloves, and how to respond to any potential emergencies on their jaunt outside the spacecraft.
And starting in 1968, Murray helped astronauts do that by operating the center’s Altitude Chambers, which are used for development, certification and testing of human life support systems in space.
The chambers “simulate the pressure of space on the whole flight profile, including the suits,” he said. “So we go through the whole activity as far as exertion and working with the tools or whatever they plan to do.”
When Murray first arrived at Johnson, the lunar lander was in a chamber as Armstrong and Aldrin practiced for their first steps on the moon, he said.
It was his first brush with astronauts. But it wouldn’t be his last.
“You do get to know them quite well,” he said. “You become a part of their family and if there’s a problem on a flight, that becomes a part of you.”
That’s why Murray and his team worked 21 hours straight before the 1969 lunar landing, making sure all the systems would work perfectly and everyone would come home safe.
“We were running profiles over and over again in the chamber,” he said. “The next morning, watching them step out of the lander brought tears to my eyes: to know we did all that work and that happened.”
It’s also why, when an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13 in 1970, he and his altitude chamber team worked so hard to bring the astronauts home.
“We were praying,” he said. “Since we were in the chambers, we were doing all the testing that the engineers came up with to fix it. We had to figure out how to get it done in the chamber.”
Murray’s hard work doesn’t go unnoticed by the astronauts. During his 50th anniversary party on Thursday, former astronaut Reid Wiseman presented Murray with the Silver Snoopy Award, the astronauts’ personal award presented to fewer than 1 percent of the aerospace workforce each year .
“Dozens of astronauts and test subjects owe a debt of gratitude for our safety and well-being to you for your constant vigilance and dedication,” Wiseman read from a commendation letter that accompanies the award. “This is our personal thanks for your outstanding support of the space program.”
Wiseman, who flew on the space station in 2014, continued: “Decades of safe operations at JSC’s vacuum chambers are due, in large measure, to your leadership.”
The Silver Snoopy presented to Murray on Thursday flew on Wiseman’s space station mission.
‘A space cowboy’
For as long as John Piwonka has known him, Murray has driven a beat up Mercedes-Benzes, tooting his horn playfully at friends on the Houston center’s campus.
He’s had a charismatic smile that never turns downward and a habit of dropping in on people, unannounced, for a quick chat.
“He’s neat,” Piwonka said at the Thursday party. “He’s just a special guy.”
Piwonka only worked with Murray at NASA’s Houston center for about a year in the 1960s, but the two have remained friends for five decades, sharing a love for the Caribbean Islands and, admittedly, Caribbean rum.
It’s not surprising, he said, that Murray has kept working all these years: he loves the job. Piwonka retired in 2012.
Neither Piwonka nor Dan Tran — who currently works with Murray in the laboratory where personnel analyze everything electrical that goes to the space station to ensure it doesn’t interfere with the avionics — can pinpoint exactly what makes Murray so special. “He’s just Vic,” they said. But Tran said he wouldn’t have missed Murray’s party for the world.
“He’s very friendly, considerate and generous,” said Tran, who has worked at Johnson for 38 years. “But he’s also very careful. He makes sure that everything is safe.”
Tran isn’t sure Murray will ever retire — neither is Murray.
“I’m asked at least once a week when I’m retiring,” Murray said. “Fifty years in one place that I’ve enjoyed … and my health is still good. Where else can I go?”
He’s excited about the Orion program — the spacecraft that will send humans to the moon for the first time in 50 years — and the way it has been reinvigorated by the current administration.
But he’s more excited about what comes after the moon: that Red Planet 48 million miles away from Earth.
“Personally, I’m ready to go to Mars,” he said. “But if the moon is a stairway to going to Mars, then I’m all for going back to the moon.”
Since taking office last year, President Donald Trump has pushed for the U.S. to return to the moon as a stepping toward for Mars. NASA currently anticipates that humans will step foot on the lunar surface again in the late 2020s, with a trip to Mars in the 2030s.
Murray’s fingers are constantly crossed that he’ll still be at NASA then.
“I’m still a space cowboy,” he said. “I still like the program, I still like what I do. I hope I’m around to see it — the first astronaut on Mars.”