Colonel Tim Kopra is an EMBA Global alumnus and is due to take command of the International Space Station in early 2016. This is his story. This was first published in AlumniNews, Issue 131, February 2014. Find out more about our alumni community at http://www.london.edu/alumni

1. AlumniNews ISSUE 131
FEBRUARY 2014
TIM KOPRA EMBAG2013 may be
the School’s first alumnus to have
ventured into space
This is Colonel Tim
to ground control

2. ■TheBigIssue/Taking on the last frontier
IN JANUARY 2011, ASTRONAUT
Tim Kopra had fewer than six
weeks to go before he was due to
embark on his second mission to
the International Space Station. He
was approaching the end of an
intense and dangerous 20-month
training schedule, which had taken
in flying planes, scuba diving,
achieving weightlessness inside
plunging jumbo jets and
undergoing survival exercises in the
wilderness.
As the necessary training is so
arduous and the expertise required
so specific, the pool of candidates
qualified to make such a trip is
understandably extremely limited.
As a result, astronauts are banned
from taking part in sports such as
motorcycle riding, skiing,
parachuting and acrobatic flying.
Nobody thought to add bike riding
to this list, however.
Unfortunately for Tim, his
customary Saturday morning spin
on his bike near his home in
Houston on 15 January ended in
disaster. He came off, breaking his
hip in the process, and his injuries
immediately ruled him out of taking
part in the planned mission.
It was a devastating setback for
Tim but NASA’s loss turned out to
be London Business School’s gain.
“Frankly, because of the bicycle
accident, I was afforded an
opportunity to do something
different,” he says. “I’d been
interested in going to business
school for a very long time. I have a
great job, and I’d like to keep it for
the time period I’m scheduled to
fly, but the School’s Global EMBA
programme really appealed to me.
Alumnus and NASA astronaut Tim Kopra EMBAG2013 knows all
about “sitting in a tin can far above the world”, as David Bowie put it.
The man who is due to take command of the International Space
Station in early 2016 talks blast offs, space walking and MBAs with
DOMINIC MIDGLEY
This is Colonel Tim to ground control

3. ■TheBigIssue/Taking on the last frontier
I thought it would give me a
chance to identify what other
opportunities are out there for
astronauts if I chose to do
something different, and also to
learn a skill-set that could be used
both within and outside NASA.”
The roots of Tim’s fascination
with space can be traced back to
the Apollo 11 mission of July 1969,
which resulted in Neil Armstrong
becoming the frst man to walk on
the lunar surface. “I was six years
old and we had people landing on
the Moon,” he says. “It was a great
inspiration for a young kid.” It
helped that Tim’s older brother had
an enthusiasm for all things space
that was highly infectious. “He had
models of Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo capsules, and he was
always following the space
programme and talking about it,”
he recalls. “The second Moon
landing took place four months
after the first, my brother and I
stayed up late at night and waited
for it to happen.
“That’s when I realised what a
fascinating thing this was and what
a great period our nation was
going through. I think that was
probably when I became personally
enthralled with the whole idea.”
Unlike many others whose
imaginations were fired by
Armstrong’s feat, Kopra’s dream of
becoming an astronaut never
faded. He went on to graduate
from West Point, and saw active
service as a pilot in Iraq during
Operation Desert Storm. After
completing an MSc in aerospace
engineering at Georgia Tech and
graduating from US Navy Test Pilot
School, he was assigned to the US
Army Aviation Technical Test
Center as an experimental test
pilot.
But his big break came in
September 1998 when he joined
NASA as a vehicle integration test
engineer at the Johnson Space
Center in Houston, Texas and,
within two years, he had been
selected for the astronaut training
programme. He was 37 years old.
As it happens, Tim’s timing was
excellent. Just over a month after
he was selected, the first two
components of the International
Space Station were connected.
Tim on board Space Shuttle Endeavor
with crewmate Tom Marshburn

4. ■TheBigIssue/Taking on the last frontier
One of NASA’s solutions to the
problem of preparing men and
women to spend months on end in
an extremely confined space in an
alien environment was to subject
them to a seven-day stay in the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s (NOAA) Aquarius
underwater laboratory.
‘It’s probably the best training we
did in terms of preparing for a high
intensity space flight,” says Tim.
“Every day is choreographed, and
it’s a really great experience in
terms of working very closely with
people and getting tasks done. At
the same time, you have to do all
those things that are required just
to get by: having meals, getting
clean, sleeping, organising your
own stuff and getting along with
people.” As the Russian space
agency Roscosmos is one of
NASA’s partners in the ISS,
Russian lessons were another
must.
By July 2009, Tim was ready to
make his first trip into outer space.
It was six years after the Space
Shuttle Columbia disaster but the
dangers inherent in being blasted
into space in what is essentially a
customised missile are never far
Left to right:
Tim suited up
for spacewalk
training in the
Neutral
Buoyancy Lab
at the Johnson
Space Centre;
STS-133 crew
prepared for
launch; STS-
127 blast off;
Tim enters the
ISS; the
residents of a
packed ISS

5. ■TheBigIssue/Taking on the last frontier
from astronauts’ thoughts. “You
recognise that your life is in peril
when you go to space, when you
do a spacewalk, or when you
come back home. Those are three
times punctuated by the
recognition that you’re in a very
dangerous business.
“But you also think about the
fact that a huge team of people
have worked very hard to make
sure that you’re safe. It’s a totally
different business from some in
that people are very, very
emotionally attached to their jobs
and to doing a good job. That is
one of the positives. You know that
everybody has done their absolute
best.”
Once in orbit, a series of events
happened in quick succession. Tim
and his two fellow crew members
docked with the space station on
flight day three and spent the night
in the airlock. On the morning of
flight day four he donned his space
suit and embarked on his frst
spacewalk.
All this coincided with being
exposed to his first proper view of
Earth from space. “It’s
overwhelming,” he says. “It’s
absolutely beautiful. We had a lot of
work to do, but you could easily
stare out of the window for hours
at a time. It’s such a phenomenal
thing to see. You’re travelling at
about five miles per second
and going around the
planet every hour and a
half. The sunrises and
sunsets are absolutely
spectacular. They
don’t even look real,
they are so breathtaking.
I’d say probably equal to
how beautiful the planet is, is
how stark and black space is
outside. That in itself, I’d say, is
almost startling because you
recognise that we have this blue
ball, but beyond that there is a lot
of nothing.”
Perhaps surprisingly, as Tim
prepares for his second space
mission, he finds himself applying a
number of the elements he had
learned while studying for his MBA.
“There is not an easy join-the-
dots answer between an MBA and
specifically what I’m doing now,
training for a space flight, but I
oftentimes think back to my
experience and the things
that I learned, and relate
“Being commander of the
space station is a very
unique and interesting
leadership challenge
because it is largely based on
communication and good
relationships. That was a theme that we
heard over and over again in the case
studies at the School”
COLONEL TIM KOPRA

6. ■TheBigIssue/Taking on the last frontier
that to the organisations in which
we function as a space business.
“When you undertake case
studies, what you’re learning about
is human behaviour, decision
making, leadership techniques,
organisational structure and how to
be more effective and more
efficient. Those are lessons that
someone can carry to any job.”
He adds: “Being commander of
the space station also presents a
very interesting leadership
challenge because, while you have
a very small group of people on
board, there is an enormous
infrastructure on the ground that is
working toward helping you
succeed and getting the mission
accomplished. That’s a very unique
and interesting leadership
challenge because it is largely
based on communication and
good relationships. That was a
theme that we heard over and over
again in the case studies at the
School.”
He was also gratified to find that
the diversity he found as a member
of a multinational space crew was
reflected in his class at the School.
“We had a Canadian doctor
astronaut,” he recalls. “I swapped
places with a Japanese astronaut.
We had two Russian crew
members, a European astronaut –
who became a commander after I
left – and then two Americans. It
was a very international
environment, and going to London
Business School, and being part of
the global programme, was an
extension of that in a lot of ways.
“I will definitely be keeping in
touch with School and my
classmates. I made so many very,
very close friends. I’ve even been
to a couple of weddings. I built
some friendships there that are
going to be very long lasting. In the
long run, absolutely the best part of
the programme, I think, will prove
to be the close relationships I had
the opportunity to develop as part
of the programme.” ■

7. ■TheBigIssue/Taking on the last frontier
‘MY MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE’
One of Tim Kopra’s predecessors
as ISS commander, Canada’s
Chris Hadfield, says every
astronaut’s greatest fear is floating
off into space during a spacewalk.
Here Tim describes his own
spacewalk, which lasted five hours
and 32 minutes
One of the things we focus on very
strongly in spacewalk training is
how to make sure we stay
attached to the space station.
There are multiple ways in which
we work against the possibility of
drifting free.
First of all, we have a protocol
which dictates that we always keep
close to station. Once out there,
we are always attached to the
mother ship by a tether that
extends like a long fishing line.
If for any reason the worst
happens, we even have an
emergency jet pack that we can
use to fly back. Despite all these
measures, you are constantly
focused on staying linked to the
space station. You can tell how
front of mind this is afterwards by
how tired your hands are simply
from holding on.
We work on this very hard in
training but there is no substitute
for actually doing it to recognise
how important staying attached to
the station is.
Chris Hadfield had an issue with
soap in his eyes, which meant he
had to let air out of his suit.
I have never had a problem of
that gravity but there are always
things that occur on spacewalks
that are not predicted.
One technical anomaly that I had
was some scratchy comms via the
mike. That made communication a
little bit challenging.
However, it wasn’t to be
compared with having your eyes
full of water and being unable to
see! That would be a pretty scary
experience, I’m sure, and very, very
stressful.
Tim during his spacewalk, something
he described as “my most memorable
experience by far”