Bradley Cheetham

A large part of Bradley Cheetham's postgraduate research involves helping to develop new and more efficient ways of space travel. The 2009 UB graduate is pursuing his master’s and PhD in aerospace engineering science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is a research associate for the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR). His three-pronged focus—technical research, outreach and participation in the commercial space industry—puts him at the forefront of the next stage of space exploration.

“I have a full plate right now, for sure,” said Cheetham. “But this is definitely stuff that was enabled by the work I did in Buffalo.”

Cheetham has a history of taking advantage of such opportunities. And making some of his own. The roots of his current work trace back to UB, where he was the founder of UB SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space), the Space Outreach Fellowship and the Inspiration from Exploration outreach program he developed for inner-city Buffalo middle school students. Cheetham’s work in this arena has continued at Boulder. His Inspiration from Exploration program was the model for We Want Our Future, a downloadable package touting the “cool factor” in math and science, which is available to teachers, troop leaders or youth directors and has involved children in 30 states and five continents.

While at UB, Cheetham received such highly prestigious awards as the Goldwater Scholarship (2008) and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award (2009). He also earned a NASA space grant fellowship and spent an influential summer in the NASA Academy at Goddard Space Flight Center.

“A lot of work went into Goldwater and at the time, what I thought then was excessive revising, turned out to be a valuable asset,” he said. “Working with the folks in the Honors College, that was spun into an ability—a way of putting my thoughts and plans down on paper—that has been very effective in proposal writing.”

Cheetham’s success at UB helped pave the way for his position in Boulder, with National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Defense Science and Engineering (NDSEG) graduate fellowships funding his work. And his collaboration with NASA led to his invitation to Kennedy Space Center as a “distinguished guest” for one of the final Space Shuttle launches.

“Space shuttles are amazing engineering specimens, but they are getting old. This was the last flight for this specific shuttle, which is sombering,” he said. “The reality is that the space shuttle was built to build the space station. Now that the space station is finished, it’s a very expensive way to get to space.”

The next step, Cheetham says, is for private industry to supply the transportation to space, taking the burden off the taxpaying public and allowing NASA to explore and inspire. But for that to happen, safe and efficient forms of space travel have to emerge from the marketplace. Cheetham is helping to devise new training courses that aim to pass the industry’s knowledge directly from aerospace veterans to the new generation of highly trained workers.

“We’re hoping to put advanced people at those consoles and give them the ability for more real-time decision-making. The commercial space industry needs to be as efficient as possible, so we need well-trained and capable people making those decisions. With billions of dollars and many lives at risk, there’s no room for error.”