The Gunslingers of White Sands

From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.

On episode 444, Houston We Have a Podcast kicks off a new series in collaboration with NASA's White Sands Test Facility, introducing producer and host Kathryn Martinez and exploring the facility's role in advancing human spaceflight. This episode was recorded on October 7, 2026.

Transcript

Gary Jordan

Houston We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 444: The Gunslingers of White Sands. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be kicking off this episode today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more.

This episode is a special one as it kicks off what will be a series hosted on Houston We Have a Podcast in collaboration with the agency's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This is a little-known satellite site of NASA that has a big impact on advancing human spaceflight. Some would say a hypervelocity impact, and we'll get into why that's a great pun in a minute.

This series will be a bit of a departure from our traditional style, but we're excited to try something new and explore the capabilities of this incredible facility. To help kick us off before we get into the heart of the episode, I'm pleased to welcome the producer and host of the White Sands series, Kathryn Martinez.

Kathryn, welcome to Houston We Have a Podcast!

Kathryn Martinez

Hi, Gary. Thanks so much for having me on the show today. All of us at White Sands are absolutely thrilled to be working with you all on this.

Gary Jordan

We're thrilled as well. We're thrilled as well, and we're introducing you. So, so Katheryn, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, what you do at White Sands.

Kathryn Martinez

Sure. So, I'm a technical writer and editor at the White Sands Test Facility, but my background is really in storytelling. So I went to New Mexico State University here in Las Cruces, where I studied broadcasting. So radio was actually like one of my first exposures to storytelling. And then I ended up going to the University of Oregon for my master's in journalism, and that's when I kind of transitioned to, like gravitated more towards long form storytelling, specifically in print.

After that, I worked as a television news producer in Albuquerque, which it's a pretty big market and a very different environment from cities like Las Cruces or Eugene, which are well small towns. And I was assigned the sort of classic rookie overnight shift producing for the morning show. So it's very unglamorous, monitoring police scanners, watching for breaking news things, things things like that.

And about a year later, I went to the University of Leeds in England, where I studied creative writing. I was really drawn to literary fiction, world building, and not in like the fantasy sense of world building, but making a place feel real for a reader who's never been somewhere. Because obviously, in fiction, that that place doesn't exist. But making it feel alive and textured and curious, so that's I sort of blended journalism with that you know creative fiction aspect of writing. And then I ended up at at NASA. It's sort of a interesting but a serendipitous sort of long spiraling journey. But as you can see, I came to White Sands with no aerospace background whatsoever.

So my primary role is technical writing and editing, mostly test documents, job instructions. But then I started getting opportunities to tell stories about the mission and about people that started in contractor communications quarterly newsletter, and then eventually through articles with NASA.gov. And eventually that evolved into asking what those stories could be in in audio format. So my role has really expanded in the nearly three years that I've been here at White Sands.

Gary Jordan

And it sounds like a lot of the things that you seem to be passionate about, right? You're you're exploring these fringe communities, exploring what's what are the untold stories, right? It sounds like you've taken a creative spin on that with the creative writing experience that you have. This seems like, I mean I'm very excited because what you're describing in terms of what your passionate about is what we're about to explore. The technical writing, of course, is essential but, this is a time to shine in terms of creativity and it seems like that's where a lot of your a lot of your passions ride, and you're doing it in a lot of different ways. Catherine, we've been talking more than a year about podcasting. I know we've connected quite a bit ago to talk about exactly how to approach this. You say you came from you came from you know radio was one of those first passions, and so talk about the inspiration for for pursuing a podcast and audio storytelling as part of you know sharing the White Sands story.

Kathryn Martinez

Yeah, so the initial push toward a podcast, it really came from Anthony Quitario. He is a photographer here at White Sands, and he and I both had radio experience at New Mexico State University. Anthony was actually the station's music director, and so we ended up all these years later working at at White Sands, and so he's the one that really saw that opportunity that we should get on board with this, you know, multimedia and get ourselves out there in a way that just hadn't been done before. And I had already been writing the articles, so I kind of started to sculpt what a podcast would look like from an editorial perspective. What it would sound like, how we could structure things, and and what my role in them would be.

You know, a lot of a lot of journalists say they go into the field because they want to give people a voice, but everyone already has a voice. So it's it's kind of just my job and my I guess philosophy is to go into this world, figure out what fascinates me about it, and hopefully that resonates with others, and we can actually bring listeners inside of this world. And yeah, so keeping that feeling of curiosity that lived in real world experience, we we want the audience to discover everything with us in real time. And we wanted the recording to actually reflect that, so we used like a combination of lapel mics and 360 ambient mics. So we're trying to be flies on the wall, and just we spent a day in the hypervelocity test lab, and these are real tests that you're going to hear them doing real conversations, unfiltered, the machinery, the buzz of the room, everything unfolding as it was. We didn't, you know, sit down afterward and ask them to explain.

So, you know, we're doing this also with a really small team. For this episode, it's Fernando Morales, and he is our multimedia specialist. He actually has only been at White Sands for two months, three months, something like that? And so, when we recorded this story in September, he had only been here about a month and a half. So, I'm doing the reporting, hosting, writing, kind of shaping that framework, and then he's really bringing the audio side of it to life.

And if we, you know, if we can get people interested in learning more about aerospace, learning more about hypervelocity, whatever topic it is we're covering, you know, we're not here to give a seminar or a lecture. We're here to spark that curiosity. So that's kind of our approach.

Gary Jordan

I am very excited because the approach is a little bit unique, and I do want to like position it for our listenership. You know, we're having this conversation right now just to really couch it. But what we're about to hear is is a very different style. This is the narrative approach. You're going and you're and you're really telling that story. You are narrating it. You're hearing the background noise. And it's called The Gunslingers of White Sands because you're going to hear what sound like gunshots because they're really firing these projectiles to really understand how they interact with with certain materials and things. And of course, you could probably explain it a little bit better than me. But but it's a it's a unique style. You know you have experience of radio you know you and it's and you said Fernando did as well and so between between you guys having that experience and thinking about well what's our approach to audio storytelling going to be you know what were some of your inspirations for this particular style?

Kathryn Martinez

Sure, so initially we had sort of done a pilot episode where we had a traditional sit-down podcast, and after further discussion, we felt that that just couldn't was not the best way to introduce the world to White Sands, because, as you'll hear, even in this episode, there are people. Most of the people who work here now, had never heard of this test site, had never heard of the facility until they actually started working there. So, having a sit-down conversation under, I guess, sort of like the premise that people understand, you know, for Houston We Have a Podcast people understand what Johnson Space Center is, but they don't know they've never heard of White Sands Test Facility, right? So we needed to create a style where we could actually pull people into that world and walk them through with us from basically square one, knowing nothing.

So we were kind of inspired by you know shows like This American Life, that that very classic narrative storytelling approach where you know you do have a host kind of guiding you through. I personally was very inspired by like Louis Theroux taking these you know, kind of weird, wacky worlds and and making them accessible because ultimately accessibility is that's really the name of the game for us. We want to make we want to bring people in. We want to not even bring people in. We want to take this world to people. We want to take this place that people can't normally go, and we want to give them an all-access pass, an all-access look at this as much as we possibly can.

These test personnel don't typically get the spotlight. They're not used to being in the spotlight. They don't particularly care. That's not why they do it. They you know they want to do this for the they're doing this for the greater good of humanity and for the mission, it's always mission first, and so you know these are not people used to being in the public eye at all, and so that's why taking this narrative broadcast approach was really important, so that we could give that authentic look rather than a sit down approach where people are maybe a little out of their natural environment and prefer to do the work, and they're so passionate about the work they do that it's very easy to get them to tell us about what they're doing and share that world with us as they're actually in it and living it.

Gary Jordan

I love it. Part of it is, and you recognize, right? This is this is not a this is not a widely known site. So you're taking the approach, thinking, well, let's introduce the listenership to White Sands. Let's give that overall aspect of what it is.

This specific episode looks at hypervelocity impacts, and like we said, this is series, so we're going to continue to work with you and explore different aspects of the facility. But but this is the introductory episode, and so with that, Kathryn, if you don't mind giving us just a high level of, we're about to explore White Sands. How would you how would you describe it to someone who doesn't really know what this facility is? Where is it? What does it look like? What happens there? Right? What's the introduction to White Sands?

Kathryn Martinez

Sure, so, White Sands fundamentally, it's a hazardous test facility, primarily supporting human spaceflight, and there's just in. Incredible range of expertise out here. Our core capabilities are rocket propulsion, oxygen systems, hypervelocity impact testing, propellants and aerospace fluids, COPVs Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels, flight acceptance testing, spaceflight component services, and then we also have tons of supporting capabilities here. WSTF is really its own little ecosystem. We have our own fire department. We have our own environmental department.

We are we're here in the middle of the desert, so even wildlife safety is deeply ingrained and incorporated into our training out here because we're sharing this space with coyotes, rattlesnakes, road runners- you know, all the critters that we have to coexist with. So it's not the typical NASA that I think a lot of people have in their minds. It's not the crisp suit, skinny tie, Apollo era. There's you know cowboy boots worn in jeans. You know people are people are here operating in in a in a hazardous environment.

And this the spirit of White Sands is- it's almost like this. There's almost an outlaw spirit. You know, we talk about the the name of the episode, The Gunslingers of White Sands, and that was really drawn from the feeling you get when you arrive here. It's almost this frontier outpost. It's this very strange mixture, like simultaneously sci-fi futurism and 1960s minimalism, so it's it's almost uncanny. You're you're out in the middle of nowhere, and in this episode, you'll hear I will take you driving in to the facility with me down the long long access road until you get to the security gate, and even when you get past that, you keep going for several miles. And depending on where you need to go, you may need to access back roads, or I mean, there's it's easy to get lost out here, and you you really are in the middle of nowhere. And I guess the simplest way I could describe it is a very spread out neighborhood with white buildings, and aesthetically the site just hasn't changed much since it opened. But of course, inside these unassuming buildings, this phenomenal advancements in aerospace is taking place.

Gary Jordan

That's fantastic, and I need to go out there myself. The way you're describing it, it sounds fantastic. It reminds me a little bit of when I visit the Kennedy Space Center. It has that sort of same vibe, where it's these long stretches of road, and you need to go to a building, and you're driving for miles and miles. You're like, man, this thing is huge. Definitely something that I think is is worth exploring. And like you said, we're gonna all these different aspects of White Sands. We're going to explore as part of this series. Very very excited.

Today, like you said, you talked about the gunslingers, which is a nod to a little bit of the culture, a little bit of the vibe that's there, but then also the testing itself. And the first test we're going to explore is hyper velocity impact. We're going to get right into it as part of this episode, but give us a little preview of of hypervelocity impact, what it is, why it's important to lead us into this this narrative storytelling that we're just about to hear.

Kathryn Martinez

Sure. So as I mentioned, hypervelocity is one of White Sands', and actually, really, the people here you'll hear them call it WSTF. WSTF: White Sands Test Facility, because of course we love to speak in acronyms. So hypervelocity is one of WSTF's core capabilities, and so the basic problem is you know spacecraft can encounter micrometeoroids and orbital debris. They're moving at these extraordinary velocities, and our team here uses specialized guns called two stage light gas guns to recreate those impacts here on Earth, so that we can understand what happens to spacecraft materials and hardware in those harsh conditions.

Yeah, and so a little bit more too on the the gunslinger thing, in the lab there there are three guns. There's the one inch, the 17 cal, and then the 50 cal, and those are all dependent on the size of of projectiles that are being fired, as you'll hear in the episode. But beneath the 17 caliber trigger, there's actually a sticker of Doc Holliday, you know, Young Guns under underneath the trigger, it's a very yeah on the nose nod to sort of the Wild West culture. It feels like you're in this sort of outlaw environment. I mean, in a metaphorical sense, of course, with just guns and bunkers, and you know the hypervelocity lab. Even comparatively, even though everything else is is so remote. It's the remote hyper velocity test lab, and it is even you know more distant from other buildings here, and even that is its own ecosystem in itself, because it is one of our core capabilities.

So there's a rather large team of engineers, of techs, there are our photographers out there as well.

And so it's a yeah, it's a very it's a it's a warehouse in the middle of the desert. There's really no no fancier way to describe it than that. But you know what happens inside is it's it's mind blowing, honestly. And the speeds, you know, seven kilometers a second, and and that doesn't even reach the Orbital velocities outside of like that's low Earth orbit velocity, so things can be moving even faster than that. And so you'll hear the experts talk about all the all the ins and outs of of those details. But it's it's really phenomenal stuff.

And another interesting thing too about White Sands and just Las Cruces in general is it's that you know we're here in the borderland, so we have a very a very you know big international community. So you'll you'll hear that too. You know several of the engineers in this episode- bilingual, and you'll you'll get to hear from them. And that's a really wonderful like cultural melding that we have here. That's really unique to not just the city of Las Cruces, but our particular NASA site.

Gary Jordan

Fantastic, and I think this is this is fantastic because even as you mentioned the the Hypervelocity Lab, you know we're talking about White Sands, but you say it's it's a building off to the side. So really, we're exploring White Sands, and we're be and we're beginning in this very interesting place. And there's a lot more to explore. Kathryn, I love your style. I'm very happy to work together on this and introduce the site to our audience. This is the first episode in our White Sands series: The Gunslingers of White Sands.

Let's get right into it. Enjoy.

Kathryn Martinez

I'm in a bunker beneath the White Sands Test Facility's remote hypervelocity test lab, asking myself the same question engineer Paula Rodriguez asked when she started two years ago.

Paola Rodriguez

But having a bunker is- it could be like, wow, what is this? Am I gonna die, or you know?

Kathryn Martinez

A valid concern. I wouldn't be the first thing to die in here, but I take my chances and find a seat in the corner beside a small graveyard of beetle shell and lizard skin.

Cozy.

You'd think it was the end of the world. Bare concrete, flickering fluorescent lights, gas masks slung over office chair armrests. If not for the monitors, the closest thing we have to windows, showing a perfectly blue New Mexico sky.

Announcer

Attention, all personnel in the 272 area. The 272 area. is now in red status.

Kathryn Martinez

And then there's that.

Paola Rodriguez

Okay, red status. We use it here in Hyper to notify people that we're doing testing. Pretty much, what it means is that no one can enter, no one can leave.

Kathryn Martinez

Looks like I'm not going anywhere. And Paula assures me there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Paola Rodriguez

The bunker allows allow us to make this hazardous testing and make us feel secure. Overwhelmed, but secure. You know because it's like, oh, what? What is this? This is just in the movies. So it's fun.

Kathryn Martinez

Quite the turnaround from. "Am I gonna die?"

Secure is exactly what we need. In a few seconds, a giant chemical gun is going to fire-a fact nobody seems particularly nervous about. Because for the team at White Sands, it's not the end of the world. Just another day at the office.

Say hello to Alan Davis.

Alan Davis

Hellooo.

Kathryn Martinez

He's a leading expert on hypervelocity, visiting from Johnson Space Center.

Alan Davis

You need a taco. By the way, it's $1.29 now. It's no longer 99 cents. Don't know how I know that.

Kathryn Martinez

And while Alan may not be able to explain his knowledge of fast food taco inflation, he can tell you a thing or two about:

Alan Davis

Rocket sciences, man! You know, meteoroid material has a, you know, like high and low densities ratio. Meteoroid material can be a bit rocky.

Kathryn Martinez

But if you're like the rest of us, like me, none of this probably makes much sense yet.

Chances are you've never even heard of the White Sands test facility, which is fine. Neither had most of the people who work here.

Probably helps to know where here is. Head eastbound down U.S. Route 70, leaving behind Las Cruces, a dusty college town and retirement community in southern New Mexico, with little to suggest what's tucked away in the desert beyond. On the outskirts, the jagged Organ Mountains frame a smattering of roadside outposts. Keep driving past the odd auto shop or cafe. Hard to tell if any of them are actually still in business until even those disappear. Exit at NASA Road, a long stretch of asphalt with the 360 view of absolutely nothing. A few miles of highway hypnosis later, it's time to badge in at the security gate. Without the proper credentials, this is where the drive ends.

Security Guard

Good morning.

Kathryn Martinez

Fortunately, mine check out, and I'm waved through, moving off the main drag and onto a network of winding gravel back roads. And that's when I see it-a plain building against the hills. On the roof, a lone orange windsock flutters in the afternoon breeze, like a sandcastle someone stuck a flag in. This somehow is the remote hypervelocity test lab. They aren't kidding about the remote part. From the outside, it doesn't look like much. Inside-

Paola Rodriguez

Pretty unique. I mean, even though the lab is like a big warehouse, you can say that.

Kathryn Martinez

Okay, so the inside isn't much to look at either. It's a warehouse with giant metal tubes. But those tubes-they're two-stage light gas guns, devices used to simulate the impact of micrometeoroids and orbital debris.

Paola Rodriguez

We have three here in our lab:

Kathryn Martinez

The .17 caliber, the .50 caliber, and the one inch, whose range extends beyond the building. But that's not on today's agenda.

Paola Rodriguez

I mean, probably people are familiar with the regular guns, but when you talk about two-stage light gas guns, it's like, what is that?

Kathryn Martinez

Yeah, what is that? Paola's read my mind.

Paola Rodriguez

Pretty much a system that divides in two. Right?

Kathryn Martinez

Sounds easy enough.

Daniel Rodriguez

The two-stage light gas gun principles introduce an intermediate high-pressure compression stage.

Kathryn Martinez

Uh… Nevermind.

Daniel Rodriguez

It uses a piston stage to compress a low molecular…

Kathryn Martinez

That's Daniel Rodriguez. No relation to Paola, by the way. He's a jack of all trades engineer.

Daniel Rodriguez

Combusting thermite… underground coal gasification… decomposing ammonia brain to produce hydrogen.

Kathryn Martinez

With a resume that can make a sci-fi supervillain jealous.

Daniel Rodriguez

Induction heaters… very high voltage stuff… designing magnetic fields… laser ignition systems…

Kathryn Martinez

Even with that toolkit, hypervelocity doesn't just… come naturally.

Daniel Rodriguez

Obviously, like hyper used my my my background, but at the same time, I had to learn a lot new stuff. You know, because hypervelocity is very specialized.

Kathryn Martinez

Just how specialized?

Daniel Rodriguez

I would say like 50 people, less than 100, to be honest. Obviously, there's a lot of people working around it, but people who truly understand the technology at a high level, I think I think very few people in the world.

Kathryn Martinez

Daniel is one of them.

Daniel Rodriguez

Yeah. So basically, here we have two-stage gas guns. The idea, the concept of these guns is to first you want to remove the atmosphere. We have vacuum pumps that pull the air out, and then we fill the pump tube with hydrogen, which is the lightest gas available. The lighter the gas, the higher the speed of sound you can reach. So, two-stage gas guns tend to use either hydrogen or helium. However, in in our case, you want to go to hydrogen because you can even get higher velocities with hydrogen.

Kathryn Martinez

Those velocities typically land between six and eight kilometers a second, with the .50 cal clocking in at seven kilometers a second.

Daniel Rodriguez

And you also install a burst disc that bursts at a specific static pressure, and that one is fully engineered based on the output velocity that you want to get. And then you compress the hydrogen to really high pressures, and then you will burst the pedal valve, and then that that the gas will decompress like a spring.

Kathryn Martinez

In his ten years at White Sands, Daniel's research on light gas guns has taken him across the world, but around these parts, well, ten years is nothing.

Paola Rodriguez

One of the things that I was surprised-they have been working for a long, a lot of years here, twenty-five years, something like that.

Kathryn Martinez

That would be veteran gunner Dennis Garcia. I find Dennis at a microscope. Brushing something with a sort of tiny toothbrush tool.

Dennis Garcia

Okay, right now I'm inspecting a sabot for the .50 cal gun range.

Kathryn Martinez

A sabot, a secure carrier for the projectile.

Dennis Garcia

I'm looking for cracks on the Lexan or pieces that don't fit together right because we need them to separate correctly after we shoot them,

Kathryn Martinez

It's delicate work. The projectile this sabot will carry is just 1.7 millimeters across, about the width of the tip of a ballpoint pen. Depending on what conditions they're trying to simulate, the projectile can be made from different materials like aluminum alloys or glass. This is where size matters.

Dennis Garcia

If they want a big projectile shot, they go to the one inch, and if they want a medium-sized projectile shot, they do it on the .50 cal, and if they have a small projectile, they go ahead and do that on the .17 cal. So it all matters of the size of projectile that we're requested to shoot.

Kathryn Martinez

I think I'm starting to understand.

First:

Dennis Garcia

It all starts out with a powder charge at the breech of a what's called the pump tube, where hydrogen gas is held.

Kathryn Martinez

And then:

Dennis Garcia

The projectile is released from that sudden pressure burst of pressure. So that's the second stage of the gun.

I've always loved science, especially when I learned about the space shuttle. I would build models of the shuttle, never dreaming that I would actually be doing testing for the shuttle. It's a it's a dream come true.

Kathryn Martinez

All this time, Dennis hasn't lost sight of that bigger picture.

Dennis Garcia

You can get into a mind frame where where you're doing it, and then you're not thinking of the end product of what you're doing, meaning how important it is to do this testing.

Kathryn Martinez

And the stakes are only getting higher.

Daniel Rodriguez

Spacecraft they use maneuvers to try to avoid overall debris impact, but because overall debris keeps growing every year, it is predicted that at one point in time we're gonna, they're gonna run out of maneuvers, and the probability of spacecraft being impacted by orbital debris is gonna reach one hundred percent.

Kathryn Martinez

In short:

Paola Rodriguez

Biggest dumpster that we have here on Earth is space right now.

Kathryn Martinez

And in that floating junkyard full of the leftovers of human spaceflight, even a fleck of paint can rip through hardware.

Today's testing will recreate what happens when orbital debris collides with a spacecraft. At seven kilometers a second, you could travel from Houston to Las Cruces in about three minutes.

Faster than a speeding bullet.

Daniel Rodriguez

This projectiles will traveling like five times faster than a bullet.

Alan Davis

The projectiles aren't moving like a bullet. They're moving so much faster. They're almost I want to say plastic?

Kathryn Martinez

A lot faster.

Alan Davis

Well, the impact, depending on what it's impacting and what the impactor is, kind of speaks to how it shocks when it hits and the mechanics of, of what the shield can do.

Daniel Rodriguez

And we've shot like bulletproof vests, and at seven kilometers per second, and they don't even work.

Kathryn Martinez

That's the challenge: shielding missions from the unthinkable. So in the lab, how do you spot a threat moving that fast?

That's Art Pardo's job, the electronic specialist behind the lens of three ultra high-speed cameras.

Art Pardo

So we have cameras that are able to record at 200 million frames a second. We have others that are 10 million frames a second, and we have others that are 1.3 million frames a second.

Kathryn Martinez

They're all trained on Old Blue, the 50 caliber, a massive blue cylinder with a submarine-looking hatch at one end. Art tells me some of its parts were repurposed. In a past life, Old Blue was dough-mixing equipment at a bakery factory.

As for Art, he's managed to stay in one piece. He's been here for 20 years.

Art Pardo

Any any any any program that that that involves NASA, we had a hand in it. Of course, we do a lot of testing even before the mission is starts. So, like we're working on future missions right now.

Kathryn Martinez

Not as long as Dennis, but long enough to see a lot change.

Art Pardo

It changed from enormously. High speed, for instance, we started with regular IR film with a camera system called a coin camera, which is just basically a laser going through the tank, being the image being being put onto the film by a little beryllium mirror turner at 3,000 RPM. So, from regular, to to digital, to high speed, of course, high speed digital, and then. And then even ultra high speed digital.

Announcer

Attention, all personnel in the 272 area.

Kathryn Martinez

But that sound, the amber warning, has always meant one thing: get to the bunker.

Announcer

The lab area are now in amber status.

Kathryn Martinez

It's a full house down here. The entire test crew, me, my audio guy Fernando, and Alan.

Alan Davis

Hyper velocity. Do you…?

Kathryn Martinez

Who, while we're on the subject of orbital debris, explains to me that hypervelocity isn't hyper enough.

Alan Davis

You know, on orbit, 50 kilometers, 15 kilometers a second, 70 kilometers, depending on, you know, so we could never test as fast as it is on orbit.

Kathryn Martinez

Daniel's working on fixing that.

Daniel Rodriguez

So right now, with the two-stage gas guns, we're pretty much capped at eight kilometers per second. Like Alan was saying, there's orbital debris that travels at higher velocities than that. The problem right now is that a lot of models extrapolate. In extrapolation, there's a risk with extrapolation because you're trying to model realms that haven't been proven by with testing.

So the idea is to develop the technology, which right now we're trying to push for a three-stage gas gun, which is a two-stage with an extra pump tube. So we'll have two, two pump tubes and a barrel. So that's the long-term goal. That's what the aim is right now.

Kathryn Martinez

For now, two stages will have to do.

Announcer

The two seven two area is now in red status.

Dennis Garcia

All right, hit of number 26205. Bit dV. Our target angle is 45 degrees. We're shooting a stainless steel 1.7 millimeter.

Kathryn Martinez

I'm not entirely sure what to expect, so I braced myself.

Dennis Garcia

3… 2…

Kathryn Martinez

The results are nominal, exactly what they're supposed to be. Which, after hours of setup, feels almost anticlimactic. But you see, you have to be very, very good for something so extreme to feel this boring,

Alan Davis

Our colleagues here at White Sands are probably the leading edge of that. They they have a very high success ratio, which we like, very repeatable, which helps with your equation development.

You know, I've I've seen other facilities. I wouldn't say in in a good way. I'd say struggle trying to you know get things to work properly. Folks here have been doing this for 30 plus years now. Gone down and experienced a lot of the bumps in the road, and have you know crossed those bumps.

Kathryn Martinez

I'm amazed, and I'll admit a little relieved, but we're still stuck down here while the techs donning gas masks head upstairs to clear the carcinogenic aftermath of the shot.

Dennis Garcia

You see us put these masks on. Hold your breath.

Kathryn Martinez

We're given the green light.

Announcer

The gun lab and 272 area are now in green status.

Kathryn Martinez

Literally, I've made it out alive, which everyone here will tell you was always the plan. At the hypervelocity lab, safety comes before anything else.

Art Pardo

Everything we we do is is in a safe manner. Our safety documents built into our procedures, so so we we're able to maintain the same level of safety every time we do the shop. We we do we do it the same way.

Kathryn Martinez

It's part of the reputation White Sands has been building since 1963, when the facility was established to support the Apollo program. 30 years later, in 1993, the Hypervelocity Test Lab was added to the site.

Dennis Garcia

Aerospace-it's highly known because of the testing that we do here. We're getting a lot of recognition.

Kathryn Martinez

Among those taking notice? Some pretty high-profile names.

Jared Isaacman

Thank you very much for the question. This is this is a subject that I'm pretty passionate about…

Kathryn Martinez

That's NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman speaking during his first confirmation hearing. In 2022 Isaacman came to this very lab where the team tested extravehicular suit materials for his Polaris Dawn spacewalk.

Jared Isaacman

I had an opportunity to visit the the NASA facility and see what a one and two millimeter piece of aluminum does at near orbital velocities, and I can tell you what it penetrates through is pretty- It's it's it's eye opening to say the least.

Kathryn Martinez

And then it hits me: this is real. There are people in space right now getting ready to go, whose lives depend in part on the work happening here, work being done by people whose names the world may never know, and that's okay with them.

Daniel Rodriguez

It's work that we do and has value to humanity, and that's that's something that I feel really proud of, and I'm pretty sure all the people in here in this lab feels proud about that too.

Paola Rodriguez

Every job is important. And every job matters, but but here, like having a mission and want to help the future per se, it's it's really cool.

Kathryn Martinez

Later that afternoon, we're gearing up for a test on the fastest gun in the lab, .17 caliber. There's no bunker, just a yellow box painted on the concrete marking the safe zone, and it's not Dennis at the trigger this time.

Dennis Garcia

Try to pass that along as much as I can. the The knowledge of the years that I've been here, and to make things easier for the next generation of gunners that come along.

Kathryn Martinez

It's Shane, a young gunner who'd rather let the .17 cal do the talking. Just beside his finger, Doc Holliday stares out from a sticker. Underneath him, two words: "Say when."

Alan's contributions aren't always strictly scientific. He also provides the dad jokes.

Alan Davis

I want to raise, you know, I deserve more.

Kathryn Martinez

Which, makes sense.

Dennis Garcia

I don't know if it's a joke, but we actually spend more time together than we do our own family, it seems like. and a lot of times I think that's true.

Kathryn Martinez

Art agrees.

Art Pardo

We have a good family atmosphere. We have our own family issues sometimes, but we resolve them and we move on and we get the work done. I guess I can be considered a big brother because I've been here one of one of the people has been here the longest.

Kathryn Martinez

In this family, everyone does their part.

Daniel Rodriguez

My style is more like leading by example, so I I try to do the best job possible that I can do from my side, so that hopefully other people see that and get inspired to try to do a good job.

Kathryn Martinez

After spending a day with some of NASA's brightest minds, I'm feeling pretty inspired myself.

Paola Rodriguez

Can you ask me the question and then I can answer to you because then my brain will-

Kathryn Martinez

Sitting with Paola, it's hard to believe that not long ago she wondered whether she even belonged in this strange place she now calls home.

"It can be a little intimidating," she says. "You can start to question yourself."

Paola will tell you she's nothing special.

Paola Rodriguez

No me considero nada especial.

Kathryn Martinez

Which I can tell you flat out isn't true. You have to be at least a little extraordinary to end up in the White Sands Hypervelocity Lab.

Paola Rodriguez

Creo que si yo puede los demás pueden ni lo digo con todo el la humildad posible.

Kathryn Martinez

She says if she can do it, other people can too, which is a lovely thought. I'm not sure it applies to me.

Kathryn Martinez

Thanks for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed this first episode from our team at White Sands.

There's still more to come in the White Sands series. Stay tuned for our second episode, Beyond the Spark: The Oxygen Team Protecting Spaceflight, coming out next month, December 2026. In the meantime, you can explore more capabilities and stories about White Sands at NASA.gov/White-Sands-Test-Facility.

The full collection of Houston We Have a Podcast episodes and all the other wonderful NASA podcasts can be found at nasa.gov/podcasts.

You can check out the NASA Johnson Space Center on Facebook, X, and Instagram. If you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes, email [email protected].

The interview that started this episode was recorded October 7, 2026. The narrative portion was recorded and produced in September 2026.

This episode of the White Sands series was produced and hosted by me, Kathryn Martinez. Audio engineering was done by multimedia specialist Fernando Morales. A very special thanks to Laura Lozada and Anthony Quitario from the White Sands Publications team for all their support.

Houston We Have a Podcast is produced by Dane Turner. Audio engineers are Will Flato and Daniel Tohill. Social media is managed by Leah Cheshier and Kelcie Howren. Houston We Have a Podcast was created and is supervised by Gary Jordan.

Let the team know what you think of their podcast by giving them a rating and feedback on whatever platform you're listening on.

Houston We Have a Podcast will be back next week.

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