BROOKSVILLE — The little boy had a question for the NASA engineer, and it wasn’t about space, science, the moon or astronomy.
“What’s an internship?”
For a moment, James Egbert’s Career Day presentation at Chocachatti Elementary School became a vocabulary lesson. Egbert, 33, a Chocachatti graduate from the Class of 2004, was describing his educational path when the question stopped him. He didn’t miss a beat.
An internship, he explained, is a job a student can hold while still in school. He was a NASA intern himself, he said, and it can lead to a full-time job with the agency.
“It’s a really good way to gain experience and knowledge, and work at a company,” he said. “Instead of just taking classes, you’re participating and contributing to the company or, in my case, NASA.”
Then it was back to the work he’s doing now.
Egbert, who lives in Orlando and works at Cape Canaveral, held the attention of two groups of students in Christine Wilkerson’s fifth grade classroom for more than a half-hour each. He went through photos, including one of the Vehicle Assembly Building near his office, and asked the students what they already knew.
“Has anybody here heard of NASA?” Every hand went up. “Has anyone here heard of Artemis?” Every hand again.
“I work at NASA, and I support the Artemis program,” he said. “I built the ground systems that support the rocket.”
Most of the 10- and 11-year-olds had watched the recent launch of Artemis II on television or online. A few had stepped outside to watch the rocket climb into the sky, visible from Spring Hill.
Egbert’s video walked the students through the mission: the crew boarding the Integrity spacecraft, the Space Launch System lifting off, the astronauts working in space, photographs of Earth and the moon, and the parachutes opening over the ocean for splashdown.
“I saw that at my grandma’s house with my grandma,” one student said. Another said he had seen it on the news and that it was a record.
“That was the furthest people have ever been from Earth, ever,” Egbert said.
‘Very smart, very bright’
Watching from the side of the classroom was Egbert’s mother, Susan King, a math teacher at West Hernando Middle School.
“He was the kid that, you know how kids take things apart and don’t put them back together?” she said. “He took them apart and put them back together. Everything.”
He collected rocks. He made up songs. He spent most of his time outside.
“Always very smart, very bright,” King said. He has always loved science and reading, she added, and he loves his job and the people he works with.
One of the photos Egbert showed was of him and his colleagues at Halloween, all dressed in white shirts, black pants and black ties.
“The whole group came in dressed like 1960s engineers,” he said.
Back to school
It was Egbert’s first visit to Chocachatti as an adult, and the first time he had ever driven a car onto the campus. Being there brought back memories, he said, and he showed a school photo from his time as a student. He had been class president in third grade.
“That’s me, in 2000, when I was here,” he said. “I took part in the MicroSociety, which I absolutely loved. I have really good memories from being here.”
Other photos showed him at the top of the rocket gantry, inside the Vehicle Assembly Building and standing next to the Integrity capsule after its return to Earth. One morning, he said, he arrived at work just as a rocket was lifting off and captured the contrail with his phone.
He also brought some of the hardware he’s working on. Egbert is on the team building the Infrastructure Pilot Excavator, a rover designed to move soil on the lunar surface — flattening landing zones and piling up berms so that arriving spacecraft don’t blast debris into nearby habitation modules.
These missions take years to plan and design, he said. The excavator he’s helping build could be on the moon in 2029.
NASA needs more than engineers, he told the students. The agency also hires police officers, firefighters, crane operators and plumbers, among others. After Chocachatti, he attended West Hernando Middle School, Central High School and Pasco-Hernando State College before earning a degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Central Florida. But there are many routes to good jobs, he said.
Career Day also featured presenters from Hernando County Fire Rescue and the Sheriff’s Office.
Fun at school
Egbert fielded questions on UFOs, space probes, space telescopes and future moon missions. At the end, he gathered the students up front for science experiments and handed out Artemis stickers and other goodies.
Benjamin Garcia, 10, said he wants to be an astronaut. So does Joshua McCall, 10, who peppered Egbert with questions. “I liked it,” he said.
Gabriel Wilson, 11, said he wants to be an engineer. Gianna Pagano, 11, said, “It’s cool. I really liked it. I really liked seeing the rocket and what kind of jobs he did.”
Wilkerson, the teacher, was impressed too.
“I thought it was outstanding, very informative and engaging,” she said. “They had outstanding questions. I was very impressed. Lots of good thinking happening.”
Egbert said he enjoys the outreach work as much as the engineering.
“It’s a dream job,” he said. “It’s absolutely wonderful. It’s one of those, I think they call it ‘a halo job,’ where it’s just the one you look up to and you always shoot for.”
He has crossed paths with some of the figures from the Apollo era at the space center’s building dedicated to Saturn V, including Buzz Aldrin.
Leaving the school with his mother, Egbert took another look around.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “It’s cool to be back.”