Christopher E. Gerty

Christopher E. Gerty (born October 19, 1975) is an American aerospace engineer who worked on NASA's Constellation Program. Gerty is an advocate of NASA's Open Government Initiative and is a leading voice on the concept of participatory exploration and collaboration. He has fifteen years of experience working on complex, technology-intense projects at NASA. Gerty served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 13 (NEEMO 13) crew.

Gerty's interest in spaceflight and NASA began at Gatelot Elementary in Lake Ronkonkoma, New York. His fifth-grade teacher led his class through the investigation of the Challenger accident in 1986. Gerty's class learned not only about the causes of the accident, but what the Space Shuttle did and why humans traveled in space. To the ten-year-old Gerty, spaceflight seemed like a necessary and noble thing for humans to do, even if there were some risks. In that position he taught astronauts how to keep themselves alive and comfortable enough to perform their tasks while doing a spacewalk, or EVA. As part of this job he performed a simulated EVA in a NASA spacesuit at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. After "spacewalking" underwater, he had a new appreciation for the difficulty of the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) and the skills of the astronauts who performed ISS construction. Gerty wrote:

Spacewalks are very analogous to diving in the ocean. In both situations you need a supply of oxygen to breathe, relative control of pressure and temperature, a means of moving around in a three-dimensional environment, and protection from the hazards ... The results [of NEEMO 13] will be used to make us more prepared when it is time to put a few more footprints and tire tracks on the moon, and eventually realize the goal of extending the human race to other planets!