Clayton Turner holds out his hand and offers up a red pill and a blue pill.
Actually, it’s a red jelly bean and a blue jelly bean — a nod to the dystopian sci-fi film “The Matrix.”
In the movie, the protagonist is given a choice: Swallow the blue pill and stay in copper-top ignorance. Or swallow the red pill and discover harsh reality and a world that needs to be rescued and rebuilt.
Turner, recently tapped to lead NASA Langley Research Center, likes the analogy for the space agency.
“The agency going forward will be different,” said Turner. “We need to leverage and learn. … You could take the blue pill and stay with what we’ve done in the past and everything’s fine and I feel good, but what you discover is I’m not really of any value.”
“Or you could take the red pill. The red pill says there’s a bright, sunshine, wonderful world at the end, but, guess what? It’s really, really hard to get there. This isn’t easy,” he said, holding up the red jelly bean. “But this is the one you want to work to.”
Turner likes to use those jelly beans — as well as posters, cartoons, NASA swag, whatever it takes — to illustrate his frequent talks to the public and to school kids.
“Part of being an introvert and an engineer is you come up with lots of props and tools,” he said.
If passion alone were a tool, Turner swings a big one. When he talks about the center and his nearly 30 years there in an assortment of engineering and leadership roles, he’s like a preacher spreading the gospel or a motivational speaker urging an audience to self-actualize.
On a white board in his office are inspirational quotes mixed with reality checks — “Hard things are hard,” “We are always living in exponential times,” and his favorite: “To be in the service of others with people you respect, what more could you ask for?”
“Our fear,” NASA Langley News Chief April Phillips said with a smile, “is that Oprah’s going to get ahold of him, take him away and make him a life coach.”
But there’s more that sets Turner apart from his predecessors. He is the first black director ever chosen to lead NASA’s oldest center. He’s also the third black director of any NASA center, after Isaac Gillam IV (Armstrong Flight Research Center, 1978-1981) and Woodrow Whitlow Jr. (Glenn Research Center, 2005-2010).
For Langley atmospheric scientist and deputy space grant manager Erica Alston, his promotion from deputy director is an epiphany.
“I felt like I felt about Obama,” said Alston, 38. “I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime.
“When Clayton got that deputy position, I was like, wow, this is fantastic, too bad he’s never going to go any higher. I just didn’t think Langley would push the envelope that far. And I am so pleasantly surprised that Langley saw the talent and the commitment that Clayton has shown this agency and rewarded him with that position.”
Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s associate administrator in D.C., said he could see during his years at Langley that Turner was becoming a leader.
“First, he had the ability to take complex and challenging problems and break them down and organize them in a way that the people working with him and for him could be successful,” Jurczyk said. “The second thing is, he’s just a great team-builder.”
Slim and trim in a blue suit, striped tie and NASA lapel pin, Turner looks a decade younger than his 62 years. He gestures wide and often and earnestly. When he tells a story about a shy child blossoming at a NASA science event, he chokes up.
But he takes his trailblazing in stride.
“(NASA) pictures from our history, of people working in 1930 and 1940, they’re not diverse,” Turner concedes. “I say, well, we have no time machine. Now, if in 50 or 100 years there’s the same set of pictures, then shame on us. And those weren’t all people doing bad — that was the world they lived in.
“Firsts are great to celebrate. I think it’s an important thing. But the measure of success should be, what have I changed and what happens later to where it’s not the first?
“Celebrate it. Now let’s go to work.”
Turner was born right next to NASA Langley, at Langley Air Force Base, where his father was stationed. When he was 5, his family moved to Rochester, N.Y.
His education and career paths are decidedly nontraditional. As a student, he said, he lacked the “appropriate motivation and energy and drive.” He even failed geometry. His college friends were going into engineering and he thought he’d give it a go, but ended up dropping out and joining the Army. There, he met his wife, and today they have two grown sons.
After the Army, Turner worked for 10 years as a recording engineer in a music studio in Rochester. Then he went back to college and got his engineering degree in 1990.
Soon he was a design engineer at NASA Langley. Over time, he worked on a number of Earth science missions that monitor and study the atmosphere and on demonstration rockets that were precursors to the SLS boosters under development to launch American astronauts into space from U.S. soil.
With encouragement from mentors and colleagues, he began taking on leadership roles — head of the engineering directorate, associate center directory, deputy director.
He’s quick to note he didn’t get every position he applied for. But every short-term disappointment, every change in trajectory, put him on the path to lead the research center. He formally assumes the directorship on Oct. 1.
“His story arc, it resonates with anybody, regardless of their race,” said Alston. “But I think it resonates deeply with minorities. … It matters to see yourself represented.”
NASA has set its sights on returning to the moon by 2024 — the Artemis program — to build a sustainable presence, then sending a crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s. It’s working with industry and other partners to make it happen. Turner sees part of his new job as facilitating such partnerships.
Langley has important roles in the moon and Mars programs, along with developing low-boom airplane technologies to enable overland supersonic flight, personal air vehicles and electric-powered aircraft. It continues its Earth science research.
“We will bring our expertise and value to the table, and that will make this greater good happen,” said Turner. “And we have to make sure we transform our mindset — are open to that.”
Likewise, he wants to transform the center’s workforce to make it more diverse. According to NASA Langley, about 20 percent of its roughly 1,400 civil employees are minority.
Alston said greater diversity is long overdue.
“The number of African Americans here at NASA Langley really has been stagnant since I first came here 15 years ago,” Alston said. “It hasn’t shifted much.”
Jurczyk said NASA and NASA Langley have been working for a decade or more to hire a more diverse workforce to grow into senior leaders.
Turner himself seeks out opportunities to inspire and engage “the young ones,” coaching youth football and volunteering to tutor students in science and math. In his office is a poster of a 4-year-old as a reminder of the long game.
“That might be the 4-year-old that helps us get to Mars in two weeks instead of eight months,” Turner said. “That might be the 4-year-old that figures out how we tackle the radiation challenge.”
The future of NASA depends on reaching the Artemis generation, vying with private space companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic with their deep pockets and flash-bang.
“The challenge is, it’s not going to be fixed next Tuesday or the next election cycle,” Turner said. “It’s generational. But if we stick with it and stay to it, we will see the world we want to see. But we all have to be all in. We can’t just say, ‘Teachers make magic.’ It’s all of us, all in.
“From the first day I was here till today, I still get excited when I talk about what I do. I can’t believe we get to do what we get to do — reach for new heights to reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind.”
Tamara Dietrich, 757-247-7892, tdietrich@dailypress.com
