Career experiences of an Apollo-era student

Having grown up in Midland, Texas, in June of 1967 I joined the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston as a Purdue co-op student. The Apollo capsule fire on the launch pad had just occurred and the race to the Moon was in full swing. In 38 years with NASA since I've held engineering, program and institutional management, and policy positions and was stationed at the Johnson Space Center, the Stennis Space Center, and at NASA Headquarters in Washington. I retired from NASA in 2005 and am now a VP with Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) in Houston. I am also a consultant to museums and themed attractions on space exploration and am President of the American Astronautical Society.   

Looking back on my career, I am truly astounded by, and very thankful for, the range of amazing experiences that NASA afforded me:

• Learning human spaceflight directly from the people who invented it in America - Max Faget, Deke Slayton, Chris Kraft, Bob Thompson, and so many others.
• Being detained at the Apollo 11 launch pad for hours the afternoon before lift-off, and then seeing it launch the next day for the first human landing on the Moon.
• Being on the start-up teams for the Space Shuttle, Space Station, and Lunar-Mars Exploration programs in, respectively, 1969 as a co-op student, 1983 as a lead engineer, and 1989 as the program manager.
• Inspecting the fueled Space Shuttle on the launch pad several hours before lift-off, and sitting in Columbia's cockpit several hours after it returned from space on STS-2.
• Seeing the Space Shuttle booster staging system work flawlessly on STS-1 after leading its design, development, test and evaluation.
• Presenting Lunar-Mars exploration plans to the Vice President at the White House.
• Seeing NASA reorganize around the customer-focused Strategic Enterprise concept that I had invented, especially the Human Exploration and Development of Space Enterprise.
• Being a member of the Shuttle Mission Management Team on console in the Launch Control Firing Room, and seeing over 20 Shuttle launches.
• Negotiating partnership agreements for Space Station and Mars exploration with Europe, Japan, Canada and Russia. 
• Experiencing weightlessness in a test series on the KC-135 zero-g aircraft. 
• Delivering a keynote address at the 3rd United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna.

I wish for you and your generation amazing contributions to, and experiences in, the exploration and development of space. They will be different than mine, and I can't wait to see what they are.   

Notes From An Aerospace Engineer

This note was written by Michael Zedd.

I am a volunteer officer of the American Astronautical Society (AAS).  Through my participation in the affairs of the society, I learned more about our association with SEDS.  My venture to strengthen the bonds between our organizations begins by participating in this blog.

Kirk asked me to write a few paragraphs about where I work and what I do.

In early July 2007 I achieved 25 years with the same employer:  the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.  I have always been an analyst within the spacecraft department.  I followed a technical path, with a short stint as a technical manager.

I chose to work here because an engineer can participate in the same project from cradle to grave:  the proposal, the design, the analysis, the build, the testing, the launch preparation, and the flight operations of spacecraft.  I have participated in all portions of this list for several spacecraft and some portions for other spacecraft.

My interests are in designing orbits to accomplish the mission goals, maneuver planning to transfer the spacecraft from rocket injection to mission orbit, the flight operations to specify the burn attitude and duration, and the orbit determination to figure out where the previous burns placed us before retargeting the remaining burn(s).

The Naval Research Laboratory calls itself the corporate research laboratory for the Navy.  There are many science and engineering specialists supporting the fleet, the Department of Defense, and other national organizations.

I am an active member of the AAS and lifetime member at the Associate Fellow grade of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

By the way, in 2003 I was accepted into the docent training program for the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy National Air & Space Museum located about 5 miles south of the Dulles Airport terminal.  I lead tours of the museum every other Sunday.  All docents for all Smithsonian museums are volunteers.