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Thursday August 30, 2007
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.
Posted by craigmk [General] ( August 30, 2007 10:56 PM ) Permalink
What do you mean "detained" at the launch pad? Because you were working on the pad? Because of the delays just had you sitting there watching? Something else?
(quite an awesome career! what else do you want to contribute now?)
Posted by Young fan on September 10, 2007 at 12:10 PM EDT #
In 1969 I was a co-op student at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. At MSC a NASA badge would allow a car and any occupants on site. I assummed that it would be the same at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), so I suggested that my high school best friend and I go to Florida for the Apollo 11 launch. We got to the gate at KSC and the guard said you had to have a NASA badge to get on site. We could see the Saturn V off in the distance, so my friend said why don't you see how far you can get with your badge and I'll wait here. We both thought that I would be back soon. I entered KSC and started driving toward the Saturn V in the distance. To my amazement my badge got me through several guard gates until I was literally right at the launch pad. This was the afternoon before launch.
Buses with VIP's were stopping near where I was parked and people were leaning out the windows taking pictures, but none were allowed to get off. I got my camera and got out of the car and starting taking pictures, absolutely amazed by the view, and thought nothing of it.
Almost immediately a guard tapped me on the shoulder and asked who I was, and what I was doing. I showed him my NASA badge with great confidence, it having gotten me this far. He instucted me to follow him to the guard skack literally at the base of the pad, and informed me that NASA employees weren't allowed to have cameras in sensitive areas. They trusted us to be there, but not to know what we couldn't photograph. I ended up staying at the guard shack for several hours as he made a number of futile calls to his superiors to find out what to do with me. I couldn't believe my luck - arrested and forced to sit for hours right under the Apollo 11 Saturn V. He finally gave up calling and said "get out of here and don't ever come back." And I didn't until I led the Space Shuttle launch assessment team that went to the pad several hours before launch.
I finally got back to the gate to pick up my frind and tell him all that happened. He wasn't too mad. Years later I took him out to the pad the day before a Shuttle launch and we climbed around and he got to look in the open Orbiter hatch. A fitting reward for his patience years earlier.
As to a next accomplishment, I have been working for some time to help the NASA human spaceflight community understand the real basis of sustainabilty, value experienced by external customers. Since Apollo our community has operated under the very mistaken impression that value only has to be claimed - hence the emphasis on better communication. In fact, value has to be based on research and then has to actually be built into programs. They must be shaped to deliver it.
Posted by 140.239.102.222 on September 10, 2007 at 09:42 PM EDT #