WORKING FOR NASA
(OR HOW I
LEARNED TO LOVE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING)
Senior Mechanical Designer
Key responsibilities-
Design of various Spacecraft, Balloon,
and Sounding Rocket hardware along with the ground support equipment (GSE),
in-house test equipment including high vacuum chambers and equipment, particle accelerator
adapter hardware, and field experiments.
Workgroup-
The Laboratory for High Energy
Astrophysics, Code 660 at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland
I spent 39 years at the Goddard Space Flight Center's Laboratory
for High Energy Astrophysics. From the day I arrived as a 21 year old, wet
behind the ears, "youngster" it was one of the best jobs anyone
interested in the Space Program could want. My boss, Adam Thompson, weaned me
away from the daily grind of the electronics drawings I was hired to draft and
introduced me to mechanical design. As a person with no college experience and
no training in engineering, it was not the easiest of concepts to get into.
Obviously I adjusted to it and went on to have a career involving the design/fabrication/assembly/integration
of mechanical components on over 50 flight programs. They included the
following:
The
OGO series, OGO-B, D, E and F
IMP-F,
G, H. AND I
PIONEER-10
AND 11
HELIOS-1
AND 2
ARIEL-5 OSO-I
VOYAGER-1 AND 2
ISEE-3
(later renamed ICE)
WIND/ELITE
INSTRUMENT
ASTRO-1
SHUTTLE (BBXRT X-RAY MIRRORS AND MOTORIZED VALVE)
ASTRO-D
(ASCA) * ASTRO-E
MOXE
(Russian)
SWIFT
BURST ALERT TELESCOPE (BAT)
GAMMA
RAY IMAGING SPECTROMETER BALLOON (GRIS)
A
NUMBER OF COSMIC RAY AND X-RAY BALLOON PAYLOADS
SOUNDING
ROCKET EXPERIMENTS INCLUDING THE SN1987A SUPERNOVA CAMPAIGN
THE
RAPIDLY MOVING TELESCOPE (RMT) AT KITT PEAK
THE
X-RAY CALIBRATION FACILITY DESIGN USED BY THE LHEA FOR X-RAY DETECTORS
In addition to flight hardware I was involved in the design of
vacuum systems using all types of seals both metallic and nonmetallic, feedthru
flanges, valves, accelerator components, and pumps. GSE hardware included dolly
design to move spacecraft and balloon hardware around, shipping cases shock
mounted internally or padded, panel design for electrical test racks, test
chambers, flight vibration test adapters and so on.
My original goal before I went to Goddard was to be a commercial
artist but I took a job as a draftsman to get my foot in a companies' door and
ended up with a life long career I never dreamed of. I started as a contractor
working on site and was converted to federal civil service in April 1969. I
retired from NASA in October, 1997.
Of all the flight projects I designed hardware for the ones that
mean the most to me are the Pioneer 10,11 and Voyager 1,2 spacecraft. The
Cosmic Ray Telescopes I designed for our Laboratory are leaving our solar system
so in a sense a part of me is going with them into interstellar space perhaps
to be retrieved by some alien race thousands of years from now.
I went to work for Swales Aerospace, Inc. in Beltsville, Maryland
as a senior mechanical designer involved with the MIDEX project SWIFT doing the
Burst Array Telescope (BAT) CZT detectors and electronics enclosures design.
The work was being done for NASA on contract so I was still working for
NASA. Full circle...from contractor to contractor. In actuality, I was back
working in the very office I left in 1997,working for the same people. I retired permanently from Swales AND Goddard in
December 2002.
Finally!!!!! Time to work on MY interests!
CB245 Messier images
(M1 to M110)
CB245 NGC and IC images
(Galaxies, Planetaries, Nebulas and Clusters)
The Original Dogpatch Observatory
in Greensboro, Md.
The New Dogpatch II Observatory
in Easton, Md.
ST-8XE Images with the Nexstar 11
Links
(Astronomy, Electronics Suppliers, Cookbook sites, Software, etc.)
Updated
Wednesday, Friday, November 07, 2003