When I first ended up at Rocketdyne (it was serendipity, not a conscious move) I was gobsmacked knowing I was working on the Space Shuttle Main Engine program, with bonafide rocket scientists and engineers. It was 1987, almost exactly one year since Challenger exploded and I was working on the FMEA/CIL (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis/Critical Items List) in anticipation of the shuttle’s return to flight. There were frequent dead times while I waited for an engineer/scientist to bring me their work so I could input it into the format we were using to present the information.
I was just going through a folder I found stashed away that’s chock full of some of the things I created back then while I was bored. Keep in mind we only had dot matrix printers and early IBM PCs. I’m pretty sure we were using IBM XTs running Intel 8088 processors. Anyway, here’s one of the things I put together to assuage my boredom back then.
I found this piece of historical info about the—shall we call it “first half”—of the Shuttle program in one of my collections of “stuff.” Note that it ends with the Challenger disaster, which happened almost a year to the day before I was hired in (initially as a temp) at Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne division, working on the document that would prepare the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) for the return to flight on September 29, 1988. Note also, as engineers are wont to do, the word “Incident” is misspelled at the bottom of the sheet. Color me unsurprised. OV-105 (Orbiter Endeavour) is also not on the list at the very bottom of the page.
I don’t imagine this will be terribly interesting to anyone who isn’t a bit of a human space flight geek like me but, as I have said recently, I need to memorialize some of the things I’ve kept over the years. They may not be of value to anyone but me—hell . . . they may not even be of value to me—but I want to get them scanned or reproduced and put out into the aether, for my sanity and possible future use.
Since “announcing” my nascent book project the other day, I have communicated with four people who were part of the action back in the time I am writing about. One of them reached out and reminded me of some of the things we were involved in that had yet to cross my mind. Two of them I had been in touch with previously and they just happened to answer emails I sent out a couple of days ago. One I called today to give him a heads-up.
Of these four, two are Vietnam veterans; one an Army Engineer, the other an RTO with an Army LRRP team. They both played major roles in my life back then, as their opposition to the war they had fought in strengthened both my belief it was wrong and my resolve to do something to end it. I have a hard time putting into words just how much their friendship meant to me, but I’m going to try.
Right now I’m working on an Introduction; an attempt to explain what I want to accomplish in the body of the book. This is all kind of new to me. Not entirely, as I’ve had the honor and experience of working with a few other people (as an editor or proofreader) on books they’ve written. It’s just that I’ve never done the actual writing before and those books were business books (and a couple of Zombie Apocalypse novels). I’m hoping once I get going a lot of it will just come pouring out. Those were eventful times.
Systems Savvy 