Crawford Alumni Center

I worked for NASA from 1966-2000. My degree is in electrical engineering and I worked in that engineering field at MSFC and at KSC for my first 8 years in the test area designing and operating test circuits for the firing of the J-2 engines used on the Saturn 5 second and third stages. There my work was in the design of firing room circuits and also I was the electrical panel operation engineer during firings.

I was sent to KSC for 6 months where I participated in the electrical design and checkout of Firing room 2. I later worked two years testing flight hardware in vibration and sound environments they would realize during flight. I was both a test designer and operator. In that area.

Later after the Saturn program finished, a Solid Rocket design group was started. I was selected to be a member of it. This group helped to pick a major contractor to build the Solid Rocket boosters for the shuttle. This was new work at MSFC since all flight motors had been liquid before. In the beginning, I worked strictly with all electrical functions of the booster but the electrical work was eventually due to protocol, given to another lab. After that, I worked mostly SRM nozzle design helping design, test and evaluate the booster nozzles. That work involved use of several design codes for determination of various solid rocket nozzle design parameters such as geometry, liner types, thickness, etc. and evaluation of code results. I also helped design the nozzle thrust vectoring control package and associated hardware. I wrote a code that was used at KSC to evaluate the Shuttle SRB flight duty cycle realized during flight using the SRB actuator position data . I was, for 45 launches, the individual who presented all flight thrust vector data to all levels of management.

For about 35 post flight evaluations, I was the lab individual sent to KSC after shuttle flights for post-flight SRB nozzle evaluation. I participated in the SRB motor case redesign team after the Challenger explosion helping with the case redesign and also the nozzle redesign.

I have always found that Tech graduates are well thought of and have a firm foundation in their respective fields. I have always felt proud when able to identify myself as a Tech graduate.

Upon graduation, he was drafted in the Army and sent to work with Werner von Braun's team of Germans at MSFC in Huntsville. There he ran a test stand firing Saturn 1 stages. At the young age of 29, he was appointed as MSFC's Resident Manager at North American Aviation in southern California, which was responsible for building the S-II (Saturn V second stage). Then he was promoted to Chief of Configuration Management for Apollo/Saturn V back in Huntsville. On a few occasions he made presentations to Dr. von Braun regarding technical and management challenges experienced in the Saturn program.

In July 1969, he took his family to Kennedy Space Center to witness the Apollo 11 launch.   

In 1969, he joined the team working on Skylab, where he became Chief, Engineering Branch of the Orbital Workshop. In this role he worked closely with the Skylab astronauts in development of the Orbital Workshop, which contained the living quarters and science workstations. He was heavily involved in solving the nearly catastrophic problems that Skylab experienced just after liftoff.  

After Skylab, he managed the LAGEOS satellite task team. Before leaving NASA in 1976 to go into business, he managed NASA’s Solar Heating a Cooling project office.  

He received many awards from NASA including the Director's Commendation and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. 
 
Submitted by Donald's son, Carlos Bowden, `82 Mechanical Engineering

I entered TPI in January 1963. That September I began a year as a full time NASA employee at MSFC and ran into Dr. Werner Von Braun on my first day there. Four years later I had completed two 12-month years as an engineering co-op doing full time work on the Apollo program’s Saturn V moon rocket. My assignments included original drawings of the mighty F-1 engines’ steering actuators and experimentation with heat transfer between metal plates in a vacuum chamber aimed at optimizing cooling of electronic packages within the upper stage Saturn V instrument unit. I also had an assignment in the Future Projects Office calculating consumables requirements for a proposed Mars mission which was to use a nuclear powered Saturn upper stage.

An Electrical Engineering degree from Tech translated into a software development position on a NASA contract supporting the International Space Station (ISS) and other projects such as Space Shuttle, the Space Launch System (SLS) and other activities based out of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. I have been on a few contracts and worked for a few contractors over the years but it's been almost 30 years supporting NASA in this capacity. It's cool to know the folks using our software are working with the astronauts and scientists around the world to expand their science research and prepare again for moon landings and beyond. It's also neat running into other Tech folks around here. TTU is well-represented in Huntsville.

My first offer to work for NASA was to move to Mississippi and work on building the Saturn V Rocket. However, I wanted to be involved in the development of space technology rather than just building something someone else had already designed.  So, when I was asked by NASA to work at Arnold Research Organization (later known as Arnold Engineering Development Corporation) in Tullahoma and work on research in vacuum technology, I jumped at the chance.  

Soon, I was asked to head up the team to build a system to study how objects would react to molecular collisions in the vacuum of space. I was given a large budget, and since I didn’t have much experience with molecular beam technology, I approached top engineering colleges such as MIT, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania. The universities had entire departments ready for research, but they didn’t have the kind of budget that NASA had, so it was a good partnership for everyone involved. 

In those days, NASA had a list of colleges that we were allowed to hire from.  It was a total of about ten schools including MIT, UCLA, Berkeley, Penn and UVA. Tennessee Tech was the only school from Tennessee that made the list. 

The other hiring requirement we were given was to hire young people. We were told to hire people under 30 because young engineers are more innovative, and President Kennedy wanted a young group to provide the energy and innovation to achieve a man on the moon by 1970.  So, our goal was to hire someone who was around 25 or 26, but nearly everyone working was under 30. Even our manager was just 33, as I remember. 

Once we assembled our team, Jess Heald joined me to build the Luke 1 Molecular Beam (pictured above). The molecular beam was a NASA project to determine what would happen to a moving molecule in the vacuum of space. Would it stick to surfaces? Would it bounce off?  

The Luke 1 Molecular Beam was the most intense beam that had ever been built in the world at the time.  After it was built, we were invited to lecture all over the country. We took turns lecturing at prestigious universities all over the U.S., and I drew the lucky straw to lecture at the Fifth International Symposium of Rarefied Gas Dynamics in Oxford, England.  I was honored at a banquet hosted by the Lord and Lady Mayor of the City of Oxford, and I was even invited as an honored guest at a Red Carpet Dinner hosted by Her Majesty’s Minister of Aviation. It was truly an exciting time to be an engineer!

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In working at ARO (which was later named AEDC), everyone was trying to get a man on the moon by 1970. John Kennedy was president and he had set the goal for us. At ARO, even the union people that were paid just 40 hours per week, would stay if we needed them to work 24 hours a day. And a lot of the projects required someone to be there 24 hours/ day.  Employees would either work themselves or get someone to work, unpaid, during that time. So that’s the atmosphere we were working in at ARO. If someone got to work a few minutes late one day, we didn’t worry too much about it because they had probably worked late earlier in the week. Our goal was to do whatever it took to get a man on the moon. 

One day, we were told that a group of inspectors from Washington, D.C., was coming to see if everything was begin done as it should be. Our manager told everyone to be there at 7:00 a.m. the next morning because the inspectors wanted to make sure that all of their protocol was being followed. Well, that didn’t sit well with some of us because we knew we were working hard and we cared more about getting the job done than being strict about the rules. 

Well, my co-worker, Ron Dawbarn, had worked for GE in Missouri manufacturing clocks. So that night, Ron and I were working together, and we were talking about the fact that everyone had to be there at 7:00 in the morning. And Ron said, "There are only 5 or 6 clocks in the building, and we could make them all run backward." So, he and I went and changed the clocks so they all ran backward, but we set it up so they would be set for the right time just before 7:00, so the inspectors wouldn’t notice right away. 

And the next morning we were all there at the building before 7:00 like we were told, but we stayed back where they couldn’t see us. And the federal inspectors from D.C. came and they were talking and checking what the time was. Then one of them noticed the time and said, “That clock over there is running backward!” They talked a few minutes and then an accountant who worked in the office said, "Well, it’s probably the electrical cord has been plugged in upside-down," so he went and turned it over and plugged it in the other direction. After a few minutes the inspectors realized that the engineers had outsmarted them, and they left ARO and we never heard from them again.

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Watt Count was a result of a group of engineers who had previously worked with NASA meeting for a Halloween weekend at Rattlesnake Resort on Brotherton Mountain just outside Cookeville. Jack Womack, Tom Moody and I were trying to figure out how we could apply space technology here on earth. We came up with the idea that we would form a company called Watt Count since “watts” meant how much energy used and this was during the energy crisis in the 70’s.  We eventually also hired TTU graduate, Mike Busby, and asked astronaut Wally Schirra to also become a partner. 

One of the things we used in Watt Count was a Heat Shield which was a special plastic that was coated with heat reflection on one side.  Heat Shield was used in space as well as in many of our experiments at ARO and had a lot of applications when it was developed for NASA. So, with Watt Count we decided to start using Heat Shield as an application for houses and commercial buildings in addition to insulation to save energy.

For our marketing plan, we wanted to have a way to tie the company back to NASA, so we talked about different astronauts and decided that Wally Schirra would be the best contact. Wally was one of the original 7 U.S. astronauts, the first to go into space three times, and one of two who were a part of all 3 missions – Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury.

The first time I met with Wally Schirra, he was in charge of water conservation in the area surrounding Arizona, so it made since that he would be interested in energy conservation as well through Watt Count. He became our partner and he worked with advertising and traveled with us.

It was really interesting to travel with Wally Schirra because whenever we would go in a restaurant or somewhere in public, he would quickly be recognized, and all the women would come flocking around and want his signature.  A few of them wanted my signature, too, because they figured I must be famous if I was with him!

When Wally visited Tennessee, he had never been to the Grand Ole Opry, so my wife, Pat, and I took him to the Grand Ole Opry one evening.  As you might guess, the Grand Ole Opry had a lot of ads in those days. The performers would come on stage and advertise for their sponsors, such as Martha White.  During intermission Wally and I went out to get a drink and when we came back in to our seats, Wally said, “I think we ought to change the name on this from the Grand Ole Opry to the Grand Ole Advertisement.

I really enjoyed getting to know Wally and working and traveling with him.  Watt Count became very successful with Wally’s help, and we eventually sold it in 1985 for a tidy profit. 

Up until my semi-retirement in 2021, I was the Director of the Facilities and Test Department on the Jacobs contract at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, TX.  I held that position for almost 9 years where I led 250 employees who test flight hardware. This department provides testing and facility support for vibration, chamber (manned and unmanned), power, propulsion, pyrotechnic, thermal and structural testing. We also had manufacturing and electronic fabrication. One highlight was when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) the successor to the Hubble was tested for 100 days in the historic Chamber A. Chamber A was built to test the Apollo Spacecraft with and without the mission crew. It is 55 feet in diameter and 90 feet high. It pumped down the JWST to vacuum and down to 20 degrees kelvin. My tenure as a director was the most rewarding part of my career.

Tennessee Tech was a key factor for my success. When I was in high school, my mother was the secretary in the TTU EE department. She would come home and tell me that more and more women were going into engineering. My dad told me that since I was good at math that I should consider majoring in engineering. After graduated with my BSEE, I landed my first engineering job at Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma as an instrumentation engineer. There I was awarded the opportunity to attend University of Tennessee Space Institute where I received my Master's degree which allowed me to get my first management role in 1999. This eventually allowed me to be bid on the Jacobs contract at JSC. I would never have dreamed when I was an undergraduate at TTU that I would have the career that I have had. Tennessee Tech can be a stepping stone for anyone’s career!

From 1964-2000, I was employed by NASA at the Kennedy Space Center during the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle programs and the initial stage of the Space Station program. I worked primarily in the software development arena including high altitude wind shear processing, launch processing, robotics and procurement bench marking among other things. I arrived at the space center as the Vehicle Assembly Building was being constructed. Farms along the coast and some of the wildlife refuge were utilized to construct the space center.

NASA first captured my imagination during my sophomore year at Tech, 1964, when I traveled with the Math Club on a field trip to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, AL. Upon graduation in 1966 with a B.S. in Mathematics, I was thrilled to be offered a position by NASA as a Systems Analyst at MSFC and was assigned to the Data Reduction group in the Computation Laboratory as a computer programmer. During my senior year at Tech I took the only computer class offered, “FORTRAN”, which was a very basic introduction to the FORTRAN computer language. My initial programming language at NASA was ALGOL on the Burroughs 5500 computer system. Due to a government contractual change, the system was replaced with a UNIVAC 1108 system which supported the computer language FORTRAN.

In the sixties, computers were large scale operating systems whose machines occupied environmentally controlled rooms. Programs were coded with pencil and paper then prepared for computer input when code instructions were manually punched into cards on keypunch machines. The Data Reduction group programmed data collection and data recall programs in support of prelaunch testing and launch of the spacecrafts for the Apollo Program. One of my programming projects was to extract Apollo spacecraft Instrument Unit telemetry data recorded on magnetic tapes that arrived at Marshall from another NASA site after each Apollo mission and to store this data in a set format on disk for recall availability.

My employment at MSFC from 1966 through 1971 was an exciting time to be employed at NASA. The Apollo Program missions included the successful 1969 Apollo 11 lunar landing and the setback from the sad loss of three Apollo 1 astronauts during a pretest launch pad fire in 1967. The most lasting memory and definitely the highlight from my years at NASA was viewing from the rooftop of the Computation Lab the MSFC Test Stand static firing of the first stage of the Saturn V rocket. The first stage consisted of five F-1 engines each producing 1.5 million pounds of thrust. The Saturn V launched man to the moon. 

In 1967 while I was an active Army Officer I was assigned to US Army Element NASA to work at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. While there for three years, I worked as an Electrical Engineer on the Apollo Communications System. Prior to leaving in 1970 I was awarded the Manned Flight Achievement Award (known as the "Silver Snoopy").

My first job was on the “Eagle” of Apollo 11. In my new job at Design Engineering, I was assigned Lead Electrical Engineer for the damper arm, data transmission, digital equipment evaluator, fuel cell servicing, complex cryogenic controls and crawler transporter control systems. My design work was mostly for these Ground Service Equipment (GSE) systems for the Apollo Spacecraft and Launch Facilities. I became an experienced electro-mechanical servo-control designer, and eventually, NASA put me in charge of developing robotics projects in 1985.

Our biggest developmental project was a Remote Umbilical Robot. We wanted to dock/mate the various LOX, LH2 and Hypergolic Umbilicals by using a robot with a Lines Management Counterbalance to reduce manual work of 32 hours down to 32 seconds: to save time, manpower and launch processing flow. I proposed a “Robotics Applications Development Laboratory” (RADL) consisting of a Control Room, a large robot on a track and multiple work cells to do various design, development and research projects to help Kennedy Space Center (KSC) reduce the cost of going to space.

Robots also helped at launch pads to lift payload canisters into the Rotating Service Structure (RSS). Here, flight payloads were removed from the canisters, the empty canister lowered, the RSS rotated around the orbiter and the payloads inserted into the shuttle. We worked with robotics to achieve KSC's goals and became innovators.

I became the first Chief of Robotics for NASA at KSC and was recognized by industry, academia and government, all over the Nation, as an expert in Robotic Control Systems. I worked on Apollo 11 thru 17, Skylab 1 thru 3 and Apollo-Soyuz Space Launch Missions. I also worked at KSC thru 5 Shuttle test flight missions, and 114 other Shuttle Space Launch Missions - working for NASA over 36 years on a total of 130 NASA flight missions at KSC.

I designed several servomechanism control systems to get the Crawler Transporters (CT) to operate more reliably; later becoming the Lead Project Engineer (on a $3.6 million dollar Renovation Project), by redesigning and programming the CT control systems to support the Space Shuttle Program. I was written up by NASA in a national publication as a “New Technology Innovator” and also received six National Aeronautics and Space Administration “New Technology Innovation” Awards.

I was a member on a featured panel in three National Seminar Panels about Robotics: one in Texas for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and one for a Goddard Space Flight Center Robotics Seminar in Maryland. At another Florida College Robotics Seminar, there were several notable Robotics panel speakers including Joseph Engelberger (“The Father of Robotics”), but the featured speaker was the “KSC Chief of Robotics,” Leon Davis. 

My Robotic Section’s designs were so well-received, that NASA Headquarters was preparing to change the “NASA Robotics Center Lead” from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA; and give it to my Lab at Kennedy - when KSC declined the money and prestige: saying they just wanted to stay an operational launch facility, rather than a research and development center.

I had the honor of being presented with a Silver Snoopy Award by an American Astronaut and a Russian Astronaut pinned a Sputnik Pin on me. I was presented with many Certificates of Appreciation, Certificates of Recognition, Manned Flight Awareness, Group Achievement Recognition, Personal Achievement and Program Awards by NASA management for the work I did at KSC.

I was a National and International Control System Design Consultant for Ground Servicing Equipment (GSE): A) a KSC GSE interface engineer for Space Station International Partners; B) the Design Lead on the American/Italian Communication Interface Development; with the Italian Space Agency on their Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) GSE; and C) a GSE design consultant for the Air Force when they built a Shuttle Launch Pad at Vandenberg AFB, in California. I was also named an Expert Failure Analysis Engineer by the KSC Center Director.

I started working as a contractor for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in 1995, then was hired as a NASA civil servant in 1999. I worked a variety of NASA projects including STEREO, MMS, GOES-R, POES-KLMNN Prime, FAST, SWAS, SOLAR-B, Landsat and in the Rapid Spacecraft Development Office as well as oversight of ground data processing systems. I was a software quality engineer, then a Systems Assurance Manager responsible for mission quality, safety and reliability for a portfolio of projects. In 2009, I transferred to the National Nuclear Security Administration after I served as the Observatory Manager for the successful rebuild of the NOAA-19 satellite at VAFB and gave the “go” for spacecraft launch in February 2009.

I was at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a NASA Research Fellow from 1994-1997 and as a NASA Faculty Fellow in 1999. My dissertation research was conducted from 1994 - 1997 as a research fellow during the period of time when the Mars Pathfinder project was completed and launched. My work was part of the efforts of the Software Assurance team and focused on formal validation of ground systems.

I co-oped at NASA in Huntsville during 1971-72 in the power systems division (I think that was the name). I worked on power systems for the Skylab. They also sent me to NASA in Houston for a week or so to work on the actual Skylab in the clean room. Very interesting! It was a very good experience for both electrical engineering and work in general! 

I began working for NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, AL on September 3, 1968 as a co-op student. I didn't know it at the time but that assignment launched a 36-year career with the Federal Government. As a business major, I was assigned to the Training Office where I worked two one-year assignments as a co-op student. After graduating from Tech in 1972, I was offered a position with NASA as a Program Analyst in The Space Sciences Lab at MSFC. I worked with NASA until August, 1973 at which time I transferred to another Federal Agency. I enjoyed my entire working experience with NASA but none more than having the privilege of being on duty July 20, 1969 when Apollo Lunar Module Eagle landed on the moon and the next day Neal Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Lunar Surface. I will forever be grateful to Tennessee Tech University for providing me the opportunity to continue my education through the Cooperative Education Program.

Upon graduating TTU in 1984, I served in the U.S. Navy as a Submarine Warfare Officer and Nuclear Power instructor. After a stint in industrial controls engineering, I began my NASA adventure in 1998 at Ames Research Center in California.

First job was as the Chief Engineer of the NFAC - The Largest Wind Tunnel in the World - where I led the electrical, mechanical and engineering teams that kept this national resource running. We supported testing vehicles ranging from a replica of the 1906 Wright brothers' flyer, to the parachutes used on the Mars Spirit, Opportunity and Perseverance rovers. 

Following some research applying evolvable algorithms to ornithopters, and some grad school at Stanford, I was lucky enough to be chosen to work on the LCROSS lunar impactor project. As a Flight Director for the mission, I was on console when the spacecraft impacted the moon's south pole, and sent back data confirming the presence of significant deposits of water-ice in the permanently shadowed Cabeus crater. 

Starting with the LCROSS discovery of water on the moon, my NASA career has been focused on helping to learn more about its origins and potential use as a resource for future exploration. 

Building on the LCROSS results, I worked as Flight Director on the LADEE mission - a lunar orbiter searching for answers to the origins of the lunar water. This spacecraft flew in an extremely low orbit, requiring frequent maneuvers to avoid impacting the surface, and carried several instruments to measure the concentration and composition of the tenuous lunar exosphere. 

The culmination of my time here at NASA is the VIPER lunar rover mission, scheduled to launch in late 2023. This mission will explore in the Nobile crater region at the moon's south pole, in an extremely challenging environment for spacecraft power, thermal and communications. Roving several kilometers over partially and fully shadowed regions, it will prospect for water-ice and drill up to a meter deep in the lunar regolith, with instruments providing science data and images of deep regolith billions of years old. 

These missions continue to re-write science textbooks and have been key in the selection of the polar regions as the landing site for NASA's Artemis mission to return astronauts to the moon. 

Throughout my career in the Navy, industry, graduate school, and at NASA, I've found the education I received at TTU has given me the strong foundation in the fundamentals of engineering that I've needed to succeed in a variety of fields. 

I have and currently work for a local company in Cookeville, Flexial Corporation, who has and continues to provide NASA with hardware for space applications.

These projects include multiple tanks and reservoirs for the potable water system on the International Space Station as well as robotic arms and thermal compensators for the curiosity and perseverance rovers that have landed on Mars.

Current projects include components for Dragonfly which will travel to Titan, Saturn's largest moon; along with surge arrestors for the Griffin Lunar Lander that is scheduled to launch and arrive at the moon in 2024. Flexial also has contracts with multiple other space companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, Astrobotic, Axiom Space and Sierra Space.

I majored in Mathematics and Minor in German at TN Tech and was hired by IBM for the Apollo/Saturn Mission on the contract to develop the Checkout and Launch computer programs for the Apollo/Saturn Mission at Kennedy Space Center. I was sent to Huntsville to school for the first year on the design of Apollo/Saturn Missions ahead and the design and machine language necessary for programs to be written for checkout and launch. I worked at the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building).  

Both the IBM team and the German team participated in the training and therefore the reason they hired 16 German and Math graduates from around the country. I was the only one from TN Tech on this particular mission team. Most of the other team members came from universities in the north. I have scrapbooks and was fortunate enough to have some NASA pictures that were not chosen by NASA for their publicity and back then we were able to get some of those rejected photos. I liked the ones that showed that the Kennedy Space Center resided in a swamp area and etc. I also drove to the post office on launch day and mailed to myself letters with the stamp of the day of launch and the special design for that particular mission.

It was a wonderful experience and I thank TN Tech for making that possible for me to have that experience. I stayed in Aviation and Aerospace for my entire career in both Management and Design of computer software working for TWA automating their overhaul bases and then Arnold Air Force Base where I could come home to McMinnville TN for future retirement. While at TWA I got my MBA in Finance and Management from Rockhurst University. Since my Retirement I have devoted my time and energy With the Rotary Club participating on a District Grant Committee to write and review grants and am now an AG (Assistant Governor) for District 6780 and am residing on the Board of Directors of several organizations and established along with 3 others a Main Street program to revitalize our downtown of which I am now a Lifetime member. My TN Tech background made all of this possible.  

I worked for about 20 years on various NASA projects starting in 1989 on the International Space Station as a Design Engineer and designed ground support equipment and internal hardware. In 1994, I supported Boeing in designing the EXPRESS Racks, experiment racks to be hosted on the space station experiment module. I was involved with the design of several NASA space station experiments, and in 2006 I was the Main Propulsion Lead on the Constellation Upper stage. In 2014, I was assigned to be the Lead Design Engineer for the NASA SLS LVSA while at Teledyne Brown Engineering, (Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter) which was integrated last week with the first stage at KSC. In 2007, I received the NASA Silver Snoopy Award for the work I did on Space Station. I am currently working as an SME consultant to USASMDC on experimental science and technology advancement of small satellites. 

When I joined NASA in 1983, the Centers were connected by a lot of point-to-point AT&T lines. I was on the team that helped transition NASA to something called the Internet. Today, the NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) is an enterprise class network that connects the NASA Centers, the Deep Space Network, the Near Earth Network, the Space Network, and foreign partners like the European Space Network and the Cosmonaut Training Facility in Russia. 

I hired on with McDonnell Douglas In Huntsville, AL after graduation in 1988 to work as a thermal analyst on the Spacelab program. My first day at work happened to be the launch of STS-26, the shuttle return to flight following the Challenger disaster. Everyone was in a conference room eating donuts and watching the launch on tv. I remember calling my family that night and telling them how great this place was and how they watched TV and ate donuts at work!

Maybe a year or so later, I was working out at Marshall Spaceflight Center testing an avionics box that had overheated on ASTRO-1, STS-35. I was working with another fellow who had gone to Tech. While we were measuring the box temperature, the door to the lab flew open and in walked Dr. Hudy Hewitt. He said, “Didn’t I tell you that measurements was going to be the most important class you had at Tech!” 

I worked there for almost 15 years, supporting shuttle flights for Spacelab and later SPACEHAB. The last flight I worked was Columbia, STS-107. 

After Columbia, I went to work for United Launch Alliance in Decatur, AL. I worked there for 12 years as Ordnance Responsible Engineer on Delta II, Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. I have since worked as a systems engineer on RS-25 engine for Aerojet Rocketdyne and as a general engineer for the Defense Contract Management Agency. I currently work for Bastion Technologies supporting NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance organization on the Space Launch System (SLS) Exploration Upper Stage as Pyro Subject Matter Expert.

I am a current senior medical student and am an executive committee member of AMSRO (aerospace medicine student and resident organization). We work closely with current residents, physicians and retirees who are/were physicians at NASA (and other organizations).  

I have also recently applied to do a clerkship in aerospace medicine at NASA-JSC.

In preparation for my career after graduation in 1968 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, I had interviews with several companies. Jobs were plentiful and I had offers from all but one, NASA. A day or so before the interview I took an elbow just above my eye in a pickup basketball game and it caused the worst "shiner" I have ever had. My eye was swollen shut and totally black. When I went to the interview the first few minutes were taken up with the eye event. The interviewer tried to concentrate on the formal part of the interview, but finally said he just couldn't concentrate on the interview because of the black eye. I went into the Air Force after graduation from Tech.  

I went to pilot training, Vietnam, a couple of flying assignments, and the Air Force Test Pilot School in 1977. The school is very competitive and selectees include graduates from the best universities in the US. There were two Tech grads there at the same time - the other was Ev Dyer who was a 1967 graduate. 

As I approached time to rotate to another assignment, I was offered an assignment to NASA Langley as a test pilot. I took it and it was some of the most varied and interesting flying I could ever hope to experience. It took 12 years to get past the black eye.

After graduation from Tech, I immediately went to work for NASA at Langley Research Center, Hampton VA. I worked in the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel Department performing aerodynamic heating tests on Apollo and other NASA and Air force vehicles. After five years, during which I received my Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering from University of VA, I left NASA and came to AEDC in TN for the remaining 34 years of my career.

I worked on the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) from 1997-2012. Three MPLMs were built by the Italian Space Agency and were used to ferry supplies/experiments to and from the Space Station while the Space Shuttle was still flying. I supported all 12 MPLM missions from Mission Control Center in Houston and was in the Firing Room at Kennedy Space Center for 5 of the launches.

My NASA story started in the fourth grade when I was asked the proverbial question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I answered boldly...AN ASTRONAUT!  

Well many years later through divine guidance, I became a mathematics teacher. I embraced the duty of helping others reach their dream through education and STEM. While looking for cool things for my students to do I ran across some activities from NASA. I scrolled down the page and there was a job announcement for a NASA Aerospace Education Specialist. I applied and got the job. I was working at the place that I said was my dream almost 30 years later. Soon after I became an Education Specialist, I had the opportunity to complete the dream and apply for the Educator Astronaut Program. Although I wasn't selected, my dream I had in the fourth grade had somewhat come true. Instead of being an astronaut at NASA, I worked with many other astronauts including fellow alum Dr. Roger Crouch to inspire the next generation of explorers. Mission accomplished.

I worked for NASA from 1961 thru 1968. I worked on the development of the J-2 engine which was used on the 2nd and 3rd stages of the Saturn V Rocket which put a man on the moon in 1969.

I worked there for 33 year and over 20 years in the space directory.

I finished my undergraduate in Electrical Engineering at Tech in 3 ½ years, in December of 1984, and then stayed on for a graduate program in the same. By the summer after my first quarter of Masters work, I was a bit burned out from school, and really wanted some industry experience. I was really hoping to get a summer job at the Naval Surface Weapons (now Warfare) Center in Dahlgren, VA, where several of my TTU compatriots had gone to work. I pulled all the strings I could find to no avail, and also tried the front door, submitting the lengthy government application through the Tech placement office. Still no luck at Dahlgren, or with any of the other summer jobs I pursued, but as summer approached, I got a call from NASA asking if I was interested in a graduate co-op position. It turned out the placement office had, unbeknownst to me, forwarded my application to NASA as well as to NSWC.

I’d seen the co-op job’s “blue sheet” posted on a board in Brown Hall, and not been interested – either in co-oping at all, or in the position working in Electrical Power at NASA. But with few options beyond another summer in Cookeville, I took the offer, with the realization I’d be going to Huntsville summer and winter quarters of my graduate career.

I ended up completing the Masters as a co-op, and staying for four careers at NASA. Starting with the graduate co-op job, I ended up working on Artificial Intelligence applications to space power in the Engineering group at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Co-op led into a NASA Research grant, and my work became my thesis topic. After graduation, I became a full-time NASA civil servant. NASA sponsored me for continued graduate work, and I finished all the course work for a Ph.D. at Auburn University, with financial support to complete my research when I got back to NASA. However, what looked like an opportunity to focus on my research turned into writer’s block; working solo I found I lacked the motivation to finish the project and writing required. Instead, I moved to a new opportunity, providing Information Technology support for the MSFC Science Directorate, a group composed mostly of scientists working with weather, space weather, Earth observation and associated topics. There I learned about the World Wide Web, and was able to work with the team that developed and operated the Science@NASA website, and started a Mac support mailing list for the many scientist who used Apple computers. 

Career three started when our whole IT support group in the Science Directorate was moved into the MSFC Office of the Chief Information Officer. There I continued working with the agency websites, and started working more with streaming audio and video. I created the first US Government podcast for Science@NASA, and developed an IPTV system for MSFC. I also became the Mac advocate at MSFC, and to an extent for all of NASA.

My final position was housed in the Huntsville Operations Support Center, an operations facility that, among other things, manages the payloads on the International Space Station from a 24/7 control room in Huntsville. I learned there how video flows from ISS to the ground and out to both payload operators around the world, and to the public. I also got to work building out the infrastructure for NASA TV, several channels of produced video available to the public from satellite and on the internet (https://nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv). 

So, the four careers at NASA had me working with Engineers, then Scientists, then IT service providers, and then spacecraft operations cadre and supporters. I had the chance to work with folks at all the NASA Centers across the country, and with others from all over the world. I just retired at the end of 2021, and am now working on figuring out what comes next!

I began my career, just after graduation from TTU, working for United Space Alliance, the NASA contractor that managed the space shuttle fleet. I verified the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) flight software for the Primary Avionics and Software System, which flew the orbiter. I also participated in mission support in the Mission Evaluation Room (MER), which was the engineering backroom support to the Flight Control team. After three years with USA, I transferred to Boeing, where I spent a year verifying Guidance and Navigation software on a DARPA satellite demonstration program called Orbital Express. Following that experience, I moved to the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), where I tested the On-orbit Flight Control System and the Data Processing System of the Space Shuttle for the next six years. I had the opportunity to work in the cockpit with several astronauts as we flew virtual missions in our testing. I continued to support the MER, supporting each shuttle flight, including its final mission in 2011.

It was during the final year of the shuttle program that I had the opportunity to begin working on the initial software requirements for Boeing's Commercial Crew Program space capsule, the CST-100 Starliner. I moved into project management for the Avionics & Software Integrated Product Team, where I help lead the team through Preliminary and Critical Design Reviews of the Flight Software (FSW) and Avionics architecture for the next four years. I then transferred to the FSW Formal Qualification Team (FQT), leading four teams of software engineers in qualifying four suites of software for the Starliner including Flight Management, Systems Management, Crew Interface, and Vision relative navigation systems.  We worked closely with our astronaut crew members during this process, including TTU alum Butch Wilmore, to systematically certify the vehicle for flight.

I've continued to perform mission support in the engineering backroom, including for the maiden voyage of Starliner. After successfully completing several verification cycles, I recently moved to the GNC FSW team as a senior GNC engineer, providing project leadership and leading the Guidance software and performance analysis team. I will also continue to provide real-time engineering support for future missions of the Starliner. I have been tremendously blessed and am very grateful for the education I received at TTU and the opportunity that it gave me to pursue my dreams of working in the manned spaceflight industry.

I work for a contractor that provides engineering and construction services to multiple NASA facilities.  In my engineering capacity, I have had the opportunity to work on projects at six different NASA centers.  There are numerous memories, most of little interest to anyone that is not a test facilities geek.  But one story most could appreciate happened at Stennis Space Center. We were building a new rocket test stand. Future use of the stand was an open question. It was designed for main shuttle rocket testing as the shuttle program was completing. In fact, the last shuttle was decommissioned as we were completing construction. That shuttle was transported from Florida to California, intentionally passing over NASA facilities in the flight path as it went. I was at the test stand site to see the shuttle fly over - it felt like a historic moment.

I did not work for NASA, but my son, Barry Wilmore, a graduate of Tennessee Tech, was selected by NASA to be an astronaut. He has made two successful flights to the International Space Station, the last one in 2015 that lasted six months. As his father, I was never apprehensive about his going into space. This was something he had wanted to do for a long time and had trained for. His mother
(now deceased) and I had faith that the Lord would watch over him and keep him safe.  

He is in training now for his third voyage to the ISS as the Commander, and I have no doubt that all will go as planned for this one also.