Surveyor 1

During my thirty-one years at the Kennedy Space Center I spent six of them working at what was then called Unmanned Launch Operations, or ULO; first for a two-year stint, and later on a four.

I did no real work on the first two American manned space programs, Mercury and Gemini, but did work the Apollo Program from very early to the end, and the Space Shuttle Program from before the first launch until I retired at the end of 1996. That second for-year period at ULO occurred during the interregnum between the end of the Apollo Program and the first launch of the Shuttle.

The US is again in such a waiting period, with no American manned launches planned before 2016, or quite possibly 2017. And these will be limited to ferrying crew members to and from the International Space Station. The more ambitious program in work, developing a vehicle and spacecraft capable of sending humans to the Moon or Mars, is years to a decade away from its first manned flight -- and that assumes the program doesn't eventually get canceled as too expensive.

Unmanned launches, though, remain quite busy. The local newspaper, "Florida Today", serves both the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral areas, hence provides more extensive coverage of unmanned launches than probably any other paper. I get to keep up, at a surface level, with what's happening with my old outfit -- now morphed into primarily commercial operations, with NASA buying launches like any other entity when it's time to launch a scientific, weather, or other government-funded spacecraft. The Air Force also uses these contractors for military launches, including the GPS satellites that provide an extremely valuable service most of us now take for granted.

I had been at KSC for only about six months, working for a support contractor as a tech writer in a general writers pool, when I was abruptly offered a transfer --including a nice promotion -- to a position then called "Project Writer" for the Atlas-Centaur Program. This included manning a console during launches, the responsibility there being to listen to the countdown progress on several channels, take notes on major events and problems, and update the electronic countdown status board at the head of the launch control center.

Between launches I prepared the NASA pre-launch technical documents (working with several engineering departments who provided the basic data, of course), and the after-launch mission report documents.

I received that promotion, after a rather short period of work as a general writer, over the heads of several other writers with more seniority and experience. My particular background made my managers think I would probably be successful in what was one of the most difficult jobs they had to support. They were, of course, right. And that first two years made some important differences in my life.

The second time I manned a console for an Atlas-Centaur launch was May 30, 1966. The payload was Surveyor 1, which became the first successful soft landing by a US spacecraft on another planetary body, the Moon (the Russians had gotten there four months earlier, but with a much less capable spacecraft). Unlike the robotic landers of today, Surveyors couldn't move. But Surveyor 1 did return 11,000 photographs of the lunar surface, providing a great deal of the data the Apollo Program needed to prepare for that historic landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.

I took advantage of the experience to do a science article (well illustrated with photos, including the status board in the launch control center), and it became my first sale to John Campbell at "Analog." I followed it with several more science articles, then began selling him science fiction as well.

The "Analog" article, which circulated widely at KSC, brought me to the attention of some high-level NASA and contractor managers. That launched me into a secondary line of work -- ghost-writing science papers for these executives.  Those, and other more mundane work, eventually led to a position in NASA itself. I retired as Deputy Chief of the Education Office.

Though I spent my last eighteen years at KSC working in other areas, I've always been thankful for those six at ULO. They opened up career paths nor previously available to me, and led to what I enjoy now -- a retirement in which I'm still writing fiction (no more science articles; too demanding) and a happy life.

Hitchhikers Guide to Retirement

I retired from NASA (as Deputy Chief, KSC Education Office) at the end of 1996. I've now been retired more years than I worked for any one employer (the longest two, NASA 13, Boeing 11). And in some ways these so-called 'Golden Years' are indeed the best of my life. But there are also drawbacks and disappointments aplenty.

A few of the drawbacks can be attributed to the rapid pace of change in today's world. (Ray Kurzweil, now chief developer of future programs at Google, is fond of pointing out that that not only is the world rapidly changing, the pace of change itself  has gotten faster.) Some of the disappointments, I like to think, derive from internal change, my personal maturation and growth. Books are a good example. 

During my last twenty-five or so working years I accumulated a lot of books. Most went on the shelves with the expectation of reading after retirement, when I would have more time. My demanding job, a second family with two young daughters, and a driving need to devote all the spare hours I could find to free-lance writing limited my reading.

After retirement, as planned, I started pulling some of those waiting books off the shelves. And, time after time, discovered I couldn't finish one. (I've become willing to abandon a book fairly quickly if it doesn't grab me early and hold my interest.) Far too often, a novel that had looked interesting twenty years ago no longer held any appeal. This was particularly true in science fiction. I'm not going to mention names, but book after book I had anticipated enjoying, I no longer wanted to read. These varied from big names in the field to bright-future newcomers, but they shared one common characteristic. I found them boring.

The world of audio visual (AV) entertainment and information has been among the fastest changing industries in a fast-changing world. We went from LP vinyl to tape to CD to DVD to streaming AV (with of course a lot of overlaps) in just a few decades. And, as you might expect from Kurzweil's observation, each major change happened with less time between than the one before. The amount of music, entertainment and education/information increased greatly along the way, with access to same gaining almost exponentially in so-called developing or undeveloped countries.

Today I have millions of songs instantly available from several streaming sources, a hundred-thousand movies offered by some of the same companies, and a million amateur but often quite good AV productions on YouTube and others; some free, others for relatively small monthly fees. I've pretty much stopped buying CDs and DVDs. Why should I, when I can reach any one I want from the streaming services to which I subscribe. The 'Cloud' is the new home entertainment center. And it's cheaper by far than buying and building your own library.

From the time my father gave me my quarter allowance on Saturday, and I hitch-hiked to the only movie theater in the county, nine miles away on U.S. 90, I've loved movies. I paid a dime to get in, which bought me a western, a cartoon short, and usually a newsreel. The fifteen remaining cents (coke or popcorn was never even under consideration) left me with a choice. Buy a science fiction magazine from one of the stands at the two drugstores and depend on hitching a ride to get home, or ride the Greyhound bus for fifteen cents. The magazine always won, if a new one was available. And I never once walked the nine miles home. Someone always stopped for a preteen boy with his thumb out.

I wrote in an earlier blog post that most of us don't appreciate how much our lives have improved, despite the fact the 'middle-class' hasn't gotten a raise in thirty years. Today I can buy more good books than I have time to read, watch more movies (on a 60-in HD screen) than my eyes and butt can last through, and enjoy TV series where each episode is better than the movies I saw as a kid. (Not to mention a plethora of often fascinating popular science and informative documentary programs.) This richness of second-hand experience is part of makes these 'golden years' highly worthwhile -- but also cuts into my reading time.

I don't know how it goes with you, but I can truthfully say that preteen boy with his thumb out never dreamed that one day he would live such a rich and rewarding life. Perspective is all.

Photo credit: PMGreen