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I grew up in the middle of the Space Age, quite literally, living in Las Cruces, NM, home of White Sands Missile Range. My father worked at WSMR as an electrician, and he took me to work with him several times and showed me around the WSMR facilities. When I enrolled at New Mexico State University, I earned my college expenses by working for Physical Sciences Laboratory, a branch of the college that had contracts to support various missile programs. While there, I helped analyze data for the Nike Zeus anti-missile missile, including America's first attempt to intercept an orbiting satellite in 1969.
I followed avidly followed all the space-related news, including the Apollo Program. Parts of Apollo were tested at WSMR and an adjacent facility constructed by NASA just for Apollo testing. When my career led me into the design of professional audio tape recorders, our 3M manufacturing plant in Camarillo, CA also made instrumentation tape recorders used by NASA and all the missile test ranges (and the spy agencies, too.)
I have never lost touch with my Space Age roots, and even today I spend time at our local library reading Aviation Week and Space Technology, and I recently began receiving a weekly tabloid on space activities. I love air shows, aviation museums and any kind of technical exhibit. I still remember visiting a JPL Open House and seeing Galileo waiting for a launch vehicle.
I spent 15 years designing professional audio tape recorders and another 15 years building robotics systems. My systems never cruised around the surface of Mars, but they did provide automation assistance to recording engineers in recording studios. Somewhere between these two career segments I became an EE Professor at Cal State University at Northridge. I loved teaching and motivating students, especially when helping them to see the big picture of how their studies could change their lives and the lives of everyone around them.
To me, the exploration of space has two exciting benefits. First is the technology that is developed that trickles down to assist the everyday man. Trips by far away spacecraft impact us either through spin-off products or in the evolving systems that allow us to monitor our Sun and our own planet to predict and understand changes that can have catastrophic effects on mankind. I'm not talking about just grand events such as global warming or asteroid collision, but rather daily global weather and solar weather monitoring.
The other benefit of space is our improved understanding of the Cosmos. During my lifetime we have made tremendous strides in understanding the entire continuum of matter, reaching from high-energy particle physics to giant Black Holes. This is a fascinating puzzle that demands our attention as we struggle to grasp the true significance of Life.
I would like to use the Solar System Ambassadors program to teach others how we benefit now from the seemingly abstract activities millions of miles or millions of light years away. I want to bring those far away missions into their laps and show them how they are participants in everything at NASA. Most of all, if I should be so lucky, I would like to generate the spark that leads a youngster to follow a career in Science, continuing the search for the answers to our future.
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