A SPACE ODESSY

I graduated from the University of Utah with a BSEE in 1960. I first went to work for HUGHES AIRCRAFT designing a MISSLE DEFENSE SYSTEM. After a couple of years, I went to work at North American Aviation in Downey, California, and was assigned to run a Research and Development Lab to develop a RE-ENTRY DISPLAY to go on the APOLLO SPACECRAFT. It was my good fortune to be able to have a team of brilliant Mathematicians and Computer experts on our Development team.

This was in the days when Integrated Circuits were in their infancy. Salesmen from Texas Instrument, Fairchild, National Semiconductors, etc. gave us thousands of dollars worth of their newest products, Differential Amplifiers, Flip-Flops, etc. just so we might use them on the APOLLO Program (Great Advertising). An early Integrated Circuit would contain the equivalent of 25-30 discreet electronic components on a 1/4" X 1/4" chip. Today several thousand equivalent components can be placed in the same package.

In the course of our development, we had to interface with the Original 7 Astronauts.

We got to know each of the Astronauts quite well, and was on a first name basis with most of them. My favorite was Wally Schirra, who was very knowledgeable in what we were attempting to do. The Astronauts came to our Lab and "FLEW" Simulated RE-ENTRY Missions so we could fine tune our design.