T-minus 8 hours and Counting

In position for liftoff. Had a great sail today. The Indian River reminds of the Chesapeake a little. Just an easy place to sail.

Here's a post that Grampa sent me about a month ago. I was saving it for the launch. Some of the info is redundant to his last post, but there's lots of new stuff.

Scott was about a little over 1 year old when Apollo 11, the first NASA mission to land on the moon was scheduled to launch in 1969. I was an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Florida, and had been interested in space science and exploration ever since I was in high school (Sputnik was launched when I was a sophomore in college). Being so close to Cape Canaveral, my thought was that Scott would kill me later if he learned he was so close to such an historical moment and did not get the chance to see it (on reflection, my own interests surely were a factor, but his reactions are a definite part of my recollections). We chartered a tour that included lunch and a viewing site that was about 20 miles from the launch pad, and included flights to and from Gainesville. While I am pretty sure that Scott doesn’t remember, the ground shook, the noise was tremendous, and the launch was like something I have not experienced since.

Not experienced since, has some history behind it also. I left the University of Florida in 1973 to join a nuclear consulting firm in the Washington, DC area. One of the things I was asked to do in about 1975 was to take over a project in support of the Department of Energy (AEC, ERDA, in previous lives) that developed and manufactured radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) fueled by plutonium-238 that provide electrical energy to spacecraft that go to the planets beyond the earth’s orbit (Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto, and beyond). Solar energy just doesn’t cut it for most of these missions. As part of this project, we analyzed the risks of launch and mission risks associated with the use of plutonium and provided real time launch accident analyses so that if an accident were to occur, accident response actions could be appropriately directed.

So I got to go to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in support of the launches of the Viking mission to Mars (two landers), a couple of Air Force missions (Lincoln Experimental Satellites), the Voyager missions to the outer planets and beyond, the Galileo missions to Jupiter, and the Ulysses mission around the poles of the sun (from about 1976 through 1990).

These missions and my support of them provided opportunities for family vacations at Cocoa Beach, usually lasting two weeks or more. Scott and his sister, Kristin, and their mother got to enjoy the beach while I was working. We stayed at what was then the Polaris Motel (used by the astronauts then) that was behind an establishment known as the Mouse Trap. The site of the Polaris is now occupied by a Best Western motel, and the Mouse Trap may still live in another incarnation. We certainly enjoyed the town and the beach. Many memories of body surfing, eating at Bernards Surf and Old Fisherman’s Wharf, including feeding the catfish. One time, when Scott’s mother and sister left to return to DC, and Scott and I were batching it, I took him to a showing of Jaws after it was first released. He claims it has traumatized him ever since! How could I have been so insensitive a father? I really thought it would be a fun movie for him, but so goes the judgment of fathers. If that’s the least of the misjudgments that I have made, I feel ok about it.

To complete the story, I left that consulting firm in 1990 and joined the Department of Energy. There, I have been a member of an Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel (INSRP) that reviews the safety analyses for those nuclear missions, for the Pluto New Horizons mission that was launched in January, 2006 and now with the Mars Science Laboratory mission scheduled for launch in September, 2009. I still enjoy my visits to Cocoa Beach. I hope Scott gets a chance to refresh his memories of Cocoa Beach.