[Dialogue] NASA software developer moves on ...

[Marge Philbrook]

Tim, I loved your story of your life. I visited Lynn and Gail Oden on my
way back from my granddaughter's wedding in Berkeley in August.  They are
in good spirit and we had a great time. We had been friends for years
before they came into the order.

I hope in your retirement you will find time to come to Chicago to see what
is happening in the archives and to help us keep a clear vision of the
possibilities of keeping the archives a "living legacy," bringing the past
into the future.  You're the greatest.  Marge Philbrook


On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Tim Wegner <twegner at swbell.net> wrote:

> Yesterday I turned in my badges at the United Space Alliance.
>
> My NASA career started when Susan and I were re-assigned from Egypt
> to Houston. The only thing I knew about the Space Shuttle was what I
> had read in Time magazines bought on the streets in Cairo.
>
> When we arrived at the Houston House, Susan stayed "in house" and I
> was assigned to work.  Larry Henschen helped me arrange an interview
> with McDonnell Douglas, a NASA contractor.  I had never programmed a
> computer and had no qualification other than a Master's degree in
> mathematics and an "all-but-thesis" not-quite-a-PhD. In retrospect,
> those were great credentials, since the state of computer programming
> when I was in college was using punch cards. When I was working
> programming NASA's first Unix computers, I remember thinking "I wish
> I had studied Unix in college" - then realizing that Unix didn't
> exist when I was in college! But the principles and laws of
> mathematics and physics I learned in the late 60's have stood up very
> well. My career has been spent in the abstract world of mathematical
> models of gravity, drag, solar pressure, and accelerations - space,
> the final frontier. Hard to beat that.
>
> I missed the first four shuttle flights but arrived in time for
> STS-5. My first project was an analysis of the shuttle drag model. My
> supervisors weren't watching closely, so I learned FORTRAN on a
> UNISYS mainframe and implemented my results in a program called HOPE.
> (There was another program called LOVE, but not one called FAITH.)
> Shortly thereafter I was re-assigned as a programmer, and remained a
> software developer (and software project manager) for my whole
> career, which extended more then a year past the last Shuttle flight
> in July 2011. I ended up working for various NASA contractors for a
> bit over 30 years.
>
> Shortly after I started at NASA, Larry Henschen and I were
> instrumental in helping Lynn Oden, another Houston House order
> member, in also getting a job. For a few years Lynn and I commutred
> together. Lynn retired a few years ago, having had a fine  career as
> a Shuttle Navigation Flight Controller.
>
> Susan and I never "left" the Houston House; it melted away around us
> as the Order transitioned away from corporate living. Conna Wilkinson
> was the last one to leave when she moved back to Oklahoma. So Susan
> and I turned out the lights of the Houston House and got an
> apartment, and later bought a house. I am grateful today for all the
> experiences we had assigned to San Franscisco, San Jose, Melbourne,
> Adelaide, Bayad, and finally Houston. Susan and I arrived in Houston
> with no assets but no debts in our mid-thirties, and are now both
> retired. We still have no debts, but now we have a few assets. I
> amazed that that was possible!
>
> I am still working with a small group of your colleagues keeping the
> wedgeblade.net glue connecting our far flung community alive.
>
> Retirement is, of course, just another "assignment" to new
> challenges.
>
> Tim Wegner
>
>
>
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