Thanks for sharing your story Tim. I have shared part of your story in many of my Peace with Justice training workshop that you told me year ago. It was powerful to me then and still is.... "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. Thank you for keeping us always looking "up" for more places to go.... Best wishes in your new assignment.... and now that Susan is retired too....come visit us in awesome Austin. Grace & Peace Wanda Wanda Holcombe wandah70@gmail.com 512-619-3469 Email: wandah70@gmail.com On Sep 29, 2012, at 11:21 AM, Tim Wegner <twegner@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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