Tim, Thanks for the great Journey report! Another one of our Iron (People) still standing. BTW, I like the term someone used for this phase, "Im not in retirement, I'm in "re-firement". Judy and I invite you and Susan to spend some re-firement time in Mexico with us whenever you'd like. Grace & Peace, Jack On Sep 29, 2012, at 11:21 AM, Tim Wegner 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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