Rocket Science

What can I say? Flying satellites in the 20th century was the coolest job there was. Way cooler than a job as a movie star, a CEO, an athlete, a gangster, or a political figure. It was cool because reaching into space had never been done, whether manned or unmanned.

People would say "It's not rocket science" when they meant something was easy to understand. Well, in a way what we did really WAS rocket science. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, we controlled satellites from a high windowless building nicknamed the Blue Cube, surrounded by 46-foot and 60-foot blazing white dish antennas.

Blue Cube
© 2007 Randy Rhody

The first satellites I worked with were four aging VELAs launched in 1969 and 1970. Their orbit was a quarter of the way to the moon, farther out than any other satellite even to this day - so far out that the earth turned faster than they could orbit, so they seemed to be moving backwards relative to our tracking stations on the ground.

We decided when and where to pulse their jets to make them spin at a certain rate, turn onboard systems on and off, manage solar panels and power during eclipses, test their detection sensors, and read their memories. The satellites watched for atmospheric nuclear blasts and in 1979, soon after I began working with them, one satellite saw an explosion that occurred over the South Atlantic, for which no country ever took responsibility.

VELA exhibit

In 1982 I transferred to the space shuttle program. I worked on STS-5 shuttle Columbia, the first shuttle to deploy a payload (SBS) from the cargo bay. We were demonstrating the ability to track one of the two PAM-D booster rockets as it was sprung. My crew was responsible for the data coming from the rocket and confirming that it fired and lifted its satellite away from the shuttle and into geosynchronous orbit, and then separated from the satellite.

In the photo below, PAM-D is the silver metal cannister of rocket propellant beneath the barrel-shaped satellite. The entire unit is spinning up and out of its protective jacket in the shuttle cargo bay. When safely away from the shuttle, the PAM will ignite and blast the satellite into high orbit.

SBS-3 satellite with PAM-D stage inside the space shuttle.
(NASA photo from Wikipedia)

In 1983 a bigger rocket (IUS) and satellite (TDRS) combination was launched aboard STS-6 shuttle Challenger, and deployed from the cargo bay. But later, when the IUS fired, it failed in such a way that the whole package spun around in space like a pinwheel and the TDRS was useless.

IUS. Photo courtesy of Boeing.

In 1986, another IUS-TDRS combination was destroyed when STS-51-L shuttle Challenger exploded during launch. In 1988, an IUS-TDRS combination finally got into orbit aboard a space shuttle, and several more STS-IUS-TDRS combinations went into space in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) at Smithsonian
© 2007 Randy Rhody

By the time of the Challenger explosion, I had already moved on to teaching satellite engineering to Air Force officers for a brand new satellite control center in Colorado. The first groups of students trained in California, and on one of our field trips to Vandenberg Air Force Base, the space shuttle Enterprise happened to be there.

Visiting Enterprise at Vandenberg in 1986,
some of my Air Force students surrounding it.
© 2007 Randy Rhody

It was the one that had been used to conduct drop and landing tests prior to the first launch. 20 years later I saw Enterprise again, after it was placed in the Smithsonian Museum.

Enterprise at Smithsonian
© 2007 Randy Rhody