U.S. SPACE STATION

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. Albert Einstein

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. Stephen Hawking

I was involved in the development of space vehicles.  When I started my career, I was a USAF officer on the MINUTEMAN Launch Team at Cape Canaveral.  I participated in over 50 launches used to develop the missile and test the warhead.  The Minuteman has 1200 sites with solid propellant missiles on a minute’s alert to programmable targets previously chosen.  Each “bird” has a reentry capsule with 3 multiple target capability.  Each target can be demolished with a thermonuclear warhead that is 50 times greater than the Nagasaki or Hiroshima bombs of 20 kiloton.   That is why it was called MAD – mutually assured destruction.  If anyone attacks the U.S., they will destroyed within ½ hour – 15 minute to 20 minute flight of up to 3,600 warheads.  I am proud of that work and believe me I sleep peacefully.  I know the capability.  My only concern today is that the U.S. may have a narcissistic president that might want to “see what happens”.   Oh well, I have lived a long and successful life but my kids and grand kids have not.  This is  the reason I now write and try to educate people.

When I left the USAF, I stayed in Florida prior to going back to graduate school. I joined IBM as a programmer team manager.  We called ourselves “Engi-grammers”  since everyone was a graduate engineer with missile experience. We designed, wrote and tested all the software that launched the Saturn V moon rocket.  I worked on the Grissom, Chaffee, and White Launch as well as the first Saturn V Moon Launch.  I was responsible for all the telemetry, propellant loading and destruct sequences. The bird had 5,000 transducers on the vehicle.   It was a challenge to calibrate all of them prior to launch.  All destruct sequences were encrypted.  The communication traffic was heavy so we had to multiplex all transmissions.  This is where triple multiplexing was born. AT& T took the communications systems that were designed, developed, tested and used on the Saturn Rocket launches and used them in transmissions for their voice and data networks. Nothing was changed.  They called it T1, T2 and T3 communications networks. It was PCM modulated.  T1 and T3 is now out to the public.  T2 is only used by AT&T for transmissions between their sub systems in their network but it is still used.

What was a motivating factor in the people I knew at the Cape?  It was SPACE.  This is what we dreamed of – the moon at first but man in space.  It took man many years and Millions of man-hours but this gives you a taste of what happened.  This is very well done.   Enjoy.

THIS IS AMAZING  – – –  I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD EVER SEE ANYTHING LIKE THIS

I had no idea as to what the Space Station looks like. Now I do and it is very impressive.

Click here: Departing Space Station Commander Provides Tour of Orbital Laboratory – YouTube

or

https://www.youtube.com/embed/doN4t5NKW-k