A parallel experience to John Young’s career.
Joy Dickinson’s Florida Flashback: “Readers laud Central Florida heroes of space, education” on March 4 brought back fond memories of the Apollo era. I had a smaller, but somewhat parallel, experience to John Young’s career leading to the Apollo program and beyond.
I, too, attended Princeton Elementary, also graduated from Orlando Senior High (the “Happy Days” equivalent), went to college, joined the Air Force and began a career in aerospace electronics at Dynatronics Inc. in Longwood, working on various government and military contracts as a senior project planner.
Dynatronics received a Request for Quote to offer a bid to NASA for the Apollo PCM Ground Data Acquisition System. This system was to consist of several land and sea data systems to receive and interpret all data from the astronauts, rocket, orbiter, lander and other equipment during the entire mission. The processed data then went to the control-room operators for analysis and reporting, which was visible on the TV news reports. We proudly say that all operations functioned without interruption or outage during all missions.
After about two months of proposal preparation and submittal, Dynatronics was selected to make a personal presentation to the NASA executives. Bob J., one of our most talented engineers, discovered a potential problem that could have a deleterious effect during the receipt and interpretation of the data streams. This was in the early to mid-1960s when solid-state designs and data streaming were in their infancy. This design identification problem was not recognized by our competitors, but a colleague provided the solution behind closed doors, which resulted in the award to Dynatronics.
The rest is history, but being a contributor to this vast project gave me a goal to seek and hold brief conversations with as many Apollo astronauts as possible during my remaining lifetime. So far, I have had personal conversations with at least eight astronauts and one control-room chief and, uniquely, three personal chats with Buzz Aldrin.
Commander John Young was the last astronaut I met, by arranging a time with his personal agent at his Orlando History Achievement Day presentation at the Orlando History Center.
Although in a much lower category, I am proud to have been another Orlando boy who had a part in this magnificent scientific project and to have followed John Young in a minor parallel life experience.
Also, it is great to be friends with some of the great heroes of that time. I just hope God isn’t too upset with us for invading his universe.