Tim Parker - Touch Down: “The Eagle has landed!”

In a writers workshop, I submitted a short essay on my aerospace contributions in helping to put men on our moon and have them returned safely to Planet Earth. I was surprised by the amount of interest generated, as the other members of the group were considerably younger.

It hadnt occurred to me that many of them werent around for the first lunar landing by the Apollo 11 Mission crew. I was floored when they pointed out that for them, this was history. When I stopped to think about it, in 2019 it will be 50 years since men first walked on the moon in July of 1969. It almost seems like it was only yesterday. It is really astonishing that there still are people who claimed the trips into space and to the moon were all faked on a movie set somewhere.

One mother of a five-year-old boy was anxious to learn about how I became an aerospace engineer/rocket scientist. Apparently, she was extremely interactive with her son and worked with him constantly to make sure he had all the age appropriate toys and games that he could learn from and be challenged by them. Although I tried to be as helpful as I could, it felt like she wanted to clone a younger version of me with her son.

This memoir explains how to become an aerospace engineer or rocket scientist at a time when classes and information to accomplish either didnt exist. The examples contained herein are intended to demonstrate how someone can tackle any new problem or challenge, even when it is outside their comfort zone or area of expertise. With creative thinking, use of ones entire background and experience enables technology transfers between fields of application to adapt square pegs to fit in round holes (or how to get to the moon and back).

Starting off in chemical engineering, I did more engineering, materials development and processing than chemistry early in my career. Many problems and product development approaches were resolved by working with suppliers to determine how to use their products. Discussions with customers or government agencies helped to find out what was needed for their applications.

My job descriptions in the space programmes evolved from the race to space with the Russians. They were beating us on every step into the cosmos. We were afraid that left unchecked, they could rain missiles and rockets down on us from Earth orbit or a base on the moon.

There was neither a blueprint on what we were trying to do nor instructions available on how to accomplish it. Basically, I had to use everything I had learned on the farm, in school and all my part-time jobs to figure out how to help the astronauts get from point E (Earth) to point M (moon) and back unscathed. Because it was unchartered territory, every step of the way was a challenge, a lot of fun and a very rewarding experience.

So where does one go when the space programme slows down due to lack of funding? Besides the fulfilment of reacting to the challenges of programmes, demands and solving problems, one wants to assure that ones family is well provided for.

When sales, marketing and product managers were being paid more than technical people, I switched to doing that instead. As a business and product line manager, I usually didnt have sufficient technical support, so I ended up performing that function as well. Eventually, I became a general manager and president of a small company. I was good at handling the business aspects, but it wasnt fun, just paperwork. I ended up as technical director in product line management as well as doing research and development where I could be more creative again.

For the most part, in my day schools didnt teach students how to think. School primarily consisted of memorising things that were too soon forgotten. I had a science teacher named George Dahlquist in high school who would say, The man who said it couldnt be done was rudely awakened one morning by the sound of someone doing it.