Oral History Interview With Charles Dissinger
Space robotics
Astronautics--Human factors
Astronautics-- Robot applications
Charles Dissinger was born and raised in Virginia. As a small child, Charles's father would drive him over to the Langley Research Center in Virginia, and he was always engaged with the space program. Charles remembers watching every space launch on tv with his dad as a kid. Being inspired by space, he decided to go to The University of Virginia to get his bachelor's degree in Biology. Then, after graduating, he taught high school for 4 years. After this, he went back to graduate school at West Virginia University to get his master's degree in Biology/Biochemistry. His second career after teaching, was doing Biochemical research for 19 years. Charles's wife later on received a job offer at The Marshall Space Flight Center in Hunstville, AL to join the Information Technology Organization there. She took this job, and they moved to Huntsville. Charles was then soon after hired in 1994 at NASA. His first project there included finding the requirements for the NASA Standard 3000 design. This project was called "The Launch Deployment Assembly" which was a system to deliver the robotic arm to the space station. Another program Charles was involved in was the Propulsion Module.
Dissinger, Charles
Stokes, Jack
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
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Interviews
Video
Oral History Interview With Charles M. Louis
Space stations
Space tourism
As a kid, Charles M. Louis loved to take things apart and put them back together. He also was inspired as a kid while reading a Life magazine article with Wernher Von Braun standing next to the Saturn V engine at the age of 15. Since he was an avid Science Fiction reader at the time, this all inspired him to become involved with the Space Program, and to eventually become a licensed hand radio operator. In college, he pursued an Electrical Engineering degree, and he flunked out of college becasue the classes were too big. Because of this, he decided to change schools and go to the Detroit Institue of Technology. There, he was more successful because of the smaller class sizes. After graduating college, he was hired at Boeing in Seattle, Washington. At Boeing, he was involved in Test Engineering supporting UHF and Microwave antennas on the Minuteman Program. Boeing then got a contract for the Saturn V Program 8 months after Charles started working there. He decided he would rather work on the Space Program then the military side, so he decided to move down to Huntsville, AL to work on the program.
Louis, Charles M.
Oral History Interview With Charles Van Valkenburg
Space simulators
Space suits
Charles Van Valkenburg grew up in Huntsville, AL, and he went to Auburn University. There, he majored in Industrial Design and he had a part-time job as a draftsman at one of the civil engineering firms. After graduating college, he received a job at Essex in Huntsville. At this job, Charles would get in the water of the Neutral Buoyancy Tank and make sure that all the tools and everything was in place for an astronaut. Sometimes, he would even be the test subject. After all the testing from the day, they would all have a debriefing session at this company where the astronaut, human factors experts, and engineers would all make inputs. After the debriefing, they would take the ideas and get the machinists to make some modifications to the hardware. Charles would also work in pressure suits, and he explains how restricted the suit made him feel. He also mentions the foot restraints, and how difficult they were to work with. In his career, Charles was also able to help design the underwater version of the manned maneuvering unit.
Van Valkenburg, Charles
Oral History Interview With Dr. John Rogers
Space environment
Dr. John Rogers is from Kansas, and in Kansas, John loved to drive out into the prarie and find places where there had been homesteads. There, he would lay on the ground and look up at the stars at night. This all inspired him to get involved with the space station, and human factors engineering. John received his Bachelor's degree at Kansas State University, and then he received his Master's degree at The University of Arkansas. At this point, he took up a teaching job in Arkansas, and during that period of time, he recieved a National Science Foundation summer research fellowship at Florida State University. There, John did research on the effects of radiation on the human body. After leaving his teaching job, he went to the University of Mexico to pursue his Phd. While he was there, he was able to be a part of a summer program that pushed him towards his career. Since John did such a great job at the summer program, they kept him on as a consultant where he could work unlimited hours, and work any time he wanted to. The work that he did there included: examining human air and organizations, and considering what was the common factor/the emphasis in the atomic energy. After his job there, he started working at NASA in June of 1967. His job tasks there included: looking at the simulations and to look at the experimental design. He also had to try to make sure that they had solid statistics behind their results that were being detained.
Rogers, John
Oral History Interview With Edwin Pruitt
Lunar surface vehicles
Edwin Pruitt is from a small town in Alabama. He went to Auburn University, and when he was a sophomore there, he applied to a co-op position. In this co-op, he was assigned to a flight-dynamics group. Edwin was not satisfied with this position, so he asked to be switched to another one. In this new co-op, he was able to drive around on the simulated moon surface. Some things he was also involved in was diving into the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator, flying on the KC-135, and he had the freedom to represent his group with other part of the center where he worked. After Edwin graduated from college, he got a job at GE Aerospace in Valley Forge. They had a contract with the Airforce to train the Airforce astronauts. He eventually got laid off from this position, and he next got a job at Teledyne Brown Engineering. After working there for a couple of years, he found a job at Matrix in Huntsville. After working here, he found a job at Essex working on proposals.
Pruitt, Edwin
Oral History Interview With George Hamilton
Biomedical engineering
Space vehicles
George Hamilton has lived in Huntsville, Alabama all of his life, and his father was a Charter Marshall Member in Huntsville. When he was working, George's father was chosen as a "guinea pig" to go up in the Pregnant Guppy, which was a large, wide-bodied cargo aircraft. Because of George's father's career and interest with NASA, it made George interested in the career as well. George has a lot of family stories like this, which all have inspired him to take on his career that he has now. After high school, George went to The University of South Alabama in Mobile to study Marine Biology. Over the summer he had a change of heart, so he decided to transfer to Auburn University for Mechanical Engineering. After he finished up with his degree, he started working in small, manufacturing spare parts for missiles. After this career, he started to work at Avco Electronics in Huntsville where he worked at the plant on the design side. After this, Avco started looking for people to go overseas on the construction side of the house, so George went overseas with them. Then he came back, got married, and received his Phd in Biomedical Engineering at The University of Alabama in Birmingham.
Hamilton, George
Oral History Interview With Joe Phillipauldy
Astronautics
Joe Phillipauldy is originally from Central, New Jersey. He did his undergraduate training at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and then he received his Master's degree at Villanove University. He then when on to get his graduate degree, and completed the program in 1984. His degree was in Experimental Psychology. In 1986, he accepted a job position with the Creatis Systems Tech Staff at Boeing Military Airplanes in Kansas. His first Human Engineering job was with Tech Staff. A project he spent a lot of time on was the Airforce I VC25 747 Presidential Replacement Program. With this, he did a workload analysis of the navigator crew station. After this work, Joe got involved with the Human Factors and Industrial Applications group. There, he ran task terms around the factory floor doing analyses and reporting on ergonomics issues on assembling vehicles. Later, he was able to work on the Space Station Vehicle Integration Contract in Huntsville, AL.
Phillipauldy, Joe
Oral History Interview With John H. Reese
Fluid dynamics (Space environment)
John H. Reese was born in the Jefferson hospital in Birmingham, AL in 1945. He went to Fairfield High school in Tennessee, and graduated in 1963. He then went to Auburn University and went into Pre-Engineering. John received his engineering degree in 1969. The reason it took him 6 years to graduate is because he had to work his way through school on the cooperative education program. His brother-in-law worked at NASA at the time, and he got John interested in the Space Program. John then decided to co-op with the Marshall Space Flight Center and he applied with the Engineering Cooperative Education office. He then decided to send his resume to NASA, and received a job offer soon after. In this job, he helped do all the structural testing on the various modules and components of the Saturn I and Saturn fives. He was also involved in the Hubble Space Telescope Mock-Up. John's job was to come up with the foot-restraint systems, tether points, etc.
Reese, John H.
Oral History Interview With John Ofenloch
Space Vehicles--- Atmospheric entry
John Ofenloch was born in Chicago, Ilinois and was raised there. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at Christian Brother's University in Memphis, Tennessee. When he graduated college, he accepted a job with North American Aviation in Downey, California. In Downey was the North American Aviation Space and Information Division which had the contract for the Apollo Command Service Module. Ofenloch's responsibility while he was out there was the Apollo Command Module Earth re-entry. His job was to make sure that the Command Module was capable of bringing the astronauts back safely to Earth. After he was through with the tests of the command module, he went to Brown Engineering in Huntsville, AL to work with zero gravity and the effects on the humans and the vehicle.
Ofenloch, John
Oral History Interview With Kim B. Robertson
Space industrialization
Industrialization
Kim B. Robertson is a retired Design Engineer, and has lived in Huntsville, AL his whole life. He grew up in the Monte Santo Mountain area where most of the German scientists on Von Braun's missile team lived, so being involved with the Space Station was always a part of his life growing up. He knew from an early age that Huntsville was where he always wanted to live, and this is the area that he wanted to work in. Robertson eventually went to Auburn University where he was able to work on a Marshall project. He was able to work on the Industrial Design team there, and he, along with his group, was asked to do some design work to get ideas for Skylab and the Space Station. After graduating from Auburn, he joined the National Guard with a year of active duty. While being in the National Guard, he became a ground-radio maintenance technician. His first job in Huntsville was working at URS Matrix, and there he worked on the hand-controller for the shuttle arm. He also did some volumetric studies for putting experiments in the back part of the shuttle work-area.
Robertson, Kim B.
Oral History Interview With Michael Bacaro
Animal space flight
Space flight
Michael Bacato was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. When he started high school at the age of 14, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. When he graduated high school, he enlisted in the Navy in 1945 so he wouldn't have to go into the Army. He stayed in the Navy for two years. In the Navy, Michael was on a crew of the Destroyer. When he got discharged from the Navy, he then started college in 1948. To help pay for college, he started working with the merch marines selling out oil tanks. He finished this in 1951. Michael started out in college at New York University, and soon after he almost had to go back to the Navy because North Korea invaded South Korea. To avoid going back, he joined the ROTC at NYU with the airforce. In 1952, he entered the extended active duty with the United States airforce as a second lieutenant. He went to Keesler Airforce Base for training, and he spent two years there. There, he became a Radar Officer. After his training, Michael then started to become interested with Von Braun, and the development of rockets in Huntsville, AL. He then finally made a decision to leave the airforce, and he moved to Huntsville to work. He went into the Mechanical Engineering Design group. One of the first projects he was assigned to was the life support system, working with two monkeys. He then was offered a job in the Bioengineering group, which he liked much better, so he decided to stay with this group. His last program he worked on was on the Hubble Telescope, where he had the opportunity to work with Buzz Aldron.
Bacaro, Michael
Oral History Interview With Richard Heckmann
Space vehicles-- Electronic equipment-- Welding
Welding
Richard Heckmann was born in Ohio, and he lived there until he was 9 years old. When he turned 9, his dad received a civil engineering job in Washington D.C., so they moved there soon after. After this, they then moved to Maryland. Richard explains that he was a sickly child, and he was once in a coma for 10 days when he was just 7 years old. Growing up, he became more healthy and ended up going to Johns Hopkins University and graduated with an Engineering Science degree. Richard eventually accepted a commission in the ordinance corp, and he went to Fort Bliss for a guided missile school. He spent two years in the autillery there. At Fort Bliss, he received his private pilot's license while he was in the service. Then, they took Richard back to the ordinance corp. and they sent him down to the Redstone Arsenal, where he got stationed. After this career, Richard worked as a project engineer for the manufacturing for hardware at Thiokol. He then transferred to Hayes Industry, and he worked with the manufacturing engineering lab at the Marshall Space Flight Center. There, he worked on the Apollo Applications Program.
Heckmann, Richard
Oral History Interview With Robert McBrayer
After Robert McBrayer graduated college, he reported to the Johnson Space Center in March of 1963. He was there assigned to a section called "Biodynamics" and in that section, they worked on Human tolerances to impact sustaining acceleration and acoustics. Robert was assigned to the acoustics group, and his first job was to design and develop a machine to produce low-frequency pure tones to test humans. He also designed and developed a test chamber for testing humans, and he participated in doing the actual human test with the machines that he helped build. He helped document the results as well. After his venture in doing basic research, he went into an area called "crew's survival equipment design and development," and he was assigned pieces of equipment that were his to design, update, and help build. In 1966, Robert asked to be transferred from the Johnson Space Center to the Marshall Space Flight Center, and he then moved to Huntsville, AL. Robert was immediately put on the Orbital Workshop where they were writing task analysis, and procedures for crew station reviews. They did two of those, on in 1967 and the other in 1968. From the Orbital Workshop, he was responsible for all the crew interfaces on adapter, etc.
McBrayer, Robert
Roving vehicles (Astronautics)
Steven Hall was born in a small town in the north central part of Indiana. This town has about a population of 2,000 people. Steven graduated from Eastern High School in 1963, and then he enrolled in Aeronautical/Neurospace Engineering at Purdue University. There, he received his bachelor's degree in 1968. Steven originally became interested in man space-flight when he was just about 10 years old. At this age, he had no clue how he could get involved with the space station, but he knew that he wanted to get involved one day. After he graduated college, he was so ready to work at NASA, that he left his home town immediately to move down to Huntsville, AL to start working. When he began working at the Marshall Space Flight Center, he was shown how Human Factors Engineering worked. One of the first projects that Steven was able to work on was "Skylab" where they built a lot of the equipment that probed how humans responded to space, and how the body changes in space. He also worked on a program to design a vehicle to drive around the surface of the moon.
Hall, Steven
Oral History Interview With Vygontus Kulpa
Vigontus Kulpa grew up in Huntsville, AL. Ever since he was young, Kulpa was always interested with the space program. He ended up going to college at UAH, and was considered a "feter" co-op engineer, so he actually started out at The Marshall Space Flight Center. There, Kulpa worked with the Human Systems Integration Branch. In college, Kulpa started out at UAH, but eventually ended up graduating from college at Auburn University. He then came back to UAH to receive his Master's degree in Systems Engineering and his Doctorate in Psychology and Human Factors. Kulpa's first full-time assignment was as a Crew Procedures Engineer. In this job, he was considered "between" the scientists that did the experiments, and the astronauts. Kulpa ended up working with the Avionics group to design a battery-operated wrench, and he took this on the KC-135. He also was able to work to help re-design the space station. After a while, he switched jobs and worked with the Neutral-Buoyancy Tank where he worked on how to make a space shuttle suit work underwater.
Kulpa, Vigontus
Oran and vicinity from castle above town.
Oran (Algeria)
Photograph number 60. This photograph shows the Oran, Algeria and surrounding areas from the castle above the town. The title for this image was found in Major Edwin D. Burwell Jr.'s list of photographs.
Burwell, Edwin D. III [Burwell, Edwin D., Jr.]
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
Photographs
Still Image
Photograph number 61. This photograph shows the Oran, Algeria and surrounding areas from the castle above the town. The title for this image was found in Major Edwin D. Burwell Jr.'s list of photographs.
Photograph number 62. This photograph shows the Oran, Algeria and surrounding areas from the castle above the town. The title for this image was found in Major Edwin D. Burwell Jr.'s list of photographs.
Photograph number 63. This photograph shows the Oran, Algeria and surrounding areas from the castle above the town. The title for this image was found in Major Edwin D. Burwell Jr.'s list of photographs.
Photograph number 64. This photograph shows the Oran, Algeria and surrounding areas from the castle above the town. The title for this image was found in Major Edwin D. Burwell Jr.'s list of photographs.