Before the Moon Blog
Exploring the past, present, and future of space.
Tag: NASA engineer
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When Ralph Anderson joined NASA, he didn’t know he would one day design a device that could save a drifting astronaut’s life. “I started out as a junior engineer working for Lockheed,” he said. “We built flight crew equipment for the Space Shuttle—a switch panel called L-1011. I couldn’t believe they were going to entrust…
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When Joe D. Gamble joined NASA in 1963, the U.S. hadn’t yet reached the Moon—and the space center he was hired to work at didn’t even exist. “When I first entered NASA in 1963,” he said, “we didn’t have Johnson Space Center yet. We were working out of apartments on the Gulf Freeway in Houston.…
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In June 1964, a young engineer named Gary Wayne Johnson packed his wife, their belongings, and their dreams into a VW Bug and drove to Houston. “That was about all we owned,” he laughed. “I’d just graduated from Oklahoma State. I changed my major from chemical to electrical engineering because I wanted to work in…