James,

I have already submitted some of my personal experiences, so some of us are old enough to have been there. I did not work in the manned space program, but instead worked for the DSN (Deep Space Network) that was charged with unmanned missions.

Working at Goldstone we were involved in many missions since we did the tracking, commanding and data recovery. A couple of programs are very much in my memory. I was a project engineer on the Mariner Venus/Mercury (called MVM-73 before launch and Mariner-10 after). It was (if I recall correctly) the first multi-planet probe to use gravitational assist. It encountered Venus and swung around the planet which gave it a boost in velocity to continue on to Mercury. It was the first spacecraft to make a close examination of Mercury. I was involved in the receiver section of the DSS-14 station (also called the "Mars" station) which had the 64m dish with s/x band feed for studying the differential bending of RF thru the atmosphere of Venus when it went into occultation (disappeared behind the planet). We accurately measure both signal frequency and LOS of the two carriers which would provide scientists with a measure of atmospheric density. It was out of comm about 40-minutes when it was to reappear from the behind Venus. But due to a human screw up, Australia picked up the signal before us even though they did not have a view of Venus above the horizon during the encounter. What was even more embarrassing was that the Director of NASA made a surprise visit to the station to personally view the experiment. Boy, did we have some explaining to do. So what happened? Since there were unknowns in the exact altitude above Venus that the trajectory would take and unknowns about Venus' gravitational field, I had to generate a series of estimates (on a desk calculator) for Doppler shift and tell the other receiver engineer what value of frequency to enter into the, then state of the art, PLL mw receiver. Since 2292 part of the frequency did not change, I gave him the .xxx,xxx,xx part instead of 2292.xxx,xxx,xx Yeah, in the excitement and stress of the moment the other engineer and I screwed up the frequency entries. The other frequency was 8415 MHz (I believe).

The other mission was the Viking-I Mars Lander, which I was involved only slightly. But NASA circulated a paper asking for signatures of all the participating engineers. The surprise was that they engraved a small plaque that was attached to the spacecraft with all those signatures. Mine is on there along with about 250 others. Pretty neat deal to think back on.

In 2001 I made a visit to Goldstone after attending MUD-2001 in San Jose. So much has changed, yet my tour-guide was a young woman that began work at Goldstone a year after I left. She was in a training program that I had a hand in starting. She actually said she recalled my name - Later that night I had dinner with Dick, K6HIJ and his son in Barstow and we reminisced. Dick first hired me to work at Goldstone in his department.

All this is 30 years or more into my past, but the recent links to the anniversary of Apollo-8 and the Parkes Station bring it back. It was my dream as a young man in high school and even earlier to get into the space program. But I never thought that would happen. It was directly due to a friendship with K6HIJ that I got that opportunity. Thanks Dick for all of that!

73, Ed - KL7UW I worked at Goldstone 1971-1976 (I was 27 years old when I started); JPL 1976-1979

At 04:17 PM 12/26/2008, James French wrote:

Since we are reminiscing about where some of our families were doing at the beginning of the space age, I'll add mine in.

My grandfather, Paul, W1DLP, told me about working on some of the equipment for the Gemini program. He even gave me one of his trinkets from then, a plastic coin bank in the shape of a Gemini capsule that he had gotten. I have long since lost that trinket...:(

I am wondering how many of us had relatives that did something during those fun times?

James W8ISS

On Fri, 2008-12-26 at 11:13 -0600, Reicher, James wrote:

...

Seeing this link brought tears to my eyes.

At the time the tapes were made, I was the tender age of three, but I still have a very close connection with those images and with the tapes.

My grandfather, Walter Lyons, an electrical engineer with RCA, helped develop the technology used in taking the images from the Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor series and converting them into radio waves and into the data found on these tapes.

Although he never was licensed as an amateur, he was one of my inspirations for becoming a ham. Unfortunately, he passed away 2 years before I earned my ticket.

73 de W0HV, Jim in Raymore, MO (ex-N8AU)

Light travels faster than sound... This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2008 11:30:36 -0900 From: Edward Cole kl7uw@acsalaska.net Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Earthrise - add To: Joe Fitzgerald jfitzgerald@alum.wpi.edu Cc: Amsat BB amsat-bb@amsat.org Message-ID: 200812252030.mBPKUbv8086213@hermes.acsalaska.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 04:25 AM 12/25/2008, Joe Fitzgerald wrote:

...

Rocky Jones wrote:

...

I think that the first black and white photo of Earthrise over

the Moon...was from one of the Lunar Orbiters... I think 5...

...

There was a nice story recently about a recent restoration of that

photo

...

...http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-111408a.html

-Joe KM1P _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the

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I am amazed at times how my own past resurfaces.

One of my duties at Goldstone from 1974-1976 was to manage the tape backup for data received from spacecraft like the Voyagers and Pioneers that flew by Jupiter, Saturn (and the outer planets after my time), and other missions. It was sort of an unwanted task handed off on me. But I took it serious and devised a record system to keep track of when they were recorded and so they would be retained for the required time period. These were backups as the prime data had been transmitted to the mission scientist. These were held a minimum of 30-days in case of any bad data in the originals. I started stacking them in an unused office but in time they ended up in the climate-controlled "basement" of the 64m DSS-14 Control Building. They ended up being kept much longer than 30-days. I'm guessing these reel tapes were made by the same recorder as mentioned in the article. Isn't it fantastic that the old Lunar tapes were recoverable! 2009 will be my 30th anniversary of leaving Jet Propulsion Lab to move to Alaska...tempis fugit!

The, then new, Hydrogen Maser Master Clock was installed in this same room. It was used for precise timing of VLBI experiments, which previously required calibration by the famous "flying clock" or the x-band Moon Bounce timing system (ask Dick, K6HIJ). Not only Goldstone, but Madrid, and Canberra stations required to be on the same accurate time (ask Tom Clark about that).

As the New Year approaches we reflect on the past. Thanks to those who recently found those articles.

Merry Christmas and Happy New year! 73, Ed Cole - KL7UW (& Janet)

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