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East Oregonian
Friday, October 13, 2017
NASA: ‘I went to the Students interact with NASA engineer
moon with a slide rule’
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
initiating fire and measuring
temperature, pressure, smoke
patterns and chemicals in the
atmosphere for a variety of
materials and scenarios until
they came up with something
that worked.
Chaffee’s
favorite
moments include the landing
of Apollo 11 on the moon. In
his living room with his two
children on his lap, he watched
astronaut Neil Armstrong take
the first step.
Another favorite memory
is of Apollo 8. On Christmas
Eve in 1968, Chaffee sat with
colleagues in Mission Control
and kept track of data as the
spacecraft orbited the moon.
As it came into view about
midnight, a high-fidelity
camera showed the surface of
the moon in muted colors of
grey, brown and black.
“The entire world could
see the moon from an Amer-
ican spacecraft in orbit,”
Chaffee said.
On the screen, Chaffee
spotted a bubble of green
and blue on the horizon. A
murmur of speculation, then
someone said “That’s the
rising earth.” For the first
time, Chaffee said, people on
earth saw the rising earth from
the moon. The astronauts —
Commander Frank Borman,
James Lovell and William
Anders — took turns reading
the first 10 verses of Genesis.
“In the beginning, God
created the heaven and
earth…,” Chaffee said.
“What an emotional moment
for everyone who was there.
Tears were streaming down.
You’re trying to watch your
data and trying to watch the
TV and your heart is throb-
bing.”
A photograph of the moon
with the earth in the back-
ground hangs in Chaffee’s
home along with the text of
Genesis 1:1.
He remembered another
mission that involved Scott
Carpenter, a Navy test pilot
who became the second astro-
naut to orbit earth. During
his Mercury flight in 1962,
Carpenter practiced orienting
the ship with a series of yaws
and rolls and pitches. The test
pilot/astronaut did so much
switching
back-and-forth
between regular and manual
control that his fuel supply
dropped low enough to
threaten reentry. The astro-
naut came in at a worrisome
angle.
“If the angle of re-entry is
too narrow, you hit the atmo-
sphere and skip like a stone,”
Chaffee said.
Carpenter made it back
into earth’s atmosphere, but
overflew the splashdown site
in the Atlantic Ocean by 250
miles. The astronaut waited
three hours for Navy divers to
arrive.
Chaffee
also
talked
about the logistics of being
an
aerospace
engineer
before the beginning of the
computer age. To illustrate,
he unsheathed his old slide
rule from a leather case and
held it up.
“I didn’t have a four-func-
tion calculator until 1973,” he
said. “I went to the moon with
a slide rule.”
One has the sense that
Chaffee could go on for
hours, telling one interesting
story after the next.
He now serves as some-
thing of an ambassador for
NASA, visiting schools and
other venues in a quest to
spark excitement about space
exploration. He oversees a
weekend-long competition
for high school students at the
Johnson Space Center. This
year, four teams of students
designed settlements capable
of housing 700 people on the
surface of Venus, a hot and
inhospitable planet. During
the weekend, each 50-person
team submits a project
proposal and students transi-
tion from enthralled visitors
to scientists working under a
deadline.
“They come in bright and
bushy-tailed and depart as
zombies,” Chaffee said.
Chaffee plans to keep
sharing his love of rocket
science with whoever will
listen.
“I’m not through,” he said.
“The sun is not yet set.”
He ended the pub talk
with a request: “Write to your
Congressman and urge full
funding of NASA.”
———
Contact Kathy Aney at
kaney@eastoregonian.com
or 941-966-0810.
BRIEFLY
Retired NASA engineer Norman
H. Chaffee spoke to approximately
150 students Wednesday about his 38
years at the space agency.
During the visit to the Pendleton
UAS Test Range, Chaffee reconnected
with Oregon STEM (science, tech-
nology, engineering and math) and
robotics students he met last spring at
the Johnson Space Center. The engineer
encouraged them and their classmates to
pursue their dreams in the field of tech-
nology innovation.
A video highlighted space flight
endeavors that happened since Chaffee,
of Pasadena, Texas, joined NASA in
1962. Among other subjects, Chaffee
spoke about the imminent reality of
inhabiting Mars and returning to colo-
nize the moon within the students’ life-
time. The students soaked in information
on rockets, robotics, space travel and the
future of STEM-related technologies.
The teens took turns interacting with
Chaffee and touring the UAS Mission
Control Facility, where they learned
about a variety of robotics and aerospace
technologies being developed in Pend-
Photo contributed by Ben Caldwell/The Duke Joseph Agency
Retired space systems engineer Dr. Norman H. Chaffee speaks with a
group of about 150 STEM students Wednesday in at the Pendleton UAS
Test Range at the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport.
leton. The students also experienced the
MCIC lab’s virtual reality simulation
and its bevy of 3D printers. They held a
thruster from the Apollo service module
and an encapsulated Apollo heat shield.
Chaffee wore many hats throughout
his long career at the Johnson Space
Center, with roles as deputy division
chief for the NASA Propulsion and
Power Division, chief engineer for
Technical Program Systems Integration
and the International Space Station
Program, and chief of systems of
the Engineering and Integration for
the NASA Lunar Mars Exploration
Program.
In 1987, Dr. Chaffee was named
NASA Engineer of the Year. In 1991, he
became deputy chief of the Automation
and Robotics division.
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U.S., Israel to exit UN agency
over alleged anti-Israel bias
PARIS (AP) — The United States announced Thursday it
is pulling out of the U.N.’s educational, scientific and cultural
agency because of what Washington sees as its anti-Israel
bias and a need for “fundamental reform” in the agency.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel
plans to follow suit.
While the Trump administration had been preparing for a
likely withdrawal from UNESCO for months, the timing of
the State Department’s statement was unexpected. The Paris-
based agency’s executive board is in the midst of choosing a
new chief — with Qatar’s Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari
leading the heated election heading into Friday’s final vote.
Outgoing Director-General Irina Bokova expressed
“profound regret” at the U.S. decision and tried to defend
UNESCO’s reputation. The organization is best known
for its World Heritage program to protect cultural sites and
traditions, but also works to improve education for girls,
promote understanding of the Holocaust’s horrors, and to
defend media freedom.
Bokova called the U.S.’s planned departure a loss for “the
United Nations family” and for multilateralism. The U.S. and
UNESCO matter to each other more than ever now with “the
rise of violent extremism and terrorism,” she said.
The U.S. stopped funding UNESCO after it voted to
include Palestine as a member state in 2011, but the State
Department has maintained a UNESCO office and sought
to weigh in on policy behind the scenes. The U.S. now owes
about $550 million in back payments.
Hotel: Gunman shot at crowd
seconds after shooting guard
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Even as investigators struggle to
unravel the mystery of what motivated a gunman to open
fire on a Las Vegas concert crowd, confusion surrounds the
sequence of events in the fatal few minutes of the worst mass
shooting in modern U.S. history.
On Thursday, the hotel where gunman Stephen Paddock
opened fire from his high-rise hotel suite disputed the
official timeline for the Las Vegas massacre and rejected
any suggestion hotel officials delayed summoning police for
several minutes after the gunman’s initial burst of fire.
It was the latest head-turning change in the investigation
that has been frustrating for all involved. Since the Oct. 1
massacre, the timeline of the shooting has changed several
times and police and hotel officials can’t seem to agree on the
basics of when the shooting happened.
In the most recent chronology given by investigators on
Monday, police said Paddock sprayed 200 rounds into the
hallway on the 32nd floor, wounding an unarmed security
guard in the leg, six minutes before he unleashed his barrage
of bullets on the festival crowd. That raised a series of
questions about whether officers were given information
quickly enough to possibly have a chance to take out the
gunman before he could carry out the bloodshed.
But on Thursday, MGM Resorts International, which
owns the Mandalay Bay, said it was no more than 40 seconds
between the time the guard using his walkie talkie to call
for help and Paddock opening fire on the crowd from two
windows in his suite.
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