Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: YogicCowboy

That is very interesting. Is there more to the story?


49 posted on 08/30/2019 3:22:59 PM PDT by yarddog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies ]


To: yarddog

If you mean his 15 minutes:

He designed a space station on his own time after clocking out. It was inspired by a hypothetical concept by Werner von Braun.

If you are familiar with the common science-fiction concept of a spinning doughnut providing articial gravity, this is where it originates, apparently. It was to be built in orbit by robot tugboats.

My father designed it; an industrial artist drew the illustrations. Two man project. Since he was a Lockheed employee, they owned it, even though they did not contribute.

NASA was intrigued, but it preceded Mercury: too advanced. The re-entry vehicle looked like a mini-space shuttle.

My mother’s indifference stemmed, I infer, from his spending evenings away on this project while she was raising three very young children. I was the youngest, and do not remember it.

My love of airplanes and rockets and such developed completely independent of my father’s career, since I did not really know much about what he did until later.

I knew he was an “engineer”; that made me think he ran choo-choo trains when I was very young.


51 posted on 08/30/2019 8:33:58 PM PDT by YogicCowboy ("I am not entirely on anyone's side, because no one is entirely on mine." - J. R. R. Tolkien)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson