Kenneth Nelson:
CLASS OF 1966
Bonners Ferry High SchoolClass of 1966
Bonners ferry, ID
Wright State University - EngineeringClass of 1977
Dayton, OH
North Idaho CollegeClass of 1968
Coeur d' alene, ID
Kenneth's Story
Hello old friends. Although I was never allowed to socialize with you all much, I have a number of fond memories of our four years together. A few of you, I was lucky and blessed enough to meet later. I hope you all have had interesting lives with much still to go.
I don't know how many of you remember how enamored I was in High School with electronics and science fiction and wanted to fly in the US Air Force. I wrote odd fantasy and science fiction papers in English class that Mrs. Venard was good enough to accept and enourage. Well although my path was not to be exactly as I dreamed, I got close. After graduation I went to North Idaho college through their Industrial Electronics program - not the engineering degree I wanted but practical enough for employment. As you may recall there was still the military draft and the Vietnam war. Not knowing how to go forward for that degree and fearing being drafted into the Marines or Army - (which might not have been so bad) I joined the Air force, but of course with no degree as an NCO - so no piloting. My test scores were so high that I got first choice in a career field and was enrolled in their communications specialty field. Seemed I was getting my electronics career underway. Boot camp was Lackland AFB near San Antonio, Texas and tech school was at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi. I spent my first tour at Fort Yukon Alaska. From there I was transferred to Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. I spent the rest of my time there except for temporary duty excursions to other bases. There I decided to work on a Systems Engineering degree which I started before leaving the AF. Wright State University was right there. Not being independently wealthy yet, I had to work and so took 7 years of night school to get that degree. I worked for an engineering prototyping company and a cable TV production group along the way. AND IT HAPPENED! I was hired to work for a flight trainer developement company - Link Training Systems - in Houston at the Johnson Space Center designi...Expand for more
ng and building the Space Shuttle and Space Station trainers. These trainers are massive computer systems with crew station hardware and computer models simulating all the systems to realistically run them in real time. These systems included US, Russian, European, and Japanese crew stations. We ran the actual flight software in emulators of the flight computers. We included Simulated visual systems - incredibly high realistically generated camera and out-the-window visual scenes from launch into orbit through landing. We integrated all this with the several US, Russian, European, and Japanese control centers and ran many long term world wide and space training sessions. We thoroughly simulated all the flight equipment, experiments, and the local universe - earth, sun, moon, star systems, satelites (tracking and communication), gravity, atmosphere, and on and on. I learned how to fly the Space Shuttle, but usually crashed the landing. In simulators equipment and people don't get hurt in accidents. Launch and orbit operations were fun. I also learned how to run most US equipment operations on the Space Station. My wife and I got to see a Shuttle launch from Florida while I was attending a conference there. Great fun! Awesome! Met so many interesting people over the years.
All this jabber may give some indication of how much I enjoyed the 34 years I worked there. It has been as close to my imagined science fiction worlds as could be, but it is real. Too bad the Shuttle program was shut down before a replacement vehicle was ready - I might still be working there. Although I had been kept on longer than could have been, eventially I was layed off. Forced into early retirement about a year earlier than expected. I'm doing fine and my wife , kids, and grandkids are keeping me busy.
This is just a highlight. Think any more could be boring. Hope I didn't bore you all as it is.
BTW, I,m still not independently wealthy, but that was not in my early dreams and I was too ignorant to save enough early enough.
Ken
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