Ever since I was young,
I’ve been fascinated by both Space Travel, Discovery and
Science Fiction. The book on the left was the first book I
ever remember reading. I read it in one sitting in my local
library in London. I was 7 or 8 years old. It turns out
that the book
was authored by a fighter
pilot -- Reginald Martin, and he fantasized about
science fiction in between missions to ward off the
horrors of war. Click on the book to learn more.
Not knowing what I
wanted to "be when I grew up", I took off and travelled
around Europe and the Middle East. I took a train and boat
to Paris from London. Took another train to Marseille. Then
I travelled by a greek ship from Marseille to Haifa in
Israel. We stopped in Naples, Italy, travelled through the
Greek Islands, stopped in Athens and Cyprus, At each stop,
I had some time to sightsee and get a flavor of the place.
I was taken by the hospitality, music and food of the Greek
Islands, that has stayed with me my whole life. The impact
of this will become evident. The map on the left shows my
route. The black line is my outgoing journey and the red
line is my return.
One night on a Kibbutz
in Israel, I was playing poker with friends. We were
discussing what we wanted to do with our lives. One fellow
said, "You would be great with computers". A light went on
inside me. I wrote to a British Computer Company -- ICL
-- who hired me right away
for some reason. I got back to London a week later. More
in the technology section. But that's how I got to
Greece, and that's how I got into technology. On the
ship at night, and in Israel at the time, when my
hormones were not playing havoc, by day I watched the
people, and by night, I watched the stars. I was 17.
At ICL, I was trained by
the engineers who were inventing and building the
computers. I learned how to operate the machines and
gradually, how to program them. In 1968, there were not
many programmers. I came to New York for a wedding, and met
a man who was a programmer at NASA. He invited me to
Washington.
What a day!!! I flew on
Eastern Airlines to DC, and when I went into his office, he
was debriefing the Apollo
10 astronauts!
Who was this man?
Harry
Hayman led the programming effort for that portion of
the Apollo mission from the liftoff from the moon to
the rendezvous with the command module in lunar orbit!
This site is
dedicated to Harry, who always encouraged my to write a
book. Harry passed away in 2008. This is the book. Not
exactly what he had in mind, but times
change.
So, at Harry's urging,
(and the fact that I met his next door neighbor's daughter,
and WOW), I came from London to Washington to work on the
Apollo program that sent 7 missions to the moon.
Unfortunately, the budget was cut before I got my US
residency and security clearance so I managed to find a job
at the World Bank instead.
At the Bank, I realized there that we were not going to
evolve if half the world’s population were dying of famine
or disease, and/or living off of $1 to $2 dollars per day.
(See the EARTH section of this site for more on this).
I plunged myself
into programming computers
in the support of economic
and social development. The Bank in Washington is not
perfect - but it has spawned several ideas. It has put
the issues of global health, nutrition and education on
the agenda of the world’s leaders. More and more people
are getting involved whether in non-governmental
organizations (NGO) or in businesses that are in some
way connected to helping the poor raise themselves up.
While the bureaucracy in Washington is tough, there are
amazing people there, who are innovative and engaged
when working with counterparts and at the grass-roots
within the countries. I retired from there in 1998,
although I took on some interesting consulting
assignments for several years afterwards.
I married -- yep -- Harry's neighbor, and we had two
wonderful kids. I kept my interest in Space and was
terribly frustrated at the apathy of the people about the
Space Programs.* I watched avidly all of the missions to
the moon, the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous, and the beginning of
the age of the Space Shuttle. I cried when Challenger
exploded, and went and mourned at the National Air and
Space Museum. I was already mourning, as my wonderful young
wife had died suddenly a couple of years before, and I was
left to raise my beautiful daughter and son by myself. I
remarried another wonderful woman 11 years later.
I got interested in Astronomy in 1986 again, as
Halley's Comet
was due to pass by the
Earth. I bought myself a big telescope, but I could not
figure out how to work the damn thing, and missed the
comet.
For me, my path came
full circle. There is a program managed by NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Lab called the Solar System
Ambassador program
that tries to reach out to the community
to educate people about what is going on in the dozens of
missions underway. I had watched this program for a few
years but did not have an idea how I could help.
My last assignments at
the World Bank were part of a Global Development Learning
Network and my final assignment was to help start up
a Distance
Learning Center program in Papua New
Guinea. From
this assignment, working with kids who had little or no
access to schools, and where crime and anarchy ruled, I
had my answer. I would volunteer to go into schools in
depressed neighborhoods and educate kids and give them
career ideas that were in their reach.
I applied with this
idea in mind and was accepted in late 2006. It’s been a
blast (no pun intended). There are more than 500
Ambassadors like me around the US, and I urge nations to
pick up the cause. This part of the website is also meant
to encourage understanding, generate support, and give
people ideas about careers in the program. If you have time
on your hands and can contribute, then follow the contact
information on the SSA site and volunteer. We are trained
by the scientists and engineers who build the spacecraft
and we are given frequent status reports and a ton of
multimedia that we use in teaching our communities.
I produce an occasional newsletter too, so if you’d like to
be included - no matter where you live, just
contact me and put “space newsletter” in the
subject line.
If you’d like to know a little about my activities,
click here. Finally, if you have kids or adult
groups in the Washington DC area and would like a
presentation about what’s going on in the World’s Space
Programs, contact me.
I hope you enjoy this part of the site. I am very open to
comments, corrections, and news.
* JOKE: A pollster knocks on the door and asks the person:
"What do you think is the worse problem: Apathy or
Ignorance?". The person answered: "I don't know and I don't
care". /JOKE
