Bill,
Brings back many vivid memories . . .
I had a chance to work "on lab" at JPL on two different occasions:
First I worked as a "contractor" for Trend Western at their "offsite" facility for
JPL back in 1974 for a few months until they transferred me "on lab" to Section 356
(Building 171), where I was for about 5 more months. I worked on a number of
different projects, including Viking. I remember once when resolving a connector
interference problem where connectors were breaking when modules were plugged into
the spacecraft, that I even had to suit up and go into the clean rooms at SAF
(Spacecraft Assembly Facility) to check out the problem first hand with my boss.
That was a thrilling experience.
But the most thrilling experience I had there didn't really happen until 1989, years
after I left JPL, when something that I did back in 1974 totally blew me away. I
used to do a lot of bizarre work for this one Engineer in Section 356, and never
really thought much of it, since I enjoyed all of it. One morning, he brought me a
Scientist who wanted to have some minor changes done to a drawing for a Reseau
(reticule dot pattern) on the face of a Vidicon Tube for one of the Auxiliary
Cameras on Project MJS-77, so that he could send it out for a quote.
I had just recently at that time worked on the design of a fax machine at a previous
company, where we applied for a Patent for some Redundancy Reduction techniques (US
PAT 4,095,248), and I got into a discussion (actually an argument) with the
Scientist about how much space he was wasting by transmitting a large inner Border
containing a Large Calibration Grey Scale Target and Measurement Scale within the
Boundary of each Picture Image that would be transmitted back from the Spacecraft,
when he could simply use the dot pattern of the Reseau as his measurement scale, and
add all of that other information when he got the image back here, much the way that
I as a Designer drew all of my drawings on a piece of Drafting Vellum with a
pre-printed Format (like the one which was taped to my drafting board at the time),
and that if he needed to actually calibrate the camera that he could bias the
vidicon tube off to the side of the normal viewing area to a calibration target, but
that he really didn't need to clutter up each image with all of that redundant
measurement and calibration garbage taking up so much of each image that he
transmitted back. The Scientist was stunned, almost as if I had hit him over the
head with a baseball bat, and I didn't know If I would be fired on the spot since my
boss was standing behind him waving his arms and shaking his head mouthing the words
"No! No! No!", since this guy was really someone important and I was trashing his
design into little pieces, but gradually the Scientist began to smile as he took in
what I was trying to tell him, and he told me to draw up an example and that he
would go have a meeting with the powers that be. When he came back that afternoon,
he was all smiles, saying that we could do it my way, and that it would save us
something on the order of 18 to 20% in terms of wasted image (the original viewing
area inside the large boarder was about 640x640 pixels with the rest f the room
taken up by the other garbage, which when removed gave a full 800x800 pixels per
transmitted image). Well, I didn't think too much about it, since I had worked on a
number of fun things there "on lab", but Trend Western lost the contract to Kirk
Mayer, and I was laid off very shortly after this happened, and I didn't think about
it much or many years to come.
Somewhere along the line I learned and knew in the back of my head that MJS-77
(which stood for Mars Jupiter Saturn 1977 Launch) was actually Launched as the
Voyager I and Voyager II Spacecraft, but I never really made any real connection to
that and the work that I had done on the MJS-77 Reseau in 1974, since all of the
pictures that I had ever seen from Voyagers had been Post Processed (Computer
enhanced and combined), where all of the artifacts of the Reseau had been removed,
and the various different images taken with different filters had been combined to
make all of the enhanced full color images released to the public (the actual
Voyager Video Cameras were only monochrome).
In 1989 during my second short stint at JPL (Worked on Mars Observer and NSCAT), I
became an Amateur Radio Operator, and one of the first projects that I became
involved in after once again being laid off from JPL (Major Project Cancellations
due to Launch Rollbacks after the Challenger Accident) was Amateur Television (ATV),
and I became involved with a friend who in cooperation with the JPL Amateur Radio
Club took the Live NASA Video Feed of the Neptune Encounter (which was being sent
all over JPL via the Labs internal Video System), and Linked it via Amateur
Television from the Lab to the top of the Pacific Telephone Building in downtown
Pasadena via a 10 GHz ATV Link, from where it was retransmitted on 1289 MHz ATV to 3
different locations: First to the Planetary Society Conference being simultaneously
conducted at the Pasadena Civic Center (so that they could have a "Live Video
Feed"); Second to the Griffith Park Observatory and Planetarium, who was also
projecting the "Live Feed" as part of their concurrent festivities; Third, to the
television set in my living room, where I was able to record the entire Neptune
Encounter on my VCR as it happened with the "Live Feed" directly from the Voyager
Spacecraft via JPL and ATV.
You can imagine my total shock, surprise, and amazement, as I sat there watching the
first images come in direct from the planet Neptune and I saw there on the screen
the Reseau that I had personally designed after arguing with the JPL Scientist on
that morning back in 1974 when I was contracting "on lab", there on each and every
image that was transmitted back from Voyager. I rushed upstairs and looked
frantically thru my box of "drawing samples" that I had been able to keep from my
previous jobs, one of which was a copy of my drawing of the Reseau at JPL in 1974 (I
had saved it because it was done in ink on mylar and all lettering was LeRoy'ed),
and then ran back downstairs to compare it to the Reseau pattern dot for dot being
transmitted live from Voyagers Neptune Encounter. It was the exactly the same. It
was the Reseau that I had redesigned, my Reseau, exactly as I had designed it, the
one that has increased the total viewing area from 640x640 pixels to 800x800 pixels
per image, my Reseau which had increased the viewing area of each and every image
that was transmitted by both Voyagers in their fantastic missions.
Talk about mind blowing. I subsequently did some research and found that while I had
only worked on a preliminary Reseau for only the Auxiliary Cameras on Voyager
(although I didn't know it was Voyager at the time), that the Reseau that I had
designed was adopted just as I designed it and also used on the Main Camera as well
as the Auxiliary Camera of both Voyager Spacecraft.
Needless to say, for years since I discovered that my Reseau was used on both
Voyager Spacecraft, I have been trying to get some form of credit or recognition for
my contribution to the success of the Voyager program. I have talked to several
Voyager Project Managers, one Director of JPL, and even one Chief Scientist of JPL,
even showing them my copy of my original drawing, all to no avail. It would be nice
to have even a letter of recognition of my contribution, to pass on to my daughter
and her family when she has one, but I have not been able to get anywhere. Since I
was laid off shortly after my redesign / design of the new Reseau, since the company
that I worked for lost their contract, I didn't even stick around long enough to get
a Voyager Coffee Cup or the traditional "give aways" like the Project Lapel Pin,
that you get when your project that you worked on succeeds.
Oh well, it was and still is very thrilling for me to think that each and every
image ever taken and sent back by both Voyager Spacecraft's had a much larger image
or much higher resolution (depending just how the Camera was configured and used and
what it was looking at) due to the fact that I had the gall (as my then boss called
it) to take that JPL Scientist and tear his design apart and convince him that I had
a much better way to do it.
Oh well . . .
Sorry if that is too much nostalgia for one post.
I'll save my story of how when I was a kid in the sixth grade in the late 50's in
northwest Pasadena (living right on the edge of the Arroyo Seco), I and two friends
discovered and routinely raided the JPL junk pile, and among many other very
interesting things I took home a prototype of the outer shell / skin and nose cone
of a Pioneer, from the JPL junk pile, our nations very first Satellite . . . I wish
I still had that thing, but my mother threw it away when we moved from Pasadena to
Arcadia in about 1963 . . .
JaMi
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brooks,Bill" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 11:31 AM
Subject: Re: [DC] Engineer/designer
> Karl... what a wonderful opportunity... Bell Labs has done so much for the
> development of innovations... You are a lucky guy to have worked there...
> and I bet you have a lot you could share with other designers...
>
> I was talking with a young attractive gal who was attending the Protel
> upgrade training in San Diego awhile back and she is working for JPL on a
> Solar Sail design that they expect to deploy to study the feasibility of
> using the Solar winds to travel to other planets.... I'm so jealous... I
> wish I could do it all. I love aerospace and it seems like so much of my
> career has just skirted the fringes of that field...
>
> But I am content with the opportunity to just be among such an elite crowd
> of talented folks and I can only hope some of it rubs off in the process...
> :)
>
> My dad had the opportunity to be a part of the Pioneer 10 space probe
> development and it totally awed me that the boards and components he built
> in a lab at UCSD are now billions of miles from our planet headed for a
> distant rendezvous (albeit long after we have all passed into memory) with
> Aldeberan, a star in the constellation Taurus the Bull. Funny, I guess it
> has the distinction of being the very first Printed Circuit Card to escape
> our Solar system... Man I just realized that...
>
> Dr. Walker Fillius at UCSD wrote me an e-mail after my dad passed away in
> March of last year and shared a little known detail of my dad's time
> there... It seems that many years in the future that the 'little green men'
> of Aldeberan may be scratching their heads wondering what the Initials "WRB"
> in etch on the corner of that PC board in the power supply on Pioneer 10
> might mean.... They were my dad's initials...(mine too, I'm actually a
> 'Jr'.) but they may never know that.... but I do. :)
>
> http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/pioneer10/
>
>
> I bet there are countless stories from others like that but it was a special
> inspiration to me to get involved in the industry... It's a great time to be
> a PCB designer... we have a lot ahead of us to do... who knows what
> challenges we will overcome, I think lead free is going to be a difficult
> one frankly... but we keep watching and learning and going to work
> everyday... eventually we shall see how it plays out...
>
> In case you're interested, my dad's obit is still online...
> http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/obituaries/20040318-9999-1m18brooks.html
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Bill Brooks - KG6VVP
> PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D.+, C.I.I.
> Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510
> e-mail:[log in to unmask]
> http://www.dtwc.com
> http://pcbwizards.com
>
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