UAH Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives

Browse Items (21 total)

  • Friday__October_20__2017_at_11_06_48_AM_default_8038320d.mp4

    Vigontus Kulpa grew up in Huntsville, AL. Ever since he was young, Kulpa was always interested with the space program. He ended up going to college at UAH, and was considered a "feter" co-op engineer, so he actually started out at The Marshall Space Flight Center. There, Kulpa worked with the Human Systems Integration Branch. In college, Kulpa started out at UAH, but eventually ended up graduating from college at Auburn University. He then came back to UAH to receive his Master's degree in Systems Engineering and his Doctorate in Psychology and Human Factors. Kulpa's first full-time assignment was as a Crew Procedures Engineer. In this job, he was considered "between" the scientists that did the experiments, and the astronauts. Kulpa ended up working with the Avionics group to design a battery-operated wrench, and he took this on the KC-135. He also was able to work to help re-design the space station. After a while, he switched jobs and worked with the Neutral-Buoyancy Tank where he worked on how to make a space shuttle suit work underwater.
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  • Friday__October_6__2017_at_12_18_03_PM_default_1dbb40e7.mp4

    Steven Hall was born in a small town in the north central part of Indiana. This town has about a population of 2,000 people. Steven graduated from Eastern High School in 1963, and then he enrolled in Aeronautical/Neurospace Engineering at Purdue University. There, he received his bachelor's degree in 1968. Steven originally became interested in man space-flight when he was just about 10 years old. At this age, he had no clue how he could get involved with the space station, but he knew that he wanted to get involved one day. After he graduated college, he was so ready to work at NASA, that he left his home town immediately to move down to Huntsville, AL to start working. When he began working at the Marshall Space Flight Center, he was shown how Human Factors Engineering worked. One of the first projects that Steven was able to work on was "Skylab" where they built a lot of the equipment that probed how humans responded to space, and how the body changes in space. He also worked on a program to design a vehicle to drive around the surface of the moon.
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  • Friday__September_15__2017_at_12_11_55_PM_default_69f7b692 (1).mp4

    After Robert McBrayer graduated college, he reported to the Johnson Space Center in March of 1963. He was there assigned to a section called "Biodynamics" and in that section, they worked on Human tolerances to impact sustaining acceleration and acoustics. Robert was assigned to the acoustics group, and his first job was to design and develop a machine to produce low-frequency pure tones to test humans. He also designed and developed a test chamber for testing humans, and he participated in doing the actual human test with the machines that he helped build. He helped document the results as well. After his venture in doing basic research, he went into an area called "crew's survival equipment design and development," and he was assigned pieces of equipment that were his to design, update, and help build. In 1966, Robert asked to be transferred from the Johnson Space Center to the Marshall Space Flight Center, and he then moved to Huntsville, AL. Robert was immediately put on the Orbital Workshop where they were writing task analysis, and procedures for crew station reviews. They did two of those, on in 1967 and the other in 1968. From the Orbital Workshop, he was responsible for all the crew interfaces on adapter, etc.
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  • Friday__September_29__2017_at_11_29_57_AM_default_2a11bcb7.mp4

    Richard Heckmann was born in Ohio, and he lived there until he was 9 years old. When he turned 9, his dad received a civil engineering job in Washington D.C., so they moved there soon after. After this, they then moved to Maryland. Richard explains that he was a sickly child, and he was once in a coma for 10 days when he was just 7 years old. Growing up, he became more healthy and ended up going to Johns Hopkins University and graduated with an Engineering Science degree. Richard eventually accepted a commission in the ordinance corp, and he went to Fort Bliss for a guided missile school. He spent two years in the autillery there. At Fort Bliss, he received his private pilot's license while he was in the service. Then, they took Richard back to the ordinance corp. and they sent him down to the Redstone Arsenal, where he got stationed. After this career, Richard worked as a project engineer for the manufacturing for hardware at Thiokol. He then transferred to Hayes Industry, and he worked with the manufacturing engineering lab at the Marshall Space Flight Center. There, he worked on the Apollo Applications Program.
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  • Friday__September_8__2017_at_12_16_04_PM_default_2b1019c8.mp4

    Michael Bacato was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. When he started high school at the age of 14, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. When he graduated high school, he enlisted in the Navy in 1945 so he wouldn't have to go into the Army. He stayed in the Navy for two years. In the Navy, Michael was on a crew of the Destroyer. When he got discharged from the Navy, he then started college in 1948. To help pay for college, he started working with the merch marines selling out oil tanks. He finished this in 1951. Michael started out in college at New York University, and soon after he almost had to go back to the Navy because North Korea invaded South Korea. To avoid going back, he joined the ROTC at NYU with the airforce. In 1952, he entered the extended active duty with the United States airforce as a second lieutenant. He went to Keesler Airforce Base for training, and he spent two years there. There, he became a Radar Officer. After his training, Michael then started to become interested with Von Braun, and the development of rockets in Huntsville, AL. He then finally made a decision to leave the airforce, and he moved to Huntsville to work. He went into the Mechanical Engineering Design group. One of the first projects he was assigned to was the life support system, working with two monkeys. He then was offered a job in the Bioengineering group, which he liked much better, so he decided to stay with this group. His last program he worked on was on the Hubble Telescope, where he had the opportunity to work with Buzz Aldron.
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  • Friday__March_9__2018_at_11_03_22_AM_default_5387bb7d.mp4

    Kim B. Robertson is a retired Design Engineer, and has lived in Huntsville, AL his whole life. He grew up in the Monte Santo Mountain area where most of the German scientists on Von Braun's missile team lived, so being involved with the Space Station was always a part of his life growing up. He knew from an early age that Huntsville was where he always wanted to live, and this is the area that he wanted to work in. Robertson eventually went to Auburn University where he was able to work on a Marshall project. He was able to work on the Industrial Design team there, and he, along with his group, was asked to do some design work to get ideas for Skylab and the Space Station. After graduating from Auburn, he joined the National Guard with a year of active duty. While being in the National Guard, he became a ground-radio maintenance technician. His first job in Huntsville was working at URS Matrix, and there he worked on the hand-controller for the shuttle arm. He also did some volumetric studies for putting experiments in the back part of the shuttle work-area.
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  • Friday__April_13__2018_at_12_01_49_PM_default_f0989c24.mp4

    John Ofenloch was born in Chicago, Ilinois and was raised there. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at Christian Brother's University in Memphis, Tennessee. When he graduated college, he accepted a job with North American Aviation in Downey, California. In Downey was the North American Aviation Space and Information Division which had the contract for the Apollo Command Service Module. Ofenloch's responsibility while he was out there was the Apollo Command Module Earth re-entry. His job was to make sure that the Command Module was capable of bringing the astronauts back safely to Earth. After he was through with the tests of the command module, he went to Brown Engineering in Huntsville, AL to work with zero gravity and the effects on the humans and the vehicle.
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  • Friday__December_1__2017_at_11_58_20_AM_default_77191c8c.mp4

    John H. Reese was born in the Jefferson hospital in Birmingham, AL in 1945. He went to Fairfield High school in Tennessee, and graduated in 1963. He then went to Auburn University and went into Pre-Engineering. John received his engineering degree in 1969. The reason it took him 6 years to graduate is because he had to work his way through school on the cooperative education program. His brother-in-law worked at NASA at the time, and he got John interested in the Space Program. John then decided to co-op with the Marshall Space Flight Center and he applied with the Engineering Cooperative Education office. He then decided to send his resume to NASA, and received a job offer soon after. In this job, he helped do all the structural testing on the various modules and components of the Saturn I and Saturn fives. He was also involved in the Hubble Space Telescope Mock-Up. John's job was to come up with the foot-restraint systems, tether points, etc.
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  • Friday__May_4__2018_at_12_10_52_PM_default_fb72b05a.mp4

    Joe Phillipauldy is originally from Central, New Jersey. He did his undergraduate training at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and then he received his Master's degree at Villanove University. He then when on to get his graduate degree, and completed the program in 1984. His degree was in Experimental Psychology. In 1986, he accepted a job position with the Creatis Systems Tech Staff at Boeing Military Airplanes in Kansas. His first Human Engineering job was with Tech Staff. A project he spent a lot of time on was the Airforce I VC25 747 Presidential Replacement Program. With this, he did a workload analysis of the navigator crew station. After this work, Joe got involved with the Human Factors and Industrial Applications group. There, he ran task terms around the factory floor doing analyses and reporting on ergonomics issues on assembling vehicles. Later, he was able to work on the Space Station Vehicle Integration Contract in Huntsville, AL.
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  • Friday__October_5__2018_at_9_33_54_AM_default_3ed44883.mp4

    George Hamilton has lived in Huntsville, Alabama all of his life, and his father was a Charter Marshall Member in Huntsville. When he was working, George's father was chosen as a "guinea pig" to go up in the Pregnant Guppy, which was a large, wide-bodied cargo aircraft. Because of George's father's career and interest with NASA, it made George interested in the career as well. George has a lot of family stories like this, which all have inspired him to take on his career that he has now. After high school, George went to The University of South Alabama in Mobile to study Marine Biology. Over the summer he had a change of heart, so he decided to transfer to Auburn University for Mechanical Engineering. After he finished up with his degree, he started working in small, manufacturing spare parts for missiles. After this career, he started to work at Avco Electronics in Huntsville where he worked at the plant on the design side. After this, Avco started looking for people to go overseas on the construction side of the house, so George went overseas with them. Then he came back, got married, and received his Phd in Biomedical Engineering at The University of Alabama in Birmingham.
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