Design007 Magazine

Design007-June2021

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96 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2021 I am one of the few regular I-Connect007 contributors who is old and privileged enough to have watched the original Star Trek series in 1966. Contemplating this has stirred up mem- ories of my childhood and early interest in sci- ence. I spent my early years with my father, an airplane enthusiast and aerospace engineer with Lockheed Martin who worked on the F-104 flight instrumentation, and who took his family out to see flight demonstrations at Edwards Air Force Base where he worked. You can say I got hooked early on space travel. I remember looking up from the play- ground during recesses as the nation took its first steps into the space age and manned space flight. e X-planes routinely shattered the sound barrier and disappeared into the sky above in Lancaster, Calif., where my family lived. I was one of those pesky kids with too many questions, bother- ing the neighborhood menfolk with my questions. My targets were many and diverse: engineers like my dad, a couple of test pilots, and even an FBI agent for good measure. e passion for flight, especially rock- etry, entered my veins early. Soon came actual space flight and it seemed like a fantasy. First was Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union, followed by Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Space was very risky business and the engineers at NASA and elsewhere were making it up "on the fly," so to speak. Fol- lowing a brief but harrowing brush with a possible nuclear apocalypse Star Trek Memories Flexible Thinking Feature Column by Joe Fjelstad, VERDANT ELECTRONICS Joe Fjelstad (center) at his high school graduation with his parents, Marjorie and John Fjelstad.

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