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My name is Tom Williams; I'm a systems engineer working on the TDRS program

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since 1975. I was working at Goddard here doing,

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ah, research in electric propulsion back in the, in the

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late 60s and in 1975 they called me,

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the TDRS project did ask if I would take on the engineering

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job as a propulsion engineer for that program that was just getting started.

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Well the launch of the first TDRS, We had an anomaly with the launch vehicle

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and normally they're supposed to drop us off and we immediately

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go into configuring the spacecraft and deploying all

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the appendages and instead we were spinning end over end at 30

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rpm and we weren't in the right orbit. So, what happened then we tried

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to figure out what we could do about it and eventually figured out a way we could

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actually get in the correct orbit with the small thrusters that we had

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on board. We did a burn every, every day and it took us 30 days and we eventually

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got there and that spacecraft lasted 27 years. I think the biggest thing

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about TDRS and I don't know why this is true and it's probably true to other programs too.

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But it really did turn into like a family. We had a lot of

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picnics for the families, parties. Our working relationship in those

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days you could argue face to face with people and then go have lunch. It was,

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I think kind of unique for a big program like that it was a very close

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relationship with all those employees.

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Beep, Beep, Beep..

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