Runway to Orbit: Reflections of A NASA Engineer

In article , rk wrote:
Doing my assigned reading and ran into this one.

I do sometimes have to wonder quite what this assigned reading covers,
but hey ;-)

This will be a NASA History Publication.

summary

Runway to Orbit: Reflections of A NASA Engineer, by Dr. Kenneth Iliff, ushers
the reader through some of the pivotal aerospace projects undertaken by NASA
since the early 1960s. Iliff made critical contributions to research on the
X-15 aircraft, the lifting bodies, the XB-70 bomber, high angle-of-attack
aircraft, and the Space Shuttle, among others. His highly personal and
thoughtful narrative also describes his seminal contributions to parameter
estimation. Runway to Orbit is scheduled for publication in January 2004.

Certainly sounds worth seeking out...

--
-Andrew Gray

On 6 Dec 2003 00:09:07 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

In article , rk wrote:

This will be a NASA History Publication.

summary

Runway to Orbit: Reflections of A NASA Engineer, by Dr. Kenneth Iliff, ushers
the reader through some of the pivotal aerospace projects undertaken by NASA
since the early 1960s. Iliff made critical contributions to research on the
X-15 aircraft, the lifting bodies, the XB-70 bomber, high angle-of-attack
aircraft, and the Space Shuttle, among others. His highly personal and
thoughtful narrative also describes his seminal contributions to parameter
estimation. Runway to Orbit is scheduled for publication in January 2004.

Certainly sounds worth seeking out...

I've read it. It's OK, I suppose, but it all seems so ordinary. It's
certainly not "Hypersonic" by Jenkins and Landis. It's just about
engineering.

It's got some nice photos. Although some of them haven't been
published much, a lot of them could have come right from my photo
collection. Ordinary, like I said.

The jacket painting is OK, probably the best thing about it. One of
the Dryden test pilots did it.

Someone told me that Amazon might carry it, even though it's GPO. I
don't know how that works.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

In article ,
Mary Shafer wrote:
Runway to Orbit: Reflections of A NASA Engineer, by Dr. Kenneth Iliff...
Certainly sounds worth seeking out...

I've read it. It's OK, I suppose, but it all seems so ordinary.

So, should we take up a collection to get that last sentence put on a
suitably-located billboard to celebrate publication? :-)

[In case there are newcomers to the group who find this a trifle cryptic:
(a) Ken Iliff is Mary Shafer's husband; (b) one of their wedding gifts was
a billboard with a snide comment on it, paid for by co-workers.]
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

Henry Spencer wrote:

So, should we take up a collection to get that last sentence put on a
suitably-located billboard to celebrate publication? :-)

[In case there are newcomers to the group who find this a trifle cryptic:
(a) Ken Iliff is Mary Shafer's husband; (b) one of their wedding gifts was
a billboard with a snide comment on it, paid for by co-workers.]


It would be cool to have a autographed copy signed by both Mary and Mr.
Mary Shafer, and with Buzz and Neil's pawprints on it.

Pat

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 23:52:12 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Henry Spencer wrote:

So, should we take up a collection to get that last sentence put on a
suitably-located billboard to celebrate publication? :-)

[In case there are newcomers to the group who find this a trifle cryptic:
(a) Ken Iliff is Mary Shafer's husband; (b) one of their wedding gifts was
a billboard with a snide comment on it, paid for by co-workers.]

It would be cool to have a autographed copy signed by both Mary and Mr.
Mary Shafer, and with Buzz and Neil's pawprints on it.

Neil and Buzz are up for it. They'll even throw in some shed hair and
a noseprint as a bonus. Maybe we'll get a carton and auction them off
on eBay.

We didn't even know about this announcement until I read rk's posting.
Ken was kind of startled by it. We've kept it very quiet because
there has been some question about it being published. Funding, you
know.

Did anyone else notice that Don Mallick's book is coming out in
December? That should be an interesting one, too.

Ken's book is really quite good, even though I'm heavily biased. He
worked really hard to find photos that hadn't been published all the
time, including getting some from my collection. It's a first-hand
narrative and it's very well-done. It's also very informative and
gives a good idea of some of the tedium that goes with the excitement
of flight research.

Bill Dana wrote the Foreword and he's right, the title of the NASP
chapter is worth the price of the book. Bill is a really great guy
and can be very funny.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

Mary Shafer writes:

[...]

Ken's book is really quite good

Ah, so it being ordinary to you and just engineering didn't stop it from
being quite good. I'm not surprised.

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 23:52:12 -0600, Pat Flannery wrote:



Henry Spencer wrote:

So, should we take up a collection to get that last sentence put on a
suitably-located billboard to celebrate publication? :-)

[In case there are newcomers to the group who find this a trifle cryptic:
(a) Ken Iliff is Mary Shafer's husband; (b) one of their wedding gifts was
a billboard with a snide comment on it, paid for by co-workers.]


It would be cool to have a autographed copy signed by both Mary and Mr.
Mary Shafer, and with Buzz and Neil's pawprints on it.


Yabbut... You might have a hard time getting it into your den.

Oh, you mean the /book/ !

I think I posted this before, but it might have been somewhere else in
sci.space.*.

Here's an article about Ken from the X-Press, Dryden's in-house
newsletter:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/X-...ppl_iliff.html

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

On Sat, 06 Dec 2003 12:24:10 -0800, Mary Shafer wrote:

Here's an article about Ken from the X-Press, Dryden's in-house
newsletter:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/X-...ppl_iliff.html

Ah yes, the old plus vs. minus bug.

I once worked with a rather eccentric (even for a programmer) colleague
who had a similar bug in one of his programs. I remember sitting next to
him at a terminal as he repeatedly replaced the + with the - then back
again, muttering "it was only half a character!"

"Mary Shafer" wrote:
On 6 Dec 2003 00:09:07 GMT, Andrew Gray
wrote:

In article , rk wrote:

This will be a NASA History Publication.

summary

Runway to Orbit: Reflections of A NASA Engineer, by Dr. Kenneth Iliff,
ushers
the reader through some of the pivotal aerospace projects undertaken
by NASA
since the early 1960s. Iliff made critical contributions to research
on the
X-15 aircraft, the lifting bodies, the XB-70 bomber, high
angle-of-attack
aircraft, and the Space Shuttle, among others. His highly personal
and
thoughtful narrative also describes his seminal contributions to
parameter
estimation. Runway to Orbit is scheduled for publication in January
2004.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/nltrc.html

It is about halfway down. Looks like several neat books will be coming out
from NASA.

Certainly sounds worth seeking out...

I've read it. It's OK, I suppose, but it all seems so ordinary. It's
certainly not "Hypersonic" by Jenkins and Landis. It's just about
engineering.

Okay, so you have a good sense of humor, Mary. Engineering can be quite
interesting even to persons who are not engineers. You just need the
interest in such things. Since "Runway to Orbit..." is a historical book
with a fascinating title, I doubt it is completely full of formulas.
Honestly though, do you think someone interested in flight would be
interested in "Runway to Orbit..."?

I just got Jenkin's and Landis' book "Hypersonic..." from Amazon about a
week ago. So far it seems to be well written and not as clunky as "Space
Shuttle". Of course I have not finished it yet, but I am intrigued by the
reference to a companion book entitled "X-15 scrapbook". The 108 page
softbound book is an overflow book which basically contains some 400
additional X-15 photographs with 12 pages in full color. I have not seen it
yet but if it is anything like "Hypersonic" it should be quite nice and a
much quicker read;-) I am curious to see how well Jenkins and Landis link
up the X-15 to the Space Shuttle.

--

Daniel
http://www.challengerdisaster.info
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC