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my name is tom williams i'm a systems

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engineer working on the tdrs program

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since 1975. i was working at goddard

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here doing

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research in electric propulsion back in

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in the late 60s and in

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1975 they called me the teachers

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projected and asked if i would take on

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the

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engineering job as a propulsion engineer

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for that program that was just getting

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started well the launch of the first

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tdrs we had an anomaly with the launch

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vehicle and normally they're supposed to

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drop us off and we immediately go into

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configuring the spacecraft and deploying

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all the appendages and instead we were

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spinning end over end at 30 rpm and we

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weren't in the right orbit so what

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happened then we tried to figure out

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what we could do about it and eventually

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figured out a way we could actually get

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in the correct orbit with the small

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thrusters that we had on board we did a

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burn every every day and it took us 30

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days and we eventually got there and

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that spacecraft lasted 27 years i think

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the biggest thing about tdrs and i don't

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know why this is true and it's it's

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probably true to other programs too but

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it really did turn into like a family we

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had a lot of picnics for the families

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parties or working relationship in those

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days you could argue face to face with

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people and then go have lunch it was uh

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i think kind of unique for a big program

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like that it was a very close