ur 16 May dinner meeting was a big success. It was our chapter’s "end of the year" meeting which closes out the term of office for all of the current hard-working chapter officers and welcomes in the new slate of officers you just elected. Fortunately, we did not spend much time at the dinner meeting discussing such mundane administrative details but rather presented outstanding aerospace science awards to several high school and one college student plus listening to an excellent presentation by Norm Thagard regarding his aviation career and his experiences aboard the Soviet MIR Space Station as a NASA astronaut.

The first set of award presentations was made by Annik Myamaki, your pre-college outreach chair. AIAA awards were presented to LA County Science Fair Participants, Matt Segal in the Jr. Division for his work on Ion Propulsion and to Joshua Lee in the Sr. Division for his work on Auto Aerodynamics.

The next award was given by Bob Walquist, one of your distinguished Advisory Board members, to Justin Han and Rajiv Sawhney of the Calif. Academy of Math & Science (CAMS). Bob and Robert Brodsky were judges at the 29 March Honeywell Regional Science & Engineering Fair. In addition to judging all of the science/engineering projects at the Fair, the two Bobs presented a $200 check from the L.A. chapter of the AIAA to Justin and Rajiv for having the best aero/astro related project — their project involved the design of a "black box", similar to those carried on aircraft, to be carried on autos and which would be used after a crash to provide information for simulating the car motion up to the time of the crash. Noteworthy in their design approach was the use of simple sensors to determine vehicle motion. At the dinner meeting, Justin and Rajiv were presented plaques honoring their efforts plus sky blue caps with "AIAA" emblazoned on the front. Hopefully, the caps will be worn at CAMS to provide free advertising for your L.A. Section. In addition to the two young scientists, their science advisor, Mr. Dan Duncan of CAMS, was presented with the AIAA design handbook.

The final student award was awarded by Professor Adrienne Lavine of UCLA to the UCLA outstanding AIAA student: Tony Lau.

One additional award was made by your L.A. Section Executive Committee members to Chuck Kilmer for his dedicated efforts in support of the many section activities throughout the past year.

We then came to the highlight of the evening: Dr. Norm Thagard’s presentation of his aerospace and medical career up through his experiences on board the Soviet MIR Space Station. Norm went to Florida State and received his BS and MS in engineering science. He really wanted to be a medical doctor, but what do you do in undergraduate school? He had always enjoyed designing electronic circuits which is what moved him to the engineering field. However, he really was interested in medicine and also had a goal to become a jet pilot. Sound confusing; yes, Norm said it was — he was just interested in too many things to immediately settle down into one particular area.

Norm’s goal to become a jet pilot had him signing up as a Freshman in the Air Force ROTC program. While in college, he ran into a Marine Corp recruiting officer who told him that he could be a jet pilot in the Marine Corp. So in 1961 he signed up to be in the Marine Corp, at the time NOT realizing that 90% of the Marines who went to flight training school ended up in helicopters not jets. However, he lucked out - 8 of them were sent into jet training and he was one of the 8.

Norm got out of the Marine Corp in February 1978 and headed back to Florida State for more education. However, in his absence, they had decided to close the Engineering School. This turned out to be a blessing for Norm since he now had no choice but to move into the field of medicine. Fortunately, his mother-in-law knew the dean of the Medical School in San Antonio and Norm applied for admission there. As luck would have it, the dean was fired shortly thereafter and nobody else at the school was interested in Norm. However, somehow, he was able to work his way into the U. of Texas Med School in Dallas where he obtained his medical education.

Now, how did he ever get from a Texas med school into the NASA astronaut program? Well, you can thank his wife for that. In April 1977, while Norm was a senior in med school, his wife filled out an application for him to apply to NASA for "astronaut school" and to become a NASA astronaut. Was she trying to get rid of him? No, she just knew of his love for flying and figured that being an astronaut would be the ultimate flying experience. So Norm was accepted and reported to the NASA astronaut program in 1978. However, John Young told him that you are not an astronaut until you have actually flown in space!

Norm flew on board Shuttle Flight 7 as the physician sent up to study space motion sickness. It turned out that he was an excellent candidate as he was the sickest one on the flight. Shuttle Flight 7 also carried the first American female astronaut in space — Sally Ride. Norm showed several slides of his airplane/space experiences culminating in the Soyuz Spacecraft and MIR Space Station. Norm was part of the science crew which was responsible for 24 scientific experiments. And, of course, since it was a Soviet space system, EVERYTHING was in Russian — not just speaking, but all the instrument labels and manuals. Norm had to pass all sorts of ground exams, all given in Russian, before becoming a flight astronaut on the MIR.

And so your L.A. Section ended up the evening, and the current year, with a wonderful dinner meeting.