On Tuesday, August 21, NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill spoke to the MaTHRobotics group, along with other robotics members from the Houston area.
Mr. Woodfill has been at NASA since the early days of space flight, and was the Warning System Engineer, monitoring the caution and warning system, when Apollo 13 exploded. His system first alerted Mission Control during that eventful day, and the event was depicted in Tom Hanks' movie Apollo 13. His inspiration for joining the space program was none other than President John F. Kennedy, who spoke at Houston's Rice University on September 12,1962, when Mr. Woodfill was enrolled as a student there.
Mr. Woodfill gave us an emotional rendition of Kennedy's speech, and also gave a talk explaining other resources at NASA, including the Space Educator'sHandbook, which he authored as part of his position at NASA-JSC.
In addition, as an outreach to the Christian community, Woodfill maintains a personal site entitled SpaceActs.com, which details some of the more spiritual and unpublicized aspects of space flight events.
He also let us know about the usefulness of DUCT TAPE! :)
