“Rocket Boy”
1957 - 1973
I am a child of Sputnik. When the first man-made object to orbit the earth went up in 1957, I was just about nine years old. That was a transformative event for the entire world and it’s when I became fascinated with space. My father bought a small telescope and set it up the backyard of our little Elizabethtown, KY home. We watched Mars together.
There wasn’t a lot of science happening in Kentucky in the late 1950s. When I got interested in space there was no internet, so you had to go to the local library or haunt the local drugstore paperback racks. Television was still in an early phase - no NOVA or Cosmos. But I began to be what some people would call a “rocket boy.”
(A former NASA engineer, named Homer H. Hickam Jr. wrote a book called Rocket Boys, which became the movie October Sky.)
I would develop rocket fuel in the basement and launch small rockets in the backyard—much to the dismay of the neighbors—but this was all part of my interest in space, and rocketry, and astronomy.
That interest stayed with me and evolved into something that, looking back on it, informed much of my future. In addition to the rockets and looking at Mars through a telescope, I became fascinated with the question of “Is there life elsewhere in the universe?” I remember reading not only tons of science fiction, but a lot of science books by people like George Gamow, Isaac Asimov, and Sir Fred Hoyle, as well as books on astronomy and cosmology. And that idea, that interest in life in the universe, eventually turned into—many, many years later—astrobiology.
When I played the role of setting up the NASA Astrobiology Institute, it was sort of that dream or interest when I was nine years old coming to fruition 40 or so years later.
“Rocket Boy” grew into a Rocket College Kid. I was at Vanderbilt University from 1966 through 1970. During the first year every Freshman had to decide on a major and find an adviser. Given my early interest in life in the Universe, I selected biology as a major and went to an interview with a professor. Once I described my interest, he said “Forget it. We don’t do any research in that topic and anyway there aren’t any jobs in biology.” So, with that eye- opening advice, I shifted to a double major in Physics and Astronomy thinking that at least I could learn something about the cosmos.
I really enjoyed the astronomy and astrophysics courses, although I was once banned from assisting at the Dyer Observatory “public night” because I had long hair at the time and the Observatory Director could not abide such an appearance!
After graduation, from 1970 to 1973 (at least according to my bio) I served as “Research Engineer, Physics Department.” That was true, although somewhere in the footnotes of my bio I usually point out that that was actually only for about a year or so. I got to work on fun projects like the 90-foot pendulum I designed and built, featured in The Tennessean newspaper clipping here.
However, that function as a research assistant in the Physics/Astronomy Department, was my “day job”. I had been playing music at night— and at one point said to myself, “When will I ever have this opportunity again?” I was around 21 and very interested in music, so I spent several years in Nashville just pursuing that passion.
And while my music interests grew stronger and brighter thanks to Vanderbilt’s presence in Nashville, I ultimately decided rocket science was more my future than the music industry. So in 1973 I left for the West Coast. (You can read all about my music adventures in Nashville here.)