Doug Rickard
Encyclopedia
Doug Rickard was an Australian-born space engineer. He is known for his stories of engineering while at the Woomera Deep Space Station. He died in 2002 from myelofibrosis
caused by contact with Cobalt-60
while working at the Maralinga nuclear test facility.
Some of his stories have been collected by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
, whose logo he possibly inspired (although the logo was designed by Bill Kennard), under the title Memoirs of a space engineer. Additional humorous engineering stories include hand-decoding images from Mariner 4
onto a sheet of graph paper since NASA JPL had only built a single display system, running a magnetic tape recorder 25 times over its rated speed to have enough bandwidth to record Ranger 9
video of its impact on the moon, and an impromptu excavation of Pompeii
's plumbing systems.
Doug also worked for some time for the Australian subsidiary of Digital Equipment Corporation. During that time he was seconded to Project Athena, the Campuswide Computing environment developed at MIT, with the specific responsibility of developing "Bones" a version of the Kerberos Authentication System, that did not relying on strong encryption, and as such would not require US Government approval for export.
Myelofibrosis
Myelofibrosis, also known as myeloid metaplasia, chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis, osteomyelofibrosis and primary myelofibrosis is a disorder of the bone marrow...
caused by contact with Cobalt-60
Cobalt-60
Cobalt-60, , is a synthetic radioactive isotope of cobalt. Due to its half-life of 5.27 years, is not found in nature. It is produced artificially by neutron activation of . decays by beta decay to the stable isotope nickel-60...
while working at the Maralinga nuclear test facility.
Some of his stories have been collected by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
, whose logo he possibly inspired (although the logo was designed by Bill Kennard), under the title Memoirs of a space engineer. Additional humorous engineering stories include hand-decoding images from Mariner 4
Mariner 4
Mariner 4 was the fourth in a series of spacecraft, launched on November 28, 1964, intended for planetary exploration in a flyby mode and performed the first successful flyby of the planet Mars, returning the first pictures of the Martian surface...
onto a sheet of graph paper since NASA JPL had only built a single display system, running a magnetic tape recorder 25 times over its rated speed to have enough bandwidth to record Ranger 9
Ranger 9
Ranger 9 was designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras, 2 wide angle and 4 narrow angle to accomplish these objectives...
video of its impact on the moon, and an impromptu excavation of Pompeii
Pompeii
The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning...
's plumbing systems.
Doug also worked for some time for the Australian subsidiary of Digital Equipment Corporation. During that time he was seconded to Project Athena, the Campuswide Computing environment developed at MIT, with the specific responsibility of developing "Bones" a version of the Kerberos Authentication System, that did not relying on strong encryption, and as such would not require US Government approval for export.