Veterans Month
November 2003
NS Veterans Remember
Rodney West
Director, Application Development
Atlanta
I served in the U.S. Air Force right after graduating from The Citadel and had some unique assignments.
My first assignment was a Space Shuttle Mission Operations Officer at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston right after the first shuttle accident (Challenger). I worked in the mission control center (shown on TV) as a payload officer responsible for satellite deployment and experiments.
My second assignment was a satellite operations officer in Colorado Springs where I took care of 21 geosynchronous communications satellites. This included service during the first gulf war in 1990-91.
I left the Air Force in 1992 as a Captain with my masters degree in aerospace engineering.
In a way my wife tells me, my career has been at opposite ends of the transportation spectrum.