PROGRAMS:

COMPANIES:

• Martin Marietta
• NASA
• Pan American
• RCA

LOCATIONS:

PAFB, KSC, Cape Kennedy, Huntsville, AL.

POSITIONS:

September 1953 - December 1953, Lockheed Aircraft Corp., "B" Drafting Engineer. Responsible for converting and verifying parts on prototype drawings for the C-130 turboprop airplane. Systems include landing lights, interior lighting, and oil pressure circuits. Also responsible for maintaining the Airplane Power Budget drawing.

January 1954 - January 1956, US Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Bragg, N.C.; Platoon leader in Combat Engineer company. Later participated in activation of the 80th Engineer Battalion. First commanded "A" Company and later commanded "C" Company.

March 1956 - June 1960, RCA Missile Test Project, Firing System Project Engineer at PAFB. Responsible for design, development, procurement, and installation of instrumentation systems and A signal distribution systems in block houses and cable terminal buildings for routing signals to the Range Control Center and other instrumentation.

September 1960 - June 1966, Taught undergraduate engineering courses at Florida Institute of Technology. Courses include Algebra, Vector Analysis, AC Circuit Theory, Transient Analysis, and Physics.

June 1960 - June 1973, Pan American World Airways, Engineer on MISTRAM System, later assigned to Special Projects Office and worked on upgrade of the Range Control Center at the Cape. Transferred to the group implementing the upgrade of the Impact Predator System. Later became the Task Order 5 Manager, responsible for evaluation of operational test data and accuracy data for ALL range instrumentation.

June 1973 - May 1978, Martin Marietta, KSC. Became a part of the Project Engineering Office, overseeing the test and checkout of SkyLab Earth resources experiments. Following SkyLab launch, went to Huntsville, AL to review and catalog the SkyLab data. Later went to Denver to work on contract proposal to perform the updates to GPS Satellites. Came back to KSC to work on software for the test and checkout of the External Tank Systems for the Space Shuttle.

May 1978 - March 1995, NASA; AST GS 13 Engineer. Worked with the Applications and Support Software section of the Guidance and Digital Systems Division. Later became the Branch Chief for the Software and Digital Systems branch prior to retiring. During this period assignments ranged from Hardware Systems Applications to Software Development verification and validation:
1. Hardware design and configuration requirements were defined for design engineering for procurement of the Launch Processing Systems (LPS) for Launch Control Rooms 2, 3, and 4.
2. Ground Operations Application Language (GOAL) was used to write test software for checkout of Ground Support Equipment (GSE) and the Space Shuttle Transportation Systems (STS).
3. Developed criteria for using the STS software package Test Configuration Identification (TCID) in support of DOD launches to maintain security.
4. Developed presentation for showing the National Science Advisory (NSA) board that the KSC approach for GOAL software development satisfied the Governments requirements for independent verification and validation of software.
5. Initially TCID's were customized for a single string of GSE facilities, launch pad, and a specific STS. Came up with a plan to make all GSE facilities generic in a TCID. This allowed and given like GSE facility could be substituted for another and verification that the substitution was made correctly. This plan allowed this to be done using a small amount of jumper wire. the LPS operating contractor implemented it differently by modifying numerous printed circuit cards.

March 31,1995 to March 1998 - Retired

March 1998 to March 2000, Superior Technical Resources, Inc. Consultant Engineer on support contract to The Boeing Company for processing segments of the International Space Station (ISS).
Participated in test procedure development and validation at the Houston Test Facilities for the GNC and the Command and Command and Data Handling systems as well as subsequent testing of ISS hardware segments.

March 19, 2000 - Retired

COMMENTS:

Mr. McGehee was born in Atlanta, Georgia to the late Thomas Wayne and Molly Sirvilla Tippens McGehee. He served in the United States Army National Guard and US Army Corps of Engineers. He received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics from the Florida Institute of Technology, and a Master of Business Administration from Florida State University. Mr. McGehee was a retired NASA Aerospace Engineer with a lifelong career in the US Space Industry, working on programs including the C-130 Aircraft, Gemini/Apollo, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station before retirement.