Small World - Boulder, CO

Kevin Horton · #1 05-05-2009, 04:25 PM

I got an e-mail today from a retired Rockwell Collins flight test engineer, who I worked with on several autopilot projects before he retired seven or eight years ago. He was in Boulder last week, eating at a restaurant, when he hears the guys in the next booth talking about my car accident. After he got back home, he did some Googling learned the details, and e-mailed me to ask me how I was doing.

Small world, isn't it.

Ironflight · #2 05-05-2009, 04:50 PM

The day you announced the news about your accident, I asked one of the guys at work if he knew you Kevin - "know him?" he said, "I spent 4 years sitting next to him at school!"

Yup, small world....

Paul

Kevin Horton · #3 05-05-2009, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ironflight

The day you announced the news about your accident, I asked one of the guys at work if he knew you Kevin - "know him?" he said, "I spent 4 years sitting next to him at school!"

Yup, small world....

That's got to be Chris Hadfield, the over achiever of our Mech Eng class

- say "Hi" to him. Great guy. As sharp as they come too.

I was showing a friend from Cold Lake, Alberta around OSH many years ago, and he ran into a cousin from California that he hadn't seen in 20 years. Another friend from Alberta was walking in downtown Beijing many years ago, with his head above the crowd (he is over six feet tall, all the locals are bit shorter than that) when he saw another head sticking above the crowd. It was someone he knew from Boeing.

Amazingly small world.

Ironflight · #4 05-05-2009, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin Horton

That's got to be Chris Hadfield, the over achiever of our Mech Eng class

- say "Hi" to him. Great guy. As sharp as they come too.

Bingo - he said to wish you well!

sjhurlbut · #5 05-06-2009, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin Horton

That's got to be Chris Hadfield, the over achiever of our Mech Eng class

- say "Hi" to him. Great guy. As sharp as they come too.

Amazingly small world.

And you're the under achiever right Kevin? After spending a few years at Royal Military College I heard many stories of how much you and Chris 'taught' the professors.

I've met Chris several times as well. Great guy and very personable.

Bob Axsom · #6 05-06-2009, 10:09 AM

The aviation and aerospace world has shrunk so much since the peak that the personal knowledge of remote peers is getting more and more common. When someone mentions Boulder, Colorado it automatically triggers a Ball Aerospace focus. Decades ago, one of the guys that I used to compete against in free flight model airplane contests, John F. Yardley, became the Project Engineer for Mercury and later the President of McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company. Toward the end of my career I spent 19 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and I was impressed by the quality of young people going to work there with a focus on deep space exploration - to watch television you would think briliant young people do not exist anymore. In the late 90's I made a trip to Ottawa to participate in a design review of a star tracker manufactured there. Two of them were used on the Genesis Spacecraft in its solar wind sample return mission. Maybe we passed each other on the cold streets there.

Bob Axsom