A career zenith -- being a member of the team that won the 1991 National
Medal of Technology, the nation's highest award for engineering achievement,
for developing Pegasus, the world's first privately developed space
launch vehicle. Other notable winners include cats like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway).
Rocket Science
Like most humorists, I began my career as a rocket scientist. Some highlights:
Pegasus Air-Launched Space Booster
Pegasus User's Guide (8.7 MB pdf file)
A sample of my technical writing -- the owner's manual to a rocket. Ninety-two spellbinding pages.
Does the Space Plane Have the Right Stuff?
Oddly enough, my master's thesis became the only collegiate thesis ever reviewed by the New York Review of Books. This article, adapted from it, was quoted everywhere from The New York Times to Congressional testimony.
- Technology Review (Jan 87)
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment
The congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) closed its doors September 29, 1995. For 23 years, the nonpartisan, analytical agency assisted Congress with the complex and highly technical issues that increasingly affect our society. OTA put the science in "political science" and provided Congress its deepest, most comprehensive analysis.
As an OTA analyst, I was a principal writer of the following snore-fests, I mean, publications.
Launch Options for the Future: A Buyer's Guide
(July 1988)
