I’m William McQuade. I work at the Kennedy Space Center as a NASA system engineer
for the Shuttle Processing Directorate, Fluids Division.
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I work in the Shuttle processing directorate, fluids division. I am a system engineer that works with the fuel cell group.
And what that means is that our system provides the electricity for the shuttle orbiter by doing electro-chemical
reactions between hydrogen and oxygen. That reaction also forms water so we also provide the
drinking water for the astronauts. And our system has the tanks that fuel the reactions to the hydrogen and oxygen
and the oxygen tanks also provide the oxygen for the astronauts to breathe.
I was in military active duty before I obtained a position with NASA and I did enjoy that work and still do enjoy that
work as a part of the United States Army Reserve and as a JAG. And a little over a year ago I received a call in
which they said they wanted me to participate in a deployment operation with the Third Infantry Division over to
Iraq. So over the last year I actually was stationed in Iraq with full support of my NASA colleagues and my supervisors.
While I was in Baghdad in the Governorate Support Team when colleagues I worked with, both soldiers and
civilians, found out I worked for NASA there was unanimous enthusiasm. I found it very gratifying that to a person
over there they support our space program, they were very excited to hear that Discovery was going to launch
while we were over there. And they also showed great support for Project Constellation. They want us to get
back to the moon as soon as we can, get permanent presence there and then move on to Mars. And so we had
many discussions about NASA, where it's going and how we're going to get there.
Well, they knew I worked on Discovery and was working on the STS-114 mission before I deployed. So the
soldiers wanted to follow it closely because they knew I had a great interest in it. We were able to, over there in
Baghdad, follow the mission because we had Internet capability on our computers as well as in our office we had
a television that we could get CNN.
When I found that there was great support over there for the mission I was trying to think of a way in which we in the
GST (Governorate Support Team) could show our support as a unit. And so I thought it would be neat to just have
a little sign and we would all get together and make a photo and send it back. I mentioned that to some people
here in the fluids division and they were able to get some large placards which when you put them together spell
"Go Discovery." They mailed those to us and they were so fantastic and so supportive that they had actually
signed a lot of good wishes on those and they sent those signs to us and we went outside the building
where we worked in, which was actually a former palace under the Saddam regime and we got a photo out of there
of almost all of the entire Governorate Support Team and we sent that back to the fluids division. I thought it
would be a nice way to show our support and we got an enthusiastic response.
I think that you can't deploy to a situation like that, in a dangerous situation in that kind of environment and not
be changed. And my perspective has changed I think in several ways at work here as well as an appreciation in a
larger sense than that for where we live. Regarding my job here at NASA, for one thing just the depth of support
that I got here was fascinating. My perspective on being a citizen of the United States also changed as a result of
my deployment to Iraq. Over in Iraq they are, with our assistance, just beginning to try to establish democratic reforms
and a rule of law environment as a means of governance.
And I was able to see what our country probably went through literally hundreds of years ago as we were struggling at the
nascent stage of our nation how to establish democratic reforms, how do we establish our republic,
how to prevent a dictator or a king from taking over. And it gave me an incredible appreciation for
how well entrenched and how deep our democratic principles go and how stable we are in reality.
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