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I’m William McQuade. I work at the Kennedy Space Center as a NASA system engineer

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for the Shuttle Processing Directorate, Fluids Division.

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Intro Music

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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.

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And what that means is that our system provides the electricity for the shuttle orbiter by doing electro-chemical

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reactions between hydrogen and oxygen.  That reaction also forms water so we also provide the

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drinking water for the astronauts.  And our system has the tanks that fuel the reactions to the hydrogen and oxygen

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and the oxygen tanks also provide the oxygen for the astronauts to breathe.

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I was in military active duty before I obtained a position with NASA and I did enjoy that work and still do enjoy that

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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

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which they said they wanted me to participate in a deployment operation with the Third Infantry Division over to

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Iraq.  So over the last year I actually was stationed in Iraq with full support of my NASA colleagues and my supervisors.

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While I was in Baghdad in the Governorate Support Team when colleagues I worked with, both soldiers and

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civilians, found out I worked for NASA there was unanimous enthusiasm.  I found it very gratifying that to a person

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over there they support our space program, they were very excited to hear that Discovery was going to launch

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while we were over there.  And they also showed great support for Project Constellation.  They want us to get

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back to the moon as soon as we can, get permanent presence there and then move on to Mars.  And so we had

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many discussions about NASA, where it's going and how we're going to get there.

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Well, they knew I worked on Discovery and was working on the STS-114 mission before I deployed.  So the

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soldiers wanted to follow it closely because they knew I had a great interest in it.  We were able to, over there in

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Baghdad, follow the mission because we had Internet capability on our computers as well as in our office we had

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a television that we could get CNN.

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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

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GST (Governorate Support Team) could show our support as a unit.  And so I thought it would be neat to just have

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a little sign and we would all get together and make a photo and send it back.  I mentioned that to some people

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here in the fluids division and they were able to get some large placards which when you put them together spell

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"Go Discovery."  They mailed those to us and they were so fantastic and so supportive that they had actually

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signed a lot of good wishes on those and they sent those signs to us and we went outside the building

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where we worked in, which was actually a former palace under the Saddam regime and we got a photo out of there

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of almost all of the entire Governorate Support Team and we sent that back to the fluids division.  I thought it

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would be a nice way to show our support and we got an enthusiastic response.

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I think that you can't deploy to a situation like that, in a dangerous situation in that kind of environment and not

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be changed.  And my perspective has changed I think in several ways at work here as well as an appreciation in a

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larger sense than that for where we live.  Regarding my job here at NASA, for one thing just the depth of support

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that I got here was fascinating. My perspective on being a citizen of the United States also changed as a result of

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my deployment to Iraq.  Over in Iraq they are, with our assistance, just beginning to try to establish democratic reforms

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and a rule of law environment as a means of governance.

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And I was able to see what our country probably went through literally hundreds of years ago as we were struggling at the

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nascent stage of our nation how to establish democratic reforms, how do we establish our republic,

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how to prevent a dictator or a king from taking over.  And it gave me an incredible appreciation for

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how well entrenched and how deep our democratic principles go and how stable we are in reality.

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Ending Music

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