Millbrook Rotary speaker

MILLBROOK — Bill Augerson, M.D., a member of the Millbrook Rotary Club, spoke at the club’s weekly lunch meeting on Wednesday, June 22, about his military career, focusing on his work with the original NASA Space Program. Augerson and his wife, Ginny, recently went back to Cape Canaveral for ceremonies marking 50 years of the space program. On the day of Al Shepard’s manned space flight, May 5, 1961, Augerson was the medical monitor in the nearby blockhouse when Shepard was launched. He had been an Army flight surgeon assigned to NASA in 1958, working on projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo doing research and launching men and monkeys into space. He also served as initial test subject on some dangerous centrifuge studies needed to support the projects.Augerson’s extremely knowledgeable and informative presentation covered numerous aspects of the space program. Among the highlights were his description of the early days of the space project with the original seven astronauts and the myriad of physical considerations that had to be worked out before sending a man into space. He noted the changes in our lives brought about by what was learned through exploration of space — weather satellites, communications satellites, earth imaging, solar power satellites and GPS technology, to name a few. On the more humorous side, the Rotary was treated to anecdotes about too tall astronauts, the Navy “forgetting” to send records of Marine test pilots for NASA review (e.g., John Glenn), which Augerson noticed, and dangers of Friday overtime on centrifuge.Augerson, who also served his country in Vietnam, retired from the U.S. Army with a rank of major general.The Millbrook Rotary Club meets for lunch at 12:15 p.m. each Wednesday, currently at Copperfield’s Restaurant. Lunch guests are welcome. Cost of lunch is $15. For more information, go to www.millbrookrotary.org.

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