Posted on Oct 18, 2017

This week's Rotary Club of Mineral Wells program was out of this world. Literally.

Guest speaker for today's program was Bernard Suchocki, pictured center with Rotary program chairman JJ Dugan, left, and club President David Cairone.

Before he became an attorney and member of Willow Park City Council in Parker County, Suchocki was an aerospace engineer for NASA from 1971 to 1981, developing software and working on projects, including Apollo missions and the famous and nearly catastrophic Apollo 13 flight.

Suchocki brought with him models of a Saturn V rocket, command service module and Apollo lunar excursion module as well as a fascinating audio and video presentation of his work at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, that included his involvement in the return and rescue of Apollo 13, which experienced an oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon's surface.

The crew never landed on the moon, and almost didn't make it back to Earth except for the amazing work done both on the ground and by the astronauts. The flight became the basis for the popular movie starring Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon. Suchocki said the movie overall was well done and realistic, with the exception of a couple of details that only those like Suchocki would know or catch.

Suchocki was one of the NASA engineers who trained Apollo astronauts, including Neil Armstrong. While he was required to be familiar with all command module systems, his area of expertise and primary training responsibility was in the area of guidance and control, which includes the flight software and hardware for navigation, spacecraft control, Delta-V burns, IMU alignments, state vector updates and rendezvous targeting.

He coordinated computer simulation results with flight controllers and participated in planning the re-entry checklist for Apollo 13 in meetings with other engineers, Flight Director Gene Kranz and astronaut Ken Mattingly, the command module pilot who was replaced at the last minute because of his exposure to the measles.

Bernard shared his personal knowledge about astronaut training, the Apollo XIII rescue efforts and some of the amazing and extraordinary achievements of the men and woman who helped put

an American on the moon at a time when America was deeply involved in the space with Russia and others. He has been an attorney for 36 years since leaving NASA.

If there was one disappointment in today's program by Suchocki it was that he didn't have more time for his presentation.

Rotary Club of Mineral Wells meets every Wednesday at noon at Holiday Hills Country Club for lunch, networking, updates on club news and events and a program of interest. The public is invited to attend a meeting and learn more about what being a Rotarian in service to the community and others is about.