The Forum on Construction Law Welcomes Fred Haise

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Nelson Forensics, the Forum enjoyed hearing from Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise today at the Midwinter Meeting in San Francisco. Mr. Haise kicked off our meeting as the Keynote Speaker at the Westin St. Francis Hotel with incredible stories about the explosion on Apollo 13, his experience as a NASA astronaut generally, and his current nonprofit endeavors.

One incredible story he told related to the amount of computing power that his fellow astronauts had available to them for use in running the space craft. On board, the computing systems had only 1/2 megabyte of storage and memory. At Mission Control, the whole program was being run off computers with just 4 megabytes.  

Mr. Haise is a native of Biloxi, Mississippi, and his accomplishments and awards are legion.  This list from his NASA biography (which has not been updated since 1996) shows this.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal for Freedom (1970); the NASA Distinguished Service Medal; the AIAA Haley Astronautics Award for 1971; the American Astronautical Society Flight Achievement Awards for 1970 and 1977; the City of New York Gold Medal in 1970; the City of Houston Medal for Valor in 1970; the Jeff Davis Award (1970); the Mississippi Distinguished Civilian Service Medal (1970); the American Defense Ribbon; the SETP's Ray E. Tenhoff Award for 1966; the A.B. Honts Trophy as the outstanding graduate of Class 64A from the Aerospace Research Pilot School in 1964; the NASA Exceptional Service Medal (1978); the JSC Special Achievement Award (1978); the Soaring Society of America's Certificate of Achievement Award (1978); the General Thomas D. White Space Trophy for 1977 (1978); the SETP's Iven C. Kincheloe Award (1978); the Air Force Association's David C. Schilling Award (1978).

Again, thank you very much to our good friends at Nelson Forensics for making a donation to Mr. Haise's charity to allow us all to hear this incredible man speak.