Alan Cruce; NASA Research Pilot – SOFIA Program
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About the Podcast
Hello, and welcome to another edition of state of readiness. I’m your host, Joseph Paris.
My guest today is Alan Cruce, pilot and adventurer. I met Alan while I was on assignment in Denver. He and his team from NASA were also on assignment in Denver, separate assignments, of course. And we met as people who are on assignments, far away from home or app to meet in the hotel bar.
They started sharing with me what their program was at NASA, which was SOFIA. I became completely infatuated. You see, when I was younger, I wanted to be a pilot, I wanted to be an astronaut. And I was fascinated with NASA. This was the time of the Apollo program and the Skylab program. I wrote to NASA and IBM Federal Systems many times and each time I was gifted a package of goodies; pictures, pamphlets, mission patches, the works.
We all got along wonderfully. And as the night went on, they asked me if I wanted to join them to the next day for simulator training in a classic 747 (the model that was all analog). Of course, I said, Yes, and messaged my client that I was going to be late.
A little about SOFIA; It was a joint project of NASA and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR, the German Space Agency). Flight operations were conducted out of the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California. The SOFIA Science Center (SSC), responsible for overseeing the scientific output of the mission, is located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. The Science Mission Operations were jointly managed by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) for NASA and by the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI), in Stuttgart, for DLR. Aircraft operations were handled by NASA Armstrong.
About Alan Cruce
Alan’s story is a great one; earning his pilot’s license before most people earn their driver’s license. From then his life was one fascinating confluence of circumstances and events after another – which he shares some (but not all) – until he got his chance to fly missions for NASA as a pilot in the SOFIA program, a fascinating program that was recently terminated.
LinkedIn Profile:
Company: NASA and DLE / SOFIA Science Center
Title: Research Pilot
Websites: https://www.sofia.usra.edu/
Headquarters: Moffett Field, CA
Year Founded: 2005
Company Type: Government Science Program
Program Objectives: SOFIA was a joint project of NASA and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR, the German Space Agency). Flight operations were conducted out of the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California. The SOFIA Science Center (SSC), responsible for overseeing the scientific output of the mission, is located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. The Science Mission Operations were jointly managed by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) for NASA and by the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI), in Stuttgart, for DLR. Aircraft operations were handled by NASA Armstrong.
