When the Eagle landed on the Moon, the world including Auburn University cheered!
However, as all those in aerospace engineering know, that great achievement meant
that the federal government could redirect funds from the space program to other
areas, principally the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War and the Great
Society. The downturn in spending on space flight lead to a decrease in aerospace
employment and a corresponding decrease in enrollment in the aerospace engineering
program at Auburn and across the nation. For the students who stayed in the program,
this was actually beneficial due the smaller class sizes. One of these students
was James Voss '72, an Army ROTC student and varsity wrestler. Voss' desire was
to become an astronaut, a rare achievement for Army officers. His determination
and perseverance, perhaps developed as a wrestler, helped him achieve his goal
and flights as a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle and two Space Station
Freedom missions.
The downturn in enrollment led, as is usually the case, to a decrease in the number of aerospace engineering faculty members. The author was one of the relatively new faculty members who stayed. Several faculty members who came to Auburn in 1968 had departed by 1973. Fortunately, when the NASA research declined, Department of Defense research was maintained at a high level and graduate school was a way to delay military service. In order to justify faculty positions, research was even more strongly encouraged. Collaboration of AE faculty on research projects, which had always been common (e.g., Sforzini and Foster) became more so. Cutchins and Burkhalter collaborated with Fred Martin on a major research project dealing with store separation from aircraft for the U. S. Air Force Research Lab at Elgin AFB. That project involved both experiments in the Auburn wind tunnels and theoretical research using finite aerodynamic elements (sources, sinks, vortices, etc.). Other research in the 1970's included, spacecraft attitude dynamics (Fitzpatrick and Cochran), missile launcher dynamics (Cochran), the development of an aerial seeding device for broadcasting pine seeds (Cutchins Burkhalter, and Foster), and spacecraft guidance and control (Art Bennett and Cochran). It is interesting to note that Bennet's contract was funded as a part of NASA's Comet and Asteroid Rendezvous and Docking (CARD) Mission, which was never flown. Thirty years later, NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft would accomplish things about which we only studied and dreamed.
