| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
Jim Adams keeps NASA technology on the right track as the agency’s Deputy Chief Technologist
After sitting inside a Mercury capsule during a Family Day at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the 1960s you would think that W. James (Jim) Adams was destined to seek out a career with the space agency. Turns out that Adams, now NASA’s Deputy Chief Technologist, originally had another career path in mind, one that might not have ever intersected with space exploration. Fortunately, destiny had another path in mind for him. During an exclusive interview with RocketSTEM, we conversed with Adams about his background, his career at NASA and his thoughts on the future of space travel.
RocketSTEM: You were exposed to space at an early age, weren’t you?
Jim ADAMS: “I was born just before Sputnik launched. A couple of times I’ve referred to myself as a Sputnik baby. So yes, the space race and space program have always been a presence in my life. I came up in a household where space was just sort of common.
My father was an aerospace engineer. He started working for Rocketdyne in California, which was where I was born, designing rocket motors. And then we came East to Virginia so Dad could work at a small company on the Saturn V and the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module, the LEM.
In 1967 we moved to the Philadelphia area where he worked in the defense aerospace business. I never really learned much of what he did because a lot of it was classified, weapons and stuff. But from time to time he would work on these really crazy things. Like ocean based farms to grow giant sea kelp for advanced energy production or sometimes some NASA projects.
Read the rest of the interview at: RocketSTEM magazine’s website.
