From NASA to the Classic

BY  THE TIME BOB SCHEPP graduated from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1959, he had logged three years with McDonnell-Douglas in its division of autopilot systems. With the ink on his degree still wet, in 1960 M-D transferred him to Project: Mercury, where he spent the early part of the program testing the Automatic Stability and Control System (ASCS) prior to delivering the capsules to Cape Canaveral for launch.

Soon after the Mercury assignment, “the decision was made that the St. Louis engineers would be part of the launch team for all of the Mercury launches, and I was selected for that team. I tested the ASCS as part of the launch counts for the Redstone and Atlas flights," recalled Schepp. "I started on the Redstone flights as a member of the launch teams for Alan Shepard and Gus. After Gus’ flight, I joined the launch teams for the Atlas flights of John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.”

After Mercury, Schepp returned to St. Louis and began work on Project: Gemini and its target docking adapter. When McDonnell-Douglas wound down its commitment to Gemini, Schepp had enjoyed his years as test conductor for power and sequential systems on the even-numbered spacecraft.

At that point, M-D sent him into the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program followed by a couple years on flight simulators prior to assignment to Skylab. After Skylab, he enjoyed fourteen years of work on the Tomahawk Cruise Missile.

Schepp retired from McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing in 2002

with nearly forty-seven years of service.

“I was a very young engineer, and most of us young people had the attitude that there was nothing we couldn’t do! It was really quite an accomplishment putting humans into space and returning them safely. I was indeed very honored and proud to be part of that history.”

Even as he was wrapping up his career with McDonnell-Douglas, Schepp returned to Washington U. and earned a Master’s Degree in International Affairs in 1996. Since 2003, however, he has been a substitute teacher in the Parkway School District, just west of St. Louis. “My purpose is to use my experiences to encourage students to work hard on math and science and to seriously consider a technical or engineering career. We need the youngsters of today for the exploration of tomorrow!”