Paul Spencer Bailey – Aerospace Engineer

Perched on his grandfather’s lap, three-year-old Paul Spencer Bailey was mesmerized by the full moon resting above the treetops on the farm just north of Kenney.

“I threw a rock and missed that bright full moon. I asked my grandad to tell me about it. He said no one could reach the moon – it was too far away.”

Tom Spencer laughed when his grandson took aim again, missing a second time.

“I thought to myself, someday I’m going to hit the moon with two more rocks, one for me and one for grandad,” said Bailey.

It was 1955, fourteen years before Apollo 11 would bring astronauts to walk on the surface of the moon, a feat few people could imagine.

The moon and the world beyond the treetops were never far from Bailey’s mind. As a child, he knew his less than perfect vision precluded him from being an astronaut but there were other avenues that could satisfy a space enthusiast.

“When I was six or seven, I learned there was something called an engineer,” said Bailey.
The job description fit Bailey perfectly: work to develop the technology to put people into space. Following his graduation from the University of Missouri, Bailey worked for two years at the Naval Weapons Center in China Lake, California. He returned to Clinton and completed a master’s degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois.

Bailey began his career at Johnson Space Center in 1978 as an engineer with McDonnell Douglas where he was assigned to the Skylab space station project and the efforts to create a maneuvering unit for untethered spacewalk.

As an orbital mechanics specialist, Bailey helped trained astronauts to fly the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a backpack weighing more than 300 pounds that allowed astronauts to fly unanchored from a spacecraft. The technology’s potential was demonstrated on February 7, 1984, test flight by Challenger astronaut Bruce McCandless.

The jetpack’s technology was short-lived. It was used in the SolarMax Satellite retrieval mission on STS 41-C and in the Palapa and Westar rescue mission during STS-51-A, both later in 1984, and then retired.

Work on the space station intersected with Hollywood in 1984 as the production crew and actors filming the television miniseries Space visited the NASA control room. Bailey and other NASA staff met Michael York and Bruce Dern, two stars of the drama.

Bailey recalled his conversation with York during an elevator ride in Houston. The actor expressed amazement at how NASA workers “have everything planned to the finest detail,” compared to the easygoing flow of a production set. Bailey made the final cut of the movie, his image in a background shot of the control room.