Pretty cool guys. I joined the USN right out of HS (to get away from home and 'see the world'). Went to Boot, Basic Electronics & Electricity (BEE) and to ET 'A' School as an ET Nuke. Didn't make it past 1st phase of ET A because to make it as a Nuke you had to be in the upper 2/3 of your class. I had a 92%!! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/zombie.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />

Yeah, my class was exceedingly smart with a class average of 96%. The average score for all ETA students was only ~85% to give this some perspective.

The USN in their ultimate wisdom felt I should go to the fleet (because there were too many ET's at the time).

I ended up being sent to a deck division on an ammo ship and striking for & getting a DS (Data Systems tech) rating. I went back to school almost exactly 1 year from the date I came aboard the ship.

To be safe they sent me through BEE again which I completed in just a little over a week (comp'd out). While I was checking out of NTC San Diego to go to my A-School in Mare Island I happened to pass the base video rental store. They had a TV facing their window tuned to the news and as I was passing the store I saw the Challenger exploding during it's Launch from Cape Canaveral <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/ignore.gif" alt="" />

Was a very surreal time for the rest of that day.

Grace Hopper was a wonderful GEM !!! I remember seeing a film of her in an education course..

I never forgot what a nanosecond is.. as explained here.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8

The Navy was one of the first heavy users of computers. Before there were even vacuum tube computers, the Navy was using analog computers using cams and gears, mainly to predict fall of shot for the big guns.

One of the first uses of digital computers was linear programming problems, the computation of shipping during wartime with constraints of minimum amounts delivered considering probability of losses from all causes.

NASA had some very fine computers for solving orbital mechanics problems, the classic 3 body problem using newtonian gravitational mechanics.

I was going to say;

I'll believe we went to the moon when I can go there and see the evidence for myself.

They went. Remember you are talking about a government agency and there is no way they could keep a secret about that big of a hoax for that long!!