A Space Mind

By Ross Abotteen

From his birth on the West Bank of the Jordan River in Palestine in 1950 to present-day Texas, A Space Mind narrates the story of Ross Abotteen. This memoir explores the transitions of his life and his views, sharing his experiences from his birthplace in the Holy Land through Saudi Arabia and onto his final destiny with NASA in Houston.

Growing up in meager circumstances in a small village, Abotteen recalls his family life as the youngest of seven brothers and one sister. A Space Mind follows his schooling in Dammam and his subsequent move to the United States where he excelled at electrical engineering. He became contractor for NASAs Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he worked as a scientist, engineer, author, and inventor from 1974 to 2009. He also shares his struggles with mental illness and cancer and how that affected him and his family.

Inspirational and educational, A Space Mind offers a glimpse into a man who lived an amazing life as a scientific engineer with roots in Arabia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480811096

Ross Abotteen

Ross Abotteen earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Houston. A NASA inventor, he has worked for more than thirty-five years with four major NASA Houston contractor companies. Abotteen and his wife live in Houston, Texas. This is his debut book.

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Copyright © 2014 Ross Abotteen.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-1108-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1110-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1109-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916583

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/13/2014

CONTENTS

About The Author

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Once Upon a Time

Chapter 2 My Birth: Divine Blessings for my Parents

Chapter 3 My Life in the Holy Land, Age Two to Five

Chapter 4 The Fluke: Entering Myself into First Grade at Age Five

Chapter 5 My Life in the Intermediate School: Tulkarem City, Jordan

Chapter 6 My Last Year in the Holy Land: Ninth Grade, 1963–1964

Chapter 7 Joining Mother to Live with Dad in Dammam, 1964–67

Chapter 8 A Jordanian Seat at CPM: My Undergraduate Life, 1967–1972

Chapter 9 Coming to America: Twenty-Two Months at UH

Chapter 10 NASA, a Green Card, and a Wedding

Chapter 11 Publish or Perish

Chapter 12 The Perfect Storm: Presenting at the ERIM Symposium in the Philippines

Chapter 13 A Career through Bipolar: Facing a Chronic Mental Disorder

Chapter 14 Starting Our Nest

Chapter 15 Making Lemonade: Hospitalizations, Cancer, and Stability at Last

Chapter 16 A Half Billion Dollars Saved: My Inventions for NASA JSC

Chapter 17 My First Invention Paper

Chapter 18 Published SPICE Paper

Appendix 1 Publications by Ross Abotteen during his tie with NASA JSC Contractor Companies

Appendix 2 Condensed List of NASA Acronyms

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R oss is an Arab American who was born in the village of Irtah (to rest in Arabic), on March 17, 1950, to Muslim parents. Irtah is located on the West Bank of the Jordan River in the Holy Land of Jordan, and Ross was raised there until he turned fourteen. He then relocated with his parents to Saudi Arabia, where he lived and attended school from tenth through twelfth grade at Dammam Secondary School in Dammam.

He graduated from high school in 1967 and was ranked sixth in the nation and number one in two-thirds of the country on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s public twelfth grade examination. He earned a Jordanian-seat-scholarship, with no strings attached, to what would become before he left a full university, the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals’ College of Engineering Sciences. The curriculum was American, and courses were taught in American English. Expenses were covered by the Saudi government, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Ross obtained his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering, participated in the honors program, and graduated summa cum laude at the top of his class in 1972.

In fall 1972, he received a teaching assistantship at Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston (UH) and was accepted into a two-year graduate program. There, he completed half of the course requirements for a PhD in electrical engineering, majoring in communication engineering theory. He obtained his master’s degree in electrical engineering, with the same specialty, from UH in 1973.

Ross became a contractor for NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he worked as a scientist, engineer, author, and inventor from 1974 to 2009.

This is Ross Abotteen’s autobiography. In A Space Mind, Mr. Abotteen explores the transitions of his life and views, sharing his experiences from his birthplace in the Holy Land through Saudi Arabia and on to his final destiny with NASA in Houston.

To my Creator, God Almighty. God took perfect care of me since my birth. And he still does in so many ways that are generous, merciful, kind, and filled with love.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my parents, who gave me my life, and especially my mother, Amnih, who raised me until I’d reached the age of sixteen, when she passed away.

My thanks go to my ex-wife, Kathie, of twenty-five years, who helped me stay alive even though I was a sufferer of bipolar disorder, from 1978 to 2000. My thanks go to my current wife, Bertha, who has cared for me since October 2004, seeing me through both my bipolar illness and two hospitalizations at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.

My many thanks go to Dr. Shehadeh, my professor and advisor at UH’s electrical engineering program, without whom I would never have come to America.

My special thanks and gratitude go to my Houston host family, Dr. and Mrs. Edgar C. James, since August 1972 and onward.

My thanks and gratitude are due my mentors and teachers at NASA/JSC, who helped me mold and shape my profound and inventive career at NASA; thank you, Dr. ST, Mr. GB, and Mr. SG.

CHAPTER 1

Once Upon a Time

O nce upon a time, far, far away in the Arabian Holy Land, a baby boy star named Rasim (Arabic for painter, one who draws and imagines) was born in the astronomical time of the Earth-centered inertial coordinate frame (a part of the system of space travel) known as M50, defined with the mean equator and equinox of Earth at 12:00 on January 1, 1950. This book is his autobiography, depicting his transitions and life experiences, first in the Holy Land, then in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and in his final destination and home with NASA in Houston, Texas.

I am Rasim Abdul-Hafiz Ahmad Mohammad Husain Ali Abotteen. When I began working for NASA at the administration’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, on June 17, 1974, I adopted the nickname Ross. The name spread like wildfire, as it was much easier for colleagues to know and remember than was my real name, Rasim. So from June 17, 1974, I became Ross Abotteen, a simplification process that has served me very well ever since. Just as William becomes Bill and Richard becomes Dick, Rasim became Ross.

I was born on March 17, 1950 (the Irish Saint Patrick’s Day), on the West Bank of the Jordan River, in Palestine, Jordan, an Islamic Arabic country. My birth village is Irtah (to rest in Arabic), located eleven miles east of Tel Aviv, Israel. My mother, Amnih, gave birth to me, the last of her eleven children, nine boys and two girls (as she did all of us) in our home in the village of Irtah, each time with the help of the same village midwife. Two of my siblings, a boy and a girl, the second and fourth eldest, died prior to my birth, at ages six and four.

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the astronomical time of my birth is important to the telling of my story. Earth-centered inertial (ECI) coordinate frames use the center of Earth’s mass as their origin. And, being nonrotating (as opposed to Earth-centered, Earth-fixed [ECEF] coordinates, which are marked with latitude, longitude, and altitude) ECI frames are useful for representing objects in space. The space travel, astronomical, earth-centered inertial frame known as M50, during which I was born, is described as follows:

Origin (O) = the center of Earth on ~ March 17, 1950

+ x-axis = the axis from O and paralleling the Earth geographical east direction on ~ March 17, 1950

+y-axis = the axis from O and paralleling the Earth geographical north direction on ~ March 17, 1950

+ z-axis = the up-axis from O on ~ March 17, 1950; this up-axis happens to point toward the constellation, Aries. Hence, this ECI coordinate system is referred to as Aries mean of fifty (M50).

When space objects—for example a space shuttle (SS)—travel, the object, or in this case a SS, has a navigation base that holds a mechanically spinning device, depicting three inertial measurement units (IMUs), velocity, orientation, and gravitational forces. An IMU measures the SS’s onboard navigation acceleration vector, and the SS onboard flight software integrates it to velocity and position vectors that are transformed to the Aries M50 Coordinate System. But each of the mechanically spinning IMUs drifts and will have spin bias. So the SS carries in its onboard flight software a nautical almanac that catalogues a hundred stars in Aries M50 coordinates.

So after every eight hours of IMUs ops, an IMU align ops occurs by acquiring and tracking four stars in space, whose positions are then loaded in the SS onboard flight software almanac. Acquisition and tracking of the four stars takes about fifteen minutes, and the data is gathered through usage of the SS negative Z body (-Zb) and SS positive Y body (+Yb) star trackers. SS star tracker is an onboard optical navigation sensor device that tracks a space object relative to the position and velocity of the Space Shuttle and within a magnitude star illumination range of the star tracker. Navigational horizontal and vertical angular measurements are based on the assumption that each star position identity is fixed, as origin, relative to a moving SS in such M50 coordinates of the specific almanac star. Triangulation-oriented methods align the three IMUs, while the four-star data is to confirm the alignment solutions.

CHAPTER 2

My Birth: Divine Blessings for my Parents

2.1. Pre-Birth

M y parents had ten children before me, eight boys and two girls. The eldest girl, their second child, died at age four, and their third son (fourth child) died at age six. So when my mother became pregnant with me, she and my father had seven boys and one girl, and I was born with eight siblings—the two eldest brothers, my sister, and five additional older brothers.

My father’s father gave my parents a small piece of land in the northwestern part of the village to build a home for themselves. They built their house piecemeal.

Before my birth, my parents were very poor. My father would take labor jobs as they became available, working, among other positions, as an agricultural worker and a pipe fitter to feed his huge family. Both of my parents were illiterate throughout their lives and had no formal education. My parents had a small home before my birth, and my mother gave birth to all my siblings and to me in this house, each time with the aid of the same village midwife.

2.2. My Birth minus Two Days

On March 15, 1950, my father found a newspaper clipping on the West Bank of the Jordan River advertising a job interview in Beirut, Lebanon, for a pipe fitter (plumber) working for the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) in the Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia’s oil production region. The job was for only one plumber. My mother put my father on the bus immediately that morning after packing him a bag and giving him a tiny amount of cash.

My father arrived in Beirut that afternoon, where he checked in with the ARAMCO interviewers. The interviewers told him to be at the interviewing hall at 8:00 a.m. sharp on March 16 and gave him hotel and board accommodations.

2.3. My Birth minus One Day

The big interview for my dad began at 8:00 a.m. as planned. My father estimated the number of interviewees at about five hundred. The interviewers set up many interviewing stations so they could test the plumbing techniques of all those seeking the position. The interviewees were given a half-hour lunch break, and they did not finish the first day of interviewing until 8 p.m. on March 16.

At that time, the interviewers had narrowed down their candidate selection process to five, and my father was one of them! The five remaining candidates were dismissed and given the following day, March 17, as a day of rest and relaxation (R&R) and to prepare for tougher interview exams on March 18. The results of those exams would determine which of the five candidates would be offered the job.

2.4. My Day of Birth

My father spent his evening on March 16 eating a light meal and praying. He prayed to God to give him peace of mind for the final exams on March 18—for he wanted and needed the ARAMCO job to feed his family. My father also spent a good part of the evening of imagining and drawing in his mind what it would be like if he was selected for the position. He envisioned how it would bless him and his family—moving them from poverty to a better life!

On March 17, my father received a telegram from my mother. You have a boy, she informed him. What to name him?

My father told me he cried at the news. If he didn’t get the ARAMCO job, I was another mouth to worry about feeding, another child to raise, which would add onto his already heavy load. If he did get the position, then God’s grace was with him, bestowing upon him mercy, bounties, and blessings. In either case, God Almighty had granted the event of my birth, the effect of which, for my father, was an emotional load—one he could view as either maniacally joyous or crushingly depressing.

So my father sent a telegram back to my mother that said simply, Rasim. In Arabic, Rasim means a man who draws or one who imagines and then draws, and my father had spent all of his late night on the day before my birth imagining and drawing in his head what life might be bringing him now that he was one of the final five candidates for the ARAMCO job and thinking of how he’d left his wife when she was about to deliver his child." So my father named me Rasim, while he was in Beirut, Lebanon, celebrating that he had become one of the final five candidates for the position with ARAMCO.

2.5. My Birthday plus One Day

The final five candidates for the position of plumber with ARAMCO, including my dad, gathered in the testing hall on March 18 at 9:00 a.m. The final tests lasted until noon.

Lo and behold, God’s bounties descended on Abdulhafiz and Amnih Abotteen. My father was selected to be ARAMCO’s newest pipe fitter. The position was in Ebquaiq, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, where he would work for the next twelve years. After that, he would work for another ten years in ARAMCO’s agricultural development department (ADD) in Dhahran, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.

On March 18, 1950; the Saudi ARAMCO interviewing officials gave my father a working visa for Saudi that with which he could get his passport stamped at any Saudi embassy.

My father returned home that evening and brought God’s bountiful news to his wife, Amnih. Mother Amnih and father Abdulhafiz both new that my father’s job offer was God’s blessings of the greatest bounties that accompanied the birth of their special son, Rasim. My mother told me she began washing my father’s clothes that evening and hung them outside on our clothes ropes to dry.

2.6. March 19, 1950

My mother packed my father a suitcase full of clothes. She then took him to the Saudi embassy in Jerusalem, where he got his Saudi working visa stamped. The ARAMCO officials had given my father money to buy a one-way airline ticket from Jerusalem to Dhahran, Saudi; and he did that on March 19.

My father hugged my mother good-bye and boarded the plane to Saudi. That morning, I was two days old. My father told me he came to see me; he held me, hugged me, blessed me, and thanked God that I was born to him and my mother. He gave me a kiss and left to Jerusalem with my mother.

CHAPTER 3

My Life in the Holy Land, Age Two to Five

3.1. First Memories

M y life’s memory starts at age two. I experienced a catastrophic drama at this age. A man, who was in my mind our house guest, came to visit us at that age. The visitor stole my mother from me. No one—not my older brothers or my sister, not my mother—explained to me who this visitor was. I kept waiting for this visitor to leave. One day, two days, and then nine days passed, and the visitor was still living with us. He slept on the second floor with my mother.

By then, I had noticed that this visitor was a very rough individual and a tyrant to my mother and siblings, which I hated. So I did everything in my power to stay away from him and to avoid crossing him.

On the morning of the tenth day after breakfast, the visitor was having hot tea with my mother. So I went to my mother’s lap and inquired, Mom, when is this stranger/visitor going to leave?

My mother replied gently and embarrassingly, This is your father!

My father screamed at me. "Hawa ennachl ye hezzak we-hez abook"