My name is Joshua Foxworth. I worked on the Orion project from late 2008 to early 2010. During that time, I. was a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin through a company called GHG.

I am a veteran of the US Marine Corps where I served from high school graduation in 1994 to 1998 as a Reconnaissance Marine. After my service, I got both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. I specialized in structural dynamics and wanted to work in finite elements analysis.

I was not a wealthy person as a student. As an undergraduate, I worked close to a full time job as a night time security guard at a private dorm. I often went days without sleep and had to repeatedly choose between food and paying the electric bill on time. I then worked at a university lab before being a teaching and research assistant in graduate school.

My master's thesis concerned ice accumulation on a Cessna 208 B. Much of that work was reconditioning an old, unused wind tunnel and building an entire Labview system to control the test equipment and data. This was a huge undertaking and involved becoming an expert in Labview. (This detail is important later)

After college, I worked in the shuttle program for a short while. I wrote software, did testing for a Laser Camera System, and worked several support missions for the shuttle.

When the Constellation program was started, I jumped at the chance to actually design parts to a space vehicle and I was overwhelmed with joy when the chance was offered. At the time, the only position available to me was as a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin (LM) through a company called GHG.

When i was in the Marines, I attended numerous special operations schools, including SERE school. Many of these programs are intended to break the spirit of the attendee and often break people that have passed numerous other special forces or special operations courses. None of these things moved me in the slightest. (I'm going somewhere with this, I promise)

The same goes for my time in college. While I understood that it was unequal for me to work day and night while competing against students that only had to worry about school, I was grateful for the chance to attend college.

My time at Lockheed Martin in the space program broke me. While the military can engage in a great deal of behavior to convince you that you are less than human, working at LM as a subcontractor flatly shows you that this is the case. You can be abused in ways that the person next to you is immune from, can be ridiculed, yelled at, and lied to. There are no ethics rules or legal structure that protect you and there is no plan for your future. Everyone else around me was planning their career while my job was to work 60 hours a week to do the things that were beneath them - namely designing space vehicles.

This page tells this story.

I was at LM through GHG from late 2007 to early 2008. In that time, i experienced the following :

• I was swapped positions with worker(s) who could not or would not complete the technical work assigned to them.

• I was given work that other worker(s) could not do and expected to put in unlimited hours to get it done.

• I advanced one project from years behind to years ahead and was told to ride out that position - potentially for decades

• My boss filled out a yearly review in which he gave me high marks in every sector, but left comments that I had a bad attitude. He repeatedly denied doing this. When I forced a meeting with him and subcontractor, the subcontractor refused to show up and refused to speak with me. Instead, a second manager was brought in to tell me that the comments I was seeing were not in the review. While this happened, my manager held his head in his hands under his desk. I was then transferred to this new manager and my subcontractor refused to speak with me.

• I was placed in a role to design tests for parts. However, these parts did not exist yet and I was essentially tasked with doing that work as well - despite a team already being tasked with it

• I was asked to purchase test equipment that everyone knew would never be used

• I was asked to write software in Labview - a language which i was an expert in. My manager placed a trial version of this software on computers in locked rooms in a basement and demanded that I do work after hours

• Never, not once, not one single time was I given guidance or oversight or direction for the components I was designing, despite repeatedly asking for oversight or assistance. My managers were incapable of doing CAD or MathCad or Finite Elements or CFD or any other technical task and were unwilling to learn - despite the fact that I was expected to know or learn these things and be 100% responsible for results as the lowest level employee.

• Managers screamed and threw tantrums when I made typographical mistakes despite me being months ahead of schedule while everyone else was producing nothing

• Managers engaged in "the game" with NASA and other groups. This game was to essentially wait for some minor change in the requirements for their system and then claim that this (often meaningless) change would cause months of additional work. This was all in hopes that somehow they could actually manage to design their systems before the next deadline

• The more meek and professional I behaved, the more it was taken as weakness and an invitation for abuse. The environment that they referred to as "sink or swim" was so toxic that people often resorted to public shouting matches attempting to assign blame for failures

In the Oct of 2007, I was hired as an engineer to work on the Orion Capsule. Specifically, I was hired to work on the Crew Impact Attenuation System (CIAS). This system had two purposes. The first was to stop vibrations created by the rocket on launch from shaking the astronauts and killing them. The second was to absorb high impacts on landing. I was hired by Lockheed Martin (LM) through a subcontracting company called GHG. There were roughly 4 engineers working on this system in total and I was the only subcontractor.

I cannot tell you how happy I was about this position. My masters work was in vibrations and I had done a good bit of work on my own time to learn as much Finite Elements Analysis (FEA) software as possible. My hope/expectation was that we would design and analyze the system using basic math and FEA tools.

After about 2 weeks of doing logistical stuff, I was finally given an explanation of what work had been done to date. This came in the form of a powerpoint presentation. The slides contained some images that appeared to show a somewhat complete system. While never outright claiming to have performed an FEA analysis, the images clearly implied this. Programs such as Orion have to go through numerous stages and this presentation was apparently used to pass one of those stages.

For a couple of weeks, I asked for the calculations and FEA analysis that produced the presentation. I was eventually given a PDF of the same presentation. After a few weeks, I was tasked with taking the requirements for the system from the PDF that dictated the systems capabilities and putting them into Excel. I eventually realized that no one working on the system had any FEA education or experience and that (apparently) no math or analysis had gone into the system to date. I was never able to ascertain where the presentation data came from and I realized pretty quickly that asking about the mathematics generated a great deal of discomfort.

My total time on the system that I was hired to work on was roughly two months. In that time, I saw no math and no higher analysis.

After a couple of months, I was approached by another engineer and told that he and I would be swapping positions. I'm gonna call this engineer "Johnny Manziel". It's the only name that i'm gonna change because I sympathized with the position he was in.

Johnny told me to speak with the group lead - Kurt Miller. Kurt was my boss and the person that hired me. Upon doing so, it was confirmed that I was being moved. Kurt told me that I was better suited to work on this other position. This new position was as the sole engineer on the Abort System to Docking System - ASDS and I would be working under a man named Fred Rhenmark.

What I learned a day or so later from Johnny was that he was unable to do the mathematical design/analysis that the system required on his own and had requested to be moved to my position as it was in the same group and he was friends with the project lead for the CIAS. He was very up front about this and it is completely understandable that very junior engineers would desire at least some oversight and guidance.

While Johnny and I were both very junior engineers, I was eager to do the work and felt that I was capable of doing a great deal on my own. I also believed that there would be at least some sort of logistical and technical oversight. I was completely wrong on this matter.

Over the next 9-10 months, I worked a great deal of hours to learn the CAD system we were using (called ProE or ProEngineer) and an analysis / documentation tool called MathCAD. The ASDS was a relatively simple system of rods and rings that connected the abort system to the docking system and in the event of an abort on launch, it would pull the docking system away from the capsule so that the astronauts could leave. I took the requirements and fully designed the system, taking the expected G forces on an abort and mathematically calculating the required sizes of several pieces.

Everything was based in mathematics and recorded in detailed MathCad documents. I took these results and made a complete ProE model. On numerous occasions, I asked Fred and Kurt to overlook my work and make sure that I was doing it correctly. This never happened. I was given no guidance and no feedback. I asked to be allowed to do an FEA analysis and I was told that this was the job of the "analysis" group/department.

This was my introduction to the analysis group lead named "Vatsal Bulsara". At that time, Vatsal had one engineer that worked for him. This engineer had only a Bachelor's degree and therefore had zero FEA education or experience. Vatsal claimed that he had looked at my design work and that it was OK. The engineer that worked for Vatsal then informed me that if there was to be FEA work, I would have to do it and he would have to be taught. I asked him if Vatsal could do it as I did not have a license for the software and he stated that Vatsal was not really capable of this.

There was one other subcontractor that worked briefly for the group that did all of the finite element work. He was very talented and experienced in this area, but only stayed with the program for a few months.

I really want to hit this again. I was put into this spot because an engineer could not do the work. I then did the work. The analysis group then told me that they could not do the analysis and I would again need to do it myself.

When I had brought this ASDS to a point where I needed to know what the next steps were to be, I approached the group lead - Kurt Miller. I asked for the following ...

• An FEA license

• An explanation of how to put out contracts to make the components that I had designed

• An explanation of testing and next steps

• Some overall guidance to ensure that I was doing things correctly in both technical and logistical manners

What Kurt Miller then told me was that I was now well ahead of where I needed to be with the project. He stated that these projects often go on for decades and that I should relax for a while and let the rest of the project catch up. This was obviously pretty upsetting to me. I had been working really hard and was now being told that this was somehow unnecessary. The expectation was that we were 3 years from launch and I was being told that I was a fool for believing this and working accordingly. I was told (in so many words) to be happy doing nothing and enjoy my career.

I sat on this for a few days or a week and approached Kurt again and asked to be moved somewhere where I could be of more use. Kurt told me that another group that was working on hatches and latches (doors and the items that secure them) was looking for someone.

I approached Kim Kuykendall, who was the lead for that group and she did say that she was looking for someone to design tests for the hatches and latches that they were designing.

I was ecstatic about this as it showed that other groups were nearing testing and (obviously) they had done an analysis and mathematically designed their components as it is necessary to have done before testing can be done.

As it turns out, I was wrong about this.

Shortly after being asked to be moved to a place where I could do more and potentially get some guidance, it was time for my yearly review. The process for this review was rigid and clearly lined out by both Lockheed Martin and GHG.

1. I complete a self review denoting all of the accomplishments of the past year

2. I rate myself in terms of performance

3. The group lead engages in the same actions

4. We meet and discuss this review

5. I then meet with GHG and sign the agreed upon review

I filled out the year's previous actions and included my design and analysis work. I noted that I had taken over a project that had seen two previous engineers that were incapable of doing a single task and I largely completed it. It took it from several months behind to several years ahead. I rated myself as 5 our 5 for work accomplished and a 4 out of 5 for some other things.

A short time later, I was called over to GHG's office. This was the first interaction I had with the two ladies there since being hired. They began to speak about my review as if I had already met with Kurt Miller to discuss it. I informed them that this was not the case and they seemed very surprised.

They handed me my "review". The "review" consisted of the same form that I had filled out with Kurt Miller agreeing with everything that I had said with no input. He agreed that my performance was above expectations, that I had taken this system from months behind to well ahead, and that I was succeeding where others refused to start.

Kurt's only contributions to the review came in the "comments" section. In a few sentences, Kurt stated that I was expressing dissatisfaction with my job and that I had a negative attitude. Note that this was in stark contrast to the ratings given above that covered behavior and attitude.

The ladies from GHG began to discuss the comments. I flatly asked them if Kurt Miller had told them that he had met with me. They seemed shocked and asked "hasn't he?". I then flatly stated he had not and again told them that they owed me an answer as to whether or not Kurt Miller stated that he had met with me. They refused to answer.

I told them that the process for review was clear and that I needed to speak with my manager - Kurt - before speaking to them. They agreed.

I went back to the Lockheed Martin building intending to go directly to Kurt's office. I ran into him in the open area near his office, gave him the review, and asked if he had said those things. He flatly refused. He stated that there had been a mistake and that he would correct it.

A few days later, I was called back over to GHG. They informed me again that Kurt had changed nothing and was claiming that he had met with me and explained the comments.

I approached Kurt again, and this process repeated itself with Kurt insisting that he had not made those statements and GHG insisting that he had not only made the statements, but that he was telling them that he had explained them to me.

At this point, I refused to sign the "review". Not only was the process not followed in the slightest, but my manager was asserting that he had not made the comments the review contained. I demanded a meeting with both. A date and time was set and both GHG and Kurt Miller agreed to meet.

When I went to this meeting in Kurt Miller's office, he was there, bu the GHG reps were not. Instead, Kim Kuykendall was there as well.

Kurt was in his seat pushed back from his desk. His head was low and he was staring at the floor. There were two chairs across from Kurt's desk and Kim asked me to sit in the other. She then explained that the review in question did not contain any of the comments I was asking about. She had seen the review and was kudos across the board.

She then stated that I would be moved to her group where I would work on designing test structures for the hatches and latches. She flatly asked "Is this acceptable".

Kurt said nothing. He merely sat in his chair with his head in his hands staring at the floor.

At this point I interpreted what was happening as them admitting that improper actions had taken place with respect to my review and that this had been corrected and I was being asked to move on.

I didn't see a path where destroying Kurt was the honorable thing to do. As childish and immoral as it was, I don't believe that his career should be destroyed because he got angry that I asked to move to another group.

As it turns out, failing to push for this ended my career.

When I left the meeting, I called GHG and asked to know why they did not attend the meeting. They never answered. They refused answer calls or emails and the next time I would talk to them was 6 months later, when I was terminated.

When I was terminated, GHG tried to deny my unemployment claim. They included only the last page of this review (with the comments about attitude) as evidence to the Texas Workforce Commission that I was "warned" about poor performance. They claimed that I had been moved from the ASDS to hatches and latches because I failed to perform. Luckily, I had kept a copy of that review and was able to show that this was not true. Lying to TWC is illegal but I had no legal authority to push this.

I was then moved to the Hatches and Latches working for Kim Kuykendall. My direct supervisor was a woman named Paige Carr. After a few days, I was given access to a proE model of a door and a latch as well as some requirements for the latch. These requirements consisted of verbal statements that the latch must be cycled "X' number of times.

I want to make this clear. I was given no guidance, no assistance, and no oversight as to how to proceed, where and how and when to purchase stuff, what budget I had, or anything else. I quickly realized why ...

After doing some initial test analysis, I realized that the load required to move the latch into position would be a lot due to the density of the seal. It did not seem that all. the parts would survive as many cycles as they were intending. I spoke with Paige Carr about this.

I was taken to a room in the basement of the building where there was a door from a previous program. I do not remember if it was Gemini or Apollo or something else. I was told that the door in the CAD model was simply a copy of this door with everything upsized to meet the dimensions of the door.

This is where things can get a little hard to understand. Doubling the size of something does not work in practice. Some loads do not scale linearly but rather exponentially or something else. I expressed these concerns to Paige Carr. I asked to see any mathematics associated with the design of the system. I was flatly told that there was none.

What came next still angers me to this day. Paige Carr directly told me that my job was to get the testing done. If I "discovered issues" with the design of the system while developing the test, then it was on me to address that. Essentially, they had made a CAD model with no math and expected me to come in and do all of the analysis to actually size the components. I would be given no credit for this and remember that I am one of the only subcontractors in this group.

Some later sections provide a few examples of what it was like working in the hatches and latches group. I wish that I could explain what the day to day environment was like for me. I decided to provide a few examples to hopefully fill in some blanks.

Zero guidance and massive hours

I was tasked with designing the test structure and was given no guidance or input of any kind. When I once asked about the process of purchasing a linear accelerator, I was told "there was a computer somewhere in the building that had software on it. Find it and use it". In addition to this, the latches themselves were changing almost daily in response to input that I was giving them based on the mathematics of designing the system. So, I would have to redo my CAD models almost daily because the engineers working on those systems would delete items and create new ones - making my CAD models no longer functional.

During this time, I arrived at work around 8am. I worked until roughly 6pm. Three to four days a week, I ate dinner with my wife and then returned to the office to work until around 10am to midnight. I did not have kids at this time. Luckily, I did not get sick or have a medical issue. As you will see in an example later, this was verbally expressed on numerous occasions that if you "couldn't swim with 40 hours, you'd have to do what it took to get your job done." The obvious problem here was that I was given the task of designing the test system and in reality, I was also designing the systems to be tested.

I cannot imagine what this would be like if I had a family at that time. I've worked for numerous places since this time and I have not encountered any atmosphere that is close to the toxicity that was created here.

My replacement

Although I was technically moved to another group, I was never physically moved to sit with them - meaning that my desk remained just outside of Kurt Miller's door. After a couple of weeks, a young man came to my desk and introduced himself to me as my replacement on the ASDS. This seemed like a very quick hire and when I inquired, he stated that he was a friend of Kurt's. He asked me to brief him on the work I had done on the ASDS. I set up a time and began to walk him through the mathematics and the ProE models that I had created. After about 10 minutes, he asked me what the software was I was using and he then explained that he die not know MathCAD and if Lockheed wanted him to learn it, they would have to send him to school for it. He noted that there were some ProE items that he was not familiar with and that he would have to be sent to school for that as well. He expressed that me going over the mathematics with him was pointless as he had no intention of "doing MathCAD" as that was not part of the job description.

Training for management

While not related to me, at this same time, a young lady was moved into a nearby desk and overheard a lot of the conversations that I was having on the various systems. She and I talked a few times and she informed me that she was "in training" for management and was going from class to class that Lockheed was paying for to prepare her for a career in management.

As it turned out, she had believed that I had been through some of these courses and when I explained that when I needed to know a software platform, I simply read the documentation and watched videos online, she agreed with my replacement that this was not something she was willing to do.

Different worlds

I have nothing against the young man that replaced me nor against the young lady that was lucky enough to be deemed a manager in training. However, those lived in a separate world from me and a few other engineers at Lockheed. For some of us, working there as an engineer meant massive hours, rigid deadlines and large workloads. The often repeated motto was that they give you the work and you "sink or swim on your own" - meaning that you did everything and got zero guidance. For others, Lockheed was a place for you to explore career opportunities and you told them what you were willing to do and what they had to pay to send you to school to do.

I mention in a few of these bullets that I was asking for help and guidance and getting nothing back. I wanted to clarify a few things on this.

When I took over the ASDS, I was given zero guidance about how to proceed. I was not told to use MathCAD and do an analysis, or what equations to use, or how to document the process, or to make a CAD, or anything else. I was simply told to make it work.

When I took over the test designs and by proxy the designs for the latches and hatches, it was the same. Here are a few examples of specific questions I was asking, why they matter, and the response that I got back.

When I designed the ASDS, I made a system with 3 rods and a "fitting" at each end. A fitting in this case was a flat piece of metal roughly 1/2 of an inch thick. These fittings had two raised flanges that a bolt passed through. This bolt then secured to the rods via a retracting device.

When designing these fittings, I asked if I could make flat space son the docking ring to connect the system or if the fittings needed to be rounded and I got no answer. I asked numerous times about how precise these pieces needed to be in terms of machining. For example, these raised pieces are not cut to a perfect 90degrees, but how close should I model them in CAD?

When working on the latches and hatches, the same questions came up. Am I to purchase off the shelf or design from scratch or something else.

The response to each of these questions that I asked was to ask me what I had done in previous positions and then pretend as if I should know these things. "Go with what you know" or "a chance to swim" was always the response. My response was always that in previous positions we bought off the shelf for tests and when I was in college, we had a shop where I could simply ask the machinist what the most convenient fillet size or rounding was for him and go with that.

What is important here is that none of my managers had a clue as to how to answer any of these questions. We had NO SHOP OF ANY KIND and every piece had to be contracted out. None of my managers had actually been part of any process where pieces like this were manufactured. They simply thought that leadership was to state that they were very busy and that I should just somehow figure out for myself if the space program at Lockheed Martin was going to use a shop or contract out the work or buy it off shelf. I was then somehow supposed to know what practices the unknown shop would consider best.

Again, I am the junior most engineer on every single one of these projects. I was the guy that was supposed to have the least amount of experience and yet I was supposed to have the answer to every question and be the guy to make every decision. The practice that was engaged in here was to force me to make those decisions and then pretend as if they opposed any wrong ones and they were the source of all the right ones.

After about 2-3 months, I realized that using some previous vehicles design was simply going to cause problems that I could not solve while simultaneously designing tests. The load on the latch was simply greater than that specific design could hold without making certain parts huge. I expressed this to Paige Carr (who was running the group due to an illness and months long absence by Kim Kuykendall).

Eventually, this was begrudgingly accepted to some extent. I was told to proceed in writing test software. This software was to control the various machinery of the tests. Remember that the items to be tested have not been designed yet, the test requirements do not really exist, and I have no hardware and no software license.

I was left to decide what software was to be used. Having used Labview in college extensively, I chose that. I should note that most of the work that I did in grad school used this software. I was an expert in it and in connecting it to hardware. I expressed this to Paige and she stated that a license was forthcoming.

Eventually, I was told that a computer existed in the building with Labview installed that I was free to use, but they did not know where. Eventually, one of the other engineers from the group came to my desk and brought me to a training room in the basement of the building. This room was locked and he had a key. He then took me to one computer there and explained that Labview was installed on it for me. He then looked at me and giggled that "i'll just have to use it after hours and find a key or a way to tunnel into the computer" as it was used for training during the day. It was also a trial version.

I had never spoken to this person before, but I was aware that he did not like me. He was an older gentleman and one of the engineers that was supposed to be designing the latches. He was a good friend of Paige Carr. I asked him how he would respond if his boss tasked him with writing software and then relegated it to a computer in a locked room that was only available after hours. His response was to laugh at me.

It may seem absurd for a boss to put software on computers behind locked doors. What you have to understand is that each and every person understood the game they were playing. They understood that they were not really capable of doing the required work - especially in the time required. The game that was then played was to pretend as if everything was going fine until something changed in a system that you connected to. You then claimed that this invalidated all of the work that you had done to date and you had to start over.

This was how the ASDS had been so far behind and no one got in trouble. It connected to both the docking system and abort system and each time a predicted load changed, they simply claimed that they had to start over. This is completely untrue, but it's a game that they all played.

The people working in the latches and hatches knew that copying the previous vehicle was a good start, but also a gamble if things didn't work - and things had not worked. Everyone understood that the system would have to start over. They simply hoped to delay until something around them changed and they would then claim that those changes were the problem and not their lack of work.

By preventing me from actually designing a test, they could hopefully hold off admission that the latches and hatches were defunct until something changed and they could blame that for the upcoming delays.

Technical people

Everyone at LM on the Orion program has a degree in engineering. However, many of them would claim to be "non technical" people. This meant that they did not have the ability to do the analysis required to design components and in many cases they could not even do CAD.

For example, Paige Carr, Kim Kuykendall and most of the other people that I worked with called themselves "nontechnical people". This goes back to the two worlds that exist in these programs. Some simply claimed that they couldn't be tasked with technical work and others could be given it all.

The work that I was doing had the potential to make it obvious that the design of the latches and hatches were fraudulent from the beginning and the problems were not caused by changing designs. All I could do was hope that they would take what I was doing and run with it. That did not happen.

Towards the end of my time at Lockheed, it became extremely obvious that things were not going well for those systems. During this time, I had a medical appointment on my day off. It should be noted that Lockheed officially worker 9 hours a day and got every other Friday off. I rarely got this day off and never during my time on hatches and latches.

However, this one time I actually took my days off. Paige objected stating that we were behind schedule. I very politely stated that I was not behind schedule as I was tasked with designing test fixtures and I had yet to be given a design to test. All I had been given was a CAD model and I was expected to properly size it - which was not my job.

The following week, a meeting was called in one of the larger offices. There were roughly 20-25 people in the room and I did not know most of them. Paige stated that there were people not working enough to get the job done and from them on, everyone was to be there Monday through Friday 8-5.

This may seem odd but it was common at Lockheed during that time. I believe that what Paige and Kim were doing was calling these meetings and making broad statements like this and then recording that they had counseled the engineer(s) in question.

At this time, another engineer that I often saw there at night spoke up. He looked around the room and stated that since he had to run large CAD models, his work meant that he had to be in the office on those computers. He stated that he was regularly there late at night and looked around the room. He pointed out that me and one or two others were also there late at night, during our days off, and other times. He then pointed out that Paige regularly was not there during the day and hardly never at night or on the off Fridays.

What also should stated was that Kim Kuykendall had been out of the office for months with a health issue. This is fine. I am not blaming her for needing to be out. However, the point that he and I were making is that since we were capable and willing to do the work, a great deal of work was put on us. For others, this did not happen. To demand that competent people essentially work unlimited hours while others do not is a recipe for failure.

Eventually, I wrote a full set of documentation for the test fixtures as well as a few for parts of the latches I was to be testing. Paige asked that I have the analysis lead Vatsal Bulsara look over the documents.

Vatsal looked over them with me present and made a single comment that I had left the analysis of hoop stress off one piece. I responded that I could certainly add it, but that this piece was not going to be stressed in that manner at it would be minimal. He asked me to add it and I did. He pointed some equations out in the book and I reminded him that the equations were present all over the documents and I knew them well.

I want to highlight again, the I was not part of the "design group" that Vatsal led, but I was doing that work. I received no oversight or guidance and Vatsal himself had not produced a single document or analysis to that date.

A few hours later, Vatsal asked to see the documents again. I stated that I had not yet added that stress in as I was busy with other work. He asked that I add them and I did, printed them, and gave him the revised document.

As it turned out, i made a typo in that equation and Vatsal found it. He pointed it out to me and before I could say anything he screamed "Jesus Christ, I wrote it down for you and you still got it wrong".

This was a common practice for Vatsal but the first time he had done it to me. The office was a large room with cubicles and Vatsal liked to find issue's like this and publicly embarrass engineers.

At this time, I was the only engineer that had produced documentation of any kind. I was the only one that had produced an equation of any kind. Every single other person was doing CAD or making presentations off my work. Vatsal himself was tasked with analyzing the latches and properly sizing them and he was months behind schedule. Not only was I doing his work, he had done literally none of his own.

I had a policy of never getting angry and never raising my voice. It was often a tactic there for managers to behave this way and then subordinates would react as you would expect and the lower engineer would be punished for that response with no discussion of what prompted it.

What I'm saying here is that I was pissed and I had had enough. I was sitting next to Vatsal at his cubicle and I stood up and started to ask him to step into a Sr manager's office where this could be handled more appropriately. I pointed towards the office and got about half a sentence out. Instead, Vatsal chose to escalate. He slammed his keyboard and walked off in a huff before I could do anything.

Again, the tactic here is to throw a public tantrum and then use that tantrum as "evidence" of who was right - the more you escalate, the more you win.

As I said, i've always held a personal policy not to behave like this. One of the primary reasons for this policy was that I believed that I would eventually be given a chance to tell "my side". When that happened, I would be thrilled to show any senior manager my work and have Vatsal explain his reaction to my typo. This never happened. In the time that I worked at LM, I was not once given a chance to explain anything. I was never once even made aware of a single allegation made against me.

Shortly thereafter, another meeting was scheduled. Kim Kuykendall was back from leave and there were roughly 25 people in the room - most of whom I had never met.

The news was not good. The hatches and latches were going back to initial design. Essentially, they had to admit that there were serious issues and they were starting over.

At this point, Kim and Paige stated that people had obviously failed in their tasks and there would be repercussions. They stated that anyone that felt that they had performed poorly should come and speak to them in the next day or so.

If you haven't figured it out, this is what passes for clever at Lockheed. Basically, if you go and talk with them, you're admitting to being a failure. If you refuse to talk with them, then they've given you a chance to say something and you chose not to.

Kim them brought up an image of the test system that I had designed. She asked "are we happy with this?"

Again, i've always had a policy of remaining silent unless absolutely necessary so that people are not publicly embarrassed. However, this was very obviously an attempt to publicly embarrass me.

I asked very clearly "What's wrong with it?" I got no response. I then stated that if there was a problem, talking to me about it before making a blanket statement in a meeting would be more appropriate.

I then asked how we could be unhappy with the test fixtures for the latch when the latch itself did not exist.

I got no answers to any of this. They just continued with the meeting.

Everyone in the room understood what was happening. By doing this, Paige and Kim could say that they voiced displeasure with my work without ever having to actually say what it was that was done wrong. This is also why I decided that working at a place like this was not for me. I could never sit silent as this was done to someone else. I could never assist in it and I could never trust a person that did.

In this manner, the Orion project self selects not for technical ability but for people that are willing to play these kind of office politics and more for people that are willing to throw public tantrums to defend themselves.

Again, the primary reason to say nothing was also the belief that if any allegations were officially made, I would be given a chance to defend myself. I also did not believe that they could get away with the failure of a system's design resulting in the termination of a person that was not actually officially working on that design - even if I had been officially handed that work.

Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors have specific rules for how they handle performance reviews, promotions, terminations, etc. However, the reality is that White males have no legal grounds on which to file a lawsuit when those rules are ignored or violated - as they were with me.

Because of this, LM and GHG and other companies maintain a separate set of "policies" for White males. You won't find these in any books or websites on ethics of the company but you hear them talked about and can find examples like me.

One of these policies is that "If you don't produce for 6 months, you can be terminated". It's a method of getting rid of employees without having to commit anything to paper in the form of yearly reviews or other practices that are required as per their ethics documentation.

I was terminated exactly 6 months plus 1 day after my yearly review - the review that clearly showed that I succeeded where other engineers failed and the same one that two managers agreed had no negative comments.

I was given no complaints of my work no reason and no one from LM spoke with me. I had not seen nor spoke with my manager - Kim Kuykendall in months as she was out of the office with an illness. I was called over to the GHG building - the first time I had spoken to them since the review and told that I "no one wants to work with you". I asked for details, about the review, and about a number of other things but they made it clear that If I asked questions, they would feel "uncomfortable".

I applied for unemployment with the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) and was told that it was being challenged by GHG. After a few days, they got back to me and stated that I had been warned for poor performance by GHG and LM. I supplied them with the review from 6 months prior stating the exact opposite.

After a few days, TWC approved my unemployment. They stated that GHG had supplied them with 1 page from my review - the comments about my attitude that both Kurt Miller and Kim Kuykendall adamantly stated did not exist.

Lying to the TWC is illegal. What GHG did in telling them that I was warned of poor performance is illegal. Unfortunately, I had no legal grounds on which to do anything and TWC refused to take action.

I filed a complaint with the NASA Inspector General and explained the lack of work being done and the malfeasance of the managers at Lockheed and GHG.

The response to this (as i understood it) was that everything that I had said was completely true and neither LM nor GHG denied it. However, what the IG looks for is fraud and LM was fully admitting that the systems involved had been poorly designed and were starting over. Since LM had been truth with the IG, there were no legal issues.

The issue of my termination and reputation and even GHG's illegal behavior were simply not things that they investigated.

Not long after being let go, I filed an ethics complaint with Lockheed Martin. You may be asking why this was not done previously and you will see why.

I gave the ethics group my "review", explained how Kurt MIller had refused to engage with me, how I was transferred to the ASDS because Kurt's friend wanted my position. I explained that I was tasked with designing the test structure for the latches and hatches and those had recently been taken back to design - so how was I accountable for those failures.

I gave them the report that I got from the TWC that showed that GHG had lied about my performance and asked them to look at my hours worked (which was readily available from badging in and out).

I eventually got a return call. The ethics department stated that they had spoken to zero people, looked at no evidence, and concluded that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on anyone's part.

At this point, I was very upset. I began to ask the young lady why nothing was done. I got out the phrase "I worked 60 hours a week for months and ...." I was cut by the ethics person yelling "Oh well, oh well, oh well" and laughing profusely at me.

If I can say anything about this, it is that this was a low point for me. The amount of work that I put in in college, the amount of work that I put in at Lockheed, the sleepless nights, the stress, .... everything culminating in a person that I had never met before getting absolute joy from mocking me about the fact that they had railroaded an investigation into very obvious ethics violations.

She continued laughing and saying "Oh well" until there was silence. I this point, she stated that we were done and hung up the phone.

The reality is that when you place a group of people into a lower legal class, the ethics policies of companies match those laws. If I was not a White male, I could have sued on the grounds of racial discrimination. LM and GHG could have been compelled to address the policy violations that took place. However, as a White male can be terminated for any and all reasons - including to cover up malfeasance and ethics violations - I had no legal ability to compel them to address the issues. As such, the ethics policies of LM match this fact and there is no reason to open the company up to further damage though an ethics violation when a White male is wronged.

It's been almost 15 years since I left the Orion program and the space program as a whole. The Orion program was supposedly 3 years from a manned launch at that time. Instead, 15 years later and we still don't have a manned launch yet. Kurt MIller was right - I could have just sat there and milked that position for more than a decade doing nothing.

I've worked in several places since leaving the potato space race. None of them have even come close to the types of disfunction that I saw in the space program.

However, the reality is that I got a BS and MS in Aerospace for a reason. I love the space program for what it could be and I would love to be back in it. What I wanted was a job designing components, using finite element software, using CAD, and doing analysis. What I came to realize is that if that job exists, my race and gender make that role off limits to me.

I use to think that I had no choice but to walk away and accept this injustice.

Having kids changed me on this.

To hell with this corruption and to hell with any person that tells my sons that if they want to be in the space program they have to pay someone of a preferred race and gender to do so. No equitable or just society would allow this. No moral person would benefit from it