Human evolution in blink of an eye, By THOM MARSHALL, Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle, Feb. 8, 2002

Century after century, people made their way in the world pretty much the same as their parents and grandparents.

They used the same weapons and tools made from stones and sticks. They hunted and gathered the same few menu and wardrobe items. They traveled the same one foot in front of the other. And they had no reason to expect their children or grandchildren would do or have or be anything different.

But suddenly things started changing. I recently visited a fellow who helped in charting the routes for the space program's earliest astronauts and in mapping the moon for man's first trip there. He said his grandfather was born in a wagon train on the Oregon Trail.

In a small piece of time that has not yet spanned three lifetimes of this family -- what amounts to no more than a grain of sand on the beach of human history -- the way people live has undergone amazing changes. Consider the tools we use, the way we travel, how we communicate, the jobs we can pick from, the amount of information at our fingertips.

Lured away by space agency

Forty-one years ago, John Dornbach was working for the Air Force Chart Center in St. Louis as a civilian with a Ph.D. in cartography and geosciences.

"I was also in charge of seeing that the first charts got made for the new NASA, which began firing rockets down range toward the South Atlantic from Cape Canaveral as a presage for testing rockets that would be used in the man-in-space program," he said.

"Soon thereafter, NASA lured me away from the Air Force to help plan for the maps that would be needed for men to get to, walk and drive on the Earth's moon."

Dornbach moved to Houston in 1962 and spent 18 years with NASA, retiring in 1980 as assistant chief of Johnson Space Center's Earth Observations Division. "It was responsible for Earth's surface remote-sensing technology development," he said.

Recently at his Friendswood home, he brought out a few keepsake mission charts to demonstrate how the space program progressed. The charts are maps of Earth with dotted lines showing the orbit paths. An early one Dornbach unfolded, which bears the autograph of John Glenn, had just three dotted lines; a later one was covered by lines in different colors for eight days of flight.

Dornbach said his job was involved with "translating NASA's and each astronaut's requirements into a chart they could take with them on each flight."

This was a most exciting time in human evolution and he was in the middle of it, along with thousands of others whose names we did not get to know as we knew the names of the astronauts, smart and driven and creative people who played essential positions on the team that won the moon.

Many long days of preparation

Twelve-hour workdays were common, 18 hours not unusual. Dornbach recalls working one day, flying to Washington for a meeting the next day and getting back home in time for work the next.

In 1967, two years before the first moon landing, Norman Rockwell visited JSC. Dornbach said The Saturday Evening Post wanted the artist to render a cover illustrating how the moon would look when we made it there.

Dornbach said Rockwell was provided with the best information available and later, when he could compare Rockwell's painting with actual photographs from the moon's surface, he judged it as pretty darned accurate.

Dornbach's grandfather was born in a covered wagon. Dornbach helped put men on the moon, and on the way there the space program produced a large variety of useful spin-off items that benefit us all. Everything from Teflon cookware in the kitchen to cancer-fighting machines in the hospital.

So what wonders will Dornbach's grandchildren see in their lifetimes? He is somewhat concerned that whatever amazing inventions and discoveries and developments await them, the total may fall short of potential. While NASA is charged with developing technology for the space program, he said, our nation is not investing enough in applying that technology to spin-offs for everyday life.

Getting to California and making the most of it took the right combination of motivation and investment and effort. Same with getting man to the moon. And it will have to be the same for all our grandkids, whatever their destinations and goals.

Some things don't change.

Thom Marshall's e-mail address is thom.marshall@chron.com

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