Melvin Thrasher, affectionately known as Mel, has lived in Cherokee County for 24 years. He was born in 1937 in Detroit, where he graduated from Denby High School.
Thrasher worked in the aerospace industry for 32 years. In 1966, he started in LTV in Michigan as a forklift driver, where he stayed for the next 10 years, receiving several advances along the way.
He then went on to work at Rockwell International in Columbus, Ohio, in the missile systems division, where his job was logistics. He did manpower planning, charge numbers and cost accounting for the department.
Thrasher continued doing this until missile systems got transferred to Atlanta. He was all ready to go when he was then hired into aircraft in the materials department.
The U.S. Air Force, regarding the B1, imposed a cost scheduled control system. Thrasher was sent to school to learn cost schedule control systems. He was then able to do it for the materials department.
After 100 airplanes were built, the facility was going to be closed so a U.S. Army depot could be housed in its place. His director sent his resume to California, and he was picked up in the space division working on the “Star Wars” program started by President Ronald Reagan.
Thrasher did cost schedule control systems but didn’t like California. After that program was shut
down, he was then transferred to the space shuttle division – which was located in the same facility just
a different office. He was in California about a year before he received the call and was transferred to Florida in the materials department, where he did manpower planning and cost accounting.
California was doing all the buying for the space shuttle at the time, but Rockwell and NASA wanted it done in Florida. Thrasher had to build up the manpower to make all the transfers.
At the time, Rockwell International was the prime contractor for the space shuttle. He was working in Cape Canaveral at the off-site location from the shuttle.
Rockwell International and Lockheed formed a joint venture called United Space Alliance USA. Thrasher and a team needed to physically move the materials department from the off-site location in Cape Canaveral to the space center itself.
He ended up with a huge industrial engineering project that took about three months to complete, as everyone and all the equipment needed to be transferred. He continued to move up in the company with salary pay grades and become the third highest-paid person in the materials department before retiring in January 1998.
When asked if he had any special memories, Thrasher said, “One of the highlights of my career, especially in the space division, was when our director in the materials department made arrangements for the crew to take a special tour of Kennedy Space Center. This was not a regular visitor’s tour. I was able to take several elevators to the top of the shuttle’s booster.”
With excitement in his voice, he added, “One of the things I didn’t know at the time was that if something had happened while the astronauts were in the space shuttle and they had to get out quickly, like for a fire or something, they’d come out of the orbiter where there were two metal baskets that were big enough to hold a man.
“They could get in and hit a pedal and, like a zip line, would take them all the way to the ground from the gantry. It was called an emergency egress system. I didn’t get a chance to ride that thing but it would have been one hell of a ride.”
One of the other perks of the job was that during day launches he was able to view the launch from Launch Complex 39 Press site at Kennedy Space Center, which is not open to the public. It’s about 3 miles from the launchpad itself.
Thrasher recalled a demonstration he once saw at the tile lab in which someone in protective clothing placed a space shuttle tile into a blast furnace and heated the tile up to a cherry red temperature.
“He then took the tile out, removed his headgear, protective clothing and gloves and was able to hold the tile with bare hands, showing how quickly the tiles cool off,” he said.
Today, Thrasher enjoys woodworking and is active with All Saints Lutheran Church in Blairsville, Ga. He was married for 59 years before his wife passed away in 2016. They have two grown daughters.