Thomas Connare Field: US Air Force Email: ctomrun1@aol.com Location: Beavercreek, OH Member Since: 9/7/2000

The Battlestar Galactica Fan Club's Gregory L. Norris recently spoke with Thomas Connare from the US Air Force. The interview has some interesting insights on Tom and the projects he worked on for the US Air Force.

by

Gregory L. Norris

Introduction: Like many science fiction classics, Battlestar Galactica has inspired legions of impressionable young viewers to forge successful careers in the arts and sciences. Artists and writers routinely visit the stars in their work much the way the crew of the Galactica did during the Colonial Fleet’s lonely quest, but few fans have actually done it quite like Dayton, Ohio transplant, Tom Connare: he’s been there – literally. The Air Force veteran spent three years of his career in Los Angeles working at the Space and Missile Systems Center, where he was responsible for the development and launching of space vehicles and their payloads. Tom led a management team for five individual satellite launches and has been associated with a dozen others, including the controversial Cassini project, a nuclear-powered orbiter scheduled to reach Saturn in 2004 (in late December, 2000, Cassini swung past Jupiter and began transmitting data of the gas giant’s magnetosphere for a study of the effects of the Solar Winds).

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom in New York City last September at the Space:1999 convention, Main Mission: 2000 during a panel on the Galactica revival. Hosted by Galactica guru Shawn O’Donnell, the panel featured such excellent guests as Richard Hatch ("Captain Apollo") and author John Muir (An Analytical Guide to Television’s Battlestar Galactica, McFarland), and this scribe as well, who has written for the television series Star Trek: Voyager and is a regular contributor to Cinescape Magazine. Tom’s demeanor impressed me immediately; well spoken, intelligent, and incredibly handsome with Clark Kent good looks, like many Battlestar Galactica proponents, Tom put a very respectable face on science fiction fandom.

TC: The reference documents I sent you take place over a four-year span. During the first two years of those documents, I was a Captain. For the last two years, I’ve been a Major.

TC: Yes. It’s not all that big a deal if you’re in the military. Where I work, everybody’s either a Captain or a Major. I’ve been in the military seventeen years. I’ll be up for Lieutenant Colonel in a year and a half from now.

TC: From a very early age, I was quite a fan of Space:1999 and Battlestar Galactica. Certain military aspects of Galactica impressed me, especially the camaraderie between the pilots. That opened my eyes a little bit as to what the military might be like. That, plus a lot of the characters in science fiction are role models. There are people on Battlestar Galactica and Space:1999 and even The Bionic Woman and The Six Million-Dollar Man who were role models for me. I took a look at what they were doing and said, ‘how can I apply that to my own life?’ As far as Galactica specifically, it was the flying scenes that did it. How cool would it be to be a Viper pilot? I was impressionable at thirteen years old and it got into my head. My goal was to be a fighter pilot for the Air Force. That didn’t end up working out, but I am a flight instructor for the FAA [Tom has logged over 600 flight hours]. But watching Battlestar Galactica planted the interest of being a fighter pilot in my mind. It was something I worked for, and twenty years later, I’m a pilot. In essence, seeing that show twenty years ago put a seed in my head and gave me something to work for.

TC: Single-engine craft, like Cessna, Piper and Beachcraft – anything that has a single engine. The neat thing about flying planes again relates back to what I said about the pilots on Battlestar Galactica being role models. Richard Hatch as Captain Apollo and Dirk Benedict as Starbuck – they were role models. The Bionic Woman – she was involved in working with the government. Even Star Trek was about a military operation, as was Galactica. As a very young boy, though these shows weren’t about a real military or government, I thought it might be a good direction to take my life into some day. Of course, when I grew into an adult, I went into the military for a lot of real reasons. But it still looked to me as valid as when I was ten years ago, those impressions about the military, and also the space world. Battlestar Galactica’s space operations drove me to consider what I could get involved with as a career in space. Then I found my job in Los Angeles, which allowed me to do just that.

TC: Lewistown, a small town in Pennsylvania. It’s a very remote, very small town.

TC: I was. I lived for Battlestar Galactica. I remember taping every episode on a tape deck because we didn’t have VCRs at the time and playing them at night when I went to sleep. I played them so much, over and over again, that to this day, I can remember a lot of the lines on the individual episodes like many people do. I used to listen to the theme song for Space:1999 – I taped it on a little Dictaphone and used to carry it with me and play it when I was doing errands with my mom or out running around because it made such an impression on me.

TC: To take it even further, my real desire all my life was to become an astronaut. Of course, a very, very select few ever make it that far. That’s what I’d have liked to try for.

TC: There are two ways to become an astronaut – you can be a pilot, or a mission specialist. I couldn’t do if from a pilot’s perspective, because I wasn’t selected to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force. The other way I could become an astronaut is as a mission specialist. To do that, you have to get your Ph.D., which is what I’m working on now. One of the reasons I started working on my Ph.D. five years ago was that somewhere down the road, I wanted to try to become an astronaut. So technically, I could still try, but it’s very select. By the time I finish, I might be getting a little old – the average astronaut starts at 34. If and when I finish my Ph.D., I will definitely turn in an application. I know a lot of very, very sharp people who have applied. So many thousands of people do, civilians too, not just military. Even to get to the top 100 applicants is quite an accomplishment. My one friend who’s trying to become an astronaut is 28 years old, has five Master’s Degrees, an MBA, a Ph.D. in Engineering and he’s now working on getting into medical school. He’s gone through all that education just to try to become an astronaut. That’s the kind of credentials you need to be selected.

TC: My job right now, and even when I was in the space work, is pretty much like a business, 8-5 Monday through Friday. In my off time, I have a lot of hobbies. I go to the gym once a day like so many people do, and I run. I also like to do a great deal of flying.

TC: After all this time, it was very exciting, and quite honestly, I got goosebumps. I asked him if he would give me one of his ‘Battlestar’ handshakes. You know how the Colonial Warriors shake hands on the show? He did that. It was really cool!

TC: Yes, at a private meeting between her and only the members of her fan club. I flew to California. It was very exciting! I got a great photo with her.

TC: I was at it’s launch, but I wasn’t on the management team. I did work on Cassini, the satellite to Saturn. I’ve probably been to a dozen launches – it’s a very physical thing. The ground rumbles. The air fills with a roar. A night launch is a very neat thing because the lights from the engines turns night into day. I even had one blow up on me.

TC: Yeah, and that was one I was directly working on. I was a Mission Manager on that one. I put a year and a half of work in on it, and it blew up. We lost all the work we put into it. It was a pretty sad day.

TC: It was a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office launched at Cape Canaveral and some forty two seconds after takeoff, it exploded. The satellite and launch vehicle were valued at 1.2 billion dollars. It was a big loss.

TC: Well, it’s not top secret, but it is kept sort of under wraps.

TC: Yeah, exactly (laughs).

TC: Cassini, you might recall, generated a great deal of controversy [the spacecraft is powered by plutonium]. It will reach Saturn in 2004. I was not the Mission Manager on this one, but I was part of the office responsible for its launch. I was a Mission Manager on five missions during my three years in Los Angeles. Cassini, like I said, was not one of my missions. However, a buddy of mine in my office was the Mission Manager on that one.

TC: We’re part of a team of 50 people or more responsible for everything that it takes to get the mission ready for launch. You report problems to the Launch Director and try to get them fixed. The team keeps the costs under control and everything on a schedule. It’s the management of all these activities. The team does everything that has to be done in order to get that thing launched. It was my favorite assignment out of all my years in the Air Force. The most fun I ever had in Los Angeles was during a launch. We’d be there in headsets and start the launch sequence usually at T-minus three hours and go through it, second by second. When you had a problem, trying to fix the problem on time to get the launch off on schedule was a real challenge. I recall one mission that was a night launch because of where we were trying to get it into orbit. We started the countdown at midnight for a launch at three in the morning. We scrubbed the launch about ten times due to various problems. We had to go through that launch countdown ten times before we actually got the vehicle launched. It was very exciting and a relief when we finally did.

TC: That’s true. After you work so many hours on a program getting things right, you put a lot of tender loving care and virtually thousands of hours into a satellite. When it goes up, you feel like part of you goes with it.

TC: I hope they keep coming out with quality TV series and movies, and I hope Battlestar Galactica comes out with another series. I like Richard Hatch’s spin on it – it’s not just science fiction, it’s also a human drama.

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