to get intelligence on the situation. They needed someone on the ground. So Paine said why not, and sent his friend into the middle of a war zone. Schmidt talked to the villagers and gathered information from the locals on the supply route, conditions of the roads, and the strength of the resistance. He scouted locations where the US could implement further aid projects. A week later (after claiming that he had dodged a hand grenade, no less), he came back with exactly the kind of information that Paine needed. He wrote up a report and hand-delivered it to Washington. He told Sherrod that it was a rather unorthodox way of getting something done. But it worked.19
By the fall of 1967, Paine had been with General Electric for seventeen years. A year earlier, NASA had brought its second manned spaceflight program, Project Gemini, to a successful conclusion with the splashdown of Gemini 12 in the Atlantic. It was the final flight of NASA’s two-man spacecraft program. By now, the United States had been launching astronauts into space for six years. Space probes were also venturing near Mars and Venus for the first time, sending back tantalizing black-and-white pictures of Earth’s nearest planetary neighbors. Four robotic Surveyor spacecraft had already soft-landed on the surface of the moon. America was now building the most complex rocket and spacecraft ever made in an attempt to land the first human beings on the moon. “Go Fever” was in the air. The country was in a full-blown race with the Soviet Union to put a man on the moon. NASA was in the news and making headlines. While TEMPO had a few small study contracts with the agency, he himself had nothing to do with them.
That was all about to change.
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