This an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Donn Nelson conducted by Volker Janssen. Donn Nelson was a mechanical engineer who worked on nuclear delivery systems for the Air Force, nuclear power for space systems at North American Rockwell, and metal fatigue at Disneyland. Nelson was born in East Los Angeles on April 10th, 1932. He graduated from Montebello High School in 1950 and then attended USC, serving in the Air Force ROTC and graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1954. He then entered active duty in the Air Force, where he went through flight school and then served at Wright-Patterson AFB as a flight instructor. He obtained a graduate degree from Ohio State and stayed in the Air Force Reserve as a colonel, working on nuclear delivery systems for the Air Force Special Weapons Command at Los Alamos and at Andrews AFB. In around 1965 he went to work for North American (later Rockwell) in its nuclear division in Canoga Park, where he worked on nuclear space systems including the SNAP-10A satellite. He also taught as an adjunct professor of engineering at UCLA. After retiring from Rockwell in 1987 he worked for Disney until 1998, working on metal fatigue in rollercoaster tracks such as Space Mountain. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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