E648 - Chester L Richards - From The Potato to Star Trek and Beyond, Smithsonian Institution, Being A Monster

EPISODE 648 - Chester L Richards - From The Potato to Star Trek and Beyond, Smithsonian Institution, Being A Monster

Chester L. Richards
Aerospace Engineer (Ret.), Inventor, Adventurer, Author, Storyteller, Romantic
The philosophy developed by Chester L. Richards, aerospace engineer, adventurer and inventor (19 patents), has indeed caused him to view all that comes his way as an adventure. Even a visit to the hospital! (Look for stories about these surprisingly entertaining forays into Deep Space Medical soon in his blog, "Stories.")

That attitude took shape early. In college, a bit after those early escapes from being thoroughly roasted by The Great Potato's molten lead flinging tricks, Chester and friend Judy Burns co-authored a spec script for “Star Trek” on a lark. The story, “The Tholian Web,” became one of the series’ most popular episodes. A veteran writer advised the young man, “You should write….write your passions.” “But I have nothing to say,” Chester thought. 

That was the moment he decided the real message was to fill his life with adventures. And he did — adventures in surfing, learning and performing music, travel to exotic places for river rafting, and his work as a rocket scientist. Along the way, he’s always met fascinating characters. He did write — essays (over 50 have been published so far). At the house in Thousand Oaks he and his late beloved  Sarah once shared, he brought himself back from the brink of despair by writing the hair-raising adventures Sarah loved, and that continue to occur, though as the author says, he no longer has much hair.

Book: From The Potato to Star Trek and Beyond
Book: The Trek Continues: More Memoirs of a Rocket Scientist

https://www.chesterlrichards.com/