Donald Irwin Prickett (1919-2004) was a

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

(USAF) Colonel who served as the research director for the

Air Force Special Weapons Center The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...

Kirtland Air Force Base Kirtland Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located in the southeast quadrant of the Albuquerque, New Mexico urban area, adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport. The base was named for the early Army aviator Col. Roy ...

in the 1950s and 1960s. He was the

USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

Liaison officer for the Project Orion.

Personal life

Prickett was born in

Irricana Irricana is a town in the Calgary Metropolitan Region of Alberta, Canada. Surrounded by Rocky View County, it is adjacent to Highway 9, approximately northeast of Calgary. The name of the town is a contraction of the words "irrigation canals", ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Canada on July 16, 1919.

World War II

Prickett served as a

bomber pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they ar ...

for the United States Air Force during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. After studying

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, he worked at the Pentagon on research and development of nuclear power.

Career

Prickett was then assigned to Kirtland Air Force Base where he became the research director for the Air Force Special Weapons Center, particularly in relation to the use of nuclear power. Prickett was a program director for tests of the

hydrogen bombs A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

, such as

Castle Bravo Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of ''Operation Castle''. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device was the most powerful ...

. According to Prickett, he was present for more than 100 atmospheric tests of nuclear bombs in Nevada and the South Pacific between 1951 and 1963, and stated he received the maximum dosage of two Rads radiation every series.

Project Orion

Pickett was the

Liaison officer for the Project Orion nuclear powered spacecraft.

''Star Trek''

Prickett was also a friend of

Gene Roddenberry Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Sr. (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American television screenwriter, producer, and creator of ''Star Trek: The Original Series'', its sequel spin-off series ''Star Trek: The Animated Series,'' and ''Sta ...

, they having served together in the USAF during World War II. When Roddenberry was developing and pitching the idea for ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...

'' in 1964, he initially contacted Prickett for help as a technical advisor. Prickett wrote to RAND Corporation scientists on Roddenberry's behalf which resulted in Harvey P. Lynn Jr, a

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...

physicist, serving as scientific adviser for ''Star Trek'''s pilot episode, "The Cage".

Later career

Pickett retired from the military in 1967.

Death

He died on February 3, 2004, in

Clarkdale, Arizona Clarkdale (Yavapai: Saupkasuiva) is a town in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States. The Verde River flows through the town as does Bitter Creek, an intermittent tributary of the river. According to the 2010 census, the population of the town w ...

at the age of 84. He was married for 61 years to his wife, Mary, with whom he had three children.

Media appearances

* ''To Mars by A-Bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion'' (BBC, 2003) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1039992

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prickett, Don 1919 births 2004 deaths People from Rocky View County Canadian emigrants to the United States United States Air Force officers United States Army Air Forces bomber pilots of World War II