While watching the 1980s-In-Review episode of Informed Sources (a still-extant local-news panel TV show on New Orleans' PBS affiliate), I remember thinking "YOU NAILED IT" when journalist/historian Errol Laborde identified New Orleans' high point of the decade to be opening day of the 1984 World's Fair, and its nadir to be the announcement that the International Space Station would be built by Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama and not by Martin Marietta at their Michoud facility in New Orleans East.
I had a personal stake in that NASA decision, because my original career plan was to get a co-op job at Michoud (which was just 15 minutes from the house I grew up in), and maybe also work there after graduation? This corporate setback (which was representative of New Orleans' overall economic decline) meant that the anticipated hiring spree wouldn't happen, so I needed to pivot.
Another Georgia Tech co-op student from New Orleans (Stephen) had secured a Summer/Winter position at American Cyanamid, a chemical plant located across the Mississippi River from New Orleans' international airport. The co-op office let me know that a complementary Fall/Spring position was available, so I took the job, and for the next three years Stephen and I swapped back and forth in that role.
My job was at the facility that made acrylonitrile, a monomer used in the manufacture of plastics (acrylonitrile is the "A" in ABS resin, which is what Lego bricks are made of). I didn't turn valves or anything, but I was right there, adjacent to the ammoxidation infrastructure - in this current-day Google Earth image, my former office is at lower right, marked with a white star. The big red and white column in the foreground is new; it wasn't there during my time at the plant.
