Description
Creator of the Vulcan database program, Ratliff worked for the Martin Marietta Corporation from 1969 to 1982 in a progression of engineering and managerial positions. He was a member of the NASA Viking program flight team when the Viking spacecraft landed on Mars in 1976, and wrote the data management system, MFILE, for the Viking lander support software.
In 1978 he wrote a database program in assembly language at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. He called it Vulcan (after Mr. Spock's home planet in the Star Trek world) and based it on Jeb Long's JPLDIS. Ratliff said he wrote the program to help win the football pool at the office.
