Een heldere hemel, Jan.

 

Jan de Koomen, 2016 © De Loods mediaproducties / Stichting Beeldlijn

As a filmmaker you often have the weird experience to feel acquainted to someone without really actually knowing them.
For most of the persons who are being filmed for a documentary, their experience with the makers mainly is just a couple of phone calls, an initial conversation and the film session, which often is not more than one or two days in total.
But the filmmaker on the other hand, has to work with that material to create the film. And by doing so, they are working with the filmed people for a much longer time. Sometimes months. You get to know their little gestures, their way of speaking, their way with words. And they become a part of your life for quite some time.
We initiated the ANS film project back in 2014. In 2016 we filmed the first three interviews. One of them was with Jan de Koomen, the engineer at Fokker Aircraft who, as project manager, supervised the construction of the first Dutch satellite.
When we were at his home to film the interview, he initially had a little trouble remembering stuff, but when we started getting into the matter of things, he still was clear and bright. He told great stories and anecdotes with a lot of insight into how the satellite worked and came to be. And with that, he provided us with a great foundation for our movie.

He has told his story often, for space enthusiasts, at lectures about the Dutch space-efforts, but I like to think he was happy to tell his story one more time to have it on record for, well, eternity.
When Jan started work at Fokker he was involved in the process of designing the Fokker F.27 Friendship. He told us how he always has been fascinated by spaceflight and, as a young and curious engineer at Fokker, he wanted to know how to build a satellite. He was sent to Republic Aviation in the U.S. to learn about all the ins and outs of satellites and came back as maybe the only Dutch engineer at that time who really knew how to build a satellite. He could put his knowledge to the test a couple of years later, when Fokker and Philips got to build the first Dutch satellite, which would become known as ANS. 

Jan de Koomen in 1974, in the Scout Launch Control Center at the Western Test Range in California,
during the countdown of ANS' launch into orbit. (a still from a NASA-made film about the ANS)

After ANS, Jan de Koomen also supervised the construction of IRAS, the second satellite built in the Netherlands, this time together with the U.S. and the U.K. After he retired, he got involved in the National Space Museum, together with a group of retired aerospace engineers and space enthusiasts. It was there, in Lelystad that I met him for the first time, in january 2014, when I brought one of my paper models to have on display in their museum. He pointed at ANS, the spare one, that was suspended from the ceiling and told me he helped in building it.
He was, in fact, the one that sparked the beginning of this film.

After the interview, we did not have much contact, but I did see him lots of times, during the editing process, on screen. And I had the feeling I knew him a little more than I perhaps actually did. At least I knew a part of him which was a very important piece of his life.
Early this morning, I was saddened to read in an email that he passed away.

I am very grateful I had the chance to meet him and talk to him. Jan de Koomen is one of the people that actually opened the door to space for The Netherlands.
As a boy he wanted to become a pilot. but because of his bad eyesight that wasn’t possible and he became an aeronautical engineer instead. I hope he’s flying free now.
Clear skies, Jan.