Dutch Von Ehrenfried worked in the space flight, aviation and nuclear fields for about 25 years. He was a NASA Flight Controller in Mission Control for many Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Missions. He also worked on some of the Apollo Lunar Experiment Packages from an operations point of view as well as experiments that went into Skylab from an Earth Resources Program perspective. He worked in the NASA Headquarters Space Station Task Force and the Program Office as a contractor for about 10 years and the FAA Aviation Safety Office for a year.
As the sensor operator on the NASA High Altitude Aircraft, Dutch worked with scientists to determine how best to obtain the data they wanted from their instruments and develop a flight plan to achieve their objectives. The sensors included infrared scanners and spectrometers, radiometers, multispectral cameras (the same used on Skylab), large format cameras and other prototype systems. These flights were from 60,000 to 70,000 feet and required the use of full pressure suits. In conjunction with this work, Dutch was an Apollo Pressure Suit test subject who included tests in the Zero G aircraft, centrifuge, and vacuum chamber as well as a lot of time on tread mills.
As part of this work, he was the NASA JSC Chief of Science Requirements and Operations and worked with both scientists and engineers to describe how the Apollo Lunar Experiment Packages and other experiments should be deployed and operated by the astronauts.
His work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was primarily related to the test and evaluation of nuclear safeguards for power plants and nuclear fuel cycle facilities.