Joe Wambolt, Thirteen Others Earn Top Aerospace Awards

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (10/16/00) -- Joseph F. "Joe" Wambolt has received The Aerospace Corporation's highest award, the Trustees' Distinguished Achievement Award. The award was presented by Dr. Ruth Davis, chair of the board of trustees, during a convocation at the company's headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., September 13, 2000.

Wambolt was recognized for contributions over 40 years to medium launch vehicle programs comprising Scout, Delta and Atlas boosters carrying weather, communications, navigation, space exploration, experimentation and national security spacecraft into orbit.

In addition to the Trustees' award, President's Achievement Awards for exceptional accomplishments and achievements were presented to two individual employees and members of three teams.

Accepting individual awards from CEO E.C. "Pete" Aldridge, Jr., were Clark Keith and Tom O'Connor. Receiving team awards were John Brekke, Dr. Stanley Chiu, Dr. Jeffery Emdee, Dr. John Klug and Randy Williams; Dr. Robert Francis, Dr. Charles Sve and Steven Van Wormer; and Brian Hamada, Dr. Craig Heatwole and Girard Manke.

The awards citations and summaries of achievements follow.

"For sustained, outstanding management and technical leadership of the highly successful Medium Launch Vehicle programs."

Joe Wambolt's Aerospace Corporation teams have been responsible for more than 200 government launches, with a high of 16 launches one year and a sustained rate of 10 to 12 launches per year for a six-year period.

His launch success record has helped establish the nation's space supremacy and fostered the U.S. commercial launch industry. He pioneered the application of acquisition reform principles to medium launch vehicles without affecting mission assurance and launch certification. He has been a mentor to

Air Force officers through the years and has developed a trusted relationship with NASA.

Wambolt's contributions to the corporate role and mission began in 1960 when he moved from the Aerospace Propulsion Office at Cape Canaveral to head the Aerospace resident office at General Dynamics/Astronautics for the Mercury booster program.

He now is responsible for The Aerospace Corporation's operations at Vandenberg Air Force Base, with 32 members of the technical staff and six support staff. His responsibilities include launch vehicle and spacecraft processing of all Air Force-funded vehicles, with anomaly resolution and launch verification fundamental parts of his duties.

"For outstanding technical contributions and programmatic leadership over the lifetime of the Technology for Autonomous Operational Survivability space program."

Clark Keith, a senior project engineer in the Space Operations, Requirements and Applications Division, is recognized as responsible for the success of the TAOS space experiment program.

TAOS (Technology for Autonomous Operational Survivability) has been a highly classified, special-access program integrating state-of-the-art autonomy and operational survivability technology into a multimission, advanced technology spacecraft bus.

Ranked as Air Force Space Command's top science and technology project from 1990 to 1991, the TAOS program will soon be ending after 12 years of concept development, hardware building, launch integration, and on-orbit operations that surpassed the planned 18-month operational lifetime with more than six years on orbit. Keith has been with the program literally from cradle to grave, joining Aerospace in 1986 as a project engineer and going soon after into the TAOS program.

In 1996 program staffing dropped from 18 to 5 government employees. A year later, Keith, the sole Aerospace support representative, led the contracting efforts, produced all technical requirements and acquired four new customers, funding TAOS and Aerospace participation through fiscal 1998.

He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where he earned a B.A. in mathematics and physics as well as a B.S. in electrical engineering, and the University of Houston, where he earned an MBA.

"For sustained excellence in the design, implementation and management of The Aerospace Corporation's employee retirement benefit programs and related trust funds."

Tom O'Connor, principal director of the Treasury Directorate, has managed investment of the corporation's various retirement-plan trust funds to provide employees with exceptional benefits at minimal cost to the corporation and to the Air Force.

Under his management, retirement plan assets have grown since 1993 without additional funding from Aerospace or from ceiling dollars, resulting in an annual cost saving to the company in the range of $10 to $20 million. When he joined Aerospace in 1979 as retirement fund manager, the Retirement Fund Trust was valued at $111 million. Today it is valued at $1.5 billion.

O'Connor directs the corporation's banking, treasury, and risk-management departments for the Office of the Deputy CFO and Assistant Treasurer. He has a B.S. in economics from John Carroll University.

"For inventing and developing a unique Ultra-Fast Thermal Cycler that greatly reduced the time required to discover and remedy a serious failure mechanism in a new solar cell array design."

The team of Dr. Robert Francis, Dr. Charles Sve and Steven Van Wormer devised an effective solution to significantly shorten the time required to complete thermal-cycle life-verification testing of solar-array life test panels. They designed and built the Ultra-Fast Thermal Cycler, which is capable of completing 100,000 thermal cycles per year with a wide range of extreme temperatures, thus shortening the time required for thermal-cycle life testing by an astounding factor of 8 to 10.

Application of this invention led to the discovery of an unknown failure mechanism and a cost avoidance of $13.8 -million and a 22-month schedule slip.

Francis, a senior engineering specialist in the Electronic Systems Division of the Engineering and Technology Group, joined Aerospace in 1983. He holds a B.S. in physics from St. Joseph's University and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Sve is a senior scientist in the Propulsion Science and Experimental Mechanics Department, Engineering and Technology Group. He came to Aerospace in 1968. Sve has a B.S. and an M.S. in civil engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from Northwestern University.

Van Wormer, an engineering specialist in the Space Systems Department, Engineering and Technology Group, joined Aerospace in 1990. He has a B.S. in electronics engineering from Colorado School of Mines.

"For innovative design and application of the Pseudo Gyro and for sustained excellence in the application of attitude reference systems to national security programs."

The team of Brian Hamada, Dr. Craig Heatwole and Girard Manke invented a unique software modification to standard attitude reference systems--the Pseudo Gyro--and effectively applied this groundbreaking work to a critical national security program acquisition and to the operational STEX spacecraft.

The application of the Pseudo Gyro to Directorate L compensates for life limitations of the baseline gyro and eliminates more than $15 million in additional development costs and schedule delays that would otherwise be required to procure an alternate gyro.

Hamada is systems director, Electronic Programs Division, National Systems Group. He came to Aerospace in 1980. He earned a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Hawaii and an M.S. in civil engineering from California State University at Long Beach.

Heatwole is an engineering specialist in the Control Analysis Department, Engineering and Technology Group. He joined Aerospace in 1997. Heatwole has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.

Manke is a senior engineering specialist in the Control Analysis Department, Engineering and Technology Group. He has been with Aerospace since 1973. He earned a B.S. and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Marquette University.

Lou Herman, who retired from Aerospace in 1994 and works as a "casual" employee contributed significantly to this project.

"For outstanding leadership in the Delta III / Orion 3 failure investigation and in the successful return-to-flight of affected U.S. launch vehicles that carry Department of Defense, NASA, commercial and National Reconnaissance Office payloads."

The team of John Brekke, Dr. Stanley Chiu, Dr. Jeffery Emdee, Dr. John Klug and Randy Williams led the Aerospace team investigating the Delta III/Orion 3 failure. The team's efforts assured the successful return-to-flight of affected U.S. launch vehicles that carry Department of Defense, National Reconnaissance Office, NASA and commercial payloads.

These individuals, together with approximately 40 other Aerospace engineers from numerous technical disciplines, were integrated into the commercial launch failure investigation. The team helped establish root cause and provided unique analytical structural models that allowed for a prompt and successful return-to-flight for grounded U.S. launch vehicles.

Brekke is the senior project leader for propulsion systems in the Medium Launch Vehicles Directorate, Space Systems Group. He is the Aerospace program manager for the Solid Strap-On Booster development program in support of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and the National Space Development Agency of Japan. Brekke, who joined Aerospace in 1990, earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota.

Chiu is an engineering specialist in the Structures Department, Vehicle Systems Division, Engineering and Technology Group. He came to Aerospace in 1984. He earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from National Taiwan University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington.

Emdee is director of the Propulsion Department, Vehicle Systems Division, Engineering and Technology Group. He joined Aerospace in 1990. Emdee received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Irvine, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Princeton and a Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering, also from Princeton.

Klug is a senior member of the technical staff in the Structures Department, Vehicle Systems Division, Engineering and Technology Group. He came to Aerospace in 1997. Klug holds B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue.

Williams is lead project engineer for the RL-10 engine in the Medium Launch Vehicles Directorate, Space Systems Group. He joined Aerospace in 1987. He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. in engineering sciences from the University of California at San Diego.