About the Author

I am a retired aerospace engineer living in Huntsville, Alabama, with my wife Shealy (“She-ly”). A few years after I was born in Savannah, Georgia, my family moved  to the small town of LaFayette, Alabama, where I lived until graduating from college. I have Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering and Master of Business Administration degrees from Auburn University. My life has been a mix of Bible-Belt culture and cutting edge science and engineering in America’s space program. My career in the aerospace industry, mostly with NASA, included work on Saturn V and Space Shuttle programs, and feasibility studies of launch vehicle and space systems in the Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. There I further advanced my skill at sorting out concepts that are as advertised from those that are not.

       Among my career achievements was the development of a launch vehicle design (computer) program, that took me eight years to complete, which is now NASA’s standard analytical program for creating initial launch vehicle designs. The initial design for NASA’s first heavy-lift launch vehicle since the Space Shuttle, called the Space Launch System (SLS), was achieved with this program, as were the initial designs for over 60 launch vehicle concepts from which the SLS was selected. America’s plans for returning to the moon and venturing to Mars are riding on the SLS, the most powerful rocket ever, that took its first steps with the program I developed.