My motivation to write this book is to share lessons learned and a substantial number of rare pictures that help tell the stories of the many aerospace and high-tech projects he carried engineering and management roles for seven decades and connections with his collegues for three decades earlier. I hope current and future generations of aerospace and high-tech engineers and management will benefit from applying the lessons learned from these stories of the struggles and initiatives taken to recover and adapt them according to their experiences. I hope this book’s value will avoid the unnecessary replications of mistakes made throughout history.

            The unique book design uses the ten-decade theme to provide the reader with my extensive professional career. In addition, the five Appendices display about 200 pictures, half considered rarely available, making this book a valuable resource for present and future generations. Appendix D is a transcript of notes from Dave Scott’s comments from a NASA conference I initiated in December 2009.

            I was born on October 22, 1933, in Phoenix, Arizona. I witnessed a combination of depression and WWII in my early years as a younger brother to his six years older sister. My father, a school teacher, and neighbor, Mrs. Hickey, born in 1863, provided an environment forming my personality and respect for elders. My Victory Garden began the motivation driving my work ethic prominent throughout my professional career. I married at 18 at the end of my first year of college, and became a father at age 20. This early start set the stage for my full-time work as a full-time student, graduating with a BSME in 1955 from the University of Arizona. In High School at 16 in 1949, I soloed in an Aeronca Champion, obtaining my private pilot’s license on May 26, 1951.

            In September 1955, I worked at the General Electric large engine plant in Evendale, Ohio. I spent long hours on extended shifts testing the new J79 Preliminary Flight Rating (PFRT) engine, focusing on the afterburner and performance aspects before its first manned flight in December 1955 in  Douglas X4D. In June 1956, I arrived at Edwards AFB working on early J79-powered F-104s, B-58s, Regulus II missiles, and a Grumman F-11-1F.

           1960 I was the X-15 flight operations engineer responsible for the propulsion systems for three years. In 1963 he served as the NASA Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) project engineer until I joined Bell Aerosytems as the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) Technical Director in June 1966. I was responsible for adding several Apollo hardware systems to the LLRV design and delivering three LLTVs for training The Apollo Commanders and Backup Commanders.

            In the 1970s and 1980s, I performed high-tech engineering and operations services for various industries, including Air Cushion Vehicles, Gas Centrifuges for Uranium Enrichment, and Solar Energy. In the 1990s, I founded a nonprofit for educating aerospace history. For the next two- decades of the 21st century, I served as a NASA senior consultant and participant in many national aerospace conferences.