(7/18) Apollo 11/Vikings Anniversary:James French, David Barnhart, Carl Stechman, Gerald Blackburn

James R. French
AIAA Fellow (60+ year member of AIAA !)
President, JRF Aerospace Consulting LLC

James R French graduated from MIT in 1958 with a degree of BSME Specializing in Propulsion. While at MIT, Mr French became the Founding President of the MIT Chapter of The American Rocket Society, an AIAA predecessor. In the ensuing years he has pursued additional education both in technical subjects and management. 

Upon graduation, he accepted a job with Rocketdyne Div. of North American Aviation and during a 5 year employment, worked on developmental testing of H-1 engines and combustion devices hardware for F-1 and J-2 engines used in Saturn 5. He was also involved in various experimental programs. Moving on to TRW Systems, Mr. French was Lead Development Test Engineer on the Lunar Module Descent Engine and was responsible for bringing on-line the High Altitude Test Stand use for all-up LMDE testing at TRW’s Capistrano Test Site. He also was involved in experimental testing of exotic propellants.

After leaving TRW as propulsion work ran down, Mr. French joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on testing and launch vehicle integration for Mariners 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9; Viking 1 & 2 and Voyager 1 & 2. Mr. French was Advanced Planetary studies Manager for JPL for several years as well as Chief Engineer for the SP-100 Space Nuclear Power System. He was Chief Engineer of a RTG powered Mars Rover study for a vehicle essentially identical to Curiosity.

Leaving JPL after 19 years, Mr. French was VP Engineering and Chief Engineer for American Rocket Company developing hybrid rocket launch vehicles.

Since leaving AMROC in 1987, Mr. French has been consultant to a variety of aerospace companies, SDIO, NASA, and USAF. As a consultant to SDIO he functioned as the government’s chief engineer on the DC-X project. He has participated in various startup companies in the private space flight arena and currently consults extensively to Blue Origin, a company in which he has been involved since its beginnings. He has worked with Project Icarus investigating interstellar missions. His current efforts draw primarily upon his extensive experience in rocket propulsion development and operational aspects of launch vehicles.

Mr. French is co-author with Dr. Michael Griffin of the best-selling text Space Vehicle Design, published by AIAA. For over 20 years he taught a 4 day short course, mostly through AIAA, on the same topic. The second edition of the book has received the Summerfield Book Award for 2008. Mr French is also the author of Firing a Rocket, a reminiscence of testing rocket engines for the Apollo missions.

Mr. French is a Fellow of both AIAA and the British Interplanetary Society and a 60+ year member of AIAA. He has held several Technical Committee and other posts in AIAA. In 2018, Mr. French was named Engineer of the Year by the Orange County Section of AIAA.

David Barnhart is currently an active Research Professor in the Department of Astronautical Engineering at USC, the faculty liason to USC’s student rocketry groups (RPL/LPL), and the Director/Co- Founder of the USC Space Engineering Research Center located at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) operated jointly with Astronautical Engineering.

At USC David specializes in developing innovative technologies and architectures for 2nd generation space morphologies, rendezvous and proximity operations technologies/techniques, and hands-on projects with students, faculty and staff through an “engineering teaching hospital” construct. The SERC created and launched USC’s first two Cubesat’s into space in 2010 and 2012. Over 200 students have graduated through the SERC’s hands on training capabilities and every summer hosts US and international student interns. SERC is currently the technical arm for a national and global standards development push for commercial rendezvous and servicing missions (CONFERS), creating a larger re-usable Lunar Lander simulator project, and has the third USC Satellite flight planned for Summer 2019.

David was most recently a senior space Project Manager at DARPA, pioneering cellular spacecraft morphologies, satbotics, space robotics and low cost high volume manufacturing on the Phoenix and SeeMe projects. He represented the first DARPA space project at the United Nations COPUOS in Vienna Austria addressing new technology pushing the need for updates to space regulations and policy issues for next generation missions.

Prior to USC and DARPA David helped initiate two commercial space companies; co-founding and serving as Vice President and CFO for Millennium Space Systems in Los Angeles CA; and was the youngest elected member of a three-person international Executive Management board for a German startup in Bremen, Vanguard Space, one of the first companies working commercial spacecraft servicing.

David started his career as a civilian for the Air Force Research Labs spending over 13 years helping to birth several notable innovations in micro-miniature electronic technologies, micro-chemical/electric propulsion systems, some of the first small satellites for remote observations, and the first independent RPO missions.