Deceased--Robert A. Citron

Robert A. Citron
September 14th, 1932 to January 31st, 2012

"Robert A. Citron dies at 79; space visionary"

An entrepreneur and engineer who helped commercialize space, Robert A. Citron collaborated on a transportation module for the space shuttle.

by

Elaine Woo

February 8th, 2012

Los Angeles Times

Robert A. Citron, an aerospace engineer and intrepid entrepreneur, whose boyhood fantasy of traveling beyond Earth inspired pioneering ventures to commercialize space, died Jan. 31 at his home in Bellevue, Wash. He was 79.

The cause was complications of prostate cancer, said his son, Kirk.

During an extraordinarily varied career, Citron founded an adventure travel agency, built satellite tracking stations, produced National Geographic documentaries and monitored natural phenomena such as insect invasions and falling meteorites. He even organized a 20-member expedition to watch the Russian space station Mir reenter the Earth's atmosphere.

"Bob had an intense passion for opening the space frontier to humanity," said Charles Miller, former senior advisor for commercial space at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "At the core he was a visionary, but he was also a pragmatic businessman. We all learned from his example."

Among those for whom Citron blazed a trail, Miller said, are entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk of SpaceX and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, whose companies are developing technologies they hope will make space travel affordable.

Citron began to focus on space in the early 1980s, "when everybody laughed at him" for advocating space tourism, said his brother, Rick, a Los Angeles attorney.

In 1983 he developed Spacehab, a pressurized module that fit inside the cargo bay of the space shuttle. He had envisioned it for human cargo.

NASA was opposed to carrying people in the module for safety reasons but eventually agreed to another use: Since 1993, Spacehab, which was patented by Citron and co-designer Thomas C. Taylor, has been deployed to hold scientific experiments on more than 20 space shuttle missions, including the 1998 flight of the Discovery, when Sen. John Glenn returned to space.

Citron sold the company in 1986. It is now part of Austin-based Astrotech.

One of Citron's most important contributions was demonstrating that the private sector could build space hardware far more cheaply than the government. He built two Spacehab modules for $150 million, substantially less than NASA's estimate of $1.2 billion, said James A. M. Muncy, a space policy consultant in Washington, D.C.

"The power of Bob's ideas, technical designs and business concepts made space business, including businesses involving humans in space, more real," Muncy said.

Citron was born Sept. 14, 1932, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and moved to Los Angeles when he was 12. After attending Inglewood High School, he served in the Air Force during the Korean War. He also studied at UCLA and earned degrees in liberal arts from the University of the Philippines and aeronautical engineering from Northrop University in Inglewood.

In 1957, while still at Northrop, he became technical director of the Pacific Rocket Society's satellite tracking station in Canoga Park. He received a congratulatory call from President Eisenhower when he managed to track Sputnik 1, the Russian artificial satellite, 48 hours after its surprise launch that October, Rick Citron said.

He later built and managed satellite tracking stations for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Asia, Africa and Europe.

In 1968, he launched the Smithsonian's Center for Short-Lived Phenomena in Cambridge, Mass., where he was its director. Using Teletype machines and a network of more than 2,000 correspondents around the globe, he told Popular Mechanics magazine in 1970, he could contact almost any inhabited place in minutes and quickly alert scientists about unusual natural events — earthquakes, fireballs, fish kills and rare animal migrations — as they unfolded.

In 1969, when a friend suggested that they could finance a free trip to view a solar eclipse if they organized a group excursion, he formed Educational Expeditions International, which took scientists and others on such uncommon experiences as climbing into an active volcano. He later sold the company, which is now part of the Boston-based Earthwatch Institute.

While still in high school, he drew up a 39-item bucket list, which included goals such as climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and dancing with Watusi tribesmen in Africa. Flying into space was the only goal he never achieved, but not for lack of trying. One of his last ventures, in 2005, was a company called Lunar Transportation Systems. Its goal was to create a two-way highway to the moon.

In addition to his son and brother, Citron, who was married three times, is survived by his partner, Audrey Woodin; sons Dave and Josh; daughters Kelly Citron, Gavriella Aber, Leah Richeimer and Dena Samuels; sisters Barbara Namerow and Cathy Bilovkski; 23 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Robert A. Citron [Wikipedia]

Deceased--Edsel D. Dunford

Edsel D. Dunford
1935 to October 3rd, 2008

"Edsel D. Dunford dies at 73; Cold War aerospace engineer, TRW president"

by

Peter Pae

October 8th, 2008

Los Angeles Times

Edsel D. Dunford, a former TRW Inc. president and aerospace engineer who helped develop pioneering satellites for the U.S. during the Cold War, died Friday. He was 73.

Dunford died at his home in Rolling Hills after kidney cancer that was diagnosed in July spread to his brain, said his wife, Lorie.

A longtime South Bay resident, Dunford spent most of his aerospace career at the sprawling Space Park complex in Redondo Beach, where TRW developed missiles and satellites throughout the Cold War.

Dunford retired as president of TRW in 1994 after a career that spanned 30 years, much of it in an atmosphere of tension with the Soviet Union.

Since the 1960s, Dunford had "played a significant role in the design and development of U.S. space systems," including communication satellites for the U.S. military and space-based observatories for NASA, said Northrop Grumman Corp., which acquired TRW in 2002, in a statement.

Though most of his work with military systems remains classified, Dunford was involved in the development of Milstar, a constellation of satellites that the U.S. military still uses to communicate.

For NASA, Dunford was responsible for the design of Pioneer 10, the first satellite to travel beyond the solar system, and the payload for the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, one of the more complex communications systems ever built.

Dunford also led the division that built what became known as the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, a satellite that helped astronomers study some of the more enigmatic phenomena in space, including black holes, pulsars and supernovae, for nearly a decade. The satellite was brought down in 2000.

As general manager of TRW's space sector in the late 1980s, Dunford also oversaw painful job cuts at Space Park as the end of the Cold War led to a slowdown in defense spending. More than 3,000 positions were eliminated.

"When you are growing rapidly, you add a lot of new capability," Dunford said in 1989 in The Times. "In a tougher market, you want to make sure you use those capabilities in the best way."

In 1991, Dunford was named TRW president and chief operating office. He retired three years later at 59.

He co-wrote and co-produced "The Cold War and Beyond," a feature-length documentary that included rare interviews with U.S. and Russian officials who were on opposite ends of the conflict.

The documentary, which debuted at the 2002 Hollywood Film Festival, was one of his more passionate projects, according to his wife.

"He had insights on the Cold War that few had," she said.

The son of George Washington Dunford, Edsel Delano Dunford was born in 1935 in North Dakota and grew up poor on a subsistence farm there.

After serving in the U.S. Army for four years, Dunford earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington and a master's in engineering from UCLA.

In addition to his wife, Dunford is survived by his sons, Wyman, Stan and Philip; a daughter, Marlo Garrett; his stepchildren, Matt Henning and Abbey Greene; and 10 grandchildren.

"Former TRW president Edsel D. Dunford dies at 73"

by

Muhammed El-Hasan

October 6th, 2008

dailybreeze.com

Edsel D. Dunford, a former TRW Inc. president and longtime South Bay resident, died Friday. He was 73.

Dunford died after a long battle with cancer, according to Northrop Grumman Corp., which purchased TRW in 2002.

The Rolling Hills resident, "played a significant role in the design and development of U.S. space systems, from early missions to the planets to complex communications, command, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems," Century City-based Northrop said in a statement Monday.

In 1961, Dunford started his aerospace career at Ford Aeronutronics.

In 1964, he joined TRW, spending most of his career at the company's Redondo Beach-based space and defense business.

In his 30 years with TRW, Dunford rose through the ranks, being appointed executive vice president and general manager of the Redondo Beach business in 1987. Four years later, he was elected president and chief operating officer at TRW's corporate headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. Dunford retired from that position in 1994.

"He was involved in just about every one of the major space programs that TRW was involved with from the '60s forward," said Dan McClain, a Northrop vice president of communications who had served under Dunford. "To me, he personified the sense of the old-school steely-eyed missile men. He was a true Cold War warrior and one of the people who made sure our country remained secure during that scary time."

McClain also remembered Dunford as warm with "a really good sense of humor."

Dunford was honored as a member the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He also served as chairman of the Aerospace Industries Association.

In addition, the aerospace veteran served on several U.S. government advisory groups, including as chairman of the U.S. Air Force/National Research Council committee to evaluate the National Aerospace Initiative in 2004.

Dunford served in the U.S. Army before earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington and a master's degree in engineering from UCLA. He also completed the Executive Program at Stanford University.

UCLA and the University of Washington schools of engineering each honored Dunford as Alumnus of the Year. USC's Viterbi School of Engineering selected him for the Daniel J. Epstein Engineering Management Award in 1993.

After leaving TRW, Dunford co-wrote and co-produced a documentary called "The Cold War and Beyond," which included both U.S. and Russian perspectives on that period. The film aired in 2003, and was a finalist at the Hollywood Film Festival that year.

Dunford is survived by his wife, Lorie, sons, Wyman, Stan and Philip, daughter Marlo Garrett and stepchildren Matt Henning and Abbey Greene.