XCOR Aerospace
My childhood dream was to work on rockets. My first job was for a NASA center near my home town, right out of high school. The pace was slow, and it seemed like there was little hope of there being major progress in the space sector in my career. However, while I was working in Hollywood, I watched as the "NewSpace" movement started to build momentum, and I decided that I had to be a part of it. I spent all my spare money on machine tools. I founded professional organizations, I went to night school for machining. Finally, I left the comforts of Los Angeles and my stable career in film to move to the desert to build rockets with some of the most dedicated people I have had the opportunity to work with. XCOR Aerospace punched above their weight. It was a honor to serve there.
While at XCOR, I wore many hats. One of my areas of responsibility was the nose landing gear for the LYNX rocket plane. I designed and analyzed all structural components of this system.
The landing gear passed all structural qualifications
Seen: Setting up the nose gear for a static test
I also helped to design and build the control system for the LYNX engine test stand.
Seen here: Control deck being used to run the engine
I managed our outsource machining production flow. I qualified new shops, chased parts and managed complicated design issues, like a 4’ long interrupted hole in titanium with a +-0.001 straightness/concentric callout.
Pictured: Generic machine shop
