Additional Biographical Information about Dr. Benton C. Clark Page: 2
Congressional Visits Day 2001: Overview Page: 2
Recap of History of Aviation Banquet Page: 2
Resume Workshop Summary Page: 3
What's Going on with the Newsletter? Page: 3
Aerobatic champion, airshow pilot, and former member of the U.S. Aerobatic Team (1991-1994) Cecilia Aragon describes her journey overcoming a fear of flying: how a shy woman afraid to climb in an airplane became an airshow performer of low-altitude loops, spins and rolls.
She holds the record for shortest time from first solo in an airplane to membership on the United States Aerobatic Team, and was a medalist at the World Aerobatic Championships, the Olympics of Aviation.
The talk will include clips of television footage featuring in-cockpit video and an airshow over San Francisco.
Cecilia will also talk about how she managed to combine a dual career as an airshow pilot and computer consultant with motherhood and taking care of a new baby.
Also during the dinner program will be the presentation of the 2001 Galileo Scholarships to 5 outstanding Bay Area students.
Beginning with the Viking and Pathfinder missions, extensive exploration of the red planet has begun. However, sending humans to Mars is a two to three orders of magnitude greater undertaking than "robotic" missions by all reasonable measures of technology, mass, and cost. Are we ready? What are technological and operational barriers to sending astronauts to Mars, and how can we overcome them? Of all the upcoming NASA and international missions, humans-to-Mars will be the most compelling from the public standpoint, and potentially one of the most important from the standpoints of scientific rewards and engineering challenges.
Dr. Benton C. Clark is chief scientist of Flight Systems at Lockheed Martin Astronautics and has Project Scientist responsibility for Stardust and Mars Surveyor programs. Dr. Clark also is the Director of the Advanced Planetary Studies group, where flight designs for the Discovery and Mars missions are conceived and developed, including the fabrication of prototypes for unique applications. For the Cassini mission, he serves as a co-investigator for the Surface Science Package (SSP) experiment on the Huygens probe. He is also a co-investigator on the Stardust, Genesis and CONTOUR Discovery missions.
Previously, Dr. Clark was the project manager for the Manned Mars Systems Study for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center from 1987-1990 and was responsible for developing advanced concepts, trade studies, mission timelines and accommodations for human exploration missions to the moon and Mars. He was the LMA's technical director of the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) from 1989-1991.
Dr. Clark earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Oklahoma (Physics), a master's degree from the University of California (Physics and Nuclear Engineering) and a doctorate from Columbia University in Biophysics.
He recently chaired the External Advisory Committee for the NASA Center for Research and Training (NSCORT) in Exobiology at the University of California in San Diego and Salk Institute. Dr. Clark was a panel co-chairman on the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) committee on International Mars Exploration and has served on NASA's comet science working groups; the Space Station Science and Applications Advisory Subcommittee for reviewing science and applications utilization of Space Station; the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space Sciences/Astronomy and Life Sciences Committees; the Mars Exploration Long-Range Strategy Working Group; and the AIAA Man-In-Space panel of the Military Space Systems Technology Model (MSSTM) project.
Hello fellow AIAA members. You might be reading this and saying "why is the secretary writing about a Public Policy event?" Aside from being a member or director of our section's Public Policy Committee for the past few years, it is in the best interest of all of our membership to make the public and our government aware of the contributions our industry makes to society. We should also be aware of what is being discussed and decided upon in Washington. This being my first trip to Congressional Visits Day (CVD), I thought I'd let you know what the experience was like as well as encourage as many of you as possible to attend next year's CVD. A great speaker, who talked about participating in grass roots legislative advocacy in DC and all the state capitals, kicked off the activities. The AIAA put together a great brochure that included the top 10 Public Policy Issues to discuss in our meetings. This made it much easier for our California team to strategize on the issues we would present. We broke them down into three bullets from which to launch our conversations with the staff members: (1) Having a long term strategy for funding research and technology in both aviation and space (2) advocating the formation of a National Space Council to coordinate planning and policy (as of this writing the Senior Interagency Group for Space has not been formally announced by the White House) (3) and reforming export controls. The second day kicked off with a breakfast attended by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Science Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. His speech was almost lock in step with the priorities we were to present that day to his colleagues with the emphasis on the investment in R & T. The team I was on had more members from northern than southern California so almost all of the Congressional office visits we made were to representatives in our section along with Sen. Feinstein's office. Unlike other teams, none of our meetings were cancelled so we all got the benefit of having 5-6 quality meetings. The highlight was our meeting with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Congresswoman from my district, who also sits on the House Science Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. She was the only representative to make a meeting along with a staff member and was the most receptive to the issues we brought up. We will have a follow up meeting with her in late May so check the AIAA-SF web site and watch your email for more details. According to the reviews of other attendees who have attended previous CVDs, this was the most organized one to date. The reception in the House Offices Building capped of a great couple of days in our nation's capital. This event was very well put together, meeting and exceeding my expectations in that I not only had the opportunity to see our legislative process at work, but got to participate in it by being seen and heard by our representatives. I highly recommend attending CVD 2002, which promises to be an even bigger event based on the increasing attendance from previous years along with the visibility and prominence that I believe our industry will experience under this new administration.
On the evening of February 15, 2001, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, along with co-sponsors United Airlines, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, hosted the History of Aviation Banquet at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California. The banquet featured a presentation by Jack Boyd on the history of NASA Ames Research Center, and a tribute to AIAA member Raymond "Ray" Kelly for his contributions to the aviation sciences while working for United Airlines. The banquet coincided with Ray Kelly's 100th birthday, which made for a very special evening.
After the opening cocktail reception in the museum exhibit hall, guests were treated to a delicious dinner by Klaus Wuehrer's Danish French Catering. Just after dinner, Ray Kelly's family presented him with a huge cake for his 100th birthday. The cake was decorated with a scanned photograph of Ray created in frosting.
While everyone was enjoying dessert, AIAA San Francisco Section Chairman Matt Jardin kicked off the event with a few opening remarks and then handed the microphone over to John W. (Jack) Boyd, the Executive Assistant to the NASA-Ames Director. Jack gave a presentation on the history of NASA Ames Research Center and the contributions to aerospace engineering made by Ames engineers and scientists.
After Jack's presentation, Ray Kelly's son, Doug, made some opening remarks about the illustrious career of his father. The remarks were followed by the showing of the film, "44 Years in Aviation 1931-1975," a collection of Ray Kelly's films taken during that time period which he has personally narrated.
At the conclusion of the film, Louis Mancini, Vice President of Engineering and Technical Support for United Airlines, presented Ray with several gifts. Included with the gifts was a personal letter of congratulations from United Airlines CEO Jim Goodwin which was read aloud. Ray was genuinely honored by the presentation and the adulation of the crowd, and he treated everyone to some personal remarks on his life in the aviation industry.
The evening concluded with a reception in the museum exhibit hall where everyone could again view some of the historical aircraft they had just heard about during the evening's presentations. The banquet drew about 100 guests, most of them AIAA members, and was a great success. The AIAA San Francisco Section Council was very happy to have been able to offer this banquet for its members and is looking forward to hosting similar events in the future.
For photos of this special event, please visit our web site at http://aiaa-sf.org.
On April 17th, the San Francisco section hosted a Resume / Interview Workshop at San Jose State University. The purpose of the workshop was to educate young professionals and students about effective resume writing techniques and interview skills. Topics discussed included resume contents, resume presentation and style, and ways to effectively represent yourself at interviews. Twelve volunteers from the local aerospace industry provided advice for individuals about their resume. There was also a speech by Lockheed Martin hiring manager Kathy Auguson. Kathy highlighted some effective resume writing and interview methods. Sixteen students and young professionals attended the three-hour event.
You have probably noticed by now that the newsletter looks a bit different. We are taking the next step towards an integrated newsletter that can be easily produced in several different formats. This newsletter was generated from one single source document, but will appear in four different incarnations (hence the new name of "In4m-Letter"): 1) e-mail (just the headlines in a text format), 2) printed hard copy (just the first and last page), 3) Adobe Acrobat (*.pdf -- complete and in full-color), and 4) HTML (complete and in full-color with hyper-links).
There are three main reasons why we are making these changes now. The first is that printing and mailing costs for the newsletter generally consume most of our operating funds each year. AIAA National sends a rebate to our local section of approximately $7.50 for each of our 1400 members for a total of about $10,500. The costs for one year of bi-monthly 4-page newsletters, for printing and postage, are currently running about $6,000. That is clearly a significant fraction of our funds, and we'd like to be able to use that money for additional programs and membership benefits instead. By reducing the printed hard copy version to 2-pages, we will save almost $1,000 per year. Ultimately, we would like to send the hard copy version to only those members who prefer the hard copy over the electronic version. We cannot do that yet, however, until we make arrangements with AIAA National to maintain the database with the proper newsletter distribution information.
The second reason for the move towards an electronic version of the newsletter is that delivery of the newsletter after production is virtually instantaneous as opposed to taking about three and a half weeks for the printed version (printing and bulk-rate mailing takes forever!).
The third reason is that we can include much more information in an electronic version than in a printed version, including full hypertext links and photographs. It is also much easier to produce an electronic newsletter since most of the content we now include originates on the world-wide-web.
If you have any comments on the newsletter, please let us know. We're happy to receive any advice. Better yet, if you'd like to get involved in the newsletter process, please contact our newsletter editor
(newsletter@aiaa-sf.org). We'd love to include more articles from our members, announcements of interesting aerospace events, interesting photos, even aerospace fiction! In the meantime, we hope you enjoy your AIAA San Francisco Section newsletter in one of the four formats you may have received.
