Gordon R. Veal

Mr. Veal is the Vice President of Engineering at L'Garde. As such, he is responsible for all engineering, research and development. He is also the Program Manager for the Encounter 2001 Program to design and fabricate a 70m x 70 m solar sail to deliver a small payload beyond our solar system.

Mr. Veal has worked at L'Garde for 35 years. During this period of time, he has been Program Manager or Program Engineer for numerous programs involved with both thin film structures and Inflatably deployed and rigidized supporting structures. These programs include the NASA/JPL Inflatable Antenna Experiment for which he was the Principal Investigator. This experiment flew on STS 77 in 1996 and demonstrated deployment of a large inflatable reflector system. The reflector aperture was 14 m dia. while the booms that attached to the Spartan carrier vehicle were 30 m long.

Prior to that, he was program Engineer for the Highly Accurate Inflatable Reflectors (HAIR) Phases I and II, the NMP Technology Development studies for stretched aluminum rigidizable structures, the Inflatable Solar Array Program, Techsat 21 SBIR Phase II for stretched Aluminum Solar Array Structures plus numerous inflatable decoy programs for the Air Force.

Other Experience

L'Garde, Inc.: Designed and developed environmental magnetic tape transports for Navy undersea applications and designed and developed high temperature and pressure oil well tools for the Department of Energy Deep Steam Program.

From 1965 to 1971 Mr. Veal was a design specialist at Ford - Space and Re-entry Systems. During this period of time he was involved in the development of the antennas deployment mechanism for the Active Midcourse Antenna System (AMAS), he was responsible for the design of payload installations on the RMP-B bus, he was the responsible engineer for the SMS Satellite attitude control hydrazine thrusters, and was responsible for final structural design of the FAIR-I (Fly Along Infrared) vehicle which was an extremely stable and contamination-free exoatmospheric sensor platform.

Atomics International: Designed electromechanical components for the System Nuclear Auxiliary Power 8 (SNAP 8) Program.

McDonnell Aircraft and North American Aviations: From 1957 to 1963 Mr. Veal was an aircraft structures designer.

EDUCATION:

BSME, Michigan State University, 1958

MSME, University of Southern California, 1969

PUBLICATIONS:

"Scaling Characteristics of Inflatable Paraboloid Concentrators," presented at the 1991 ASME-JSME International Solar Energy Conference, Reno, Nevada, March 1991.

"Important Conclusions Based on Results of Geothermal Casing Packer Seal Elastomers Testing," presented at 1978 Annual Meeting of Geothermal Resources Council, 25-27 July 1978, Hilo, HI.

"MIN-STRESS II, a New Ultrahigh Temperature Casing Packer," presented at DOE Meeting of Heavy Oil and West Coast Contractors, Enhanced Oil Recovery, 27-29 July 1982, San Francisco, CA.

"Dynamic Simulation of T-142 Tank Pads on Gravel Terrain," presented to Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society, Paper No. 65, 26-29 May 1987, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

"IN-STEP Inflatable Antenna Experiment," presented at the NASA/DOD Flight Experiments Technical Interchange Meeting, Monterey, CA, October 1992

"Validation of a Unique Concept for a Low Cost, Lightweight Space Deployable Antenna Structure," invited paper, presented at 44th International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Congress, Graz, Austria, October 1993.

"IN-STEP Inflatable Antenna Experiment," presented at the 43rd Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, Washington, DC, September , 1992

"Development of Flight Hardware for a Large, Inflatable-Deployable Antenna Experiment," presented at the 46th International Astronautical Congress, Oslo, Norway, October, 1995.

"Large Inflatable Deployable Antenna Flight Experiment Results," presented at the 48th International Astronautical Congress, Turin, Italy, October 1997.

"Inflatable Deployable Space Structures Technology Summary," presented at the 49th International Astonautical Congress, Melbourne, Australia, September 1998.