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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Mr. Andrew Clark

We are all so proud of our Dad, even if he is kind of “spacey.” In fact, that’s one of the things that makes him so special. The following is an excerpt from the RSDO (Rapid Spacecraft Development Office) News, a NASA newsletter, at the time of his retirement in 2003:
Bruce (W. Clark) began his career in the private sector, working on the Lunar Excursion Model (LEM) for the Apollo Project. While working on LEM, he helped pioneer ways to use computers to analyze the performance of electrical power systems. In fact, he contributed to groundbreaking efforts that later evolved into the technology used to predict power system performance during the dramatic Apollo 13 rescue effort.
In 1980, Bruce joined the government team at GSFC in the Systems Review Office, where he led numerous spacecraft review teams. One of the systems Bruce reviewed – the Delta Launch Vehicle – was to play an important role in his ensuing career.
In the 1980s the government was endeavoring to transition from owning launch vehicles, to purchasing launch services from vendors. To accomplish this shift, the Delta Launch Services project absorbed the SCOUT launch vehicle program (among others) to form the Orbital Launch Services (OLS) Program at Goddard. Bruce led this organization for a number of years, successfully originating the methods by which the government procures launch services.
Around 1999-2000, Bruce joined the RSDO team, where his system engineering skills and experience in acquisition management have been key to the organization’s continued success. Primarily his goal at RSDO was to make it easier and quicker for customers to understand what RSDO does, identify candidate buses from the RDSO catalog, determine the modifications needed to support individual missions, and calculate meaningful price estimates. To facilitate these RSDO customer services, Bruce successfully integrated computer and web-based technology into everyday RSDO processes.
When asked what he has enjoyed most about his career, Bruce stated that he loved “just learning about rockets and spending time with so many experts in rocketry.”
We are extremely proud to submit our father, Bruce W. Clark and his accomplishments to the National Aviation and Space Exploration Wall of Honor!
Love, Don, Andy and Laura