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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

1. Qualifications and Background
Donald R. Connell is the Engineering Manager of Advanced Liquid Propulsion Systems, Pratt & Whitney Liquid Rocket Engine group in West Palm Beach, FL In this position he is responsible for the design, fabrication and test activities to support the broad range of propulsion activities on new projects that support the Nation's Space Program.
His career has progressed through a series of assignments to where he is considered one of the leading U.S. experts in the testing of rocket and turbojet propulsion systems.
Mr. Connell received a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Auburn University in 1959 and continued his studies toward a Master's degree from the University of Florida.
Mr. Connell began his professional career in 1959 as a test engineer with Pratt & Whitney (P&W) on the J58 turbojet program that powers the SR71, which is the world's fastest and highest flying aircraft. He coordinated the design and test of major components of the J58 such as bearings, seals, combustors and gearboxes of this engine. Since the oil system of the J58 engine operated at high temperatures (over 500 degrees F) conventional oil would not work in the lubrication system for bearings and the gearbox. A new high temperature synthetic oil had to be produced and qualified for use in the J58 engine. Mr. Connell led the testing that qualified synthetic oil for use in the J58 engine.
Later he managed the testing of the J58 turbojet engine in the ground test facilities at P&W FL. He progressed to testing the J58 in the altitude facilities at P&W, FL and P&Ws East Hartford Wilgoose altitude facility. He tested the J58 in the altitude facility to the highest altitude that a turbojet engine had ever been tested.
In 1966 Mr. Connell became a major contributor to the to the Air Force's XLR 129 250K thrust staged combustion rocket engine that was the precursor to the Space Shuttle Main Engine. Mr. Connell directed the design, fabrication and testing of components such as injectors, preburners, and chambers and led the test firings of the entire engine in P&Ws E-8 high pressure LH2 and Lox test facility. He conducted the first staged combustion full scale engine tests ever conducted in the United States.
Mr. Connell reentered turbojet engine development and from 1971-1973 was responsible for development of the balance beam (load balancing) nozzle for the F100 engine that powers the Air Force F15 fighter aircraft. He led the development of the balanced beam (load balancing) convergent/divergent variable area nozzle. Variations of this concept are still used in the latest new fighter engines such as the F22.
Due to Mr. Connell's combustion background in the Air Force 250K program, he was assigned to the Airborne Laser Laboratory Gas Dynamic Laser program in 1974. This was a highly successful one-of-a-kind C02 laser device that was ground tested and flight tested in a KC135 at Kirtland AFB, NM. Mr. Connell was the test manager during this testing phase. The ALL GDL flight test demonstrated the destruction of TOW missiles with the ALL GDL high power laser beam.
In 1981, when P&W withdrew from the laser business, Mr. Connell was reassigned to the F100 engine program where he was Program Manager of the Engine Diagnostic Program (EDS) that was flight tested in five F15 aircraft at Langley Air Force Base. This effort was P&Ws first prototype flight EDS and led to the first P&W production EDS. Later he became the Project Engineer for the upgraded F100 compressor. He led the development of many new fabrication techniques that reduced the cost of the compressor. One of the new fabrication techniques was a flash butt welded rotor disk spacer. This was the first welded rotating part ever run in a production aircraft engine in the United States.
Again, due to his rocket background, Mr. Connell was reassigned in 1984 to liquid rocket programs, which included P&W proposals to upgrade the SSME power head. This led to P&W being awarded the contract to develop the SSME Lox and LH2 turbopumps. At that point Mr. Connell was assigned as Project Manager for the P&W efforts that led to the Advanced Launch System Space Transportation Main Engine and Space Transportation Booster Engine for NASA.
Mr. Connell became the Engineering Manager for Advanced Liquid Rockets Engineering in 1990, a position he continues to hold. In this capacity he led the winning of many proposals to both NASA and the Air Force. He then managed the engineering for these programs that includes such contracts as NASA's 60K Dual Rotor Turbopump for the Bantam Launcher and the Rocket Based Combined Cycle hypersonic component demonstration. Also the Air Force Advanced Liquid Hydrogen Turbopump and Upper Stage Demonstrator programs are managed by Mr. Connell.
Again due to his background in rocket engine test, Mr. Connell was selected in July 1995 to lead testing of the Russian NPO Energomash RD 120 engine in Pratt & Whitney's E-8 liquid rocket test stand. This is the same test stand where Mr. Connell led the first staged combustion tests in the 1960's. With Mr. Connll's direction the test stand was modified to supply RP-1 fuel and the RD 120 engine was mounted in the test stand and fired in just 10 weeks from start of this effort. The RD 120 was tested successfully three times to demonstrate that a Russian manufactured engine could be operated in a United States test stand on US fuel RP1 rather than Russian fuel. This was the first Russian engine ever to be tested in the United States. It was run for a planned three full duration runs without any problems.
During 1995 P&W was working to have P&Ws quality system certified to conform to Quality Standard ISO 9001. Mr. Connell was selected to lead the Space Propulsion Engineering (SPE) efforts that showed SPE met the quality standard. This required a lot of documentation of how the engineering for SPE was accomplished. The effort was successful and P&W became the only company of its large size to be certified on the first audit by Det Norske Veritas, an outside auditor, for ISO 9001.
During 1997 and 1998 Mr. Connell was the Engineering Manager for airbreathing Rocket Based Combined Cycle (RBCC) engines. He led a program for Marshall Space Flight Center to design a RBCC rig to test at sea level take off up to mach 3, as well as in the pure rocket mode. This ground test rig is a large-scale-factor version of a full-scale flight engine
During his career with P&W Mr. Connell received many recognition awards for both special achievements and engine cost savings. The special achievements' awards include an Eagle award for leading the testing of the Russian RD 120 engine and also an Eagle award for the successful chairmanship of the 1996 AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference.
Mr. Connell has made numerous significant contributions to AIAA including:
a. In April 1998 Mr. Connell was elected as Director-Technical, Propulsion and Energy (P&E) on the AIAA Board of Directors organization. During 1998, Mr. Connell led all of the P&E TC's in creating a metric system for evaluating the individual TC's. Then each TC did a self evaluation using the metrics and reported the results to the P&E group meeting. This metric system evaluation has resulted in creating goals for the individual TC's.
b. One of the most significant contributions as technical chairman of the 1996 AIAA led JPC was the creation of a system for organizing the room location and timing for the numerous sessions conducted by the joint organizations. The method was based on attendance history of each session type from previous JPC session chairman's report and the hotel conference room seating capacity and location. This eliminated any unnecessary competition among the sponsoring units to obtain the largest rooms and earliest session dates, which had been the case in the past. The method was so successful that it has been adopted by the AIAA TAC Propulsion and Energy Committee, which leads the JPC planning, as a standard for planning the JPC.
c. In the Deputy Director of Propulsion position, Mr. Connell organized six Joint Propulsion Conference Planning Subcommittees to make JPC's better and easier to organize. The subcommittees and the charter for each were created by Mr. Connell are listed below:
Overall Conference Planning Subcommittee
Charter- Use Connell's "Events in planning a conference, glossary and organization
charts" as a starter and settle on the actions, dates, etc.
Conference Organizers Planning Standardization Subcommittee
Charter- Create a standard for publication and distribution of what, when and how to
organize at this level.
Session Chair Standardization Subcommittee
Charter- Create a standard presentation format definition of the duties of the session
chair to be used in training.
Survey Review Subcommittee
Charter- Review survey, lesson learned and C. Chase's e mail items then categorize &
recommend actions.
Conference Social Events Subcommittee
Charter- Create standard in presentation form for the events always needed and the
optional ones.
Author/Presenter Guide Subcommittee
Charter- Create a guide in presentation format to train the authors what are their duties.
Mr. Connell followed up with each subcommittee until each one had accomplished the charter that he had created for the subcommittees. The documentation from each subcommittee was completed and was put in a book format used by the JPC organizers to organize future conferences. Mr. Connell has continued to add information into this book in 1998. As a result of his book input the book additions were printed and distributed to the people using the book.
For many years Mr. Connell has contributed greatly to the organizing the Joint Propulsion Conference. The P&E TC's generate a majority of the Joint Propulsion Conference Sessions and consequently cause the publication of an enormous numbers of technical papers. In the last three years the P&E TC's have generated a total of 240 sessions out of a total number of sessions of 363, which makes an average of 66.1% of the sessions. The P&E TC's sessions had a total of 1544 papers out of a total number of papers of 2353, which makes an average of 65.6% of the papers.
d. The Vice President of the Technical Activities Committee (TAC) Dr. Virgil Smith initiated a self appraisal request for each TAC Technical Committee (TC). Mr. Connell led the ten TC's in Propulsion and Energy (P&E) through the self-evaluation. An Excel spread sheet of all the evaluation elements for each TC was created Mr. Connell. The spread sheet showed that all of the P&E TC's were satisfactory to remain in existence and it did identify a few items for improvement in some TC's. These improvements are being implemented. This approach was used as an exemplar for the Directors and Deputy Directors of the six other TAC technical groups to use to evaluate the other 56 TAC TC's.
e. Mr. Connell was Chairman of the Liquid Propulsion Technical Committee from 1993 to 1995. He was became a member of this committee in 1990.