Foil: 7 Panel: 1 Column: 2 Line: 35

Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Mr. Baumel was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 8, 1941, and moved to Rahway, New Jersey at the age of 3. At 5 he moved to Clark, New Jersey, where his parents owned a retail business. He graduated from the Arthur L. Johnson Regional High school in Clark, in 1959, and matriculated at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York in the Engineering Physics Program. While a freshman at Cornell he met his future wife, Gladys Beverly Leff, of Roselle, New Jersey, on a blind date. They married on July 7, 1963, and have two children, Daniel and Steven.
Mr. Baumel graduated from Cornell University in 1965 with a Bachelor of Engineering Physics degree. The engineering degree at Cornell was a five year program. Len began his career at Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama working on the Saturn V lunar launch vehicle, doing stability analysis for the Sl-C, S-Il and S-IVB stages of that booster. He then transferred to Lockheed in Houston where he began work on the Apollo Guidance Computer and the Lunar Module Guidance Computer, which allowed him to be involved in the Lunar Landing mission from liftoff to splashdown, rather than just the first few minutes of launch. At this point in his career, he chose a path that would emphasize software development. Len also helped develop the Space Shuttle Functional Simulator (SSFS) for NASA. In 1978 Mr. Baumel transferred to Lockheed Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale, California where he worked on the software for the Hubble Space Telescope. He also worked on several classified programs. He was a charter employee of the Lockheed Austin Division, which started in Austin, Texas in 1982, where he worked on Advanced Development and later with the Lockheed Software Technology Center. In 1988, he was given a Certificate of Advanced Engineering Study from Cornell in recognition that his course of study for his Bachelors degree earned in 1965 was now earning students a Masters degree in engineering. Also in 1988 he transferred to a program supporting the U2 reconnaissance aircraft, where he stayed until the Austin Division was closed in 1996 following the Lockheed - Martin Marietta merger in 1995. He moved with the program to Denver, Colorado where he specialized in the requirements management function of the program until completing his career, retiring in 2001.