Born 1731/39, Tom has a lifelong love of aviation and space. His education includes a B.Aero Eng. from University of Detroit (1962), and M.S. Aero. Eng. from University of Southern California in 1966: In industry, he started in 1959 as a co-op for General Dynamics on the Atlas-Mercury and Centaur.
In 1962, he joined North American Aviation in Downey, CA, as a structural designer on the ApoHOr+Us career progressed as the company changed names to North American Rockwell, Rockwell, and Boeing, with lead assignments on the Shuttle Orbiter, and advanced projects as Transatmospheric Vehicles and Space Station Freedom. In 1988, He became a Chief Engineer, first of Shuttle-C; then National Launch System; then in 1993, Rockwell's SSTO (x-33) team. This-produced a simple design that would have been successful. After that, Tom was CE of the Liquid Fly Back Booster for Shuttle. In 1998, until retirement in 2001, he served as CE for Boeing's Reusable Launch Systems in Seal Beach, This design was a bimese TSTO for commercial operations.
Tom was married in 1963, and he and his wife Mattia have 4 children (and 2 grandchildren so far).They are looking forward to many years of retirement, pursuing family, travel, aviation and space as hobbies.