Challenging Toys/Projects

Here's some photos of projects I've worked on, created, nurtured, and/or produced.  I thought these might be particularly interesting to my commercial cohorts who have little concept of what aerospace is about, and vice versa, as well as my software cohorts regarding hardware, and vice versa.  And I mean real hardware like structures, jet engines, and rockets -- not just computers.
Key features of main products produced at Cubic Transportation Systems in 2005

Cubic used a lot of technology to manage fare collection for large transit systems worldwide.

Navigation features of Cybersensor screen display for managing a tank farm in 2000

Cybersensor's websites made extensive use of javascript servlets & dynamic HTML to provide users with flyover menus and configurable, tree-style user interfaces.

Lunar's Prodigy full-body bone density apparatus

Lunar's new Prodigy combines a Cad-Zinc-Telluride array detector with a slick NT user interface. More notably, the software is very extensible with extensive exception handling and unique error reporting.

Lunar's Achilles Express portable ultrasonic bone density apparatus

Lunar's Achilles Express is half the  size and cost of its predecessor. Inflated membranes enable the benefits of ultrasound water coupling while keeping the user "dry".

DIRECTV's Castle Rock Broadcast Center's antenna farm

DIRECTV's Castle Rock Broadcast Center, 30 miles south of Denver, Colorado provides 175+ channels thru a pizza-size home dish to the  whole USA

CRBC's main operator consoles

CRBC's main operator consoles and lots of software allow this facility to operate with less than one staff per channel for a full 7/24. 

Test flight of Convair's stealthy nuclear AGM-129A Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM)

Convair's AGM-129A Advanced Cruise Missile, a direct descendant of one of my DARPA initiatives that was nick-named Teal Dawn (gee, I wonder where he came up with that name?).  No, the picture is not upside down and backward, and do not let anyone tell you how easy it is to design forward swept wings with today's modern structural analysis software.

Flight test of submunition array dispensed from autonomous Tomahawk cruise missile

Submunitions precisely dispensed and delivered (here by Convair's Tomahawk) after flying  autonomously for hundreds of miles; UTC's Advanced Systems  Division developed similar dispensers for Northrop's Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile (TSSAM).

Flight test of the Navy's Tomahawk cruise missile of Desert Storm fame

General Dynamics Convair's Tomahawk of Desert Storm fame. We'll never think of a milk factory the same again. It was nice to see that autonomous precision guidance actually worked.

MRASM mockup being fit-checked for loading on a B-52

MRASM was a reduced-cost,  joint-service, non-nuclear, air-launched derivative of      Tomahawk.

Phillips Medical's Image Processing Module (IPM) apparatus used in digital radiography

Philips Medical's Image        Processing Module (IPM) still needed specialized hardware in  the eighties for Digital Subtraction Angiography and digital Radiography.

Early example image of distance imaging by laser radar

An imaging laser radar scene      circa 1977 -- one of my DARPA "zero-CEP" initiatives. The         pseudo- color corresponds to distance. FYI, a scene's        geometry is much more stable and harder to hide than its  intensity.

Hexagon military satellite's initial launch in 1972 on a Titan-3D booster

This was the first launch of the Hexagon military satellite.  What a great first job!  You've never heard "loud" until you are up close to a large rocket.

Overhead view of Wisconsin's alcove N-scale model train layout

I further regressed and built an N-Scale train layout in the alcove above the fireplace in our Wisconsin playroom.

Downtown section of Wisconsin alcove's N-scale model train layout

It started out with buying a        pretty little model of a steam engine for the train line that ran across the river from where Alicia grew up.

Another view of Wisconsin's alcove N-scale model train layout

Of course, then I needed to buy  some track and cars, and then a model of a coal mine, and        then...I'm now trying to convince myself that this is big enough and that I really don't need more   practice in landscaping, my new CAD program for rail layouts, and other  such new skills.