Photo by Marianne Dysoncirca 1990 |
THE ARTEMIS PROJECT More than you could possibly want to know about Gregory Bennettmanager, engineer, writer |
Role in the Artemis Project:Greg is the founder of the Artemis Project. Today he serves as president and a member of the board of directors of Artemis Society International, president emeritus and member of the board of directors of the Moon Society, and chairman of the board and president of The Lunar Resources Company. Summary:Gregory R. Bennett has more than 30 years of experience in aerospace engineering, with responsibilities ranging from management to detailed technical analysis. He is the founder of several successful non-profit organizations (including the Artemis Society), and writes science fiction under the cleverly disguised pseudonym of Gregory Bennett. Work experience:Greg is currently working as a Special Government Employee for NASA at the Commercial Crew/Cargo Project Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Greg is the President of The Lunar Resources Company, headquartered in Plano, Texas. Prior to accepting a position with the NASA Commerical Crew/Cargo Project Office, he worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as a project manager for part of the International Space Station's Environmental Health Systems and previously served as Vice President for Spacecraft Development at Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Before moving to Bigelow Aerospace, Greg worked in manned space flight engineering at the Johnson Space Center for 20 years. He was the Houston lead for operations and responsible for EVA engineering on the International Space Station program. He worked for McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing, since Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged in 1997) since 1972 in Space Shuttle astronaut and mission controller training, space station operations planning, and lately as manager for space station EVA assembly and maintenance development. He moved to the Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1979 to take the job of operations supervisor on the Space Shuttle Procedures Simulator the for Link Flight Simulation Division of the Singer Company (now CAE/Link). After the first flight of the Space Shuttle, the Smithsonian came to pick up the aging simulator, and Greg moved to McDonnell Douglas to escape from being reassigned to manager of a helicopter simulator. Prior to his employment in manned space flight, Greg spent seven years at the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company in Seattle, where he participated in exploratory design of commercial jet aircraft and development of the YC-14, the USAF's prototype advanced medium STOL transport. At Boeing he developed aircraft flight controls, evaluated aircraft handling qualities, stability, and control, and taught courses in modern control theory and computer operating systems. When he left Boeing to follow the lure of manned space flight, he was director of training for Boeing's Flight Controls Laboratories. He put himself through college by working as a lab technician at Admiral Corporation refrigeration laboratory and the Knox College physics department, taught freshman physics, and did sundry odd jobs. Organizational experience:Greg has extensive experience and success in running large organizations. In 1976 he founded the Northwest L5 Society, the first local chapter of the National Space Society. That same year he founded the Northwest Science Fiction Society, which sponsors Norwescon, the Northwest regional science fiction convention. He served as chairman of the first three Norwescons. He also served as the first editor of Westwind magazine, and was chairman of the Seattle bidding committee for the 1981 World Science Fiction Convention. These activities continued after he moved to Houston with participation in the operation of most World Science Fiction Conventions for the next several years. He was Director of Special Interest Programs at Chicon IV, the 1982 Worldcon. He founded the Artemis Society in 1994 and served as its leader until the organization was formally established as a non-profit educational and scientific foundation with its headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama. Education:Greg started college life majoring in Physics major at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, 1968-1970. In 1969, he became concerned that there were no jobs in Physics, so he transferred to the University of Illinois to study Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering; just in time for the biggest aerospace industry crash in history. He received his Bachelor of Science in January 1973. Personal stuff:Greg was born in Independence, Kansas on March 12, 1950, the son of a Disciples of Christ minister and a hospital nurse. He is the third of four children. While Greg was still an infant, his family moved to Virginia. He was in the third grade in Alexandria, the Virginia part of the District of Columbia diamond, when NASA was formed in late 1958. About once a month NASA speakers from Washington, D.C. would come to hone their skills on the neighborhood schoolkids. The message of the government space program back then was how good it was going to be when everyone could work and live in space. Greg never forgot that promise, even after the government abandoned these goals to pursue their race to the moon. His personal interests and hobbies are as eclectic as anyone's: space flight, history, philosophy, psychology, private pilot, backpacking, computer programming, astronomy, photography, astrophysics, ecology, geology, FRP games, graphics design, foreign languages, all kinds of music, and of course, surfing the net. |
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