John Muratore | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1956 (age 67–68) |
| Occupation | Engineer |
John F. Muratore (born 1956) is a former NASA systems engineer-project manager and launch director at SpaceX. He is well known in the aerospace circles for his gregarious and unconventional style and use of rapid spiral development to reduce cost and schedule for introducing technical innovations. [1]
Muratore was born in Brooklyn in 1956. [2] He earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1979 from Yale University and a Master of Science in Computer Science in 1988 from the University of Houston–Clear Lake. He served in the US Air Force on the Air Force Space Shuttle Program at Vandenberg AFB, CA from 1979 until 1983 where he spent most of his time on assignment at Kennedy Space Center working on the Launch Sequence software. After his tour in the Air Force, Mr. Muratore joined NASA JSC after which he held progressively responsible leadership positions including Space Shuttle Flight Director, and Chief, Control Center Systems Division in the Mission Operations Directorate; and Associate Director and Deputy Manager, Advance Development Office and Assistant to the Director, Engineering within the Engineering Directorate. He was the 35th flight director in the history of human spaceflight of the United States and had the call sign "Kitty Hawk Flight" in honor of the location of the Wright Brothers first powered flight. As Chief of the Control Center Division, he led the conversion of Mission Control Center from the Apollo legacy mainframe based system to a networked Unix workstation based system to support Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.
From 1996 to 2003, he was the Program Manager of the X-38 program, an unmanned demonstrator which performed a series of successful demonstration flights at Edwards Air Force Base. He gathered a team of young, relatively inexperienced but highly motivated engineers to try to apply the 'faster, better, cheaper' method advocated by Daniel Goldin to human spaceflight, in order for NASA to obtain at affordable cost a Crew Return Vehicle. In addition to serving as the project manager, Muratore served as Mission Director and B-52 Launch Panel Operator for several of the atmospheric drop tests of the vehicle.
In 2003, the X-38 program was cancelled due to the International Space Station program's financial woes. Following the Columbia accident, Mr. Muratore was named Manager, Space Shuttle Systems Engineering and Integration Office, where he led the re-certification of the shuttle to enable its return to flight.
In April 2006, following his technical opposition to Michael Griffin's decisions regarding the Shuttle return to flight, he was reassigned as Senior Systems Engineer supporting the Shuttle/Station Engineering Office in the Engineering Directorate.
In August 2006, as part of NASA's outreach program, Muratore became an Adjunct Lecturer at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He taught graduate-level classes in Aerospace Systems Engineering and Introductory Flight Testing. Also while at Rice, Muratore advised an undergraduate Senior Design group tasked with creating an experiment to be flown on NASA's Weightless Wonder microgravity research aircraft. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate the feasibility of using the aircraft as a test-bed for commercial small-scale zero-gravity systems; testing of such systems in a 1 G environment requires costly simulators that cannot completely model micro- and zero-gravity environments. The Rice team, under the guidance of Muratore, showed that the NASA aircraft indeed was a viable platform for such testing, creating an impressive mock satellite in only two semesters with a very limited budget.
Muratore's experiences at Rice University inspired him to teach full-time. He served four years as a research associate professor at the University of Tennessee Space Institute in Tullahoma, TN. His research at UTSI focused on the use of advanced airborne data acquisition networks for aircraft flight testing and airborne science. He instrumented aircraft that supported missions for NASA and NOAA making earth observations and performing atmospheric sampling. A course he developed in Space Systems Engineering at UTSI is hosted by NASA online for free access.
In 2011, Muratore returned to space development by joining SpaceX of Hawthorne California. He supported the first commercial Falcon-9/Dragon mission to the International Space Station in May 2012. Mr Muratore served as the Launch Chief Engineer for the Falcon 9-7 launch of the SES-8 satellite in December 2013, the Falcon 9-8 launch of the Thaicom-6 satellite in January 2014 and the Falcon 9-15 launch of the DSCOVR spacecraft in February 2015. Muratore led the conversion of Launch Complex 39a and was Launch Director for the first flight of Falcon 9 at Launch Complex 39a in February 2017. Muratore then worked on the rebuild of SLC-40 which was damaged in the AMOS-6 explosion on 1 Sept 2016. Muratore was Launch Director for the first launch off the rebuilt SLC-40 in December 2017.
In 2018 Muratore moved to South Texas to serve as the site director for the SpaceX complex at Boca Chica Texas, Muratore led the development of the site, the Starship build facilities and the launch pad. In 2019 Muratore served as the launch director for the first flight of Starhopper, a prototype of the SpaceX Mars Starship vehicle. Starhopper was the first SpaceX flight test of the Raptor methane-LOX engine.
During his time at NASA, Mr Muratore was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, The NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.
In September 2020, Muratore left SpaceX and joined Kairos Power as Senior Director of Special Projects. In this role, Muratore led the construction and operations of the Engineering Test Unit hardware demonstration in Albuquerque New Mexico. Kairos Power's mission is to enable the world’s transition to clean energy, with the ultimate goal of dramatically improving people’s quality of life while protecting the environment. Mr Muratore left Kairos Power in March 2023 at the completion of the ETU-1 build. The ETU-1 build was described in the 7 February 2023 edition of the Atlantic magazine.
In April 2023, Muratore re-entered aerospace joining Venturi Astrolab working on the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) Services contract proposal. In April 2024, Venturi Astrolab won a competitive contract for developing a LTV rover for human and robotic exploration of the lunar South Pole. Muratore is serving as the Program Manager for Astrolab's effort.
Muratore is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in the State of Texas
Muratore has written several articles. [3] A selection:
The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development.
The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo program. Marshall has been the lead center for the Space Shuttle main propulsion and external tank; payloads and related crew training; International Space Station (ISS) design and assembly; computers, networks, and information management; and the Space Launch System. Located on the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, MSFC is named in honor of General of the Army George C. Marshall.
A booster is a rocket used either in the first stage of a multistage launch vehicle or in parallel with longer-burning sustainer rockets to augment the space vehicle's takeoff thrust and payload capability. Boosters are traditionally necessary to launch spacecraft into low Earth orbit, and are especially important for a space vehicle to go beyond Earth orbit. The booster is dropped to fall back to Earth once its fuel is expended, a point known as booster engine cut-off (BECO).
The Rogers Commission Report was written by a Presidential Commission charged with investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster during its 10th mission, STS-51-L. The report, released and submitted to President Ronald Reagan on June 9, 1986, both determined the cause of the disaster that took place 73 seconds after liftoff, and urged NASA to improve and install new safety features on the shuttles and in its organizational handling of future missions.
A spaceplane is a vehicle that can fly and glide like an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere and maneuver like a spacecraft in outer space. To do so, spaceplanes must incorporate features of both aircraft and spacecraft. Orbital spaceplanes tend to be more similar to conventional spacecraft, while sub-orbital spaceplanes tend to be more similar to fixed-wing aircraft. All spaceplanes to date have been rocket-powered for takeoff and climb, but have then landed as unpowered gliders.
Richard Noel "Dick" Richards, , is a retired American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, chemical engineer, and a former NASA astronaut. He flew aboard four Space Shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s.
Colonel Gary Eugene Payton, USAF, is an American astronaut and USAF Manned Spaceflight Engineer. Payton flew on the STS-51-C mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in January 1985. He later served as Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force under the Bush and Obama Administrations.
Carl Joseph Meade is a former NASA astronaut.
Bryan Daniel O'Connor is a retired United States Marine Corps Colonel and former NASA astronaut. He was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2008.
The X-38 was an experimental re-entry vehicle designed by NASA to research a possible emergency crew return vehicle (CRV) for the International Space Station (ISS). The 1995–2002 program also developed concepts for a crew return vehicle design that could be modified for other uses, such as a possible joint U.S. and international human spacecraft that could be launched on the French Ariane 5 booster.
The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a reusable robotic spacecraft. It is boosted into space by a launch vehicle, then re-enters Earth's atmosphere and lands as a spaceplane. The X-37 is operated by the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, in collaboration with United States Space Force, for orbital spaceflight missions intended to demonstrate reusable space technologies. It is a 120-percent-scaled derivative of the earlier Boeing X-40. The X-37 began as a NASA project in 1999, before being transferred to the United States Department of Defense in 2004. Until 2019, the program was managed by Air Force Space Command.
Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, was first designed to accommodate the Saturn V launch vehicle. Typically used to launch NASA's crewed spaceflight missions since the late 1960s, the pad was leased by SpaceX and has been modified to support their launch vehicles.
Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) is a rocket launch site at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island in Florida, United States. The site and its collection of facilities were originally built as the Apollo program's "Moonport" and later modified for the Space Shuttle program.
The Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center is a four-story building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, used to manage launches of launch vehicles from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39. Attached to the southeast corner of the Vehicle Assembly Building, the LCC contains offices; telemetry, tracking, and instrumentation equipment; and firing rooms.
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. The most successful VTVL vehicle was the Apollo Lunar Module which delivered the first humans to the Moon. Building on the decades of development, SpaceX utilised the VTVL concept for its flagship Falcon 9 first stage, which has delivered over two hundred successful powered landings so far.
Gerald D. Griffin is an American aeronautical engineer and former NASA official, who served as a flight director during the Apollo program and director of Johnson Space Center, succeeding Chris Kraft in 1982.
In rocketry, range safety or flight safety is ensured by monitoring the flight paths of missiles and launch vehicles, and enforcing strict guidelines for rocket construction and ground-based operations. Various measures are implemented to protect nearby people, buildings and infrastructure from the dangers of a rocket launch.
Livingston L. Holder Jr. is a former USAF astronaut in the Manned Spaceflight Engineer Program during the mid-1980s. He was assigned to fly as a military payload specialist on the Space Shuttle, but could not fly in space due to the Challenger accident in 1986.
The retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet took place from March to July 2011. Discovery was the first of the three active Space Shuttles to be retired, completing its final mission on March 9, 2011; Endeavour did so on June 1. The final shuttle mission was completed with the landing of Atlantis on July 21, 2011, closing the 30-year Space Shuttle program.
| Authority control databases: Academics |
|---|
