The Space Industry Dilemma: Promising Future or Intellectual Swindle?

A lecture by Spanish Scientist Antonio Elías presented by the Washington DC chapter of Spanish Scientist in the USA (ECUSA).

Antonio Elias is the Chief Technical Officer of Orbital ATK, a global leader in aerospace and defense technologies. Antonio started his aerospace engineering education at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Aeronauticos (ETSIA) in Madrid, earning his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1978, and becoming a member of the MIT faculty until 1986 when he joined the newly formed Orbital Sciences Corporation in Washington, D.C.

At Orbital, Antonio designed the Pegasus air-launched space booster which, in its fifteenth mission, place in orbit the MINISAT-01 satellite developed by the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA.) Departing from Gando Spanish Air Force Base in the island of Grand Canary, this became the first and only satellite launched from Spanish soil. The Pegasus’ unusual design earned Antonio the 1991 US National Medal of Technology. His latest design is the Cygnus spacecraft used by Orbital ATK to transport cargo to the International Space Station under a unique commercial services contract with NASA.

Antonio is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and the International Academy of Astronautics (IAS.) He also holds U.S. Air Transport Pilot (ATP) and Instrument and Multi-engine Flight Instructor certificates.