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Roundtable 3 Speaker Biographies
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Dr. Paul Eckert, as International and Commercial Strategist for Boeing's Space Exploration division, develops strategies to strengthen global business relationships and explore new commercial markets. He has become increasingly active in writing and speaking about the importance of international industrial cooperation to encourage innovation. Since joining the Boeing Company in 2003, Dr. Eckert has played a variety of roles, facilitating space exploration planning, infrastructure design, Earth observation, space science, government relations, and communications.
In 2001 and 2002, Dr. Eckert served as a Technology Policy Analyst in the Office of Space Commercialization, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., helping to develop policies promoting growth of the commercial space industry, both domestically and internationally. From 1999 through 2000, he was a Legislative Affairs Specialist at NASA, with responsibility for liaison with the U.S. Congress involving space and aeronautics, information technology, systems engineering, and technology transfer to industry. In 1997 and 1998, Dr. Eckert was science and technology advisor to U.S. Senator John Breaux, a prominent member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, having received a Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship through the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). From 1986 through 1997, he gained expertise in productivity enhancement, as Director of Quality Improvement for a division of Henry Ford Health System.
Dr. Eckert holds a bachelor's degree with high honors in history from Harvard University, and a doctoral degree in psychology from Michigan State University, supplemented by postdoctoral training in organizational development. He is fluent in French and active in promoting international public-private partnerships to stimulate economic growth.
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Wayne White is an attorney and space law consultant from Boulder Colorado. Mr. White received his law degree from U.C. Davis. He has practiced law for approximately 20 years, as a corporate counsel, in private practice, and in academia.
In 2003, Mr. White represented the United States as a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Legal Subcommittee. From 2000 through 2004 he was a Director of the National Space Society. He chaired the Society's International Space Development Conference in 2002.
Mr. White has authored 13 published articles in the field of international outer space law.
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Berin Szoka is an associate in Latham & Watkins' Washington, D.C. office and is a member of the Corporate Department and Communications Practice Group. Mr. Szoka's practice focuses on the communications, new media and space industries. He has experience in satellite licensing, FCC enforcement actions, equipment authorizations, wireless services and telecommunications relay services for the hearing-impaired.
Mr. Szoka is a member of the Federal Communications Bar Association, the Society of Satellite Professionals International, the Society for International Affairs, the American Bar Association, the Washington Space Business Roundtable, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the International Association of Space Entrepreneurs and the National Space Society.
Mr. Szoka has chaired the legal tracks at the International Space Development Conference, the Return to the Moon Conference and the Space Frontier Conference. He has spoken about the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, space law, commercial human spaceflight regulation and relevant aspects of state law at these conferences and others, including the lunar Commerce Roundtable and the Space Access Society Conference.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Szoka served as a law clerk to the Honorable H. Dale Cook, Senior United States District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma from 2004 to 2005. He is conversant in French.
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John C. Mankins is the President of ARTEMIS Innovation Management Solutions LLC, a management consulting, research and development start-up focusing on solving tough innovation challenges for government, industry and not-for-profit clients. Mr. Mankins is an internationally recognized leader in space systems and technology innovation, and as a highly effective manager of large-scale technology R&D programs. His 25-year career at NASA ranged from flight projects and space mission operations, to systems-level innovation and advanced technology research and development management. He is also well known as an innovator in R&D management, and was one of the creators of the widely used "technology readiness level" (TRL) scale for technology assessment.
Before leaving NASA, Mr. Mankins was the manager of Exploration Systems Research and Technology within the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate with responsibility for an $800M annual budget, involving more than 100 individual projects and over 3,000 personnel. For 10 years, he was the manager of Advanced Concepts Studies at NASA, and was the lead for critical studies of space solar power, highly reusable space transportation, affordable human exploration approaches, and other topics. He was the creator or co-creator of numerous novel concepts, including the 'MagLifter' electromagnetic launch assist system, the Internet-based NASA "Virtual Research Center" the "Solar Clipper" interplanetary transport vehicle, the "SunTower" space solar power system, the "Hybrid Propellant Module" for in-space refueling, the "HabBot" mobile planetary outpost architecture, the Advanced Technology Life cycle Analysis System (ATLAS), and others. In recognition of his accomplishments, he has received numerous awards and honors, including the prestigious NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal (of which he was the first recipient).
He holds undergraduate (Harvey Mudd College) and graduate (UCLA) degrees in Physics and an MBA in Public Policy Analysis (The Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University). Mr. Mankins is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and the Sigma Xi Research Society.
Mr. Mankins is an accomplished communicator, including political, programmatic, technical and lay audiences. He has authored or co-authored more than 70 published papers, reports and other technical documents, and has testified before Congress on several occasions, and has been consulted on R&D management and space issues with organizations in the U.S. and internationally.
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Dr. Harvey J. Willenberg has a 24 year history of leading advanced civil space projects in a wide variety of applications, mostly during his tenure at The Boeing Company from 1982 to 2004. These projects have been in robotic planetary exploration, space power technology, human exploration, microgravity materials processing, and automation and robotics technologies. He has led a number of studies of advanced solar cells, space solar power technologies, and space nuclear reactor applications for power generation and electric propulsion. In human exploration, he has led a number of studies of human lunar exploration, focusing on technology needs and on architecture studies that maximize existing technology and commercial approaches. He was Boeing's Chief Scientist for Space Station Freedom from 1989 to 1993. He was an early advocate for commercial microgravity materials processing aboard the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. He has flown microgravity experiments on a Russian space station within six months of project inception and state-of-the-art advanced solar arrays on an Air Force satellite, as well as initiating Space Shuttle microgravity experiments. In the planetary exploration arena, he was Boeing's project manager for Mars Sample Return and Mars Ascent Vehicle studies, and Chief Technologist for a nuclear reactor-based Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter study. He has also led studies investigating the potential for near-term technologies to assemble, maintain, and repair large space structures, including large space telescopes and solar power stations, in addition to technical/financial analyses of repair and servicing of existing commercial satellites.
He was a frequent traveler to Russia in the early 1990s, where he initiated activities which led to combining the American and Russian space station program, the Sea Launch venture, a life support laboratory, and a protein crystal growth experiment. He was Vice President-Technical of the American Astronautical Society from 1998-2000, and is an active member of the International Astronautical Federation committee on space power. Dr. Willenberg received his B.S. in Physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1967. He received his M.S. in Physics in 1971, M.S.E. in Nuclear Engineering in 1972, and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering in 1976 – all from the University of Washington. He worked on fast breeder reactors and conceptual designs for fusion reactors from 1972 through 1982.
Dr. Willenberg is currently an independent consultant on space and nuclear activities, aligned with American Aerospace Advisors, Inc.
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Dr. Klaus P. Heiss was assistant to Prof. Oskar Morgenstern at Princeton University and Mathematica (1964 – 1973). His work involved development and applications of advanced concepts in the Theory of Games and Mathematical Economics to such diverse issues as the Plowshare Program (peaceful uses of nuclear explosives), Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, advanced transportation modes and the value of remote sensing information gathered from Space.
The work of Dr. Heiss led to innovations in US technology programs, including conceptual work on new Space Transportation Systems (the Space Shuttle), assessing the scope and value of worldwide remote sensing systems (e.g. Snowmass 1974, Agristar), advanced Space communications concepts (Geoplatforms, VSATs, airborne systems) and Space energy concepts and program assessments. (NASA, US Atomic Energy Commission, Office of Naval Research, Departments of Interior, Department of Agriculture, Aerospace Industry Association, Aerospace and Communications companies). Some of these concepts and programs have been implemented.
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Roger X. Lenard is a retired Air Force officer who holds a Bachelor of Science in physics and a Master of Science in chemical physics. Roger has 2000 hours of single seat fighter time in the Air Force. During his flying career he was a squadron test pilot and an air combat tactics instructor pilot. Roger spent several years in the space object tracking and identification program where he developed the first automatic pattern recognition programs for the Air Force.
Roger was selected as part of President Reagan's Defense Technology Study Team where he designed the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization's Kinetic Energy Weapons Master Plan. Roger was transferred to the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization where he was in charge of lightweight interceptors, hypervelocity weapons and was the program manager for the Timberwind program, a project to develop a nuclear thermal rocket stage. Roger managed programs of $100M/year in high technology research and development. Roger has served on four Defense Science Boards on subjects from advanced launch systems to space based radars. One of the products of his programs was the lightweight interceptor package for what is now the Navy Upper Tier defense system.
In 1991 Roger was selected to be part of President Bush's Space Exploration Initiative, working for General Thomas Stafford. He was the Mars exploration team co-lead with Mr. Douglas Cook of NASA Johnson Space Center. In 1993 Roger retired from the Air Force and began working for Sandia National Laboratories. In 2000 Roger became a part-time Sandian and began to consult for the Air Force and NASA on the X-37 and hydrogen peroxide fueled upper stage.
He is a part-time Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in the advanced reactor technology department. He is a consultant to Raytheon Missile Systems on the NASA Concept Evaluation and Refinement effort and provides technical and programmatic advice to Marshall Space Flight Center on the surface nuclear power and nuclear thermal propulsion programs. Roger worked extensively on the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter program for the Northrop Grumman team, who won the JIMO contract.
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Dallas Bienhoff is the In-Space and Surface Systems Manager for Boeing Space Exploration. He has over 30 years of space industry experience, spending the past 20 years managing and conducting space architecture studies. Mr. Bienhoff was the Boeing Program Manager for the Concept Exploration and Refinement Study contract for NASA in 2004 and 2005. He has a MS in Engineering from CSU-Northridge and a BSME from Florida Institute of Technology.
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Rex Ridenoure has been a champion of and active participant in the emerging market sector of private and commercial space missions to the Moon and beyond since 1980.
For the first 20 years of his career while working at Hughes, Lockheed and JPL, Rex made significant technical contributions to more than a dozen pioneering space projects and studies such as Viking (Mars), Shuttle-launched communications satellites, the Hubble Space Telescope, Voyager 2 (Neptune), Lunar Observer, SURFSat and Deep Space 1.
In the late 1990s he successfully transitioned into the entrepreneurial space arena. He was co-recipient with three other engineers of a 1999 Laurel Award (the aerospace "Oscar") for playing a key role in the 1998 salvage of the stranded HGS-1 comsat, using a novel orbit method that made HGS-1 the first commercial spacecraft to reach the Moon's distance. From 1998-2000 Rex was Chief Mission Architect at SpaceDev, one of the first commercial space-exploration and development companies. During 2000-2001 he was Chief Mission Architect and VP for Commercial Payloads at BlastOff! Corporation, which made the most progress to date toward sending the first commercial spacecraft to the surface of the Moon.
Since co-founding Ecliptic in 2001, he has directed strategic planning and partnering, business development, marketing and sales. Ecliptic’s popular RocketCam™ product family is the world’s leading brand of onboard video systems for use with rockets and spacecraft. Ecliptic was a team member on the pioneering SpaceShipOne effort and will support future 'space-tourist' missions offered by the path-finding commercial space company Space Adventures.
Rex earned his M.S. in Aeronautics from Caltech in 1979, sponsored on a Hughes Aircraft Company Fellowship. He got his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering (Cum Laude) from Iowa State University (Ames) in 1978, where he was also an accomplished NCAA gymnast.
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