User:Toma
From Rocketpedia
Welcome To Thomas M. Atchison's Profile Page
Toma 05:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
After more than 25 years as a senior executive and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I got the civilian space bug from a lunch discussion with a number of founders of Xircomm, including Dirk Gates, and have never looked back. Having successfully started and run four high technology ventures, I decided to return to my roots in 2002. I had worked for the NASA-Ames chemical research projects office in 1980, I decided it was time to pursue my passion for space exploration again, by joining the civilian space race full time, designing and building my own rockets to conducting interesting science, and creating an organization where I could also enable others by organizing the Mavericks, and inspiring our youth to excell in STEM education principals by having an organization that could enable them to demonstrate their mastery of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics .
I founded the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, a non -profit educational foundation dedicated to facilitating civilian space research, STEM education and competition as an enabler of civilian space explorers. Personally, I am a TRA L-3 certified flyer with a passion and drive for developing new experimental propulsion technologies that will reduced the cost and increase the accessibility of civilian space exploration. I also have a passion for synthetic biology and systems biology, and understanding how life was created here on earth, what the nature and quantitive and qualitative characteristics of life in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere are, and whether life forms in the upper atmosphere can play a role in lithopanspermic seeding of life by earth of the universe.
I was the director of finance for the TRA AeroPAC 100K altitude program and contributed the aerodynamic and thermal design engineering of that airframe. I was also the designer of the Mavericks QPDoll low altitude sounding rocket flown at BALLS in 2008. Aside from organizing research in my areas of interest, and managing Mavericks Foundation, I contribute in projects as a team member, specializing in airframe aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, composite materials, and propulsion and motor ballistics.
More details about my experience and work outside Mavericks can be found here: Media:TomaCV.pdf
Best way to reach me is by phone: 650-492-5978 or by e-mail: toma @ rocketmavericks . com
Note: Remove the spaces in the address. They are their to thwart spammers.
