posted 08-10-2020 01:42 AM            

During the multi-day short course, I got lunch with Tom and learned more about his small town Kentucky upbringings which ultimately led to a long and celebrated career as trajectory and orbital mechanics analyst and engineer. Tom had a side gig for many years writing captions for comics.

He will be greatly missed in the aerospace community. Tom passed on May 1, 2020. Ad astra.

From a note from the organization he taught through, ATI's website:

Thomas Stanley Logsdon, 82, of Seal Beach, California, passed away on May 1, 2020. Tom was an internationally recognized rocket scientist, author, expert witness, keynote lecturer, and short course instructor. He used his extraordinary knowledge of mathematics and physics to help put a dozen astronauts on the moon and played an integral role in the invention of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is so vital to our modern world...

After graduation, Tom landed his first job as an Aero-ballistics Engineer for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, CA, kicking off a 32-year career in the aerospace industry. He was recruited by Rockwell International to become a Trajectory Mathematician on the Apollo Space program. When asked about his job on a television interview, he said, with his usual clever sense of humor, "before the flight, we predict where the rocket will go, and after the flight we try to explain why it didn't go there!"

He went on to work on the Shuttle Spacecraft program and in the mid-1970s Tom employed his mathematical genius to determine the placement of 24 satellites (satellite constellation) which make up our worldwide GPS. He was recently recognized as one of 28 original Inventors of GPS. While at Rockwell, he also worked on the Saturn V moon rocket, Skylab flight maneuvers, and unmanned Mars missions. He was also awarded the Rockwell Presidential Award and held a patent centered around navigation of jetliners.

In addition, Tom was a well-respected author, writing over 30 books, from his first book about space travel, "A Rush Toward the Stars", to some of the first computer programming books, to his best-selling "Six Simple Solutions that Shook the World." He also taught computer science at USC for many years.

After retiring from Rockwell, Tom ran a full-time business up until his death, producing books, magazine articles, and technical papers; teaching GPS & Orbital Mechanics short courses for NASA & JPL, lecturing around the world, being a guest speaker for Crystal Cruises (averaging 8 cruises a year), and appearing on radio and TV.