Distinguished Speakers

Mr. Joe Sciabica
Executive Director, Air Force Research Laboratory
Plenary Moderator

Mr. Joe Sciabica, a member of the Senior Executive Service, is Executive Director, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. He is the principal assistant to the commander and the senior civilian executive responsible for managing the Air Force’s $2 billion science and technology program; additional customer funded research and development of $1.7 billion; and a workforce of approximately 9,500 people in the laboratory’s component technology directorates and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Mr. Sciabica has served in a variety of engineering and senior technical management positions within the Air Force laboratory system, leading the development and transition of advanced rocket, space, and sensor technologies to air, space, and missile systems.

A graduate of the Defense Systems Management College and National War College, Mr. Sciabica was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2003.

Brig General John Hyten (Invited)
Director of Requirements, Air Force Space Command
Plenary Speaker

Brig. Gen. John E. Hyten is the Director of Requirements, Headquarters Air Force Space Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. As Director, he is responsible for ensuring future space and missile systems meet the operational needs of our joint forces into the 21st century.

General Hyten’s career includes assignments in a variety of space acquisition and operations positions. He has served in senior engineering positions on both Air Force and Army anti-satellite weapon system programs. The general’s staff assignments include tours with the Air Force Secretariat, the Air Staff, the Joint Staff and the Commander’s Action Group at Headquarters Air Force Space Command as the Director. He served as a mission director in Cheyenne Mountain and was the last active-duty commander of the 6th Space Operations Squadron at Offutt AFB, Neb. In 2006, he deployed to Southwest Asia as Director of Space Forces for operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Prior to assuming his current position, General Hyten commanded the 50th Space Wing at Schriever AFB, Colo.

Mr. Robert "Mike" Maxwell
Associate Director of Strategic Planning, Headquarters, U.S. Air Force
Plenary Speaker

Robert M. "Mike" Maxwell, a member of the Senior Executive Service, is Associate Director of Strategic Planning, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Programs, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington D.C. He assists the director in developing and evaluating future strategies, policies and objectives as required to improve the Air Force's contribution to national defense. He manages a strategic planning process that is used to focus and implement Air Force strategies, policies and objectives. He provides direction to Air Force programmers for implementation of the Air Force strategic vision through the annually updated Air Force Strategic Plan and Annual Planning and Programming Guidance. Mr. Maxwell also links strategy with analysis for on-going four-year defense reviews and annual defense planning guidance through the office of the Secretary of Defense. At the same time he coordinates and oversees a mission area planning process that aggressively evaluates and incorporates future warfighting concepts.

Mr. Maxwell served as an Air Force officer in a series of planning resource allocation assignments, including Chief of the Support Division of the Directorate of Programs where he was responsible for programming all Air Force agile combat support activities. He was special assistant for the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, and Director of Programs and Resources for U.S. Southern Command. He also served operationally in mobile radar and command and control systems including operational squadron command.

For the 10 years prior to joining the Air Staff, Mr. Maxwell was employed by Science Applications International Corporation, a defense technology and consulting firm. As an SAIC Vice President and Division Manager, he had executive responsibility for all aspects of managing a $50 million consulting practice comprising approximately 300 consultants, analysts and technical staff. Additionally, he served as a member of senior review panel for defense planning and resource processes in the Beyond Goldwater-Nichols study to re-examine role of the joint community and combatant commands.

Dr. Rodney Robertson
Director, Space and Missile Defense Technology Center
Plenary Speaker

Dr. Rodney L. Robertson is the Director, Technical Center, which is part of the Research, Development, and Acquisition element of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC). As the Director, Dr. Robertson is responsible for managing the research, development, test, and evaluation activities for the Army’s space and missile defense programs which include the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll/Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands and the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility located at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

Dr. Robertson has more than 25 years of professional experience in science, engineering, and management covering a broad spectrum of activities in advanced technology, research, design, development, and test and evaluation. Dr. Robertson is a member of the Senior Executive Service. He has served as the Acting Director, Sensors Directorate; the Associate Director, Technology; Deputy Director, Technical Center; and Director, Test and Evaluation Directorate, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. He also served on a special assignment as Director, System-of-Systems Directorate, PEO Missiles and Space. In December 2005, he was named the Director, Technical Center, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

He has received numerous awards and recognition during his career including: 2004 Auburn University Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering Alumnus Award; 2004 Army Space & Missile Defense Association Professional of the Year Award; 2003 Ted Eschenbach Award for the Best Engineering Management Journal Paper; and numerous performance awards.

Mr. Douglas Schaefer
Director, Producibility & Manufacturing, Missile Defense Agency
Plenary Speaker

Mr. Schaefer is the Director, Manufacturing Technology and Producibility, of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Office of the Secretary of Defense, Pentagon, Washington, DC. The MDA is Presidentially-chartered and mandated by Congress to acquire highly effective ballistic missile defense systems for forward-deployed and expeditionary elements of the U.S. Armed Forces. Additionally, MDA will develop options and, if directed, acquire systems for ballistic missile defense of the United States. As Director DEP, Mr. Schaefer is responsible to the MDA Director for BMD system-wide producibility and manufacturing, risk assessment, mitigation, and applications.

Mr. Schaefer entered the Navy in 1976 after graduating from the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he earned bachelor and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering. He became a Civil Servant in 1983. In prior assignments at MDA (formerly BMDO), he was the Program Manager for the BMDO Lethality Program and was Director for System Engineering Analysis. He qualified as an Arctic Undersea Warfare Specialist and a Nuclear Shift Test Engineer. While on active duty, he qualified in Submarines, and prior to his retirement from the U.S. Naval Reserves, at the rank of Captain, he was Commanding Officer of Second Fleets “Striking Fleet Atlantic” unit in the Naval Reserve. Among his many awards, he has received the Defense Civilian Meritorious Service Medal and the Navy Meritorious Service Medal.

Mr. Steve Cook
Director, Exploration Launch Projects, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Plenary Speaker

Biography unavailable at time of publication.

Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz
(Astronaut) Ad Astra Rocket Company
Keynote Tutorial Speaker

Dr. Chang-Díaz, inventor of the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR, U.S. patent 2002) and other advanced propulsion technologies (U.S. patents 1989, 1990), founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company (AARC) in 2005, after 25 years of service as a NASA astronaut. AARC is dedicated to the development and commercialization of the VASIMR and related technologies.

Following graduation from the University of Connecticut in 1973, he entered graduate school at MIT, becoming heavily involved in the United States’ controlled fusion program and doing intensive research in the design and operation of fusion reactors. He obtained his doctorate in the field of applied plasma physics and fusion technology and, in that same year, joined the technical staff of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. His work at Draper was geared strongly toward the design and integration of control systems for fusion reactor concepts and experimental devices, in both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion. In 1979, he developed a novel concept to guide and target fuel pellets in an inertial fusion reactor chamber. Later on he was engaged in the design of a new concept in rocket propulsion based on magnetically confined high temperature plasmas. As a visiting scientist with the M.I.T. Plasma Fusion Center from October 1983 to December 1993, he led the plasma propulsion program to develop this technology for future human missions to Mars. From December 1993 to July 2005 Dr. Chang-Dìaz served as Director of the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center where he continued his research on plasma rockets. He is an Adjunct Professor of Physics at Rice University and the University of Houston and has presented numerous papers at technical conferences and in scientific journals.

Dr. Richard Hallion Founder-President, Hallion Associates
Featured Tutorial Speaker

Dr. Richard Hallion, President of Hallion Associates, is an internationally recognized aerospace and military historian. He was a founding Curator at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, returned subsequently as the Charles Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History, and most recently as the Alfred Verville Fellow in Aeronautics. He served as Chief Historian of the United States Air Force, and as the Harold Keith Johnson Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Army War College, Carlisle Barracks. Dr. Hallion is the author or editor of a broad spectrum of works regarding the history of flight, including a three volume set The Hypersonic Revolution, published by the Air Force. Dr. Hallion received his BA and PhD from the University of Maryland.

Mr. Allan McDonald
Author, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings
Featured Tutorial Speaker

Mr. Allan McDonald retired as Vice President and Technical Director for Advanced Technology Programs at ATK Thiokol Propulsion in 2001. He was the Director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project at the time of the Challenger accident and the Vice President of Engineering for Space Operations during the redesign and requalification of the solid rocket motors.

In Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, Mr. McDonald, a skilled engineer and executive, relives the tragedy from where he stood at Launch Control Center. In this rigorous and fair-minded book, McDonald, with the assistance of internationally distinguished aerospace historian James R. Hansen, addresses all of the factors that led to the accident, some of which were never included in NASA’s Failure Team report submitted to the Presidential Commission. One of the few insiders who never signed a confidentiality agreement, McDonald reveals for the first time the reason behind the O-rings’ catastrophic failure.

Truth, Lies, and O-Rings is the first look at the Challenger tragedy and its aftermath from someone who was on the inside, recognized the potential disaster, and tried to prevent it. It also addresses the early warnings of very severe debris issues from the first two post-Challenger flights, which ultimately resulted in the loss of Columbia some fifteen years later.