CASM Pioneer Award Recipients

Ian McDougall (right), Chairman of the Canadian Air & Space Museum presents Simon Roberts (left), Vice President and General Manager, Turboprops and Toronto Operations with a Canadian Air & Space Pioneer award in recognition of Bombardier Aerospace's Toronto site's Dash 8/Q-Series aircraft program. Event Photos, Videos, & Coverage

Dr. Robert (Bob) Thirsk became the first Canadian Space Agency astronaut to fly a long duration expedition aboard the International Space Station (ISS). During his 188-day mission aboard the ISS in 2009, behind the scenes a team of Canadians and American health and safety professionals contributed not only to his safe return to Earth, but also to his mission readiness, and post-mission health.

As a member of the ISS Expedition 20/21 crew, Bob and his five international crewmates performed an unprecedented amount of multidisciplinary research, complex robotic operations, and maintenance and repair work of Station systems and payloads. The health and safety support team members on the ground include:

• Dr. Doug Hamilton, Flight Surgeon
• Dr. Marvin Lange. Psychiatrist
• Dr. Gary Gray, Senior Consultant Flight Surgeon
• Ms. Leena Tomi, Project Manager
• Ms. Natalie Hirsch, Project manager
• Mr. Chris Van Velson, Biomedical Engineer
• Bios for C1 Health Support Personnel

The Award to the Health & Safety team supporting Dr. Thirsk’s mission aboard the International Space Station was announced on April 13 and will be presented to representatives at the Canadian Space Society Annual Summit in Ottawa on November 19-21, 2010.

In April 1970, the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) played a little known role in the safe return of the Apollo 13 astronauts to earth.

Forty years ago, an explosion in space had badly damaged the command and service module of Apollo 13, crippling the spacecraft and prompting the astronauts to move to the lunar module, which had to function as a life raft for the return journey. In Toronto, a routine staff meeting at UTIAS was interrupted by a phone call from Grumman Aerospace Corporation, which had been contracted to build the Apollo lunar modules, wanting help.

UTIAS had been contacted to help with a crucial calculation on the correct pressure required to separate the entry module from the damaged spacecraft, because the two could not be separated using the mission profile. It was decided to use some residual air pressure to free the entry module from the spacecraft, but the key question was how much pressure should be used: too little pressure and the space vehicles wouldn’t have a clear separation; too much pressure could have resulted in damage to the entry hatch on the lunar module.

A small team at UTIAS was assembled to tackle the challenge, made up of professors Phil Sullivan, Rod Tennyson, Irvine Glass, Barry French and Ben Etkin. The team stayed in touch by phone and sorted out the issues and made a recommendation.

Three of the original UTIAS team involved in the Apollo work – Phil Sullivan, Barry French and Ben Etkin – were on hand at the Museum on April 13, 2010 to accept the award on behalf of UTIAS, along with UTIAS director David Zingg.

John Dennis Hodge -- Born in Leigh-on-Sea, England, in 1929, Hodge was educated at the University of London and worked at Vickers Armstrong, before moving to Toronto and Avro Canada in 1952. At Avro, he worked on loads and flight test for the CF-105 Avro Arrow. After joining NASA in 1959, when the Arrow was cancelled, Hodge worked in operations, helping set up the network aspects of Mercury and the control center for Mercury and Gemini. He became chief of the flight control division at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) and was responsible for the hiring and training of flight controllers.

Hodge became one of NASA's original flight directors, along with Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz of Apollo 13 fame. Hodge worked as flight director in Mercury, Gemini and early Apollo missions. He was the lead flight director for Gemini 8, the first emergency in space. Hodge ordered commander Neil Armstrong and pilot David Scott to make an emergency splashdown in the Pacific Ocean after a stuck thruster caused their spacecraft to spin out of control.

In 1968, Hodge went to plan the later lunar missions, and then NASA's piloted space program after Apollo. In 1970, he left NASA and went to the U.S. Department of Transportation. He returned to NASA in 1982 to get the space station program started at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C., became deputy associate administrator for space station, and remained there until 1987. Hodge is now a consultant living near Washington, D.C. He and his wife Audrey have four children.

Owen Eugene Maynard was born in 1924 in Sarnia, Ontario and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942. He flew a number of aircraft, including the Mosquito, in Canada and overseas.  After the war, he worked at Avro Canada while he earned his aeronautical engineering degree at the University of Toronto. Maynard held a number of jobs at Avro, including working on the layout of the Avro Jetliner, and the design and testing of the CF-105 Avro Arrow weapons pack and landing gear.

When the Arrow was cancelled in 1959, Maynard was a member of the group of 31 Canadian and British engineers from Avro that joined NASA. He worked on the Mercury and Gemini programs and then went on to work on Apollo. Maynard was also part of a group at NASA that won a U.S. patent in 1967 for a space station design.

After leaving NASA in 1970, Maynard went to Raytheon in the Boston area, where he worked on many aerospace programs. During this time, he became an advocate for the use of satellites to collect solar power for use on Earth, and the use of solar power collected on earth for powering spacecraft. He retired from Raytheon in 1992, and he and his wife Helen returned to Canada, settling in Waterloo, Ontario.

Owen Eugene Maynard died on July 15, 2000 at age 75. He was an outstanding leader at NASA and one of Canada's great space flight pioneers.

James C. (Jim) Floyd was involved for more than half a century in aircraft designs, ranging from biplanes to supersonic transports and space vehicles. In his early days he worked with two of the great British aircraft designers, Sir Sydney Camm on the Hurricane and Roy Chadwick on the Anson, the famous Lancaster bomber, the York transport, the Lincoln and other designs, becoming Chief Project Engineer in 1944.

Floyd came to Canada in February 1946 to join the newly formed A.V.Roe Canada company (Avro) at Malton Ontario, initially as Chief Design Engineer in charge of the C 102 Jetliner project, then Chief Engineer in charge of all Avro projects, including the CF 100 fighter and the CF 105 Arrow project. He was appointed Vice-president Engineering in 1955.

After the cancellation of the Arrow project he established his own international aviation consulting company and made contributions to many state-of-the-art projects worldwide. He was consultant to the British Ministry of Technology on the Concorde project from 1965 to 1972.

In 1950 he became the first non-American recipient of the Wright Bros. Medal for his work on jet transport technology, specifically the design of the Avro Canada Jetliner, the world's first regional jet passenger aircraft. In 1957 he received the J.D.McCurdy Award for his work on the CF 100 and CF 105 (Arrow) fighter aircraft. For his work on supersonic transport design he was awarded the Royal Aeronautical Society's George Taylor Gold Medal in 1962.