Michael Gass: United Launch Alliance CEO forged team of former rocket competitors.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: EXECUTIVE EDGE - Chief executive officer - Michael Gass - Conference notes

The 26th National Space Symposium will be April 12-15 at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs centering on all aspects of space--civil, commercial, national security, entrepreneurship, finance, education and work-force issues.

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Speakers include Air Force Space Command Commander Gen. C. Robert Kehler; National Reconnaissance Office Director Gen. Bruce Carlson, USAF (retired); famed video game developer and private space explorer Richard Garriott; Boeing Executive Vice President/Integrated Defense Systems CEO Dennis A. Muilenburg; and actor Leonard Nimoy.

A separate conference, Cyber 1.0, will be held April 12 featuring top-level Air Force Space Command and industry speakers plus interactive demonstrations of cyberspace technologies.

For information, visit www.NationalSpaceSymposium.org.

As Michael Gass prepares this month to witness United Launch Alliance's 38th rocket launch in three years, he reflects on the first space shot he ever saw--as a second-grader watching on a grainy 19-inch TV in a school gymnasium of his native New York.

"John Glenn went up, came back and everybody was really excited about the start of the space age," recalls Gass, 53, who on that day went home and told his grandma he wanted to be in the rocket industry. "And she said in her thick Eastern European accent, 'You have to be an engineer.' Growing up in New York, I had been around subways and thought, 'What do rockets have to do with driving a train?"'

Gass would go on to graduate from Lehigh University with a bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering and earn a master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"John Glenn went up on top of an Atlas rocket, and we still build them today," said Gass, who before joining ULA as president and CEO served as vice president and general manager of space transportation for Lockheed Martin, overseeing the Atlas, Titan and other space launch projects. "And I got to meet our national hero several times, so you couldn't ask for a more exciting field to be in."

ULA--the merged rocket operations of Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co.--employs 3,800, including 1,800 at its headquarters in...