Hollister’s resident rocket scientist has accepted a position
with a Florida-based space company but will remain living here.
Hollister’s resident rocket scientist has accepted a position with a Florida-based space company but will remain living here.
Bill Colburn said this week that he is now vice president of Micro-Aerospace Solutions, Inc. of Melbourne, Fla.
“Donald Platt (MAS president) offered me the job on March 20 and I gave him my answer on the 25th,” Colburn said. He added that he expects his new position to take him to Melbourne from time to time.
Platt and Colburn won a grant from NASA early this year to develop a safer propellant for the space shuttle, and Colbun said that so far he has spent about $8,000 of the $64,000 grant on material, wages and services.
Colburn has been a consultant for MAS for about three years. His association with Platt began in 1992 when the latter was a student at the Miami campus of the University of Florida and approached Colburn with questions about space technology. Platt formed MAS in the mid-1990s.
Colburn was born in Hollister and since boyhood was interested in space. After serving in the U.S. Air Force he became part of the Apollo Project team. As such, his name is among those inscribed on the Apollo Memorial in Titusville, Fla.
Colburn heads the Hollister Space Project based at the Hollister Airport. HSP has put eight rockets into flight in the desert in the past several years. Colburn said the ninth launch will be in May near Edwards Air Force Base.
“We hope to reach 20,000 feet this time,” he said.
He pointed out that the rockets are built at the hangar but no propellant is kept there for safety’s sake. The propellant is attached only when the rockets are ready to launch.
