History: Bellman and Matranga
This photo Nalin and I found in the archive is that of Donald Bellman and Gene Matranga of NASA Flight Research Center (probably taken in the 1964-66 timeframe). Bellman was the PM and Matranga and Drake (not pictured) were engineers on the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) project in 1964-65. -Jeff Veselenak, AIAA AV Executive Advisor.
More info is at the Dryden Fact Sheet for the LLRV.
Do/did you know these two gentlemen? Did you work on or with the LLRV project? We'd love to hear your story. Please click below to leave your comments on this post.
Labels: history
posted by AIAA AV at
12:03 PM
3 Comments:
Although I worked at the AF Rocket Propulsion Lab in the 60's, I knew them both, Don much better than Gene. Don went to St.Paul;s Episcopal Church and was quite active. He was the Senior Warden for a number of years and very active with his wife Betty with youth ministry. She founded the Lacaster Parent Nursery which existed for over 45 years. Don died about 10 years ago after retiring and later moving to the Santa Barbara area.
Richard Spann
Don is my grandfather. After he left NASA, he devoted much of his energy to organizing interdenominational Christian conferences on the Holy Spirit. He helped my parents move to Santa Barbara and consequently I grew up there. He's a great man that I barely got to know, but I enjoy learning now about his work at NASA. Two weekends ago at Betty's 90th birthday party, I met Bill Schweikhard who worked with Don and graduated with Neil Armstrong. Bill's stories about Don are invaluable to me.
- Marc Madrigal
Gene Matranga is my grandfather. I dont have much to say about the other man. But i love what they did. It is very fascinating to me. I love being a matranga!!!!!
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