About Frontier Astronautics, LLC
At Frontier Astronautics, the name really does say it all. We believe that space is the new frontier, and it is just waiting for us to come get it. We believe in getting things done, building and testing hardware, not writing studies and reports.
Our World Class Team of Engineers
Timothy Bendel, MS Aero E. - President
Tim has extensive experience in the areas of propulsion and attitude control. Tim was a Senior Propulsion Engineer on the Titan launch vehicle and Principal Engineer of the Titan II Attitude Control System during his seven years with Lockheed Martin in Denver, and received four company awards for his performance there. Tim was also Senior Principal Propulsion Engineer for Orbital Sciences, working with the NK-33 engine in their Taurus II vehicle.
Kristof Richmond, PhD Mech E. - Control Systems Engineer
Kristof is a Control Systems Engineer with experience in a wide variety of sensing, guidance, navigation and control applications. His Ph.D. research at Stanford focused on combining inertial, acoustic Doppler, and computer vision systems to enable a new class of underwater robots capable of autonomously interacting with their environment. This culminated in a robotic survey of the sunken wreckage of the USS Macon using the navigation and control system he developedi. At Frontier, Kristof has been involved in the development and fielding of the navigation and control systems for several vehicles, including the Laramie Rose, the ENDURANCE vehicle (including its deployment to Antartica), and the VALKYRIE vehicle. Kristof is the author of numerous academic papers and is a member of the IEEE.
David Hampton - Sr. Stress Engineer
For over 35 years, Dave has been closely involved in the structural design and analysis of some of the nation's most effective strategic missile systems. He has worked on the Minuteman, Peacekeeper and Titan missile systems as well as numerous defense related satellite programs. Dave was the Lead Stress Engineer for the Targets Element of the Ballistic Missile Defense Program at Lockheed Martin Astronautics. Tasks included supervision of a stress group supporting the design/development of structural components for the modification of Trident C-4 missiles to launch simulated foreign ballistic re-entry vehicles. The stress group was responsible for extensive modeling of the entire Trident C-4 structure. Dave was also a Senior Stress Engineer for the Core Element of the Titan Launch Vehicle Program. He performed structural analysis on core elements of the Titan II and Titan IV programs.
Since his retirement from Lockheed Martin, he has kept active with Frontier Astronautics, some home building projects and a little camping with his wife and three dogs
Degrees:
Masters in Assistance Management, University of South California, 1976
Masters in Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, 1974
Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, 1972