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Meet: Robert Cenker
Aerospace Systems ConsultantRobert Cenker currently consults with various firms in the areas of spacecraft design, assembly, flight operations, and micro-gravity research. This has included launch vehicle evaluation and system engineering support for Motorola on Iridium. His last two years with RCA were spent as Manager of Payload Accommodations on EOS Platform, and he was responsible for definition and co-ordination of interfaces supporting the utilization of the EOS by numerous (ten to fifteen) complex scientific payloads. Prior assignments at RCA included Integration and Test Manager for the Satcom D & E space craft, responsibility for implementation of all launch site activities, and satisfaction of multiple launch vehicle interfaces (Delta, STS and Ariane) by the spacecraft bus design.
What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?
A long, long, long, long, long time ago (40 years) as a ten year old boy in Southwestern Pennsylvania (near Uniontown Pa.) I was fascinated by anything that flew, or could be made to fly; airplanes, rockets, helicopters, parachutes, rocks... I loved to read, and was fascinated by the author Willy Lee, who wrote about the then current and projected space program; astronauts, spaceships, and space stations. I was encouraged by my parents. My father, an unemployed coal miner, worked as a laborer on home construction, fixed TV’s at night, and was fascinated by math.
Who inspired you to pursue your current career?
It seemed that I was blessed with very good luck. While my teachers were all in general excellent, my high school chemistry, physics, and math teachers were particularly helpful. To further my good fortune, when Penn State opened the new Fayette campus in Uniontown, several of these same high school teachers joined the staff and taught at the freshman college level, greatly easing my potentially traumatic transition from high school into college. With the basics from the Fayette campus, I was able to do reasonably well at Penn State, graduating with a degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1970.
What educational background do you have, and is it typical of your field?
Unfortunately, jobs were very difficult to find in the space program at this time. So I got a position supporting the design of nuclear reactors for ships, but was determined to get into the space program. One year later, when my college advisor had an opening for a graduate student, I readily left the job to return to Penn State to get my Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering. With this, I was finally able to get a job in the space business, supporting the design of commercial communications satellites with RCA’s Astro Electronics Division. At RCA, I discovered that spacecraft were primarily electrical, and I had little electrical engineering experience. After several after-hours courses at RCA, I began night classes at Rutgers, eventually getting a Master’s Degree there in electrical Engineering.
What kinds of things do you find most exciting about your work?
The work at RCA was exactly what I enjoyed doing. Like puzzles, real engineering design tasks involve gathering available information, sorting out what’s available and what isn’t, what pieces go where, and assembling them all into something (hopefully) better than what was originally started with. What I discovered I really loved was spacecraft operations, or actually flying the spacecraft. I once described them to my family as the world’s most expensive radio control toys. I would happily sit at a console in Washington D.C., type in commands, and watch the data come back as a 7000 lb spacecraft the size of a small room moved at my command.
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