French, James R.
Dates
- Existence: 1935-
Biographical Note: James R. French
James “Jim” French is an aerospace engineer active in the later 20th and early 21st centuries. He helped design, develop and test the rocket engines for the Apollo/Saturn launch vehicles and the Apollo Lunar Module. He also worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where he contributed to the Mariner, Viking, and Voyager missions, and consulted with Blue Origin.
James Ross French, Jr. was born in 1935 in Amarillo, Texas to James and Cathey French. His father’s side of the family was from Texas and Louisiana and his mother’s side was from Tennessee. French began life as a farmhand but soon developed a love and appreciation for science. Eventually he would attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT he studied aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering, graduating in 1958. He returned home during summers to help with his father’s farm, but during his last summer during his college years worked for Douglas Aircraft Company on the Thor missile.
Upon graduating from MIT French took a job with Rocketdyne working on engines. He ran the very first test on an H-1 engine and then worked on the F-1 and J-2 engines which were used for the Apollo/Saturn launch vehicles. After five years at Rocketdyne, French decided he wanted to get experience somewhere else and took a job at Space Technology Laboratories (later TRW, Inc.). There, he worked on the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and Lunar Module Descent Engine (LMDE), plus some other projects for about four years.
In 1967 French began working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). On staff there for 19 years, he contributed to a wide variety of projects Including Mariners five through ten, Viking, Voyager, the SP-100 space nuclear reactor program and other projects. Discontent with his work at JPL, French began looking into the private sector. In 1986 he got hired as Chief Engineer at a company called American Rocket which was developing hybrid rocket engines for a low-cost launch vehicle. The company folded within a few years, and his friend Mike Griffin helped French get into consulting work, providing expertise to both private businesses, including Blue Origin, and government agencies, such as the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). The McDonnell Douglas DC-X Delta Clipper project was among many he worked on.
French is a long-time advocate of a mission architecture for a Mars probe, known as Mars Sample Return with In-Situ Propellant Production, that would manufacture propellant from resources at the target planet to power a return trip, dramatically reducing the size of the outbound vessel and the cost of the mission. He published an article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society in 1989 recommending in-situ propellant production for a manned Mars mission, though the technique would not be feasible until a Mars base was well-established, due to the risks of relying on fueling a spacecraft with in-situ produced propellant. Robert Zubrin credits this paper as a forerunner of the Mars Direct mission architecture.
The summer the French had worked at Douglas Aircraft Company, he took flight lessons at Santa Monica Airport in California in a Cessna 140. He didn’t quite complete his lessons before he had to return to school. In 1962 he completed his flight training and got his pilot’s license. Ten years later, in 1972, he joined the Civil Air Patrol and became a search pilot flying a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog. French also owned an American Champion Citabria 7ECA and a Frank Smith Miniplane for some time, in which he liked to perform acrobatics. He ultimately flew for 52 years, hitting 2600 hours.
As of 2015, French continued doing consulting work with Blue Origin and other private space systems. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), has been a member of several AIAA technical committees, and chaired the AIAA Space Systems Technical Committee. He co-authored the book Space Vehicle Design with Michael Griffin in 1991, in addition to authoring at least 40 technical papers.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.