FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Gil and Phyllis Moore inducted into prestigious Crown Circle

MAXWELL AFB, Ala. — Gil and Phyllis Moore of Monument, Col. have been named to Civil Air Patrol’s Crown Circle for Aerospace Education Leadership.

The Moores were inducted into the Crown Circle March 27 during the 2004 National Congress on Aviation and Space Education in Atlanta. Established in 1979, membership in the Crown Circle is one of the nation’s most prestigious honors bestowed worldwide in the field of aerospace education. This year’s three-day National Congress, now in its 37th year, presented the best practices in aviation and space education to educators from throughout the nation.

The Moores are co-directors of the all-volunteer Project Starshine, which has made possible the flight of three mirrored student atmospheric research satellites. Such satellites reflect sunlight to the ground and can be tracked without specialized equipment. The satellites were designed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, but were actually built by volunteers, including 90,000 students who polished the many aluminum mirrors used in the project.

Project Starshine is only one of many the Moores have supported to promote aerospace education. “Aerospace education is important because it helps our school children, who are our future voters and civilian and military leaders, better understand the continuing importance of aeronautics and space to our nation’s survival,” Gil Moore said. “Our country is beginning to take its international leadership role for granted, and that’s a serious mistake. We don’t want to see our grandchildren and great grandchildren living as second-class citizens in a community of nations whose moral and humanitarian value systems are far less altruistic than those of the United States. The intellectual and economic stimulus provided by our aeronautics and space activities keeps our population excited about and supportive of our international leadership role.”

In 1962, Gil Moore established the AstroMet Division of Thiokol Corp. in Ogden, Utah. For 19 years, the division manufactured and launched a family of sounding rockets from sites throughout the world to study solar-terrestrial physics. Moore went on to work on booster rockets for the U.S. space shuttle program and also joined the adjunct physics faculty at Utah State University.

Moore and wife Phyllis purchased the first reservation for a NASA Get Away Special canister in 1976, a program that provided self-contained experiment canisters that could be placed within the cargo bays on space shuttle flights. The Moores continued to work with the canister program through five shuttle missions, making it possible to place onboard the shuttle experiments developed by more than 50 graduate and undergraduate students. Gil Moore also managed Thiokol’s participation in the Space Shuttle Student Involvement Project, which provided astronaut-tended experiments for three shuttle missions.

In 1987, Gil Moore helped found Globesat, Inc., a small satellite company. He served as outreach director for the Rocky Mountain Space Grant Consortium and program chairman of the AIAA/Utah State University Annual Conference on Small Satellites. He went on to become the first occupant of the Gen. Bernard A. Schriever Chair of Space Systems Engineering in the Department of Astronautics at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Col. While there, Moore helped start a cadet program to build and fly small satellites.
Moore is currently directing a controllable mirror experiment that could be mounted on the International Space Station to send Morse Code sunlight flash messages in daylight to students around the world. He is also directing experiments to determine whether tropospheric standing waves over steep mountain ranges are a source of atmospheric gravity waves. The Moores have involved dozens of K-12 schools in northern Utah and the CAP Cache Valley Composite Squadron in this investigation.

Gil Moore has received many awards for his work, including NASA’s Public Service Medal and Aviation Week & Space Technology’s Laurel Award. He and wife Phyllis jointly received the Houston Rotary National Stellar Award for Space Achievement, and Phyllis Moore was nominated by the U.S. Air Force Academy as their candidate for the Kathryn Wright Award in 1995.

Civil Air Patrol and the U.S. Air Force host the National Congress and its Crown Circle awards. CAP is the official Air Force auxiliary and is a nonprofit organization with almost 62,000 members nationwide. CAP performs 95% of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. Its volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counterdrug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. The members take a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to the almost 27,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs. CAP has been performing missions for America for more than 60 years.

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