Ken Thomas – NESC Academy Biography

Kenneth S. Thomas is a second-generation space engineer who was graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Central Connecticut State University and worked over four decades in industry. In 1989, he became a contractor project engineer (task manger and team leader) on the Shuttle Extravehicular Mobility Unit Program. To develop his expertise in this area, he conducted hundreds of hours of unpaid research interviewing scores of early spacesuit designers and engineers from many organizations who were directly involved from the beginning of U.S. spacesuit developments to what was then current. Mr. Thomas also reviewed documents from the early NASA period to provide further insight and validate interview results. In 1993, he became a consultant to the National Air and Space Museum’s Space History Division where he gained access to even greater documentation, interview information, and insights. He was a suit-system project engineer for over 20 years and served as principal investigator or key technical support engineer on Lunar-Mars suit efforts for over 15 years, being an inventor or the sole inventor on four international spacesuit patents. He is currently teaching engineering part-time at Central Connecticut State University.