Wednesday, March 7, 2007 Mt. Mary College 2900 N. Menomonee River Parkway Milwaukee, WI

DIRECTIONS

6:00 PM - Social Hour
7:00 PM - Dinner
8:00 PM - Meeting and Program

Dinner – catered by “Saz’s Restaurant” (Prices include tax and gratuity)
            •           Entrees (choice of one, please specify when making reservations)
            ◦           London Broil, or
            ◦           Shrimp Scampi, or
            ◦           Vegetable Stuffed Puff
with:
            ◦           Green beans with almonds
            ◦           Olive couscous
            ◦           Salad with dressing
            ◦           Hot baked roles and butter
            ◦           Key Lime pie
            ◦           Fresh brewed coffee

Members/Guests – $22.00
Chemistry Students – $10.00

For dinner reservations, please call
Bruce Warren at Marquette University
 (414) 288-7065
or
e-mail: bruce.warren@mu.edu

subject="ACS Dinner Reservation"
by
Wednesday, March 1, 2007
All are welcome.
 Come and hear the speaker without attending the dinner.

ABSTRACT

In general, thermal protection systems (TPS) can be divided into 4 categories.  The first two – active cooling and passive cooling – are generally reserved for specialized suborbital flight operations and are not practical for space flight.  The third category – ablative heat shields – were used in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo manned space programs and have more recently been used to protect probes exploring other planets.
The last and most complex TPS developed has been for the fleet of Space Shuttles.  Designed to be reusable, the various components of the overall Shuttle TPS have to meet varying performance requirements based on their position on the orbiter and the stresses (thermal, vibrational, acoustical) encountered during flight operations.
This presentation will review the chemistry behind the development of TPS for manned space flight, including ablative heat shields and the Space Shuttle TPS.  Special focus will be given to the Shuttle’s high-temperature reusable surface insulation (HRSI) “black tiles” for which CERAC, Inc. manufactures the tile coating.  Finally, materials being considered as components for future TPS will be discussed.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Mark A. Drezdzon was born in Milwaukee and raised in New Berlin.  After receiving a Gilbert Chemistry Set at age 8, the next big push toward chemistry as a career would be given by chemistry teacher Mr. Howard Sanders at Eisenhower High School.  Mr. Sanders also served as track coach, providing easy punishment for “The Nitrogen Triiodide Incident of 1975” with a substitute teacher during Mark’s junior year.
Staying in the Milwaukee area, Mark attended Marquette University (home of the Warriors) where he was one of the student band directors at Marquette’s 1977 NCAA Championship run in Atlanta, GA.  In his spare time, he earned a B.S. in Chemistry and in Mathematics with Honors.  Professor Chuck Wilkie’s class on inorganic chemistry sparked Mark’s interest in the field.  From there, he attended Northwestern University and, working under the guidance Professor Duward F. Shriver, studied the reduction of CO in metal carbonyl complexes and the resulting methane yield dependence on metal nuclearity.
Mark began his career in industry at the Amoco Research Center (now BP) in Naperville, IL in 1984 where he worked on developing novel materials for use in catalysis.  Key research areas included polyoxometallate-pillered hydrotalcite clays, mixed-metal oxides, and modified catalysts for polypropylene production.  While at Amoco, Mark co-authored the 2nd edition of Du Shriver’s “The Manipulation of Air-Sensitive Compounds.  In 1990, he moved back to Milwaukee to work for CERAC, Inc. as the Manager of Technical Services.  Mark then moved to Aldrich Chemical Company in 1993 where, over the next 7 years, he served in various positions, including Manager of Publications & Promotions, President of Aldrich-APL, Marketing Manager for Organics/Inorganics, and Manager of Laboratory Equipment.
Currently, Mark is the Vice President of QA/QC at CERAC, Inc. where he’s been since his return in late 2000.  Besides overseeing QA/QC functions and the Analytical Laboratory, Mark is the lead chemist at CERAC and is involved in all synthesis/development work, scale-up, process design, and general technical tasks.  Upon his return and through mid-2001, he directed the team of CERAC personnel who re-invented the manufacture of “The Space Shuttle Material” after it had not been made for over 15 years.  Without this success, the Shuttle Fleet may have been grounded in late 2002 due to lack of materials for producing replacement thermal tiles.