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THOMAS V. JONES President Northrop Corp. Beverly Hills, Calif...
There is no doubt that Northrop-and Tom Jones-have accomplished much in this relatively new field, not the least of which is getting across to both Government and competition that space vehicles can be built, operated and maintained at a minimum cost without sacrificing performance or reliability. However, to my mind, the biggest miracle was moving Phoenix and Tucson to New Mexico. Does Arizona know...
Jones chose to regard Northrop not as a collection of product lines but as a storehouse of skills. Though its F89 and Snark rapidly became obsolete, Northrop, in building them, had become expert in the fields of guidance, communications, fire control and optics. Tom Jones, steadily moving up through the Northrop hierarchy, recommended sweeping changes to exploit the company's spectrum of esoteric knowledge. By the time he took over the presidency from Collins in 1959, Northrop had become subcontractor to the whole space age, had even erased the word "Aircraft" from its corporate title. "It made much more...
...Project Mariner probes to Mercury and Venus. "Ultimately," says Jones, "the same technology will serve on long-distance airliners and ocean liners." Work on the Snark also convinced Jones of the need for a pulse-taking computer to run a continuous inspection on every missile. From that experience Northrop developed its intelligent Datico, which checks out not only the Polaris but half a dozen Army missiles as well as the flight-control and radar-identification systems on Air Force planes...
From planes, Northrop made a short jump into recoverable Mach 2 target missiles for ack-ack training. The target drones, of which Northrop is the world's largest builder, float down to earth on parachutes after the shoot is finished-and they gave Northrop expertise in high-altitude landing systems. The eventual result: the Northrop-built recovery system for the Mercury capsule, including its 63-ft.-wide parachute, which brought Astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom down from space...