(Active 1964 - 2009) Aeronautical Engineer

David Michael Simpson was an aeronautical engineer who was involved in a number of projects covering both aircraft and satellite design. He began his career in 1964 as an Aeronautical Engineering Apprentice working at Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd. Following completion of his training, he would become an Aircraft Design Engineer working on the Hawker Siddeley Hawk jet trainer, computer-aided design research and future projects weight engineering.

In 1976 he joined the Royal Navy and served as a Lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm at Royal Naval Air Station Lee-on-Solent also known as HMS Daedalus. He would leave the Navy 2 years later in 1978 and go on to work as a Project Engineer at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Here he worked on a number of projects beginning as a Thermal Analyst on CHASE and the ROSAT soft X-ray wide-field camera. In this position, he was responsible for the design and production of general-purpose finite difference thermal analysis software THETA. He would go on to work on Thermo-mechanical design and Non-Linear Drive Mechanism Analysis for the ERS-1 spacecraft before becoming Engineering Manager on CHASE (Coronal Helium Abundance Spacelab Experiment). This was launched on the space shuttle Challenger in 1985.

In 1988 David Simpson moved to Principia Mechanica Ltd as the Head of Mechanical Systems. Here he began as Chief Engineer and Stress Analysis of the Hypervelocity Impact Test Facility for the Atomic Energy Authority, where he designed the facility, safety system and operating procedures. He also worked as Supervising Engineer at the Seismic Test and Qualification Centre as well as a Project Manager on the 6 Degree-of-Freedom ship motion simulator and the Downhole Seismic Source Programme.

In 1990 he would join Astrium Ltd beginning as Principal Engineer working on structural dynamic analysis before going on to work on the SOHO payload module mechanical system. In 1993 he would go on to work as Payload Systems Design & Technology Group Leader responsible for the snapdragon spacecraft architecture. In 2003 he became the Systems Engineering Manager for the European Space Agency’s TerraSAR-L.

In 2009 David Simpson would retire from Astrium but would remain on call as a consultant.