RTN Raytheon Co

By James R. Hagerty 

After the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in 1957, American scientists were under the gun to top that stunning feat. Harold Rosen, an electrical engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co., proposed small, spinning satellites that could relay telephone calls and TV signals around the world.

Many of his colleagues dismissed the idea as impractical. Dr. Rosen struggled for years to win funding for his project. "This was not the most auspicious time to propose a commercial space program," he later wrote. "The most vivid impression most people then had of space-related activities was of rockets blowing up at Cape Canaveral."

In 1963, after myriad delays and technical problems, his Syncom satellite was finally launched into orbit. President Kennedy tried it out by making a call to Nigerian Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The next year the Syncom satellite system relayed live TV coverage of the Tokyo Summer Olympics to the U.S.

Dr. Rosen went on to direct development of more than 150 satellites. Among his many awards was the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 1985. In his late 80s, he was still fit enough for gymnastics, including swinging from one steel ring to the next at Santa Monica Beach.

Dr. Rosen died Jan. 30 at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. He was 90 years old and had suffered a minor stroke in 2015.

Harold Alvin Rosen was born March 20, 1926, in New Orleans. His father was a dentist. When Harold was a teenager, his parents divorced, and his mother went to work as a secretary to support her three children. Young Harold built a ham radio as a teenager and graduated from high school at 15.

He then studied electrical engineering at Tulane University but paused his studies to join the Navy and work with radio communications and radar during World War II. After his Navy service, he completed his degree at Tulane and was unsure whether to continue his studies at Harvard University or the California Institute of Technology. A Life magazine story about beach parties in Southern California persuaded him to head for Caltech, where he earned a doctorate in electrical engineering in 1951.

During and after his Caltech studies he worked at Raytheon Co., gaining experience in the electronics used to guide antiaircraft missiles. In 1956, he joined Hughes Aircraft, founded by the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes.

Competing against Bell Labs and others for supremacy in satellites, Dr. Rosen wanted a geostationary system, in which satellites 22,300 miles above the Earth would move in sync with the spinning planet. That meant antennas on Earth could always point in one direction, eliminating the need for complex tracking systems. Other scientists believed the satellites needed for a geostationary system would be unreliable and too heavy to launch.

"I considered it me against the world," he later told the Los Angeles Times.

Dr. Rosen counted on his knowledge of electronics and missile guidance. He and his colleagues came up with a cylindrical satellite weighing only about 55 pounds. The Syncom satellite would spin in space, making it easier to stabilize -- similar to the way a quarterback throws a spiral to avoid wobbles.

When Hughes hesitated to fund the project, Dr. Rosen discussed it with his former employers at Raytheon. To avoid losing Dr. Rosen and his team, Hughes decided to back Dr. Rosen's concept. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration contracted to buy three of the satellites and launched them.

The first Syncom launch, in February 1963, failed when a rocket malfunctioned. Six months later, a second launch succeeded. Hughes was on its way to becoming a powerhouse in the nascent commercial-satellite industry, greatly expanding the scope for international telephone calls and data transmission previously handled mainly by copper cables. One result: national same-day distribution of The Wall Street Journal via satellite transmission to regional printing plants.

Dr. Rosen later helped design much larger, more complex satellites, powerful enough to reach small dishes on Earth, including those bringing hundreds of TV channels to individual homes. In the mid-1980s, he and colleagues worked out ways for astronauts on the Space Shuttle to repair satellites in orbit.

"Harold was the brains behind a lot of what we did," said Steven Dorfman, a former president of the Hughes telecommunications and space business.

Dr. Rosen was in Sri Lanka in 1990 when his first grandchild was born. Satellites made it easily affordable for his son Rocky to fax a picture of her to him, his family recalled.

After retiring from Hughes in 1993, Dr. Rosen went into business with his brother, Ben Rosen, a venture capitalist who helped found Compaq Computer Corp. Their Rosen Motors developed a hybrid-electric powertrain for cars, promising virtually no emissions, but auto makers declined to embrace the technology. "It was a technical success and a commercial failure," Ben Rosen said.

In recent years, Harold Rosen consulted for Boeing Co. and conducted research in areas including spacecraft, gravitational waves, synthetic fuels and climate engineering. He exercised regularly on Santa Monica beach. He also enjoyed crossword puzzles and bloody marys -- sometimes at the same time.

Dr. Rosen is survived by his wife of 32 years, Deborah Castleman, a satellite-systems engineer, as well his brother, two sons and three grandchildren. His first wife, Rosetta Hirschfeld Rosen, died in 1969.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2017 10:14 ET (15:14 GMT)

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