Former Martin Marietta CEO, AIAA President Was 86

Aero-News has learned Laurence J. Adams, who once ran one of the country's largest aerospace companies and assisted with investigating the Challenger disaster, passed away February 13 at the age of 86.

Adams became president and CEO of Martin Marietta in 1983, 35 years after he joined the company as an apprentice engineer, according to the Washington Post. He retired three years later... but continued his work in the aerospace industry.

In 1986, Adams served on the National Academy of Sciences panel that advised NASA on the redesign of the solid rocket boosters used on the space shuttle program, following the January 28 loss of the Challenger due to a defective O-ring seal.

It was in that role Adams earned the last of his three NASA Public Service Medals; he earned the first two for his work on the Viking Mars Lander and Skylab programs. In 1988, Adams was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

Almost 10 years later, Adams oversaw an effort for which many of us can be thankful. He led a National Research Panel that recommended the elimination of the deliberate signal disruption from the military's global positioning system satellites. That feature degraded the quality of GPS signals available to nonmilitary users, sharply reducing the system's accuracy.

Adams argued the disruption, intended as a security measure, was obsolete. The military turned off the signal reduction capability in 2000, under an order from President Bill Clinton -- a change that boosted accuracy of civilian GPS readings from 100 meters, to about 10 meters. (The Pentagon has since agreed to deactivate its ability to block those signals in times of crisis, as well -- Ed.)

A former president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Adams also served as chairman of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. He also endowed a chair and scholarship at McDaniel College in Maryland, for graduate students working in the field of special education.

"He was a very modest man, a very humble man; he was a silent philanthropist," said one of his daughters, Teresa Hayes.

But Adams left his mark on the business world, as well... and he wasn't so silent.

In 1982, under then-CEO Thomas Pownall, Adams was "instrumental" in striking down a hostile takeover attempt at Martin Marietta by Bendix. Over a 33-day period -- the time it took Bendix to gain full control of the majority shares it had purchased in Martin Marietta -- the company sold off its non-core businesses, under Adams' stewardship, and launched a hostile takeover bid of its own... against Bendix.

That strategy proved successful, and today is still known as the "Pac-Man" defense by Wall Street analysts. Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed in 1995.

FMI: www.aiaa.org, www.lockheedmartin.com