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.
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