Our brilliant Renaissance man, Robert Edwin Sharples, died after a long illness this past Sunday, November 22, 2020. Born on February 4, 1937 in Ridgewood Queens New York, he was eighty-three years old. He moved to California in 1961 and became a resident of Manhattan Beach ten years later. Bob had a long career in aerospace as an engineering manager and proposal manager. He managed numerous very large proposals for Northrop Grumman/TRW, including James Webb, National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), and Jupiter Icy-moons Orbiter (JIMO). The sum of the winning bids for the list of proposals he managed is nearly nine billion dollars. He also worked on the development of the US Air Force’s Minuteman III MIRV ballistic missile weapon system, serving as the Manager of Systems Engineering and Test for the Minuteman Program Office in charge of the testing of the weapon system. Other management work included the development of real-time software for the … [Read more...]