Joe Sacco is still on a journey of learning and flight

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
Arnold Air Force Base, Tenn. --  As a child, Joe Sacco enjoyed creative, hands on projects.

"I was interested in trying to understand the different forces at work in nature," he said. "I have always been interested in anything that flies; birds, airplanes or rockets. So, I started building model airplanes at an early age."

Money or the lack of it was never an obstacle according to Sacco, who is the chief engineer at the world's largest wind tunnel, Arnold Engineering Development Center's (AEDC) National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) at Moffett Field, Calif.

"If I couldn't get my hands on enough money to buy a model kit, I would build it from scratch," he said. "I began by going to the library to read books about flight and building model airplanes so I could make mine fly better.

"I also enjoyed science fiction because it got me thinking about what the future might hold," he continued. "This helped me to visualize goals to work toward."

Armed with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif., Sacco first worked for Rockwell Corp., and Lockheed.

Sacco, who first worked at the NFAC in 1991, has built a career on helping to ensure that everything from novel aircraft, cutting-edge helicopter rotors to space payload parachutes will "fly" safely in an environment simulating flight.

In 2002, after learning that his wife was pregnant with triplet boys, Sacco transitioned to a research position with the satellite systems branch of NASA. He learned "another aspect of systems engineering and met some great people there who were doing work on projects like Kepler and the SOFIA aircraft."

In 2006, AEDC's Mark Betzina and Col. Vince Albert asked Sacco to come back on board at the NFAC to help with the reactivation of the unique ground testing complex.

Currently as chief engineer, he is primarily responsible for helping with the oversight and review of test preparation and operations there. He also trains test directors and wind tunnel operators.

"I am involved mostly with operations and technical aspects of work," he said. "I'm not an expert in any one field, but I provide systems engineering support for all the different aspects of testing. The tests can be simple ones where wind blows over models, or more complex tests that involve helicopter rotors and jet engines."

Looking back on his life, Sacco said from childhood to the present day, many mentors, including his parents, instructors and coworkers, have helped inspire him along the way.
He is now in a position to pass along some of those lessons and his love of learning to his own children and other young people.

"NASA has a program where student interns are brought in for three to six months," Sacco said. "I have had the opportunity to work with them and I enjoy it quite a bit. I also volunteer time at my kids' grade school; they're in second grade now. Last year I did science demonstrations where I used tinker toys to help the younger kids visualize solid, liquid and gas molecules. They definitely enjoyed the dry ice demonstrations."

Speaking of his wife and children, Sacco said, "Mary will come down with the boys so they can see some of the tests that we do. They've been in to see the Mars Science Laboratory parachute test as well as the UH-60 rotor test at the NFAC."

Sacco said learning should be a life-long process.

"I am continually learning," he said. "There is much to explore, a lot of different areas interest me, aeronautical engineering, space travel, computer engineering, life underwater..."

His advice to young people interested in aeronautics is uncompromising.

"Explore and let your imagination go wild," he said. "Study everything that flies. You can learn a lot from observing nature, so keep your eye on insects, birds, and fish. Hunt down the answers to whatever you don't understand. If you don't understand what you read, don't get frustrated, just keep reading more and eventually you'll figure it out. Try to understand how things work, and how you would make them work better. As my father told me, 'Nothing you learn is ever wasted.'"