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Hi…My name is Bob Greska and I thought
you might want to know a little about me. I come from Massachusetts where I
grew up in my father's cabinet shop. As a cabinetmaker he taught me all about
precision and quality. His shop was located above a fiberglass shop where the
first fiberglass shower stalls were made. In grade school I took a lawn mower
apart to make an air compressor. And that was only the beginning. In high
school, I cannibalized an old stove to make a burner for my part-time popcorn
business that made me some pretty good money. After high school, I mentored
under inventor/entrepreneur, Harold B. MacDonald who developed fiber optics.
Pretty cool, huh? We worked with light, glass fibers and the electro-magnetic
spectrum to develop medical equipment and optical read heads. It was at this
point in my life that I knew what I wanted to do; I just didn't know what you
called it.
Then in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts at Southeastern
Massachusetts University (SMU), now called the University of Massachusetts, I
found out what you called it; Mechanical Engineering. I would of rather become
a professional ski instructor but I buckled down and made college work for me.
After college I was off and running up and down the East and West coast selling
bunji cords while looking for the perfect stretch of beach. Just to keep my
perspective however, I interviewed with various aerospace companies.
One of those companies, Lockheed Missile and Space Company, gave
me a chance to be a part of a premier aerospace organization responsible for
over 50% of all spacecraft that went into space. I learned the finer details of
manufacturing space quality Graphite/Epoxy structures and engineered
graphite/composite sandwich telescoping, tri-tracked large-diameter tubes. It
was here at Lockheed that I engineered and built my first spacecraft
graphite/composite solar array frame. And that isn't even the exciting
part.
As a materials and process engineer, I worked on the ceramic tiles
which were used as the re-entry shield for the first space shuttle, Columbia.
It was my responsibility to oversee the process of turning high purity silicon
dioxide glass fibers into the ceramic billets used to carve out the shuttle
tiles.
Several years before Lockheed and Martin Marietta merged, I went
to work for Martin in Littleton, Colorado as an engineer in the Composites
laboratory. There I worked on various fiber-reinforced composite projects and
as a materials specialist I worked on the design of jet aircraft engine
nacelles. (If you don't know what a nacelle is, just look at the Enterprise on
Star Trek; the two long tubes up and behind the dome are the nacelles). For
four years I was Program Engineer for a $2M year manufacturing program making
ablative heat shield paint used on all commercial aircraft jet engines to
isolate engine fires.
In 1990, I walked from Martin Marietta to start Altitude
Fitness LLC. and I never looked back. I put my efforts into taking the leading
edge of aerospace technology and using it in human performance related
products. Some of the things we were successful in developing were composite
prosthetic devices, a robot arm, a body fitting graphite/kevlar seat for
top-fuel dragsters, graphite-wrapped baseball bats, drum sticks, violin bows,
and miniature rocket nozzles as well as a honeycomb-sandwich force platform for
human metabolic studies. We even developed graphite/epoxy energy return springs
for running shoes and energy return crutches! And, oh yea, high altitude
fitness chambers.
On a lighter side but with no less time and effort is my family
life. Living at the mouth of Waterton Canyon in Littleton Colorado with five
children and a wife who runs a successful German shepherd dog breeding business
keeps me-and everything else-- moving. We plan on building a new house and
updating the shop in the coming year, just to keep up with things that keep
growing.
Well, it was nice to share some of my background with you and I
hope you learned a thing or two about my passion. A passion I am now sharing
with you through thee designing, building and selling of my high altitude
fitness chambers. Drop me a line after you read this and let me know how I can help you reach your vertical limit. |
