Bryn Mawr Resident Peter Ayoub Is A Rocket Scientist

Of the many ultra-expensive technologies that comprise America's fighter planes, the most crucial let pilots escape safely when they are in trouble and out of options.

Longtime Bryn Mawr resident Peter Ayoub, a rocket scientist, has spent his career trying to engineer the perfect getaway.

A Love of Flight

He began his career in 1968 with Boeing in Ridley Park, after getting an aeronautical engineering degree from the University of Illinois. Ayoub was born in Jerusalem, and as he grew up in Jordan and Lebanon, aeronautics, aerospace and airplane design always intrigued him.

“When you have clear weather, you can see birds. And I used to watch birds, wondering how they fly—why one bird would go higher than the other, and if it catches a thermal it can go up higher,” Ayoub said. “It’s basically just like a dream. I was fascinated with flight.”

In particular, Ayoub loved the DC-3—"the one in the Indiana Jones movies," he said. He's flown in one about six times.

“I used to watch the DC-3 take off, and I wanted to design something faster and less noisy,” said Ayoub. “It takes a while to get going and is extremely noisy, but it’s extremely reliable—a very reliable airplane. It turned out to be one of the best planes."

Working for the Military

Ayoub lived all around the Main Line for a decade until he and his wife settled down in Bryn Mawr in 1978. After working with Boeing, he worked with the Army at the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia until its operations were relocated to Northern New Jersey. 

At that time, he found a job at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia and in 1979 began working at the Naval Air Development Center in Warminster, PA. Though it moved to southern Maryland in 1996, he continued working there until his retirement in 2000. 

Ayoub was working at the Naval Air Development Center on Jan. 28, 1986—the day of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that killed all seven crew members on board.

The Rogers Commission was formed to investigate the accident, and the Navy was part of a team that conducted studies on the possibility of putting in escape systems.

Ayoub Designs Escapes

In the end, they came up with an escape system to cover the landing portion of a shuttle’s mission, in which astronauts would be able to escape at about 20,000 feet, Ayoub said.

“But that was only one portion of my career,” Ayoub said.

His specialization was escape systems.

“Basically, it was a last resort for the pilot to get out, and I spent a good part of my career working on that in the Navy,” said Ayoub, who has four escape-related patents to his name. 

That included looking at requirements for the development of escape systems for future fighters. With that, he became part of the Joint Strike Fighter program, which was a large-scale study to look at replacing fighters for the military.

The Department of Defense selected two contractors: Boeing with the X-32 and Lockheed Martin with the X-35 (“X” stands for experimental, Ayoub explained). Both contractors were required to build and demonstrate three different configurations—for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. 

Ayoub’s involvement was to put together the design requirements for ejection systems as the lead engineer for the Navy and Air Force escape teams. 

In 2000, the Department of Defense awarded the contract to Lockheed Martin for the X-35, which will become the F-35 ("F" stands for fighter) and will effectively replace most fighters currently in use, including the F-16 and F/A-18.

In addition to the photos of test runs of the joint strike fighters, another wall in Ayoub’s basement houses plaques of recognition for his years of service and a mail carrier bag from WWII he was given at his retirement party. He wasn’t sure off the top of his head what he’s done with the numerous letters he’s received, including one from President Bill Clinton.

“Working for the Navy was a big honor,” he said. “There, I thought I peaked in terms of what my desires were. It turned out to be one of the best things I ever did.” 

He said he was fortunate to be working at the Navy at the time those teams were being developed. 

Most of Ayoub’s flying was done as a passenger, traveling across the United States, to Europe and back. Though Ayoub had a private pilot’s license at one point, he never got into being a pilot of test flights—he settled for being a passenger on some of them.

In his retirement, Ayoub is not entirely removed from his life's work. He still does consulting work for various companies, he and his family love the movie Top Gun, and the "dad area" of his Bryn Mawr basement is decorated with pictures of joint strike fighters.