James R. French is a prominent U.S. aerospace engineer

Aerospace engineering

Aerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is divided into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering...

. While working for different NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 contractors during the 1960s, he helped design, develop and test the rocket engines for the Apollo

Project Apollo

The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration , that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F...

/Saturn

Saturn (rocket family)

The Saturn family of American rocket boosters was developed by a team of mostly German rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. Originally proposed as a military satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo moon...

 launch vehicles and the Apollo Lunar Module

Apollo Lunar Module

The Apollo Lunar Module was the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft built for the US Apollo program by Grumman to carry a crew of two from lunar orbit to the surface and back...

 that enabled humans to walk on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

. He then joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The facility is headquartered in the city of Pasadena on the border of La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena...

 where he worked on the Mariner

Mariner program

The Mariner program was a program conducted by the American space agency NASA that launched a series of robotic interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury from 1963 to 1973...

, Viking

Viking program

The Viking program consisted of a pair of American space probes sent to Mars, Viking 1 and Viking 2. Each spacecraft was composed of two main parts, an orbiter designed to photograph the surface of Mars from orbit, and a lander designed to study the planet from the surface...

, and Voyager

Voyager program

The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s...

 missions.

French is a long-time advocate of a mission architecture for a Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

 probe, known as Mars Sample Return with In-Situ Propellant Production, that would manufacture propellant from resources at the target planet to power a return trip, to dramatically reduce the size of the outbound vessel and the cost of the mission. He also published an article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society

Journal of the British Interplanetary Society

The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society is a technical scientific journal, first published in 1934. JBIS is concerned with space science and space technology...

in 1989 recommending in-situ propellant production for a manned Mars mission, though he recommended that the technique would not be feasible until a Mars base were already well-established, due to the risks of relying on fueling a spacecraft with in-situ produced propellant. Robert Zubrin

Robert Zubrin

Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of the manned exploration of Mars. He was the driving force behind Mars Direct—a proposal intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission...

 credits this paper as a forerunner of the Mars Direct

Mars Direct

Mars Direct is a proposal for a manned mission to Mars. Proponents of the scheme have claimed it to be both cost-effective and that it can be conducted with current technology. It was originally detailed in a research paper by NASA engineers Robert Zubrin and David Baker in 1990, and later expanded...

 mission architecture, in which French's concern is resolved by devoting a separate spacecraft to the return trip, so that it can be verified as fueled and ready to launch from Mars before the crew launches from Earth.

French now works as a private space systems engineering consultant, and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is the professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA was founded in 1963 from the merger of two earlier societies: the American Rocket Society , founded in 1930 as the American Interplanetary Society , and the Institute...

. He has co-authored the book Space Vehicle Design (ISBN 1-56347-539-1) with Michael Griffin

Michael D. Griffin

Michael Douglas Griffin is an American physicist and aerospace engineer. From April 13, 2005 to January 20, 2009 he served as Administrator of NASA, the space agency of the United States...

, who was the chief of NASA until January 20, 2009.