The GRABET Orbit

I began graduate school at the University of Texas in the fall of 1997. The following spring, Roger Broucke approved my research topic, a computer model of the Mars trajectory.  I set it up as two Three Body Problems (3BP). Dr. Broucke, who did his PhD (and many subsequent papers) on the Three Body Problem, was excited.  He had not done 3BP research in over 20 years, he said. He later published a paper on one of my early problems setting up the Mars trajectory, negotiating a singularity near Earth and Mars.

etting up the initial solution was the “holy grail” of orbital mechanics at that time.  Without a good first guess that actually reached Mars, Dr. Hull’s industry-standard nonlinear program (NLP) failed - miserably.  This is me, stuck in the infamous “Bermuda Triangle” graveyard of grad students who failed to solve the Mars problem…

As Dr. Broucke poured over my FORTRAN code – I had used his Runge-Kutta 7/8 integrator, with his permission; a very fast, compact algorithm.  He mumbled, “You know, sometimes they take baby steps backward in time in optimization routines… You can do that, you know, when the only forces in the model are gravity because gravity is a central force. This is how astronomers study the evolution of the solar system.  They …” The absent-minded professor rambling on.

Boom!

I practically ran out of the room.  Two weeks later, I reached Mars. WITHOUT NEEDING DR.  HULL’S MONSTER NLP PROGRAM.

Wow… I cracked the “holy grail” of orbital mechanics and created a rock-solid first-guess solution to the Mars (and any other interplanetary) trajectory.  When I mentioned it to other orbital professors, they laughed – another grad student who solved the impossible by cutting corners. 

Dr. Broucke refused to help me further: “Not until you pass your qualifying exams. It is department policy.”

Not so! Mars Pathfinder 1.0 was a full 3D simulation in double-precision FORTRAN, accurate to 16 significant digits from beginning to end.  Doh! Nobody uses FORTRAN anymore; C++ is the new standard.

NOTE: I always knew Roger Broucke was an ace FORTRAN expert, but only recently did I discover that his Runge-Kutta 7/8 was quite remarkable for that era. It was the only FORTRAN integrator that was stable for backward integration, which was used over very short intervals in several optimization methods.  Nobody had ever tried it over half a trajectory; I suppose even Dr. Broucke was skeptical of my claims of solving the Mars problem.

Mars Pathfinder 2.0

After two years trying to get feedback on my Mars research, I boycotted all classes in the fall of 2000.  The department chairman, Dr. Dolling, assigned Cesar Ocampo as a second advisor for me.  This was Dr. Ocampo’s first semester on the faculty, and I was his first grad student.  Dr. Ocampo set up the seminar. His name is on the flyer.

Roger Broucke did not go to the seminar.  His own grad student; his ONLY grad student.  Cesar Ocampo was there, Wallace Fowler, David Hull, PAM Abusali, and a NASA engineer from Houston. 

By the time my seminar was over, everybody in that room knew that I had solved the “holy grail” and really did reach Mars with a direct solution.  It was quite simple: I divided an extremely nonlinear problem into two, solved each independently, and patched them together at the min-point thrust.  Integrate forward to Mars from the midpoint, backward to Earth.

For the last two years, Roger Broucke, Wallace Fowler, and others have told me, “Where’s your literature search. Do your homework!”  I always responded, “I don’t need to.  If anybody had discovered my method, it would be in every freshman orbital mechanics book.”

Now they knew I was telling the truth. 

Mad Scramble to Fame

A week after the seminar, I met with Cesar Ocampo to go over my research.  He gave me a stack of NASA’s “pork chop plots,” two-body solutions of the Mars trajectory using Lambert’s Theorem.  I returned them a week later, saying, “My solution is not in there.”  Ocampo quit as my advisor on the spot. Wallace Fowler was my advisor thereafter.

Then recently I discovered that Cesar Ocampo stole my research: Mars Pathfinder was the exact solution he used to get a major NASA grant for the Copernicus application – Ocampo just set it up with an NLP and juiced it for a little more savings.

Suddenly, the sequence of events after my seminar made perfect sense.  They weren’t discrimination at all, but a concerted, planned, premeditated campaign to get rid of me so Cesar Ocampo et al. could use my research.

Anchored in US Copyrights

The original FORTRAN was copyrighted in July 1988, two years before Ocampo came to campus.  Half a dozen other copyrights and several papers published in Walter Babin’s General Science Journal establish this timeline.

I will present each document or detail, and then align the context with the narrative. First, Ocampo’s backstory. He knew my work from the seminar and our meetings afterward.  I created a full Windows program, Mars Pathfinder 2.0, and put it online by the start of the spring semester of 2001.

Copernicus was to become NASA’s flagship trajectory analysis tool.  Ocampo became quite famous at NASA, especially when he returned to his native Colombia.  The historical record shows his work on Copernicus began in the spring of 2001 – right after my Mars seminar- creating a prototype (stealing my app), applying for, then receiving a UT research grant in August 2001, then a full NASA grant that November.

At that very moment, Ocampo was signing the NASA grant – using Mars Pathfinder – he was on  an ad hoc committee that expelled me, saying, “… your research isn’t worth an undergraduate senior thesis, much less a dissertation.”

Finally, I was out of the program, and my research was up for grabs.  Unfortunately for Ocampo and the Aerospace Department, they left a massive paper trail of almost 50 official documents.  Moreover, there is one undeniable fact that anchors these allegations in stone.

The Runge-Kutta 7/8 Integrator

I always knew Roger Broucke was a FORTRAN guru, but I only recently discovered that he was as well known in numerical trajectory optimization as he was in celestial mechanics, if not more so – using his own killer apps to study orbital motion.  Dr. Broucke’s Runge-Kutta 7/8 was legendary!

Roger Broucke’s app was the only FORTRAN integrator (stable in reverse) at the time.  All of Ocampo’s previous work was in FORTRAN, as was Copernicus.  So it’s a given that Ocampo had to use Roger Broucke’s Runge-Kutta 7/8.  Nowhere does he give any credit to Dr. Broucke. 

But the point in this narrative is this:  Since Cesar Ocampo used Dr. Broucke’s code without giving him credit – a man who was a legend in celestial mechanics as well as trajectory optimization – he would certainly have no qualms using my work without attribution.

AIAA Paper Blocked

Early in  2001, I put Mars Pathfinder 2.0 online (the GUI was built using a niche app, Winteracter, which Ocampo conveniently used for his own Mars “game,” distributed in his classes beginning the fall of 2001), after working nonstop over the Christmas holidays.  I’d built a dozen commercial Windows apps over the past ten years, so it was not hard to do.  (Reference the many conference papers in my resume.)

That spring semester, I wrote a formal paper on Mars Pathfinder and submitted it to the AIAA. They put it on their “graduate students research projects” page.  David Hull immediately had them remove it.  Why? Because Cesar Ocampo was at that very moment working on Copernicus, using my code, and I had no right.

In March, I asked Dr. Fowler if I should put my FORTRAN on my Mars Pathfinder website.  He emailed back. “Yes, it will only increase your esteem.”  Well, yeah – and give away my PhD – to, you guessed it: Cesar Ocampo.

That June, I got hauled into the Student Legal Services Office and threatened with immediate dismissal for using my university web server space for commercial purposes (the attorney claimed I had been warned once already – not true).  I always suspected Dr. Fowler turned me in – nobody visited that website. I mean. No. Body.

Then while reviewing the documents recently, Dr. Fowler’s resignation letter mentions talking to the “Assistant Dean of Students for Judicial Affairs.”  I did not deal with them at all; so he as well as admits to turning me in.  Why? Cesar Ocampo had just submitted an application for a UT research grant using my Mars app.

Killer Written Qualifying Exams

I lost a whole week preparing to meet with Student Legal Services – my Mom even came with me, it was that serious – less than two weeks before the written qualifying exams.  Dr. Fowler couldn’t tell them to wait two weeks until I passed the exams?  NO. Because he wanted me to fail.

I passed the exams in orbital mechanics and optimization.  I screwed up something on the exam for mathematics, and the proctor CLINT DAWSON said to put my name on the papers.  Doh! Failed the math exam. I took a three-hour oral exam a few weeks later, didn’t miss a single question the whole time; but Clint Dawson voted to fail me – the other two professors passed me. Why? Because I suppose Dr. Dawson was party to Ocampo’s scheme, as a fellow numerical methods geek.

The Falling Tower of Texas

I visited Dr. Fowler in his office at Woolrich Labs not long after 9/11.  He was playing a silly game on his big Mac computer, bop Osama bin Laden on the head, and he disappears into a hole.  As Dr. Fowler kept playing, I asked him to set up a practice oral exam session.

He rambled on and on about being treated for prostate cancer.  They put radiation pellets down there.  He’s on hormone therapy now, so he’s very sensitive emotionally. Etc. I eased out of the room. Clearly, he was NOT going to do the practice exam, like they always do.

Usually professors WANT their students to succeed.  Not Dr. Wallace.  Ocampo had just signed a UT grant for Copernicus and had just submitted a massive application to NASA.  If NASA finds out Ocampo’s using Clark’s research, that’s a big hit to the whole program.

Deadlines, Bans,  Retaliation

Dr. Hull then lowered the boom: you’re barred from registering for the spring semester.  If you don’t pass the oral exam, you will be automatically expelled. Oh, and you better sign up five orbital mechanics professors for the exam in case one of them can’t make it.  I hustled around and got five faculty – basically every orbits professor in the group.

Dr. Fowler was nowhere.  I got stressed. Nerve spasms all over my body.  I brought all my old Army medical documents to the Disabilities Office and asked for some help:  not accommodation, mind you, just what everybody else gets.  They said to submit a written statement; I did, immediately.

Weeks later, they claim never to have received my written petition for help; thus relieving them of  the responsibility of intervening.  Why not? Because Dr. Hull probably told them exactly what  he told me: “You’re not schizophrenic.”

Retaliation and Dismissal

Ultimately, I appealed to ABET, the licensing authority that allows universities to award college degrees. They did nothing; they never even wrote back…  I contacted them five years ago and discovered why: at the time, they did not certify PhD programs.

That explains why Dr. Hull, in his next letter, suddenly out of the blue states that I was three years behind schedule, that I should have taken the PhD exams after my first year in grad school (this rule applies after you get an MSE degree and take all the prerequisite graduate courses covered by the exams, which took me a good 3+ years).

Why would Dr. Hull suddenly claim I was a PhD student? Because that prevents ABET from investigating the program.  ABET would not only discover the malice toward me, but also Ocampo’s use of my (and Dr. Broucke’s) Mars research.

Ultimately, they set up an ad hoc committee to review my Mars research. Cesar Ocampo was on that committee. He had known since my November 2000 Mars seminar that I had solved the “holy grail” of orbital mechanics and set up a solid first-guess estimate. 

Having spent three solid years trying to get feedback on my research, being told by everybody in the department, “Not until you pass your qualifying exams,” I’m supposed to drop everything a week before my oral qualifying exam – for which I had had no practice sessions – and spend a day on campus defending research I had already defended in an hours-long formal seminar?

I unplugged my phone and computer, put my mail on hold, and hunkered down to study.

When I went to campus to take the oral qualifying exam, Nita Pollard – a neighbor out in Lago Vista – asked, “Didn’t you get our letter? You’re expelled.”

For Whom the Bells Toll

I had a 3.7 GPA, passed all the coursework for a PhD, just got my MSE (applied for it on October 30th – everybody I got to sign in the graduate college was in costumes), passed the killer written exams – and… I’m expelled? 

No probation. No warnings.  No classes on how to write research papers or do research. 

At this very moment, Cesar Ocampo was signing a multi-million-dollar contract with NASA.  He could do it with a clear conscience.  I was no officially expelled, and all my research belonged to Ocampo now.