Peter Homer

President and founder, FLAGSUIT LLC (a developer of pressure capable gloves and suits for private spaceflight, industrial and medical uses) Peter is an aerospace engineer with degrees from Stanford University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Peter's aerospace career includes positions at the Grumman Aerospace Product Development Center (aka “skunk” works) where he developed radar satellite concepts for “Star Wars” (Strategic Defense Initiative), and at Lockheed Martin Space Systems (formerly GE Astro Space). Peter led the structure and configuration design teams and was co-inventor of Lockheed Martin's A2100 [“A-twenty one hundred”] Spacecraft Bus—the first “configure to order” platform for communications satellites—which is the basis for over thirty operational satellites. Peter's past endeavors have included the positions of executive director of a non-profit, sales engineer and manager at several software companies including Netscape, AOL and Sun Microsystems, and technician at a sail loft in his home town of Southwest Harbor, Maine. In 2007, Peter came up with a new way to construct astronaut gloves which makes them more flexible under pressure, leading to his winning entry in the first NASA Astronaut Glove Centennial Challenge. Peter used the prize money to found FLAGSUIT with a goal of becoming a supplier of affordable full-body hyperbaric suits for private spaceflight. He continues to mprove pressurized suit joints, achieving twice the flexibility of comparable NASA-developed designs, and winning the Astronaut Glove Centennial Challenge for a second time in 2009. FLAGSUIT gloves are featured on Orbital Outfitter's prototype Industrial Suborbital Space Suit (IS3), and Peter is now working on a prototype suit to be used for for medical hyperbaric therapy. Peter has written numerous articles about his Centennial Challenge experiences and has been a featured presenter at the World Space Expo, NextFest, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and at the MIT Man-Vehicle Lab.