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University of Southern California
USC - Trojans
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University of Southern California
Why "Trojans"?
Neil Armstrong at USC (and on the Moon)
USC Astronauts
A Trojan Leads First Americans to Contested City
WWII Espionage Story at USC
Astronautics at USC
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC), the oldest and largest private university on the West Coast opened its doors in Los Angeles in 1880.
Why "Trojans"?
In 1912, The Los Angeles Times brought an analogy of the ancient Trojans to describe the fighting spirit of student athletes of the University of Southern California (Bird, 1912). Since those days, the Trojan has become the proud nickname for USC students, faculty, staff, and alumni. A bronze statue of a Trojan warrior is on a pedestal in the very center of the university campus in Los Angeles; the famous USC marching band calls itself the "Spirit of Troy"; and the student newspaper is "Daily Trojan." (Enemy Amongst Trojans, 2010, p. 61)
Neil Armstrong at USC (and on the Moon)
On January 22, 1970, a "distinguished member of a student body" of the School of Engineering of the University of Southern California (USC) gave a one-hour seminar on "techniques and procedures" of lunar landing. He thus completed the requirements for the Master's degree in aerospace engineering which was conferred on him after the lecture. The name of the student was Neil A. Armstrong who had commanded the Apollo 11 lunar mission six months earlier and become the first man to set foot on the surface of Earth's only natural satellite.
The article begins with the details of graduate studies of Armstrong at USC and then describes his visit to the campus on that January day in 1970 for the festive dedication of a major science center building and the seminar. A review of the design and operations of the Apollo missions and its lunar modules follows. Finally, the article focuses on Armstrong's lecture on the guidance and control of the Lunar Module Eagle during its historic landing in the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis) on the moon and concludes with the degree award to the astronaut.
Neil Armstrong: From Lunar Landing to Master of Science Degree
International Astronatical Congress, IAC-24-E4.IP.9, 2024 (article pdf will be linked soon)
USC Astronauts
A Trojan Leads First Americans to Contested City
Liberation of Paris 80 Years Ago.
Boris Pash. A Trojan (USC) Leads First Americans to Contested City.
Liberation of Paris 80 Years Ago.
published on LinkedIn in August 2024
Eighty years ago on the evening of August 24, 1944, the first units of General Philippe
Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division (2e Division Blindée) entered German-occupied Paris ...
On this chaotic August 25 ... a small group of Americans cautiously advanced through the city suburbs. When attacked, they shot back ...
WWII Espionage Story at USC
On November 21, 1945, a 37-year old political science instructor in the University of Southern California (USC) mysteriously disappeared. This USC cum-laude graduate "vanished on a barren stretch of beach of the Pacific Ocean in southern California." The Trojans knew him as Ignacy Samuel Witczak, the name under which the man had entered the United States. Two months later, Witczak's wife Bunia with their one-year old son Dickie also disappeared from a street corner in Long Beach, California. Never to be seen or heard of again ...
In 1952 the U.S. Congress described the vanished Trojan as an important Soviet spy in a case that approached "the fantastic for to this day there is no information as to the identity of the false Ignacy Witczak and little more information as to his means of departure from this country or present whereabouts." The Los Angeles Times called him a "superspy" based on a report of the Canadian investigative commission. The true identity of Witczak remained a mystery.
Enemy Amongst Trojans. A Soviet Spy at USC, Figueroa Press, 2010
Astronautics at USC
Excerpts from an article in JSSE, 2024
... In the 1990s, aerospace engineering at USC was rather typical for the country. The university is in Los Angeles at the center of a major cluster of space and defense companies and government research and development centers. At that time, most of the faculty of the then Aerospace Engineering Department focused on fluid dynamics research in aeronautical fields since its founding in 1964 [11].
<snip>
After rapid post-World War II growth and large enrollments, aerospace student populations in the United States had dropped by the mid-1990s, following the end of the Cold War [4]. The defiant response of a few astronautics-oriented aerospace faculty at USC to the prevailing doom-and-gloom atmosphere of the 1990s was to found the Astronautics and Space Technology Program (Astronautics Program) [1]. The initiative took advantage of the university’s strategic location at a center of space and defense industries in Los Angeles and concentrated first on the Master of Science degree...
More on USC Astronautics in journal articles and conference/congress papers:
2024,
2018,
2014,
2007
or combined 2024+2018+2014+2007
Master of Science in Astronautical Engineering degree at the University of Southern California for the space industry
Journal of Space Safety Engineering, 2024 (article pdf)
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