About our Guest Gregory H. Allison Greg Allison is the Alabama state director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. Mr. Allison is a subject matter expert in avionics system safety. He has been active in the aerospace community as an electrical engineer, systems engineer, system safety engineer, project/program manager, team lead, and an avid space activist for 45 years. He designed the architectural layout of the power and data systems distribution for the International Space Station’s Nodes 2 and 3. He has designed power and control systems for industrial equipment and worked on M1 Abrams tank and F-15 avionics. For the past 20 years Mr. Allison has been performing avionics system safety for NASA as a contractor employed by Bastion Technologies Incorporated working on the Artemis-1 Space Launch System, X-37, various satellites, and other projects. In 1994 Mr. Allison was the founding Program Manager for the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5) High Altitude LiftOff (HALO) Program. He led efforts that developed and launched hybrid rockets developed in garages from balloons at the edge of space into suborbital trajectories. Some of these balloons that carried the rockets up were launched from ships in the Gulf of Mexico. These activities were conducted with part time help on a shoestring budget. This caused Mr. Allison to become quite concerned about the types of missions that terrorist or other nations could one day launch. |
In 1996 Mr. Allison founded the High-Altitude Research Corporation (HARC) to further develop the balloon launched hybrid rockets. He won a NASA Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant (which is intended to be a paper study) through which the HARC team actually executed a flight hardware program to develop and launch Balloon Launch Return Vehicle (BLRV), a reusable remotely piloted rocket plane from a balloon. Mr. Allison managed a project to launch a rocket with HARC designed altitude determination system to verify an altitude of over 200 km. He managed an at-sea balloon launch for JPL. These missions were all conducted from ships in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Allison determined that he could not expect to survive a grid down scenario, so he decided to do something about it. He formed the Alabama Power Grid Defense Committee. He chaired two Power Grid Defense Conferences in Huntsville, Alabama, one in 2016 and one in 2018. Mr. Allison is drawing on his 10 years of experience and Chairman of the National Space Society’s Policy Committee to build an advocacy base to support hardening the power grid. Links: Home - Freedom Restoration Foundation National Space Society Green Gregs YouTube Channel Galactic Gregs YouTube Channel (more on balloons here) |