John Frassanito & Associates (JF&A) in Houston, Texas, is a prestigious industrial design firm that specializes in designing the future of space exploration. JF&A won NASA’s Creative Services Design Contract to create advanced transportation concepts for lunar and Mars mission scenarios. Company founder, John Frassanito, is an internationally recognized industrial designer. He has been a key contributor to several of the most significant innovations of this era including the personal computer, the microprocessor, computer networking, personal teleconferencing, and the United States Space Station. His patents include work on the first personal computer and microprocessor. Bob Sauls, senior industrial designer and animator, is responsible for the visuals and animations produced for NASA by JF&A.
The images, created by Presenter Professional on a Macintosh, were used by the White House to persuade Congressional skeptics to fund the space station project and to persuade Russia to join in. According to a Machine Design article titled “Space Station Orbits In Virtual Reality”, President Clinton, trying to gather support for the space station from Congress and the public asked NASA to present options to the original project that would get the space station into orbit faster, increase safety, and cut costs as well. The article states that, “ Because time was important, NASA’s engineers, together with JF&A, chose VIDI’s Macintosh-based Presenter Professional to update the space station’s design and then generate realistic 3D images of the new configuration. Thanks in part to this visual imagery, NASA got its point across. The Congress voted to authorize $15 billion in spending for the agency, including $1.9 for the space station.”
JF&A and Bob Sauls recently completed the computer visualization of the docking presented on Ted Koppel’s Nightline and CNN broadcasts at the time of the actual docking. All the shuttle and space station graphics shown were created by Presenter Professional on a Macintosh.
