(January 27, 1940 – July 28, 2011)
Personal
O’Leary was born and raised in Boston, and credits a teenage visit to Washington,
D.C. with inspiring the patriotism that drove his efforts to become
an astronaut.[1]
Climbing the Matterhorn, running the Boston
Marathon and becoming an Eagle Scout
were among his pre-astronautic activities. O’Leary had two children.Education
O’Leary graduated from Belmont High School, Belmont, Massachusetts, in 1957; received a bachelor of arts degree in physics from Williams College in 1961, a masters of arts in Astronomy from Georgetown University in 1964, and a doctor of philosophy in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967.Organizations
O’Leary became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975. Other organizations are: 1970-1976, secretary of the American Geophysical Union’s Planetology Section; 1977, team leader of the Asteroidal Resources Group, NASA Ames Summer Study on Space Settlements; 1976–1979, member of the nominating committee of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences; 1983–1985, chairman of the board of directors of the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Space; 1990, founding board member of the International Association for New Science; 2003 founding president of the New Energy Movement; 2007-, Fellow, World Innovation Foundation.Astronaut program
While attending graduate school in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, O’Leary published several scientific papers on the Martian atmosphere.[2] O’Leary’s Ph.D. thesis in 1967 was on the Martian surface.[3] Soon after completing his Ph.D. thesis, O'Leary was the first astronaut specifically selected for a potential manned Mars mission when it was still in NASA's program plan projected for the 1980s as a follow-on to the Apollo lunar program.[4] O’Leary was the only planetary scientist-astronaut in NASA’s astronaut corps during the Apollo program.[5] O’Leary resigned from the astronaut program in April 1968, and cited several reasons for resigning in his The Making of an Ex-Astronaut, which included the cancellation of the Mars program in early 1968.Academic career
After O’Leary’s resignation from NASA, Carl Sagan recruited him to teach at Cornell University in 1968, where he researched and lectured until 1971. While teaching at Cornell, he studied lunar mascons.[6] O’Leary subsequently taught astronomy, physics, and science policy assessment at several academic institutions, including the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (1971–1972) Hampshire College (1972–75) and Princeton University (1976–1981).[7]O’Leary was a member of the Mariner 10 Venus-Mercury TV Science Team.[8] The team received NASA’s group achievement award for its participation.[9]
O’Leary authored several popular books and more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles in the fields of planetary science, astronautics, and science policy.[10] He was one of the more visible scientists who participated in Gerard K. O'Neill and the L5 Society's plans for an orbiting city.[11] O’Leary suggested that Earth-approaching asteroids and the moons of Mars would be the most accessible space-based resource for space colonies.[12] O’Leary was among the earliest to coordinate observations and interpretations of stellar occultations by planetary satellites and asteroids.[13] O’Leary also wrote and edited popular books on astronomy and astronautics.[14] During the 1970s and 1980s, O’Leary was a regular contributor to the magazines Omni, Science Digest, New Scientist, Astronomy, and Sky and Telescope.
Political activities
O’Leary became politically active early in his career. He participated in a demonstration in Washington, D.C. in 1970, to protest the war in Cambodia. Richard Nixon administration officials invited O’Leary and his fellow Cornell professors into the White House to present their grievances and their meeting appeared as the lead story of CBS Evening News on May 9, 1970.[15] O’Leary was Morris Udall’s energy advisor during his 1975-1976 campaign for U.S. president, and served under Udall as a special staff consultant on energy for the U.S. House Interior Committee subcommittee on energy and the environment in 1975-1976.[16] O’Leary advised other U.S. presidential candidates, including George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, and Dennis Kucinich.During those years, he also immersed himself in several controversies relating to NASA’s objectives, including its manned lunar landings, the Space Shuttle, and the weaponization of space.[17] O’Leary promoted a joint manned mission to Mars between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.[18] O’Leary twice traveled to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s to promote the peaceful exploration of space. O’Leary participated in a peace cruise along the Dnieper River in the Ukraine with the first Westerners to visit the area in decades.[19]
Alternative Beliefs
A remote viewing experience in 1979[20] and a near-death experience in 1982[21] initiated O’Leary’s departure from orthodox science. After Princeton, O’Leary worked in the space industry at Science Applications International Corporation in Hermosa Beach, California, beginning in 1982.[22] O’Leary refused to work on military space applications, which resulted in losing his position there in 1987.[23]Beginning in 1987, O’Leary increasingly explored unorthodox ideas, particularly the relationship between consciousness and science, and became widely known for his writings on “the frontiers of science, space, energy and culture.”[24] He lectured extensively since the 1980s on science and consciousness, in places such as the Findhorn Foundation, Esalen Institute, Omega Institute, Unity Churches, Religious Science churches and Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres. He extensively traveled internationally during his investigations, which included visiting scientific laboratories and mystics such as Sathya Sai Baba. In the mid-1990s, O’Leary began to write about his investigations regarding innovative technologies that allegedly utilize energy sources that science does not currently recognize (also called new energy), and how those technologies can transform the planet and the human journey.[25] O’Leary believed there is an extraterrestrial presence on Earth, its relationship to those potentially transformative technologies, and their conjoined organized suppression.[26] O’Leary also participated in the Face on Mars issue.[27]
In 2003, O’Leary founded the New Energy Movement.[28] Shortly after his new energy colleague Eugene Mallove was murdered in 2004,[29] O’Leary moved to Ecuador, where he resided for the rest of his life. He ontinued to travel and publicly lecture on the subject of new energy and planetary healing.[30] In 2007, O’Leary presented a paper titled, "Renewable and Unconventional Energy for a Sustainable Future: Can We Convert in Time?", at the International Energy Conference and Exhibition in Daegu, S. Korea.[31] With his artist wife Meredith Miller, in 2008 he co-established the Montesueños Eco-Retreat in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, which is devoted to “peace, sustainability, the arts and new science.”[32] In 2009, O’Leary published the Energy Solution Revolution.[33] In 2010, O’Leary published “The Turquoise Revolution”.[34]
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