Nathaniel "Nate" Zelazo, co-founder and chairman emeritus of Astronautics Corp., died November 22 in Milwaukee. He was 100.
Zelazo and his sister, Norma Paige, established the Milwaukee-headquartered company in May 1959, initially beginning with rocket science, according to Astronautics. Zelazo had eyed a U.S. Air Force-sponsored program to optimize and conserve fuel in a manned space vehicle that was traveling to the moon. This spurred a project involving equations calculating the rate a space vehicle would consume fuel. He worked with Rosemount Aeronautical Laboratories at the University of Minnesota along with his professors at the University of Wisconsin, while Paige, an attorney, established the company.
Astronautics took on other space-related projects, including recording sensor data on NASA’s TIROS weather satellites and developing a gyro-controlled platform and star tracker for the X-15 that photographed the first stars from outside the Earth’s atmosphere. But its primary focus throughout the 1960s was developing electromechanical primary flight instruments—HSIs, ADIs, BDHIs—for fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft.
Zelazo and Paige, who passed away in 2017, steered Astronautics from a “one-room storefront to a global corporation,” the company said, adding, “Astronautics was Nate’s true passion.” He served as president from its inception through 1984, taking the role of CEO in 1984 and ultimately retiring and becoming chairman emeritus in 2000. He did step back into the business for about three years (2004 to 2007) to serve as CEO of Astronautics subsidiary Kearfott Guidance and Navigation, now Kearfott Corp., and remained on the board of directors and as a consultant.
Born in Lomza, Poland in September of 1918, Zelazo immigrated to New York with his family in 1928. While he did not speak English when he arrived, he excelled in his studies, with his teachers encouraging him to attend the scientific-specialty Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Earning an engineering degree from City College of New York, he received a master’s, and later honorary doctorates, from the University of Wisconsin.
During World War II, he designed and developed radar systems for the U.S. Navy. After the war, he worked on engineering and electronics projects for the Navy and the Department of Defense. Zelazo took a role as a vice president for Ketay Instrument Corp. from 1952 to 1954 and then joined the Avionics Division of the John Oster Manufacturing Co. in Racine, Wisconsin, leading research and development there until he founded Astronautics. He brought several of his colleagues from Oster to his new company.
Zelazo was active in the community, including donating a building for the Helene Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in honor of his late wife. He served on the Greater Milwaukee Committee, Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, and the Milwaukee School of Engineering Board of Regents. He was inducted into the Wisconsin Business Hall of Fame in 2014 and was a lifetime member of the American Society of Naval Engineers and the Navy League of the U.S.
