John Courter

John Courter is the Director of the Aerospace Structures Group at Firefly Aerospace. John has been with the company for over three years and is responsible for overseeing the initial development and proving the platform is capable of meeting the design requirements. John also oversees the Advanced Composite Manufacturing Engineering (ACME) Team which brings the concept to life and is responsible for creating the in depth work instructions, fixtures, tooling and LEAN work cells required to produce the LRIP platforms. The Composite Manufacturing Team is the multiple shifts of Manufacturing Managers, Senior Technicians and Technicians that bring Firefly’s dreams to reality. They bring their knowledge and trade crafts to bear on our platforms to make them repeatably and reliably. The Materials and Process team work tirelessly to ensure they have proper Allowables and specifications for all materials that Firefly uses. They focus on all aspects of material characterization including acceptance, process control and populating reactive chemistry Allowables for both coupon acceptance and populating analysis material cards. They also define and bound all processes to ensure any product produced by that process will meet the requirements.

John Courter has a Bachelor of Science from Purdue University in Materials Engineering from 2001-2006. John was a Crew Chief for Owen Hall Grand Prix Racing Team and Owen Hall Student Senate. John also has a Master of Science from Purdue University in Engineering from 2007-2009 where they were a TA for MSE 597/AAE 590 Experimental Characterization of Advanced Composites. Lastly, they have a High School Diploma from Notre Dame Preparatory in College Bound from 1997-2001 where they were in First Robotics and Varsity Soccer.