Dominick Commisso of South Setauket, who died July 14, 2019 at age 84. Beloved husband of the late Marian. Devoted father of James J. Cherished grandfather of Amanda and Joseph. Loving brother of Louis, Arthur and Victor. There will be a Religious Service Friday at 11 AM in O.B. Davis Funeral Homes, 4839 Nesconset Highway, Port Jefferson Station, New York. The interment will take place in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Coram, New York.
Dominick was one of the design engineers of the Lunar Module. He was responsible for the design of all system's fluid lines and cable assemblies in the mid-section of the Ascent Stage of the Lunar Module. This included the fuel system lines for the Ascent Stage rocket engine which boosted the astronauts from the lunar surface to the orbiting Command Module and the lines for the Reaction Control system which controlled the flight altitude of the vehicle.
At the age 12, Dominick had become intensely interested in astronomy, but at that time the idea of space travel seemed like something that might happen in the 21st. century or perhaps not at all. However, a scant 10 years later it became a reality when Russia launched Sputnik 1. After getting over the initial shock, Dominick knew if space travel was indeed possible he had to have some part in it. To accomplish that, he enrolled in college at the Academy of Aeronautics in the following year and upon graduation was offered a position with the Grumman Corp. He was not expecting to due any space work for many years to come, but to his great astonishment he was assigned a temporary task of doing visibility studies on the new triangular windows on the Lunar Module within a month of joining Grumman. Several months later he was permanently assigned to the Equipment Lines group of the Lunar Module. It would be hard to describe the elation he had felt for fulfilling what seemed like an impossible dream in such a short time.
Later, Dominick went on to do design work on the EA-6B electronic countermeasures aircraft, the F-14 fighter jet and the E-2C surveillance aircraft. In 1994 the Northrop Corp. acquired Grumman and decided to end all aircraft production on Long Island. Dominick remained with Northrop Grumman until the last E-2C(on L.I.) was completed. He was then forced to take early retirement and lived with his wife, Marian in Coram until her passing in2006, after which he moved to Jefferson's Ferry in South Setauket.
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