This website alleges my Mars Pathfinder computer application was used to set up the first trial run of what became NASA’s flagship trajectory-planning tool, Copernicus. Here are key points
- I copyrighted the FORTRAN code in July 1998, using reverse integration for half of the trajectory, making it possible to solve the complete 3D Earth-to-Mars mission without a nonlinear optimization algorithm
- Cesar Ocampo started on the faculty at the University of Texas in Austin in the fall of 2000. I was his first grad student.
- I presented a more sophisticated version, Mars Pathfinder 2.0 (which saved 15% energy on the final approach to Mars by targeting the L1 point), at a formal seminar set up by Dr. Ocampo Austin in November 2000 to talk about my one-screen DOS version (145 kb).Here’s the seminar flyer.
- My notes from the seminar show Ocampo, Wallace Fowler, and PAM Abusali all asked questions. David Hull was there but asked no questions.
- A week after that seminar, I met with Dr. Ocampo in his office at Woolrich Labs on campus to talk about my Mars research. He gave me a stack of NASA’s “pork chop plots” of two-body solutions using Lambert’s Theory of the Mars trajectory.
- I returned the plots to Dr. Ocampo one week later, saying, “My solution is not in there because it’s a three-body application.” Dr. Ocampo immediately quit as my advisor. Wallace Fowler was my advisor after that.
This confirms that Cesar Ocampo knew exactly what my project was about. It’s quite simple, actually. My eight-year-old niece figured it out immediately (so did my Mom, who was very gung-ho about Mars):
- Reverse integration for half of the trajectory (using Roger Broucke’s Runge-Kutta 7/8 integrator, with his permission; the only integrator at the time that could do reverse integration without accumulating large errors)
- Targeting the L1 Lagrange Point on the final Mars approach aligns the trajectory with Mars’ gravity field, saving 15% on the final approach to Mars.
- THIS IS CRITICAL: The exact same technique can be done on the Earth escape part of the trajectory. I never mentioned this in my papers or presentation because claiming to save 15% got doors slammed in my face. IF CESAR OCAMPO WAS SUCH A MARS GURU, HOW COME HE DIDN’T DO THAT to save a WHOPPING THIRTY PERCENT???
- Why not? Because he didn’t develop the theoretical foundation and had no clue what the overall dynamics of the system were.
(Cesar Ocampo published a paper exactly one year later in August 2001, using the lunar gravity field to align a spacecraft for a favorable trajectory at the end of an interplanetary mission toward Earth. This is the EXACT TIME he was said to have been working feverishly on the first test case of Copernicus, which is an Earth-Mars simulation – INFINITELY more difficult to solve than the Earth-Moon problem.)
After Ocampo quit as my advisor, I thought nobody understood what I was doing. Over the 2000-2001 winter break, I purchased the Winteracter software and created a full Windows version with help screens, color printouts, and different options. I built a website and put it online, then implored Fowler, Ocampo, and the other orbital mechanics professors to go online and try it. This link goes to the vintage HTML site I built, showing it exactly as it was back then.
(Five of these orbital mechanics professors would agree later that year to be on my dissertation committee.)
I asked Wallace Fowler for his opinion on my Mars research REPEATEDLY, but he only said, “Not until after you pass the qualifying exams.” Which was the stock answer I got from everybody.
Complete legal details and official documentation are on my website: clark-vs-utaustin.com
Cesar Ocampo was on the ad hoc committee in late November 2001 set up by Dr. Dolling, chairman of the department, to evaluate Mars Pathfinder. They declared “it was not fit for a senior research thesis,” and I was summarily expelled.
This establishes that Ocampo (1) knew my method, and (2) had access to the full documentation – including the FORTRAN code (which was on my website, per Wallace Fowler’s suggestion)- even to the point of (3) being required by the department as a member of the ad hoc committee to evaluate my research.
Ocampo Stole Roger Broucke’s Integrator
A significant technical question is: What integrator did Ocampo use? Roger Broucke’s Runge-Kutta 7/8 integrator was the only one capable of integrating the equations of motion in reverse at this time without “blowing up” and failing after just a short distance. THIS IS ONLY POSSIBLE IF THE ONLY FORCES ARE GRAVITY because gravity is a central force.
Since (1) Ocampo’s first Mars test example used reverse integration over large distances, (2) which can only be done if the only forces in the model are GRAVITY; but (3) nowhere does Ocampo mention having to zero out all other forces in the simulation (solar radiation, etc.) to make these reverse steps; (4) Cesar Ocampo therefore used Roger Broucke’s Runge-Kutta 7/8 integrator without attribution (or permission, knowing Dr. Broucke’s animosity toward the orbital mechanics group). THAT’S INDISPUTABLE.
And so, if Ocampo stole Roger Broucke’s priceless Runge-Kutta 7/8 integrator – a man of enormous stature and respect in both the celestial mechanics and numerical optimization disciplines – this gives strong support to my case: stealing IP from a grad student.
Cesar Ocampo’s Workload
The fall of 2000 was Ocampo’s first semester at Texas and his first semester as a professor. Moreover, he took over all of Roger Broucke’s classes in celestial mechanics – Celestial Mechanics I, II, and Theory of Orbits. Just preparing the lecture notes for those three classes (for which he had zero background and no formal training) was a full-time job for at least the first 18 months.
I sat in on Ocampo’s fall 2000 Celestial Mechanics I class for a few weeks. He derived Lambert’s Theorem backward. I called him out; he had to erase the chalkboards and start over again. Clearly, he was struggling with the information and the workload.
The literature says Ocampo started work on the first use of what was to become the Copernicus software ecosystem in the spring of 2001. Only a few months after my November 2000 seminar. The University of Texas gave him a research grant the next summer.
By the fall of 2001, he had a complete, functional “Mars game” that he was using in his classes. Ocampo’s FORTRAN game was built using Winteracter, the same application I used for Mars Pathfinder 2.0 (which had been online for a year by this time, with hundreds of downloads – one professor in November 2001 said he was using it in his orbital mechanics classes.)
Late that fall, Ocampo was awarded a major grant by NASA for the Copernicus application.
The questions here are: (1) How did Ocampo find the time to create this massively complex application with such REMARKABLE BREAKTHROUGHS he became famous far and wide? (2) Where is his prior work on the Mars problem? (There is none: all his work was in the Earth-Moon system, exclusively. (3) Had he ever used reverse integration to solve a trajectory, much less without a nonlinear optimization solver? (no) (4) Where are his notes, drawings, failed FORTRAN runs, etc…? I have a hundred pages of notes, half a dozen ZIP drives as backups of early runs; saved four hard drives from that era; my Winteractoer app and Layhey-Fujitsu compiler. (5) Ocampo was a superstar from practically 2001 forward – you KEEP those things. You TALK about them in your papers. You don’t just say, “it was a genius moment.”
Whose genius moment? That is the question.
Bar X Software
The next question now is: did I have the skill to create Mars Pathfinder? At the bottom of my resume page is a list of publications. Over the previous ten years, I had published a dozen formal papers on commercial engineering apps I created for commercial construction: HVAC, energy conservation, electrical design, and lighting. By the time I entered grad school, I had my own Bar X Software startup.
In my first semester in grad school, McGraw-Hill published my textbook Retrofitting for Energy Conservation. The following semester, they published Electrical Design Guide for Commercial Buildings (which is still in print, the first edition). I had free downloads of all my software apps to promote the books.
All ten programs were written in dBase and compiled into full interactive Windows programs. The zipped version had to fit on a 3.5-inch floppy, a maximum of 1.5 MB. dBase is almost identical to FORTRAN; it just has internal data files instead of external ones like FORTRAN – all the other commands are exactly the same. I also had experience creating .exe files for distribution; all my apps – including Mars Pathfinder 2.0 had a self-extracting executable file that set up the program on your computer, in its own folder, and with an icon on the menu.
It took years to just learn how to set up for distribution, much less code each program. So I knew how to “make a game,” set up a distributable, and build the GUI. Ocampo had never done any of this before. That alone is a year’s work, after he started at Texas. It’s not easy creating a GUI either, setting everything up with easy-to-use menus, outputs, inputs, the workflow. Ocampo had zero experience in any of this.
How did he knock out this wonderful Mars game for the NASA demo in the fall of 2001?
I will put all of the old dBase programs here soon, plus newer FORTRAN versions I created in that era, where each one operates just like a spreadsheet, updating values every time you change a field variable.
Thank you for your time
Be that as it may, I will add the Mars Pathfinder FORTRAN code, my Mars presentation notes, and other relevant technical documents, plus Ocampo’s tech papers on the first days of Copernicus, to the AI chat. I will instruct the chat to focus on that first Mars simulation.
You can run the forensic analysis, ask questions, and investigate. I will post the exact instructions I used to set it up in the AI for transparency.
Bill H. Clark, P.E. (Retired) Professional Engineer Texas License #74416 October 21, 2026
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