Charles Thomas “Chuck” Coleman was a highly respected and accomplished pilot and engineer in the aviation industry whose career spanned more than thirty-five years as an aerospace engineer, ATP pilot, flight instructor, test pilot, airshow performer, and A&P mechanic. He served as a senior design engineer at McDonnell Douglas and contributed to military aircraft projects including the F15, F18, AV8B, YF23, C17, and A12, and he also held key roles at Scaled Composites, BD Jet Corporation, and ICON Aircraft. He tested aircraft including the Proteus jet, BD10 jet, BD12, and the ICON A5 light sport amphibian seaplane, and he was the chase and instructor pilot for historic flights including the Global Flyer, White Knight One, and SpaceShipOne. During his career, he accumulated over 10,400 flight hours in 150 types of aircraft, held commercial ratings in airplanes, helicopters, gliders, and seaplanes, and built and restored over ten airplanes. He logged more than 4,300 hours in the Extra Flugzeugbau 300L series aircraft, performed in hundreds of air shows across the U.S., and gave over three thousand aerobatic rides. Internationally recognized, he was a test pilot for Burt Rutan’s Proteus, which he flew around the world with co-pilot Michael T. Alsbury. Coleman held an aerospace engineering degree from the University of Michigan, was an Associate Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, and was an FAA-licensed Airframe and Powerplant mechanic with Inspection Authorization. He was part of two Collier Trophy-winning projects, the development of the McDonnell Douglas C-17 Globemaster in 1994 and Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne in 2004, and he was also part of the Scaled Composites team that won the Ansari X Prize in 2004. He was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and provided aerial support for the Peabody Award-winning documentary “Black Sky: The Race for Space.” In 2018, he was the lead aerobatic flight instructor for “Tom Cruises’s School of Flying,” preparing actors for their roles in “Top Gun: Maverick,” and he performed 140 training flights to enhance their g-force tolerance for filming and flight in F/A-18s. Passionate about flight and STEM education, he frequently visited schools and universities to lecture about flying and mechanical engineering. Based at the Mojave Air and Space Port at Rutan Field for over 20 years, he was integral to many historic aviation and space ventures and served on its Board of Directors from 2020 to 2024.