He developed many creative proposals for reusable launch vehicles, and was present at several key events of the early Space Age.
After learning to fly in the Second World War, he became a U.S. Navy fighter pilot, and executive officer of an ASW patrol squadron.
[2] Around 1960 he left NASA to work at North American Aviation, where he was project engineer for space transportation systems at the Los Angeles Division[4] for several years.
In 1967 Cormier formed a company called TranSpace, marking the beginning of his work on a commercial approach to spaceflight, which continued for the remainder of his life.
However Cormier struggled to obtain sufficient investment for his Space Van (and other) concepts, which underwent many revisions over the years.