100 years ago today, George Mueller, “the father of the space shuttle”, was born. The electrical engineer was the NASA administrator who headed the Office of Manned Space Flight and ensured the success of the Apollo program that landed a man on the Moon and returned him safely to the Earth in 1969. NASA’s “most brilliant and fearless manager”, Mueller also played a key part in the design of Skylab, and championed the space shuttle’s development… (1918)
As a boy, George enjoyed reading science fiction and was curious about how things worked, building his own radios. Working part time and attending college at night, he studied until he obtained a doctorate in physics. While at TRW working on missile systems, Mueller became convinced that “all-up testing” was essential, and pushed through that philosophy at NASA—with “impeccable reasoning” convincing others that testing piecemeal, one system without the integration of the whole, was not good enough. He also refused to work at NASA at all in 1963 unless they restructured the agency so that three centers would report directly to him—and took a substantial pay cut to do so.
MORE Good News on this Day:
- Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia signed the first constitution of Ethiopia (1930)
- The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France with Italy…
