George E. Mueller
George Edwin Mueller , pronounced Miller (born July 16, 1918 in St. Louis , Missouri , † October 12, 2015 ), was an American electrical and aerospace engineer. He was a senior manager at NASA during the Apollo program and head of the Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF) from 1963 to 1969.
Life
Mueller's parents were German-Americans , but he spoke little German himself . His father was an electrician and Mueller also showed a talent for technology early on. He studied electrical engineering at the Missouri School of Mines and Technology with a bachelor's degree in 1938 and a master's degree from Purdue University in 1940. After the bachelor's degree, he set up a television recording system at Purdue University in a project by RCA and went to Bell Laboratories (1940 to 1946), where he worked on radar in aircraft during World War II . He also studied and received his PhD in physics (on antenna technology) from Ohio State University in 1951 . He then taught as a professor at the university until 1957 and headed the program on dielectric antennas, but at the same time advised the Ramo-Wooldridge company (later taken over by TRW Inc. ), among other things, in radar technology for rockets. In 1958 he moved to TRW as head of the electronics laboratory at Space Technology Laboratories in Redondo Beach .
In 1963, NASA director James Edwin Webb brought him to head the OMSF (from 1964 as acting director of the Apollo program). He reorganized and tightened the management structures and implemented the concept of all-up-testing for the Saturn V , i.e. simultaneous testing of all levels. The first two tests were successful (the first all up test was with Apollo 4 in November 1967), in the third launch Apollo 8 went into a lunar orbit in 1968 and the sixth launch was the moon landing of Apollo 11 . Due to his contacts with the military missile program, he also brought a number of Air Force officers from the Minuteman program to the Apollo program, including its head Samuel C. Phillips .
As early as the mid-1960s, he was involved in the planning of successor projects to Apollo at NASA and also in the early decisions for the space shuttle . At the end of 1969 he left NASA and went into industry. He was senior vice president of General Dynamics for some time and in 1971 became chairman of the System Development Corporation (SDC) in Santa Monica, which developed complex computer systems for the military and was acquired by Burroughs in 1980. He stayed there until 1984, after which he was President of the International Academy of Astronautics . From 1995 to 2004 he was CEO of Kistler Aerospace.
In 1970 he received the National Medal of Science and he has received multiple honorary doctorates . In 1989 he was President of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics . He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the National Academy of Engineering , the Royal Aeronautical Society , the British Interplanetary Society , the American Physical Society , the IEEE, and the American Geophysical Union .
Web links
- Transcripts of interviews with Mueller in the JSC Oral History Project
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mueller, George E. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mueller, George Edwin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American aerospace engineer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 16, 1918 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | St. Louis , Missouri |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 12, 2015 |