Titans of the Classic Space Age - A Biographical Glossary of Architects, Aerospace Engineers, and Designers by Thomas Foltz

Adams, Constance

Constance Adams was born in 1964 in Boston and raised in Dallas. She earned her bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University-Raddiffe College in 1987 and her master's in architecture from Yale University in 1990. She worked for a vari­ety of well-known architectural offices around the world between the late 1980s and the mid 1990s, including those of Cesar Pelli and Associates in New Haven, Connecticut, Josef Paul Kleihues in Berlin, and Kenzo Tange in Tokyo. Since 1997, she has been employed by Lock­heed Martin Space Operations in Houston to work with NASA architects to design and develop the habitation module for BlO-Plex, a test facility for the Mars surface habitat, and TransHab structures, inflatable habitations for future space missions. She teaches stu­dios in space,architecture and design at Yale, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Technical University in Munich.

Armstrong, Harris

Harris Armstrong was born in 1899. He studied architecture at Washington Uni­versity and Ohio State University, and designed smaller functionalist homes and offices in the 1930s. His career blossomed in the postwar era, when he became one of St. Louis's leading architects, design­ing structures such as the 1952 Cancer Research Building at Washington Univer­sity as well as projects farther afield, such as the American consulate in Basra, Iraq, in 1957. Because of his prominence in St. Louis, he received several commis­sions from the McDonnell Aircraft Com­pany in the 1950s, including the design of their new technical center, with its attractively landscaped park setting and basement bomb shelters that could pro­tect seven thousand employees in case of nuclear attack. Armstrong retired from architectural practice in 1993 and died two years later.

Barmin, Vladimir Pavlovich

Born 1909 in Moscow, Vladimir Barmin graduated in 1930 from Bauman Tech­nical University and was employed there­after by the Kompressor Plant and an offshoot design bureau that created the famous Katyusha rockets used by the Red Army in World War II. After the war, he traveled to Germany to study captured rocket equipment and facilities, and he subsequently designed and built all major Soviet launch facilities, most notably the Baikonur Cosmodrome, begun in 1950. Barmin expanded upon Sergei Korolev's and Vasily Mishin's ini­tial ideas about horizontal assembly and transport of rockets to their launch sites and incorporated that principle into the design of his launch facilities. He also assisted in the design of machinery used for interplanetary soil sampling missions. He died in 1993.

Bonestell, Chesley

Born in San Francisco in 1888, the artist Chesley Bonestell is best known for his space paintings and illustrations. His training as an architect at Columbia Uni­versity and his subsequent experience in Willis Polk's architectural office in San Francisco from 1911 to 1919, and several firms in New York afterwards, gave him the opportunity to work on major struc­tures of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Chrysler Building in New York and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. At the age of 50, he changed careers and began working in Hollywood as a special-effects artist. His movie credits include science-fiction classics such as War of the Worlds; When Worlds Collide, and Destination Moon. In the 1940s, he also started illustrating articles by Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun, and others in such magazines as Life, Scientific Ameri­can,and Collier's. These articles and technically accurate illustrations helped fire the public imagination and brought space travel from the realm of science fiction to serious feasibility. Bonestell died in Carmel, California, in 1986.

Bossart, Karel J.

Commonly known as the "father of Atlas," Karel J. "Charlie" Bossart was born in Belgium in 1904. He earned a degree in mining engineering from the University of Brussels in 1925, then came to the United States and enrolled at the Mass­achusetts Institute of Technology. There he studied aeronautics and specialized in aeronautical structures. He went to work for Convair (which later became General Dynamics) and led the group that designed the Atlas missile. Among his revolutionary ideas for this rocket were the concepts of a pressurized fuel tank, which functioned like a large, metal balloon as part of the rocket's structure, and the ability to steer the rocket by turning or gimbaling the entire rocket engine. These achievements earned him the U.S. Exceptional Civilian Service Award in 1958 and led NASA to choose the Atlas rocket as the vehicle that would

carry America's first Mercury astronauts into orbit. Bossart retired from General Dynamics in 1967 and died in 1975.

Clarke, Arthur C.

Arthur C. Clarke is generally regarded as one of the foremost science-fiction authors and space visionaries of the twen­tieth century. He was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, on December 16,1917, and joined the British Interplanetary Society in 1936, where he wrote the BIS Bulletin and began writing science fic­tion. In 1954, Clarke wrote a letter to Dr. Harry Wexler, the chief of the Scien­tific Services Division of the U. S. Weather Bureau, in which he proposed the idea of using space satellites as a meteoro­logical tool. Ten years later, in 1964, he began work with Stanley Kubrick on the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which realistically portrayed moon bases, space shuttles, and a rotating space station. Clarke currently lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he continues to write sci­ence fiction.

Connell, Maurice H.

Maurice Connell was born in 1894 in Greenwich, Connecticut, and earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1914. After service in the Signal Corps and the Air Corps in World War I, he returned to Connecticut to establish his own engineering practice. In 1925, he relo­cated his firm, Connell, Pierce, Garland and Fridman, to Miami, Florida, where they designed the mechanical aspects of a number of buildings. These include such local landmarks as the Dade County Courthouse, the Miami Post Office, and the Miami Biltmore Hotel, the launch gantries and service structures at Cape Canaveral, as well as similar projects at the Redstone missile arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Connell died in December 1967 in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Dornberger, Walter Robert

A pioneer in the developing field of rocket technology, Walter Dornberger was born in Giessen, Germany, on Sep­tember 6,1895. He enlisted in the German army in 1914, and was commissioned a year later. In 1925, the army sent him to the School of Technology in Charlot- tenberg, where he specialized in ballistics and earned his master's degree in 1930. After graduation, he was assigned to help with the development of new rocket-powered weapons, which were not banned by the Treaty of Versailles. Dornberger rose through the ranks and in 1932 was placed in charge of the Research Station West at Kummersdorf. Working as part of his team was the young scientist Wernher von Braun. The research group moved to Peenemünde in 1937 and began to develop the A-4 rocket (known to the Allies as the V-2). After the war ended, Lieutenant Gen­eral Dornberger was held as a British prisoner of war for two years, but was released and came to the United States in 1947. He served as an advisor to the air force in the area of guided missiles, and helped with the development of the X-20 Dyna-Soar project before it was canceled. In 1965 he retired, and he died in Baden-Württemburg, Germany, on June 27, 1980.

Ehricke, Krafft Arnold

Krafft Ehricke was born on March 24, 1917. In 1942, he received his degree in aeronautical engineering from Berlin's Technical University. Because of the war, his talents were immediately put to use as part of the Peenemünde rocket development team, where he special­ized in propulsion systems for the A-4 rocket. After the war, he came to the United States and continued his work on ballistic missiles and space vehicles working for the U.S. Army Ordinance Department. After leaving the army, he went to work with Convair General Dynamics and helped develop the Atlas rocket. In 1959, he became a vice presi­dent of the company and headed up the team that built the Centaur upperstage. This vehicle was the first hydrogen- fueled upper stage and was used almost exclusively to boost NASA's space probes to the planets. In 1974, he became the chief scientist at North American Rock­well's Space Systems Division, where he was free to pursue his ideas of using space resources peacefully for the bene­fit of all people. Ehricke died in 1984, and a year later the Krafft A. Ehricke Institute for Space Development was founded in his honor.

Esnault-Pelterie, Robert

Robert Esnault-Pelterie, sometimes known as REP, was born in Paris on November 8, 1881. He graduated with a degree in science (which encompassed botany, chemistry, and physics) from the Sorbonne College of Science and Let­ters of the University of Paris in 1902. In that same year, he received his first of many patents. As news of the Wright brothers' accomplishments reached France, Esnault-Pelterie knew that he wanted to build and fly airplanes. He did not like the crude control methods employed by the Wrights, however, so he improved the design, inventing the control stick and the aileron in the process. He completed his first success­ful monoplane in 1906, an all-metal design powered by a seven-cylinder, air- cooled radial engine, which he also designed. This engine was so successful that variations of it powered planes for the next thirty years. Soon, though, Esnault-Pelterie's interest turned to spaceflight. His studies were interrupted by World War I, but after the war he sued France, England, the United States, and Germany for patent infringement for their use of the control stick in their airplanes. He won his case, and every company that used a control stick in their airplanes had to pay him royalties. In 1920, he resumed his theoretical rocket research and began lecturing on rocket design. A year later, in associa­tion with banker André Hirsch, he insti­tuted the REP-Hirsch International Astronautics Prize for the most influen­tial original scientific work in astronau­tics. The first award was presented to Hermann Oberth. From 1926 to 1930, Esnault-Pelterie was engaged in writing L'Astronautique,an encyclopedia of everything that was known about rock­etry and space travel. He continued his experiments and in 1931 lost four left- hand fingers when a rocket engine he had been working on exploded. He switched his research to the somewhat safer propellants - liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - and demonstrated an engine powered by these propellants in

1937.   With the onset of World War II, however, he collected and destroyed all of his unpublished research to keep it from the Nazis. He retired to Switzer­land and presented his last rocketry lec­ture in 1947. Esnault-Pelterie died on December 6, 1957, two months after the Soviet launch of Sputnik 2.

Faget, Maxime Allen

Max Faget was bom in 1921 in British Honduras and studied engineering and aeronautic design at Louisiana State University. After graduation, he entered the U.S. Navy and served on submarines during World War II. When the war ended, he returned to his interest in aeronautics and went to work for Dr. Robert Gilruth designing high-speed and high-altitude aircraft for the Depart­ment of Defense. His projects included the Scout and Little Joe research rockets, the Polaris missile, and the X-15 rocket plane. With the launch of Sputnik, national attention turned to space, and Faget followed Gilruth to the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration. There, he championed the idea of a blunt capsule for manned missions, rather than the popular notion of a streamlined, winged spacecraft. His arguments eventually convinced NASA, and he went on to design the Mercury spacecraft, and helped with the Gemini, Apollo, and shuttle programs. After retiring from NASA, he founded his own company, Space Industries, Inc. Faget lives in Houston.

Fender, Donna L.

Born in 1965 in Decatur, Alabama, Donna Fender earned a bachelor of science degree in aerospace and aeronautical engineering from the University of Alabama in 1988. Since then, she has worked for NASA in a variety of positions related to test systems and space simu­lation. She presented a paper entitled "Manned Testing in a Simulated Space Environment" at the 1993 European Space Agency conference in the Nether­lands on space simulation. She is cur­rently the project manager for TransHab, coordinating the work of architects and engineers creating inflatable space habitats. Fender specializes in building and integrating systems for testing, par­ticularly in space-simulation chambers.

Frassanito, John

John Frassanito was born in 1941 and raised in New York. He studied industrial design at the Art Center in Los Angeles (now Art Center College of Design in Pasadena), and graduated in 1968. He then joined Raymond Loewy'sfirm, Raymond Loewy/William Snaith, Inc., as part of the team that worked on the design of Skylab, NASA's first space station. Frassanito left Loewy's office shortly thereafter to take a job with the Computer Terminal Corporation, where he designed, among other early com­puters, the Datapoint 2000 (patented July 25,1972). It was considered by Inven­tion and Technology magazine (Fall 1994) to be the "direct lineal ancestor to the PC." Frassanito started his own design firm in 1975, where he continued to design Datapoint computers as well as products for Sani-Fresh, Scott Paper, and EMI Corporation. In 1983, he set up his practice in Houston so that he could collaborate again with NASA, which was beginning to plan the space station that resulted in the International Space Station. In the 1980s, Frassanito worked with NASA architects and engineers as part of one of the teams that devel­oped concepts for the space station. His firm has continued to work for NASA on a contract basis in developing com­puter-generated animations of their planned missions.

Glushko, Valentin Petrovich

Born in 1908 in Odessa, Russia, Valentin Glushko graduated in 1929 from Lenin­grad University. A few years later, while working at the Gas Dynamics Labora­tory, he developed early Soviet rocket propulsion systems. It was in that job that he first met Sergei Korolev, who would serve as chief designer of the Soviet space program in the 1950s and 1960s.

In fact, Glushko designed a rocket engine that was used in 1937 to propel one of Korolev's glider designs. As was Korolev, Glushko was arrested in a Stalinist purge and spent the war in a prison camp, where he continued to work on rocket design. Immediately after World War II, he studied captured German rocket launchers and was put in charge of the design bureau that eventually became NPO Energomash, the facility responsi­ble for most of the Soviet Union's first- stage engines of their heavy launchers. Although Glushko disagreed with Korolev over the design of the latter's N-1 Moon Rocket (designed by Korolev favorite Vasily Pavlovich Mishin), his fortunes changed after Korolev's death in 1966. Glushko reorganized the design bureaus of the Soviet space program and has been credited with developing the massive Energia boosters, as well as Buran, the Soviet Union's answer to America's Space Shuttle. He died in Moscow in 1989.

Goddard, Robert Hutchings

Robert Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 5, 1882. Although math was a difficult subject for him in high school, Goddard dreamed of building rockets and knew that math was critical. Through hard work and determination, he graduated at the top of his class. He entered Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1904 and earned his bachelor's degree in physics. He then went on to earn his master's degree and doctorate at Clark University. After graduation, he began teaching physics. In 1912, Goddard was awarded a one-year research fellowship to Princeton, where he developed his basic theoretical rocket computations. His hard work and long hours, however, soon caught up with him. Near the end of his fellowship he had a breakdown and contracted tuberculosis. He was given two weeks to live, but managed to survive. He returned to Clark Univer­sity as a part-time teacher, in order to dedicate more time to his research and experiments. In 1917, he began his long relationship with the Smithsonian Insti­tution and received a $5,000 sponsorship. A year later, he led the U.S. Army rocket research group. Goddard pub­lished his calculations and theoretical rocket models in 1919 in a paper entitled, "A Method of Reaching Extreme Alti­tudes." This study, however, earned Goddard nothing but skepticism and ridicule. He became more reclusive and secluded, but continued his research.

He began developing liquid-fueled rock­ets, and on March 16, 1926, the world's first liquid-fueled rocket flew for 2.5 seconds and achieved an altitude of 184 feet. Goddard continued to improve his design, and in 1929 launched a rocket that contained a scientific payload, con­sisting of a thermometer, a barometer, and a camera to take a picture of the instruments at the top of the rocket's flight path. In 1930, Goddard received a $50,000 Guggenheim grant and moved to Roswell, New Mexico, where he built a new rocket research facility. He contin­ued to improve his designs and achieved better stability by using gyroscopes, and in 1935 he launched a rocket to an altitude of over a mile on a perfectly stabilized flight. Following these suc­cesses, he published a second paper in

1936   titled, "Liquid-Propellant Rocket Development," which included experi­mental data from all his rocket flights. With the onset of World War II, Goddard joined the Naval Engineering Experi­mental Station in Annapolis, Maryland. He continued working there until his death in 1945.

Griffin, Brand Norman

Born in 1947, Brand Griffin was raised in the Pacific Northwest and educated at Washington State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in architec­ture in 1 970. He earned a master of fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1971, and a master's in architecture from Rice University in 1972. Although Griffin taught at Tulane, Rice, and the University of Washington, he is probably best known for his long-term work with Boeing, particularly for designs for the International Space Station in the 1980s. He has received numerous awards, includ­ing the Prix de Rome fellowship in archi­tecture at the American Academy in Rome, and his design work for spacecraft has been featured in publications such as Aviation Week and Space Technology and in exhibitions in Huntsville, Alabama, Seattle, and New York. He currently heads his own firm, Griffin Design, in Huntsville.

Hedrick, Wyatt Cephas

Wyatt Hedrick was born in Chatham, Virginia, in 1888, and was educated at Roanoke College and Washington and Lee University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1910. He established a variety of firms during a more than fifty-year career, beginning with the W. C. Hedrick Construction Co. of 1914 and culminating in Wyatt C. Hedrick Architect and Associates, based in Fort Worth, from 1925 until his death in 1964. He received major industrial commissions in Texas and abroad, and his other important projects included bases for the army, navy, and air force, among them the U.S. Air Force base in Keflavik, Iceland, of 1952-57, and the Shamrock Hilton in Houston of 1946 (now demolished). For NASA he designed the Central Laboratory and Office Com­plex at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1961.

Hilten, Heinz

Born in Berlin in 1909, Heinz Hilten stud­ied architecture at the Technical Univer­sity there, earning a master's degree under the well-known architect Heinrich Tessenow in 1934. From 1939 to 1942 he worked as an architect at Peenemünde, mostly on the construction of the hous­ing projects for the facilities workers and scientists there. After serving in the German army from 1942 to 1944, he returned to work with Wernher von Braun's group at Peenemünde until the war's end, and from 1945 to 1954 he was employed in the municipal architect's office in Augsburg. It was then that Hannes Luehrsen (see below) brought him to Huntsville, Alabama, to work on the master planning of the Redstone missile arsenal, which occupied him until 1960. Between 1960 and his retirement in 1978, he was employed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. At Marshall, he prepared the master plans submitted annually to Congress for budgetary and expansion approval, and he participated in the design of various laboratories there, including those for structures, mechanics, guidance, and aerodynamics. Since retir­ing he has continued to live in Huntsville.

Jones, Rod

William R."Rod" Jones II was born in 1958 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He earned his bachelor of architecture degree from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1984. Even before finishing his degree, he worked as a draftsman for the Los Angeles architects Pulliam Mathews and Associates in 1979-80, and as a jun­ior designer with the Chicago firm of Fujikawa, Conterato, Lohan, and Asso­ciates (later Lohan Associates), from 1981 to 1982. In the latter firm he con­tributed to the design of the demonstra­tion kitchen and extensive high-tech audio-visual functions for McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Since 1984, he has worked with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, he participated in the design of the Inter­national Space Station as well as man­aged the development of Space Station Crew Equipment, including restraints, interior partitions, crew quarters, galley, food service areas, and personal hygiene facilities. At present he is responsible for the oversight of all U.S. flights to assemble, outfit, and resupply the Inter­national Space Station.

Kennedy, Kriss

Kriss Kennedy was born in Potsdam, New York, in 1960. He earned his bach­elor's degree in professional studies in architecture from the University of Buf­falo in 1984 and his master of architec­ture degree from the Sasakawa Center for Space Architecture at the University of Houston in 1988. He has worked for a variety of architectural firms, sometimes simultaneously. From 1987 to 1995, he was a consulting designer for Allan James, Inc., in Houston, and in 1990, he established his own architectural firm, called Techne Architects. In addition, since 1987 he has also been employed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in a variety of design positions, including those related to the inflatable module TransHab for the International Space Station, Surface Base Planning, and Lunar-Mars habitats. His latest work for NASA involves the development of inflatable structures for space habitation.

Korolev, Sergei Pavlovich

Sergei Korolev was born in the Ukraine in 1907. In 1928, he entered Bauman Technical University, where he special­ized in aeronautical engineering. While there, he cofounded GIRD, an unofficial organization that carried out some of the first liquid-fueled rocket experiments in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, his increasing technological skills brought him unwanted attention, and in 1938 he was arrested in a Stalinist purge and accused of "subversion in a new field of technology." He was sent to the Kolyma gold mines in Siberia, where the aver­age life expectancy of a prisoner was six months. Soon, however, he was trans­ferred to a special prison for scientists and engineers, where he resumed his rocket research. After World War II, Korolev was sent to Germany to study captured A-4 rockets. He was put to work designing ballistic missiles, but he also persisted with his own plans to send people into space by designing missiles large enough and powerful enough to launch manned capsules. He eventually became the chief designer of the Soviet space program. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union set a stunning number of space records: the first artificial satel­lite, the first person in space, the first spacewalk, the first spacecraft to reach the Moon, the first (and only) probes to land on Venus, the first Mars flyby, and the first spy satellite. He also led the U.S.S.R.'s attempts to land a man on the Moon. Korolev, however, did not live to see the conclusion of the race. He died prematurely in January 1966.

Ley, Willy

Fascinated by science, Willy Ley was one of the driving forces behind the popu­larization of spaceflight. Ley was born in Berlin in 1906, and studied astronomy, zoology, physics, and paleontology at the University of Berlin and the Univer­sity of Konigsburg. He wrote his first book on the topic of space travel in 1926 and worked with the film director Fritz Lang on a few of his movies, including Frau im Mond.Inspired by the writings of Hermann Oberth, in 1927 he helped . form the Society for Space Travel and later recruited the young Wernher von Braun into the society. His enthusiasm for spreading knowledge, specifically the latest developments in rocketry, however, led to trouble when the Nazi party came to power. He left Germany, moved to Great Britain, and then came to the United States. After the war, he continued to write books about rock­etry and space travel, collaborating on some of them with von Braun, and he strongly advocated the idea of sending people to the Moon. His books helped fuel the public support that eventually led to the Apollo program. He died in June 1969, just one month before the first Moon landing.

Lippisch, Alexander Martin

Alexander Lippisch was born in Munich on November 2, 1894. He received his engineering doctorate from Heidelberg University. In 1918, after his service in World War I, he went to work for the Zeppelin Company. Soon, though, his interests turned to high-speed aircraft. He developed some of the earliest stud­ies, experiments, and theoretical mod­els of high-speed aircraft performance, and was intrigued by the idea of a tail­less aircraft. His first successful tailless design was a glider he designed in 1921. Seven years later, he created a rocket- boosted glider and achieved the first rocket-powered flight in history. He pur­sued his research on delta wing, tailless, high-speed aircraft and in 1939 was hired by the Messerschmitt Company. There, he designed the Me 163, the world's first rocket-powered interceptor. In 1946, he immigrated to the United States and worked with the U.S. Air Force. He died on February 11,1976.

Loewy, Raymond Fernand

Raymond Loewy became one of the most influential industrial designers in Amer­ica. He was born in Paris on November 8, 1893, and attended the University of Paris from 1910to 1912. He served with the French Army Corps of Engineers as liaison officer to the American Expedi­tionary Force between 1914 and 1918. After the war, he immigrated to the United States; he was naturalized in 1938.   He started his career as a window- display artist and fashion illustrator, but soon opened his own industrial design firm, Raymond Loewy Associates, in 1929. He developed the acronym MAYA - Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable - to describe his design philosophy. He helped design all kinds and aspects of Ameri­can products, including International Harvester tractors, a Sears, Roebuck, and Co. refrigerator, Studebaker automo­biles, and the Exxon and Shell Oil Com­pany logos. From 1967 to 1973, his influence extended beyond the atmos­phere as he helped design the interior of the Skylab space station. He died on July 14, 1986, in Monte Carlo.

Luckman, Charles

Charles Luckman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1909. He graduated magna cum laude in 1931 from the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois. His career began at the Colgate-Palmo- live-Peet Company, where he worked as a draftsman. His business sense and attention to detail were quickly noticed, and in 1935, he was offered the posi­tion of sales manager at the Pepsodent Company, whose profits he promptly quadrupled. This feat earned him a place on the cover of Time magazine in 1937   and the label, "Boy Wonder of American Industry." In 1943, Pepsodent was acquired by Lever Brothers, but Luckman again rose to the top, and in 1946 he was named president of Lever Brothers. One of his first tasks there was to help create the new corporate headquarters, which became one of the first glass skyscrapers in Manhattan - the famous Lever House on Park Avenue designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He enjoyed the process so much that he left the company and started the Luckman Partnership architectural firm. It was with this firm that he made his contributions to the space program. He was responsible for creating the origi­nal master plans for Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles, the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the Johnson Space Center in Hous­ton. These accomplishments are even more impressive when the timelines are taken into account. Because of the rush to land men on the Moon by the end of the decade, Luckman was given only forty-eight days to design the entire Johnson Space Center, including all the laboratories, training facilities, and Mission Control. Luckman died in January 1999.

Luehrsen, Hannes

Hannes Luehrsen was born in Bargte­heide, Germany, in 1907 and studied at the Technical Universities in Aachen and Berlin, earning his bachelor's degree in 1930 and his master's degree in 1934, both from Aachen. He ran his own archi­tectural practice in Berlin from 1938 to 1941 and during World War II was one of the architects who worked on the design of the V-2 facilities at Peenemünde, where he designed the various emblems on the V-2s. In 1949, he was brought to Huntsville, Alabama, by Wernher von Braun to work as the master planner for the Redstone missile arsenal. In 1960, two years after NASA was established, Luehrsen became chief of the master planning office for the NASA campus in Huntsville; he held this position until 1969. He also consulted on other master planning efforts, such as that for the restoration of Heidelberg, Germany, sponsored by the Portland Cement Com­pany, in 1969, and for Point Mallard Park in Decatur, Alabama, in 1967. Luehrsen died in 1986.

Mount, Frances E.

Frances Mount was born in 1936 and was raised in Pennsylvania. She traveled extensively throughout the United States while completing her college work. From the University of Houston, she earned a bachelor of science in mathematics in 1974; a bachelor of science in psychology in 1975; and a doctorate in psychology, specializing in human factors, in 1993. She worked as a consultant to NASA's Johnson Space Center for a decade begin­ning in 1974, and since 1985 she has been a staff member. At NASA, she has worked on a variety of habitability issues related to spaceflights of long duration, particularly those pertaining to the space station Freedom (the precursor of the International Space Station), develop­ing the programs for ergonomics, work­station design, and human-computer interface issues. Her research also addresses general space habitability factors, from window placement to color use and noise level determination. She currently researches space human fac­tors, such as procedures, crew interfaces, and conflict resolution, which help main­tain effective and efficient crew per­formance during spaceflight missions.

Nixon, David A.

Born in 1947 in 11 key, Yorkshire, England, David Nixon studied architecture at the Polytechnic of Central London. After graduation in 1971, he worked for a variety of high-tech architectural firms, including those of Lord Richard Rogers, Sir Hugh Casson, Sir Norman Foster, and Nicholas Grimshaw, as well as Chicago's Skidmore, Owingsand Merrill. In 1977, Nixon and architect Jan Kaplicky formed a group in London called Future Systems; they worked together on a variety of design projects for more than a decade. Nixon moved to California in 1980 to teach architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the University of California, Los Angeles. Between 1985 and 1989, he worked for NASA on the design of the astronauts' habitation in the International Space Station. With the experience gained from that contract, he created the firm Altus Associates and expanded his scope to include aerospace architecture and design projects, most notably for the Rotary Rocket Company. 

Oberth, Hermann Julius

Born in Transylvania on June 25, 1894, Hermann Oberth became interested in spaceflight and rocketry at an early age when he began reading the works of Jules Verne. In 1912, he entered the Uni­versity of Munich to study medicine, and he worked in a medical unit during World War I. Deciding not to pursue a medical career, Oberth returned to school to study physics. He presented his doc­toral thesis, entitled "Rockets into Inter­planetary Space," in 1922, but it was rejected for being too utopian. He did not rewrite his thesis, but instead pub­lished it on his own, hoping to show that without a degree he was a better scientist than those who had rejected his work. His interest in rocketry contin­ued, and in 1928 and 1929 he worked as a scientific consultant to Fritz Lang during the production of the film Frau im Mond. Also in 1929, Oberth fired his first liquid-fueled rocket, assisted by students of the Technical University of Berlin. One of these students was Wern­her von Braun, who later used many of Oberth's design improvements in his own V-2 rocket engine. Oberth also assisted with the production of the V-2 during World War II, and after the war he moved to Switzerland to be an inde­pendent consultant and writer. Oberth then came to the United States and worked for von Braun in Huntsville, Alabama, during the late 1950s. He retired to Germany in 1962, where he contin­ued his writing. Oberth died in Nurem- burg in 1989, at the age of ninety-five.

Tedesko, Anton

Anton Tedesko was born in 1903 in Gruenberg, Germany. He earned engineering degrees from the Polytechnic Universities in Vienna in 1926 and Berlin in 1930, as well as a doctorate from Vienna in 1951. Although he designed structures in Vienna as well as Poland and Czechoslovakia before World War II, he is best remembered for his work with Chicago engineers Roberts and Schaefer from 1932 and after, particularly thin- shell concrete roofs. Some of Tedesko's most famous buildings include the Sea-plane Hangars at North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego from 1940-41 and the roofs of the 1951-56 terminal at Lambert Field, St. Louis, designed in con-junction with architects Hellmuth, Yamasaki, and Leinweber. He and his firm consulted on other aerospace proj¬ects as well, most notably the facilities at Cape Canaveral from the early 1960s, including the Vertical Assembly Building. Tedesko died in Seattle in 1994. 

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of Soviet rocketry, was born on September 17, 1857, in the village of Izherskoye, about two hundred kilometers from Moscow. At age nine, a case of scarlet fever caused him to lose most of his hear­ing. Ridiculed by other children, he turned to reading for entertainment. He taught himself physics and began invent­ing such vehicles as a steam-powered carriage and a hydrogen-fueled balloon. At age sixteen, he went to Moscow to continue his studies; he taught himself differential and integral calculus, ana­lytical geometry, and spherical trigonom­etry. Tsiolkovsky was driven by the idea of travel into space and starved himself so that he could spend most of his money on books and chemicals for his experiments. In 1876, he returned home and three years later began his career as a schoolteacher. He continued his experimentation and theoretical studies and was particularly interested in airplanes, an all-metal dirigible, and interplanetary rockets. In 1890, he con­structed the first wind tunnel in Russia to test his designs. He even tried his hand at writing science fiction. His 1895 story, "Dreams of Earth and Heaven," describes a space station orbiting two hundred miles above the Earth, an alti­tude that is remarkably accurate. In 1897, he derived the formula for a liquid- fueled rocket, which relates the rocket velocity to its exhaust velocity and amount of fuel remaining. He described this formula in his 1903 paper, "Investi­gating Space with Reaction Devices," which also proved that rockets could theoretically achieve orbital speeds and escape velocity. The paper contained as well practical instructions for building rocket components and concluded that single-stage rockets were not the best design for interplanetary flights. His ideas, however, were not well received. Most people refused to give credit to the work of a self-taught scientist with no formal college degree. Tsiolkovsky con­tinued his research, and a revised version of "Investigating Space" was published in 1911. This version also included a new section on using nuclear power for rocket propulsion and proposed the idea of using electric fields to increase the exhaust velocity. He began gaining more credibility for his work and was inducted into the Russian Socialist Academy of Sciences in 1919. He contin­ued writing papers on reentry, solar propulsion, multi-staged rockets, and jet airplanes. Tsiolkovsky died in Kaluga, Russia, in 1935, having published four times as many articles during his last seventeen years as he had in his previous sixty years of life.

Urbahn, Max O.

Born in 1912 in Burscheid, Germany, and educated in architecture at the University of Illinois and Yale University, Max Urbahn began his design career in

1938    in the office of John Russell Pope. There he worked as part of the team that designed the National Gallery of Art and the Jefferson Memorial. He worked in the New York office of Holabird and Root, a prominent Chicago firm, during World War II. Urbahn practiced architec­ture on his own in New York from 1946 to 1978. His firm, originally Resiner and Urbahn, exists today under the name Urbahn Associates and is headed by Martin Stein. The Urbahn office special­ized in, and still concentrates on, archi­tecture for the public sector, some of its notable work being hospitals, schools, and research institutes, particularly in the New York City area. His office was part of the architectural team that designed Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. Urbahn's greatest accomplishment in building for space travel was heading a consortium that designed the Vehicle Assembly Building and launch-control complex at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early 1960s. He served as president of the American Institute of Architects in 1972. Urbahn made his home in Stonington, Connecticut; he died there in 1995.

Verne, Jules Gabriel

Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in Nantes, France, into a family of lawyers. He earned his law degree in Paris in 1849. Verne became increas­ingly enchanted with the city's literary circles, and he began writing plays, the first of which was performed in 1850.

Verne also began teaching himself geol­ogy, engineering, and astronomy in order to write more realistic and believable stories. His first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was published in 1863. Many more novels followed, including From the Earth to the Moon, Direct in Ninety-seven Hours Twenty Minutes in 1866, and its sequel, Around the Moon, in 1869. These stories of interplanetary travel, which were remarkably accurate for their time, later inspired many scientists and engineers to make space travel a reality. Verne lived a long and colorful life, which included witnessing a revolution, serving in the coast guard during the Franco-Prussian War, working as a stockbroker, receiving a pri­vate audience with Pope Leo XII, and being shot by his nephew, which left him permanently lame. He died in Amiens in 1905.

Von Braun, Wernher

Wernher von Braun was born into an aris­tocratic family in Wirsitz, Germany, on March 23, 1912. Upon his confirmation into the Lutheran church, his mother pre­sented him with a telescope, which fueled his desire for space travel. The family moved to Berlin in 1920, but young Wern­her did not perform well in school, partic­ularly in math and physics. In 1925, he obtained a copy of Hermann Oberth's the­sis, "Rockets into Interplanetary Space," and became extremely frustrated when he could not understand the math involved. He began to study more diligently and eventually mastered the subject. While studying at the Berlin Institute of Technol­ogy in 1930, von Braun joined the Society for Space Travel, where he assisted Oberth with the testing of liquid-fueled rocket engines. In 1932, he earned his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineer­ing and started his graduate work at Berlin University. In that same year, the Society for Space Travel ran into financial prob­lems and could not afford to continue its rocket tests. The group was soon contacted by Captain Walter Dornberger, who was in charge of developing solid-fueled rock­ets for the German army and offered them a chance to keep working at the Kum- mersdorf Army Proving Grounds outside of Berlin. Von Braun completed his school­ing and earned his doctorate in physics in 1934. His thesis,"About Combustion Tests," bore a title that was purposely vague due to military security. In it, von Braun intri­cately described the test firings of two different types of liquid-fueled engines developed at Kummersdorf. While at Kummersdorf, von Braun and his team also developed the rocket that became known as the V-1 buzz bomb. Soon, however, it became apparent that more room was needed for their tests, and in 1937 the team moved to a town on the Baltic Sea called Peenemünde. There von Braun and his colleagues created the A-4 rocket, which later was renamed the V-2. The first test flight of the A-4 occurred on October 3, 1942. During this flight, the rocket broke the sound barrier and climbed over sixty miles high, literally reaching the edge of space. Work contin­ued, and on September 7, 1944, the first operational V-2 was launched. As the war neared its end, all turned their eyes towards von Braun. The United States and the Soviet Union both wanted the mastermind behind the V-2, but the German military police force had orders to kill the entire team to keep the information from falling into enemy hands. Von Braun and his fellow scientists decided that they would much rather surrender to the Americans, so they stole a train and headed for the Ameri­can lines. They were brought to White Sands, New Mexico, along with hun­dreds of tons of captured V-2 hardware, and continued their rocket research, this time working for the U.S. Army.

In 1952, von Braun moved to Hunts­ville, Alabama, and took charge of the army's ballistic weapons program. Under his control, the army developed the Redstone, Jupiter-C, Juno, and Pershing missiles. During the 1950s, von Braun also wrote numerous articles and books popularizing the idea of space travel.

He became a United States citizen in 1955. In 1958, after the Soviet launches of Sputnik 1 and 2, and the failed launch of the U.S. Vanguard program, von Braun and his team at Huntsville launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1, aboard a Jupiter-C missile. In that same year, the rocket team was transferred to the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Von Braun became the director of NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville and began work on the Saturn series of rockets, the first boost­ers designed specifically as space vehi­cles. Saturn rockets eventually launched every manned mission to the moon, as well as the Skylab space station and the American half of the joint U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz mission. In 1970, von Braun was transferred to NASA head­quarters in Huntsville, where he served as the deputy administrator for plan­ning. He left NASA in 1972 and took a position as vice president with the aero­space company Fairchild Industries, Inc. He founded the National Space Insti­tute in 1975 to promote the peaceful use of space. Von Braun died in Alexan­dria, Virginia, in 1977.

In: 2001: Building for Space Travel. Edit by John Zukowsky, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.), pp.180-184.

Out of the Present
 

Let There be Light