George Mueller (NASA)
George Edwin Mueller, pronounced Miller, (* July 16, 1918 in St. Louis) is an American electrical and aerospace engineer. He was one of the leading manager of NASA during the Apollo program and director of the Office of Manned Space Flight Space ( OMSF ) By 1963 until 1969.
Life
Mueller's parents were German - Americans, but he himself spoke little German. His father was an electrician and also Mueller early showed a talent for art. He studied electrical engineering at the Missouri School of Mines and Technology with a bachelor 's degree in 1938 and a master's degree at Purdue University 1940. According to the bachelor's degree he taught a television recording system at Purdue University in a project by RCA and went to the Bell Laboratories ( 1940-1946 ), where he worked on radar in airplanes during World War II. By the way, he studied and in 1951 received his doctorate at Ohio State University in physics ( via antenna technology). He then taught until 1957 as a professor at the University and director of the Program on dielectric antennas, but at the same time advised the company Ramo Wooldridge - ( later acquired by TRW Inc.), among others, in radar technology for missiles. In 1958, he joined TRW as head of the Electronics Laboratory in the Space Technology Laboratories, Redondo Beach.
1963 brought him NASA director James Edwin Webb as Head of OMSF (from 1964 as Acting Director of the Apollo program ). He reorganized and streamlined the management structure and put the concept of the all -up testing for the Saturn V through, that is, simultaneous test of all levels. The first two tests were successful ( the first all up test was with Apollo 4 in November 1967), the third launch Apollo 8 in 1968 went into a lunar orbit and the sixth launch was the moon landing of Apollo 11 due to its contacts with the military missile program he also brought a number Airforce officers from the Minuteman program to the Apollo program, including its director Samuel C. Phillips.
He was already in the mid-1960s, NASA involved in planning for follow-up projects of Apollo and also on the early decisions for the Space Shuttle. The end of 1969, he left NASA and went into industry. Time he was a senior vice president of General Dynamics, and in 1971 chairman of the System Development Corporation ( SDC) in Santa Monica, the complex computer systems for the military developed and adopted in 1980 by Burroughs. He remained there until 1984. Afterwards, he was President of the International Academy of Astronautics. 1995 to 2004 he was CEO of Kistler Aerospace.
In 1970 he received the National Medal of Science, and he was more 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.