Kurt H. Debus

Kurt Heinrich Debus ( born November 29, 1908 in Frankfurt am Main, † 10 October 1983 in Cocoa Beach, Florida ) was a German rocket pioneer. From 1944 to February 1945 he was manager of the dynamometer VII in Peenemünde, between July 1962 and November 1974, he was director of the Kennedy Space Center.

Biography

Kurt Debus began in 1929 to study electrical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he in 1930 a member of the fraternity Markomannia - was - later Darmstadt fraternity Rheno - Markomannia. From 1933 to 1936 he was a member of the SA, from the beginning of 1939 he was a member of the SS ( membership number 426 559 ). In 1935, he obtained his degree in electrical engineering and became an assistant to Ernst headdresses. In 1939 he received a doctorate in electrical engineering at the TH Darmstadt and then worked as a research assistant on to the TH. Even at the time of his tenure at the TU- Darmstadt in 1942, he showed a work colleague with the Gestapo, for alleged " staatsabträglicher " utterances. This was sentenced to two years in prison after the former treachery law.

From 1939, Wernher von Braun had tried several times without success, to win Debus for work on the V2 in Peenemünde. Given the choice to become a soldier or go to Peenemünde, he opted for the latter and worked from August 1943 as a development engineer at the Army Research Center Peenemünde on the V-2 rocket. Lately he was superintendent of the dynamometer VII

Debus came in 1945 along with a group of engineers and scientists Wernher von Braun in the United States. By 1950, five years, the group worked at Fort Bliss (Texas ) and then moved to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville (Alabama ).

From 1952 to 1960 Kurt Debus worked for the U.S. Army in the ballistic agency of the flight ignition laboratories. As such, he was at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where he oversaw the launch of the first ballistic missile "Army Redstone ". From the Redstone program under his decisive participation was the Mercury - Redstone program, the forerunner of the Apollo program.

Debus 1962 Director of the Start Operation Centers, and finally director of the John F. Kennedy Space Center. During this time he was responsible for the launch of the Apollo program, including the six lunar landings (Apollo 11 to Apollo 17, Apollo 13 was aborted ). Under his leadership, among other things, enter the following missions:

In 1974 he retired from the position as director of the Space Center. From 1975 to 1980 he was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of OTRAG.

Honors

After Kurt H. Debus, the moon crater Debus was named to the moon back.

Source

• 70th Birthday: Post Mannheimer Morgen November 29, 1978