Designer Of Mercury Capsule
The man who designed the
Mercury capsule, as well as the Apollo service- and command-module,
Maxime Faget, has gone west.
"There is no one in space flight history in this or any other
country who has had a larger impact on man's quest in space
exploration," said Christopher Kraft, the former director of the
Johnson Space Center, as quoted by the Houston Chronicle. "History
will remember him as one of the really great scientists of the 20th
century."
Faget was there at the very beginning, a founding member of the
Space Task Group. Appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958,
the team of 35 scientists was ordered to come up with a way to
answer the Soviet Union's initial forays into space.
In short order, the Task Group, working for the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), moved from its original
home at Langley AFB in Hampton (VA) to Houston, where it became the
core of NASA and the Johnson Space Center.
Faget and the other team members were on the hotseat, working
fast to come up with a space program after Russia launched its
Sputnik satellite in 1957. In Houston, Faget's work on blunt nose
cones for ballistic missiles proved groundbreaking when it came
time to design a manned spacecraft. Other scientists advocated a
winged lifting-body spacecraft. But, working on that very tight
deadline, Faget convinced his colleagues that a blunt-nosed
spacecraft could quickly answer the Soviet challenge.
Getting into space in short order was just one issue. The manned
capsule had to be a little aerodynamic so that it could be
maneuvered in the Earth's atmosphere. It also had to withstand the
terrible heat of re-entry.
Faget's Mercury design became the forerunner of the Gemini and
Apollo spacecraft and he was there to work on both. At the end of
the Apollo missions, Faget turned his attention to creating a
reusable spaceship -- the space shuttle.
He retired in 1981, right after the second shuttle mission.
Last year, Faget bumped heads with his former employer. Just
after the Columbia tragedy, he told the Chronicle that the shuttles
had outlived their best years.
"It's old and needs to
be replaced," Faget said of the shuttle fleet. "Congress should
provide enough money for us to build a new shuttle. We should
seriously get to work and do that. It's that simple."
But in the wake of Faget's death in Clear Lake over the weekend,
NASA's leader was willing to let bygones be bygones.
"Without Max Faget's innovative designs and thoughtful approach
to problem solving, America's space program would have had trouble
getting off the ground," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe,
quoted in the Houston paper.
Faget's death came just a week after one of America's first seven
astronauts, Gordon Cooper, died at the age of 77. Cooper manned the
last of the Mercury missions, staying in orbit for more than 34
hours.
The founder of one of the world's first private space
corporations, Faget died not long after SpaceShipOne, a
privately-funded, privately-built spaceship made its third journey
to the edge of space, winning the $10 million Ansari X-Prize.
Maxime Faget has gone west, where every spaceship flies
flawlessly and every mission is perfect. Happy landings, Max.