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Gilruth, Robert R
Gilruth
Gilruth
American engineer, at NASA 1937-1952. Head of Mercury, 1959-1962, Director, Houston, 1962-1972. Under his leadership Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were designed and flown, America won the moon race, and the shuttle was designed.

Born: 1913-10-08. Died: 2000-08-17. Birth Place: Nashwauk, Minnesota.

Gilruth's father was a high school physics teacher; his mother a math teacher. As a 13-year-old boy in Duluth, news of Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic gave him the aviation bug, and he became a master model airplane builder. He went to the University of Minnesota and got a masters degree in aeronautical engineering. While there he was deeply involved in the design and wind tunnel testing of the Laird Meteor racing plane, which seized the world speed record in 1935. Gilruth went straight to NACA's Langley Aeronautical Laboratory after graduation in 1937. In 1946 he was named chief of the pilotless aircraft research division at Wallops Island, then named an Assistant Director at Langley from 1952. By then he already began exploring the possibility of human spaceflight , putting together an informal group that studied the technical and aerodynamic problems of getting into space and returning to earth.

As a result of this advanced work, when NACA was transformed into NASA, he was named Assistant Director for Manned Satellites and head of Project Mercury in 1959. Three years later NASA moved its manned spaceflight activities to Houston, where Gilruth was Director from 1962-1972. Under his leadership NASA developed the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft, successfully trained for and flew the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo manned programs, won the moon race, and designed the Space Shuttle.



Country: USA. Bibliography: 4472, 535, 5433.
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GilruthGilruth
Credit: NASA



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