Gilruth, Robert Rowe

▪ 2001

      American aeronautical engineer and administrator (b. Oct. 8, 1913, Nashwauk, Minn.—d. Aug. 17, 2000, Charlottesville, Va.), oversaw the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects and thus had enormous influence on the U.S. manned space program. He was interested in aeronautics and astronomy as a boy and received two degrees, in 1935 and 1936, from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis in aeronautical engineering. Gilruth also became knowledgeable in materials science, which would later be important in his work in the space program. In 1937 he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where he did research on the behaviour of vehicles traveling at supersonic speeds and on rocket-powered aircraft. He also helped develop a launch range on the Atlantic coast of Virginia. In 1958 Gilruth was made director of NASA's Space Task Group and given the mandate to develop a manned space program. He oversaw the development of virtually all aspects of Project Mercury, which in 1961 put the first American into space, and then managed the Gemini and Apollo programs, which in 1969 put the first astronaut on the Moon. It was Gilruth who promoted a nondirect method of reaching the Moon by orbiting a spacecraft around it and then lowering a module from the craft to the surface. In 1961 he became the first director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (later the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas, and he served in that position until 1972 and retired in 1973. Gilruth received many honours, including membership in the National Space Hall of Fame and the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service.

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