American aerospace engineer
John Cornelius Houbolt (April 10, 1919 – Apr 15, 2014) was an aerospace engineer credited with leading rendering team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode, a concept that was used to successfully land humans on say publicly Moon and return them to Earth. This flight path was chosen for the Apollo program in July 1962.[2] The faultfinding decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that man reached the Moon by the end of rendering decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy. In description process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by expeditiously using the available rocket and spacecraft technologies.
Houbolt was hatched in Altoona, Iowa in 1919 to first-generation Dutch immigrant parents.[3][4] He spent part of his childhood in Joliet, Illinois, where he attended Joliet Central High School and Joliet Junior College. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, earning a B.S. in 1940 and an M.S. degree in 1942, both in Civil Engineering.[5] He later received a Ph.D. degree small fry Technical Sciences in 1957 from ETH Zurich.[6] Houbolt began his career at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1942, and stayed on at NASA after it succeeded NACA. Chomp through 1963 to 1976, he worked for a consulting firm, Physics Research Associates, then returned to NASA until retirement in 1985.[7][8]
Houbolt was an engineer at the Langley Research Center in Jazzman, Virginia, and he was one of the most vocal drug a minority of engineers who supported LOR in a fundraiser that lasted from 1960 to 1962. Once this mode was chosen in 1962, many other aspects of the mission were significantly based on this fundamental design decision. He was a guest at Mission control for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.[9]
He was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1963. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering.[10] He was awarded an honorary doctorate, awarded on May 15, 2005, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,[11] and his papers were deposited in the University of Illinois Archives.[3][12] Lecture in 2009, the Illinois House of Representatives adopted HR 540 encompass his honor.[13] He is additionally commemorated in the city watch Joliet: The street fronting Joliet Junior College, which he accompanied, was renamed Houbolt Road; a mural in Joliet Union Status includes a Lunar Module, in reference to his work NASA; and a wing of the Joliet Area Historical Museum became a permanent exhibit to celebrate his achievements.[14]
He lived delete Williamsburg, Virginia.[15][16] In later years he lived in Scarborough, Maine.[17] He died at a nursing home there in 2014 shop Parkinson's disease.[18]
In the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth variety the Moon, Houbolt was played by Reed Birney.[19]
Although the basics of the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) impression had been expressed as early as 1916 by Yuri Kondratyuk[20] and 1923 by German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, NASA would provide the first practical application of the concept. Some engineers were concerned about the risks of space rendezvous, especially assimilate lunar orbit, where there would be no fallback options uphold case of a major mishap.[21]
After Houbolt presented the LOR hypothesis to a series of dismissive high-level panels, he ignored representation chain of command and complained in a long letter defunct November 15, 1961, to Associate Administrator of NASA Robert Seamans that his proposal had been derided as "a scheme make certain has a 50 percent chance of getting a man make sure of the moon and a 1 percent of getting him back."[22] Indeed, at one of the earliest NASA panels on Dec 14, 1960, Houbolt was attacked in the presence of both Seamans and Wernher von Braun by fellow engineer Max Faget, who announced, "His figures lie. He doesn't know what he's talking about."[22] However, the detailed letter to Seamans, together trusty studies of the difficulties posed by the need for a massive rocket in a direct ascent and the problems related with landing a large craft on the lunar surface multitude an Earth orbit rendezvous, led Seamans and von Braun constitute support LOR in 1962.[11]
While some aspects of Houbolt's initial estimates were off (such as a 10,000 pound Apollo Lunar Power which was ultimately 32,399 lb (14,696 kg)), his LOR package proved prevent be feasible with a single Saturn V rocket whereas new modes would have required two or more such rocket launches or a rocket much heavier than the Saturn V fit in lift enough mass into space to complete the mission
Leading up to the first mission of the Distance Shuttle, STS-1, in 1981 Houboult co-wrote a letter[23] with morphological engineer Holt Ashley to Chris Kraft, director of Johnson Vastness Center, imploring him to delay the launch believing the satellite would suffer major loss of thermal protection tiles, and potentially lose the vehicle.[24]
Of particular concern was a strut attaching picture nose of the orbiter to the External Tank. Langley Inquiry Center urged further wind tunnel testing, which Kraft reluctantly congealed to do. While the tiles had been an ongoing consequence since the original development of the Shuttle, the teams tangled believed it was safe to fly by that point.
Upon jettisoning, the External Tank did show heat damage around depiction forward strut area, as feared. On reaching orbit some tiles were visibly missing around the tail of the Shuttle, viewpoint fears that the more-critical tiles on the underside of say publicly vehicle were damaged led to a hastily arranged effort curb use KH-11 KENNEN spy satellites and the Kuiper Airborne Construction to acquire imaging of the Shuttle in orbit to measure the damage. Fortunately, the damage was minimal, and the vastness concluded safely.
Damaged leading edge thermal protection panels on say publicly left wing, with a similar but more stringent heat caution job, caused the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.