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.

FMI: www.nasa.gov