.gif)
George Mueller (NASA)
Encyclopedia
George Mueller was Associate Administrator of the NASA
Office of Manned Space Flight from September 1963 until December 1969. Hailed as one of NASA's "most brilliant and fearless managers", he was instrumental in the "All-up" philosophy of testing the Saturn V
booster that accelerated a floundering Apollo program and ensured it would succeed in landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth by the end of 1969. Mueller (he pronounces it "Miller") also played a key part in the design of Skylab
and championed the space shuttle
's development.
More recently, Mueller was Chairman & Chief Vehicle Architect of the now defunct Kistler Aerospace Corp.
He went to Benton School in St. Louis - until the 8th grade - then he and his parents moved to a larger house in the country called Bel Nor outside the city.
The young Mueller enjoyed reading science fiction and, helped by his grandfather, woodworking - although his first model ship capsized. When he was aged 11 or 12 Mueller also built and raced model aircraft - such as gliders and rubber band model airplanes. Always curious about how things worked, he also built radios. Interested in these activities the teenage Mueller wanted to be an aeronautical engineer but discovered that where he could go to school, the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (now Missouri University of Science and Technology
) in Rolla, Missouri, there was no aeronautical engineering. They did have mechanical engineering so he plumped for this although finally found it discouraging, and switched over to electrical engineering.
Mueller assumed he would end up working in industry and so, in his senior year, went on a tour of various suitable companies. He applied to General Electric and Emerson but when he graduated in 1939 the economy took a downturn and he, like most of the class, had no job.
Luckily, after applying to several graduate schools he got an offer of a fellowship (funded by RCA) at Purdue. The fellowship was in a television project, Purdue was building a television transmitter for the campus, and it was the first of the kind that was using all vacuum tubes to produce the pictures. It was also the first using a CRT for display purposes. They still had mechanical disks for scanning but they were trying to develop an all-electronic approach.
The work Mueller did at Bell Labs prevented him from being drafted into the military during World War 2. He initially researched Orthicon technology but later became heavily involved in radar technology. As the war progressed his group was given the task of building the first airborne radar for Bell. Ultimately, the radar from MIT was chosen instead but not until after Mueller was spectacularly sick whilst flight testing Bell Labs' radar. He then worked on magnetrons and came close to co-inventing the transistor if he and his co-workers had placed their contacts on a single crystal of zircon rather than working with multiple crystals. It was at Bell Labs that he got to know Dean Wooldridge
.
, getting up every morning at around 5 o'clock and driving to Princeton to take a couple of courses before driving back down to Holmdehl to work all day at Bell Labs
. Luckily in 1946 a friend, Milt Boone, who knew a professor at The Ohio State University, encouraged Mueller to help set up a vacuum tube lab and run the communications group at Ohio State.
At Ohio State Mueller taught and did research, focusing his PhD thesis on dielectric antennas. Upon obtaining his doctorate in 1951, he became associate professor. Increasingly interested in the work that the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation was doing, he arranged a sabbatical in 1953 to them on the understanding he would be made a full professor on his return.
At Ramo-Wooldridge Mueller was a consultant. He got involved in the review of radar designs and the Bell Labs radar for the Titan rocket (which was originally radio-guided). Mueller was peripherally involved with some of the developments of the inertial systems and generally began to help out wherever there was a problem. He was tagged as a problem solver of the moment which turned out to be fun and kept him busy. Mueller admitted in 1987 that at this time he didn't know anything about missiles.
At this time Ramo-Wooldridge had just received a contract from General Bernard Schriever of the US Air Force. It was their first really large contract and they were trying to manage four programs all at once starting with a cadre of only 20 or 30 people.
After returning from his sabbatical year to Ohio State, Mueller taught but was also retained as a part-time consultant to R-W. In 1957 he joined Ramo-Wooldridge's STL as director of the Electronics Laboratories. This Laboratory soon merged with the mechanical group, and then Mueller became deputy of this larger organization. He was also program director for the Pioneer program and then took over as head of R&D [Research and Development]. Then STL was absorbed into what became TRW
. While working on missile systems Mueller became convinced that all-up testing was essential as "you don't want to be testing piece-wise in space. You want to test the entire system because who knows which one's going to fail, and you'd better have it all together so that whatever fails, you have a reasonable chance of finding the real failure mode, not just the one you were looking for."
Mueller became increasingly involved with NASA and the Apollo Program. NASA's administrator James Webb sounded Mueller out for a top job. Mueller would only agree if the agency was restructured and so over the next month he worked with Robert Seamans to restructure NASA which involved shifting three centers over to report to him directly, as well as a local group at Headquarters. Mueller accepted the job - although he took a substantial pay cut.
Encouraged by Webb, Mueller had already investigated OMSF. His first impression; "there wasn't any management system in existence". More seriously, Mueller found no means to determine and control hardware configuration which gave no way to determine costs or schedules. Mueller concluded he would have to "teach people what was involved in doing program control."
In August 1963, Mueller invited each of NASA's field center directors to visit him and explained how his proposed changes would put Apollo back on schedule and solve problems with the Bureau of the Budget. With some directors he had little problem but he had issues with Wernher von Braun
who gave "one of his impassioned speeches about how you can't change the basic organization of Marshall." After some argument von Braun accepted Mueller's proposals and reorganized MSFC strengthening its capacity in running large projects.
Mueller's position was strengthened by Webb making the directors at MSC, MSFC and KSC report direct to OMSF. Mueller also reduced attendance at the MSF Management Council to just himself and the Center directors. Borrowing from the US Air Force Minuteman program, Mueller formed the Apollo Executive Group which consisted of himself and the presidents of Apollo's main contractors.
The biggest problem Mueller still faced was Apollo's slipping schedule and huge cost overruns. He had always thought the only way to resolve this, and achieve a lunar landing before 1970, was to reduce the number of test flights. Mueller wanted to use his "all-up testing" concept with each flight using the full number of live stages. This approach had been used successfully on the Titan II and Minuteman programs but violated von Braun's engineering concepts. The von Braun test plan called for the first live test to use the Saturn's first stage with dummy upper stages. If the first stage worked correctly then the first two stages would then be live with a dummy third stage and so on, with at least ten test flights before a manned version was put into low earth orbit.
The Saturn V program manager Arthur Rudolph
cornered Mueller with scale models of Saturn and Minuteman. The Saturn dwarfed the Minuteman but Mueller replied, "So what?"
Eventually von Braun and the others were won over. As von Braun stated: "It sounded reckless, but George Mueller's reasoning was impeccable. Water ballast in lieu of a second and third stage would require much less tank volume than liquid-hydrogen-fuelled stages, so that a rocket tested with only a live first stage would be much shorter than the final configuration. Its aerodynamic shape and its body dynamics would thus not be representative. Filling the ballast tanks with liquid hydrogen? Fine, but then why not burn it as a bonus experiment? And so the arguments went on until George in the end prevailed."
Mueller's concept of all up testing worked, the first two unmanned flights of the Saturn V were successful (the second less so), then the third Saturn V put Frank Borman's Apollo 8
crew in orbit round the Moon on Christmas 1968, and the sixth Saturn V carried Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11
to the first lunar landing.
In an interview Mueller acknowledged what would have happened if all up testing had failed, "The whole Apollo program and my reputation would have gone down the drain".
With this battle won, in November 1965, Mueller reorganized the Gemini
and Apollo Program Offices, creating a five box structure at HQ and field center. This structure replicated Mueller's concept of system management and provided far better program overview. The cleverness of the idea was that inside these "GEM boxes" (named from his initials) managers and engineers communicated directly with their functional counterparts in NASA HQ bypassing all the usual chain of command and bureaucracy.
Mueller's GEM box idea worked but not until after several months of chaos at NASA HQ.
With another battle won, Mueller still found that he could not always find the right people with the right skills. Using his background in Air Force projects Mueller sought Webb's permission to bring in skilled Air Force managers. He proposed Minuteman program director General Samuel C. Phillips
as program controller of OMSF. Webb agreed, and so did AFSC chief General Bernard Schriever but only on the condition that Phillips became Apollo Program Director. Phillips in turn agreed and brought with him 42 mid-grade air force officers and eventually 124 more junior officers.
Robert Seamans
(the then NASA Deputy Administrator) stated that Mueller "didn’t sell; he dictated - and without his direction, Apollo would not have succeeded."
Also well known were Mueller's Project Status Reviews often held on Sundays and in brutal detail. The presentations were nicknamed "“pasteurized" as the tired managers' ability to absorb the detail was waning, and the charts were merely "past your eyes."
After the Apollo 1 fire, NASA Administrator James Webb became distrustful of Mueller, but commented. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn't fire him because he was manager of our successful Apollo project, and one of the ablest men in the world ... The last thing I wanted was to lose him, but I also had another desire, which was not to let his way of working create too many difficulties.”
Faced with Congressional disapproval and in-fighting within NASA the ambitious Apollo Applications Program
was cut back time and time again until just Skylab remained.
". Whether this is entirely true is debatable -- Scott Pace
propounded the view that, in such a complex system with so many stakeholders, "everyone was a Shuttle designer." What is beyond doubt is that Mueller played a key role in early Space Shuttle decisions and in championing the cause for a reusable space vehicle. Whilst perhaps not the 'Father' he has been accurately described by Professor John Logsdon as the 'Policy Father of the Space Shuttle'.
Mueller held a one-day symposium (held at NASA headquarters) in December 1967 to which 80 people from the Air Force, NASA and industry were invited to discuss low cost space flight and shuttle-like designs. The designs ranged from 'simple' concepts like Martin Marietta's six person reusable craft similar to the Dyna-Soar (launched by a Titan III
-M), to partially reusable concepts like Lockheed
's Star Clipper or Tip Tank from McDonnell Douglas
, to fully reusable two-stage vehicles like the one proposed by General Dynamics
.
Following this symposium Mueller continued to champion a "space shuttle". Although he did not invent the term, he did make it his own. He was also a keen proponent of space station
s and was well aware that the space shuttle was to shuttle to and from such a station.
While in London in August 1968, to receive an award from the British Interplanetary Society
, he again trumpeted the cause of the shuttle, "...there is a real requirement for an efficient earth to orbit transportation system - an economical space shuttle". "I forecast that the next major thrust in space will be the development of an economical launch vehicle for shuttling between Earth and the installations, such as the orbiting space station that will soon be orbiting in space." He also stated, as many others would do later, that "The shuttle ideally would be able to operate in a mode similar to that of a large commercial air transports and be compatible with the environment of major airports".
Mueller's optimism grew in 1968 and he chided Wernher von Braun (who had been cautiously promoting a cheap interim shuttle-type craft), "You'd be telling me that my Shuttle was in the future and you needed an interim system." Mueller was sure that the incoming president, Richard Nixon
, would want to go "all out" and that "this may be the big program for Nixon".
Whilst Nixon would eventually endorse the shuttle, Mueller was very wrong that the country, Congress or Nixon would go "all out" for a new expanded space exploration policy.
In 1987 Mueller had this to say about the shuttle, “It was clear to us at that time that we needed to have a joint program between the Air Force and NASA, and that that program ought to be aimed at providing low cost space transportation for all of our needs. It's just in my view unfortunate that we made the compromise, after I left NASA, in terms of a partially reusable vehicle, and all that that implies in terms of not only the cost of the throw-away parts but also the cost of the ground troops that have to process it and put it together and fly it every time. That combination—and ground support is a not insignificant part of a Shuttle cost—was a set of decisions that doomed low cost space transportation for that generation of vehicles.”
recognized his abilities. Whilst Mueller could be described as intellectually arrogant he was not an office tyrant, in fact, one of his colleagues, John Disher
, describes working for him as a "piece of cake". Nor did he try to belittle others or shout them down. Whilst appearing affable and reasonably charming "with the epitome of politeness, but you know down deep he's just as hard as steel!".
Interestingly, we get a rare glimpse inside the extremely rational, hard to know Mueller when he was asked what was his most memorable moment during the years of Apollo. It wasn't the first launch of the Saturn V, the Apollo 8 triumph or even the moon landing but a surprise birthday party that his staff organized for him after the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969.
over space priorities for '70s and disputes with subordinates; he has twice been passed over for deputy admr post".
In an interview Mueller gives different reasons for leaving, "One is that the decision had been made to terminate the Apollo program, and that was a good time then to leave before, and let someone else take over for the next phase. From a practical point of view, I needed to go make some money so I could keep my family going. It was costly for us to join the Apollo program. My salary was half what I was making in industry when I went there, and it was just a strain to keep the family going and work going at the same time. So I went back to industry.".
System Development Corporation
, Santa Monica, California
Chairman, President (1971–1980)
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer (1981–1983)
Burroughs Corporation
Senior Vice-President (1982–1983)
Consultant (1984 - date unknown)
Kistler Aerospace (Rocketplane Kistler
from 2006)
CEO 1995-2004
Chairman and Chief Vehicle Architect 2004
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
Office of Manned Space Flight from September 1963 until December 1969. Hailed as one of NASA's "most brilliant and fearless managers", he was instrumental in the "All-up" philosophy of testing the Saturn V
Saturn V
The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA's Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. A multistage liquid-fueled launch vehicle, NASA launched 13 Saturn Vs from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida with no loss of crew or payload...
booster that accelerated a floundering Apollo program and ensured it would succeed in landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth by the end of 1969. Mueller (he pronounces it "Miller") also played a key part in the design of Skylab
Skylab
Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA, the space agency of the United States. Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a mass of...
and championed the space shuttle
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
's development.
More recently, Mueller was Chairman & Chief Vehicle Architect of the now defunct Kistler Aerospace Corp.
Early life and education
George Mueller was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 16, 1918. His mother came from Belleville, Illinois and had been a secretary, but she never worked after marriage. His father was an electrician who was superintendent of an electrical motor repair shop in St. Louis. Both parents spoke German, although Mueller never learned it.He went to Benton School in St. Louis - until the 8th grade - then he and his parents moved to a larger house in the country called Bel Nor outside the city.
The young Mueller enjoyed reading science fiction and, helped by his grandfather, woodworking - although his first model ship capsized. When he was aged 11 or 12 Mueller also built and raced model aircraft - such as gliders and rubber band model airplanes. Always curious about how things worked, he also built radios. Interested in these activities the teenage Mueller wanted to be an aeronautical engineer but discovered that where he could go to school, the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (now Missouri University of Science and Technology
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Missouri University of Science and Technology is an institution of higher learning located in Rolla, Missouri, United States, and part of the University of Missouri System...
) in Rolla, Missouri, there was no aeronautical engineering. They did have mechanical engineering so he plumped for this although finally found it discouraging, and switched over to electrical engineering.
Mueller assumed he would end up working in industry and so, in his senior year, went on a tour of various suitable companies. He applied to General Electric and Emerson but when he graduated in 1939 the economy took a downturn and he, like most of the class, had no job.
Luckily, after applying to several graduate schools he got an offer of a fellowship (funded by RCA) at Purdue. The fellowship was in a television project, Purdue was building a television transmitter for the campus, and it was the first of the kind that was using all vacuum tubes to produce the pictures. It was also the first using a CRT for display purposes. They still had mechanical disks for scanning but they were trying to develop an all-electronic approach.
Bell Labs
His tutor suggested he apply for a research job at Bell Labs which he got. After a year of getting established there he married Maude Rosenbaum who he'd met at Purdue. Mueller described himself as a bit of a loner but at Purdue he did form some fairly close long lasting friendships.The work Mueller did at Bell Labs prevented him from being drafted into the military during World War 2. He initially researched Orthicon technology but later became heavily involved in radar technology. As the war progressed his group was given the task of building the first airborne radar for Bell. Ultimately, the radar from MIT was chosen instead but not until after Mueller was spectacularly sick whilst flight testing Bell Labs' radar. He then worked on magnetrons and came close to co-inventing the transistor if he and his co-workers had placed their contacts on a single crystal of zircon rather than working with multiple crystals. It was at Bell Labs that he got to know Dean Wooldridge
Dean Wooldridge
Dean Everett Wooldridge was a prominent engineer in the aerospace industry....
.
PhD and Ramo-Wooldridge
Mueller increasingly believed that to move up in the hierarchy he would need a PhD, and he began working towards this goal on a part-time basis at Princeton UniversityPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, getting up every morning at around 5 o'clock and driving to Princeton to take a couple of courses before driving back down to Holmdehl to work all day at Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
. Luckily in 1946 a friend, Milt Boone, who knew a professor at The Ohio State University, encouraged Mueller to help set up a vacuum tube lab and run the communications group at Ohio State.
At Ohio State Mueller taught and did research, focusing his PhD thesis on dielectric antennas. Upon obtaining his doctorate in 1951, he became associate professor. Increasingly interested in the work that the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation was doing, he arranged a sabbatical in 1953 to them on the understanding he would be made a full professor on his return.
At Ramo-Wooldridge Mueller was a consultant. He got involved in the review of radar designs and the Bell Labs radar for the Titan rocket (which was originally radio-guided). Mueller was peripherally involved with some of the developments of the inertial systems and generally began to help out wherever there was a problem. He was tagged as a problem solver of the moment which turned out to be fun and kept him busy. Mueller admitted in 1987 that at this time he didn't know anything about missiles.
At this time Ramo-Wooldridge had just received a contract from General Bernard Schriever of the US Air Force. It was their first really large contract and they were trying to manage four programs all at once starting with a cadre of only 20 or 30 people.
After returning from his sabbatical year to Ohio State, Mueller taught but was also retained as a part-time consultant to R-W. In 1957 he joined Ramo-Wooldridge's STL as director of the Electronics Laboratories. This Laboratory soon merged with the mechanical group, and then Mueller became deputy of this larger organization. He was also program director for the Pioneer program and then took over as head of R&D [Research and Development]. Then STL was absorbed into what became TRW
TRW
TRW Inc. was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, automotive, and credit reporting. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft,...
. While working on missile systems Mueller became convinced that all-up testing was essential as "you don't want to be testing piece-wise in space. You want to test the entire system because who knows which one's going to fail, and you'd better have it all together so that whatever fails, you have a reasonable chance of finding the real failure mode, not just the one you were looking for."
NASA and the Apollo program
Encouraged by Webb, Mueller had already investigated OMSF. His first impression; "there wasn't any management system in existence". More seriously, Mueller found no means to determine and control hardware configuration which gave no way to determine costs or schedules. Mueller concluded he would have to "teach people what was involved in doing program control."
In August 1963, Mueller invited each of NASA's field center directors to visit him and explained how his proposed changes would put Apollo back on schedule and solve problems with the Bureau of the Budget. With some directors he had little problem but he had issues with Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...
who gave "one of his impassioned speeches about how you can't change the basic organization of Marshall." After some argument von Braun accepted Mueller's proposals and reorganized MSFC strengthening its capacity in running large projects.
Mueller's position was strengthened by Webb making the directors at MSC, MSFC and KSC report direct to OMSF. Mueller also reduced attendance at the MSF Management Council to just himself and the Center directors. Borrowing from the US Air Force Minuteman program, Mueller formed the Apollo Executive Group which consisted of himself and the presidents of Apollo's main contractors.
The Saturn V program manager Arthur Rudolph
Arthur Rudolph
Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph was a German rocket engineer and member of the Nazi party who played a key role in the development of the V-2 rocket. After World War II he was brought to the United States, subsequently becoming a pioneer of the United States space program. He worked for the U.S...
cornered Mueller with scale models of Saturn and Minuteman. The Saturn dwarfed the Minuteman but Mueller replied, "So what?"
Eventually von Braun and the others were won over. As von Braun stated: "It sounded reckless, but George Mueller's reasoning was impeccable. Water ballast in lieu of a second and third stage would require much less tank volume than liquid-hydrogen-fuelled stages, so that a rocket tested with only a live first stage would be much shorter than the final configuration. Its aerodynamic shape and its body dynamics would thus not be representative. Filling the ballast tanks with liquid hydrogen? Fine, but then why not burn it as a bonus experiment? And so the arguments went on until George in the end prevailed."
Mueller's concept of all up testing worked, the first two unmanned flights of the Saturn V were successful (the second less so), then the third Saturn V put Frank Borman's Apollo 8
Apollo 8
Apollo 8, the second manned mission in the American Apollo space program, was the first human spaceflight to leave Earth orbit; the first to be captured by and escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body; and the first crewed voyage to return to Earth from another celestial...
crew in orbit round the Moon on Christmas 1968, and the sixth Saturn V carried Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
to the first lunar landing.
In an interview Mueller acknowledged what would have happened if all up testing had failed, "The whole Apollo program and my reputation would have gone down the drain".
With this battle won, in November 1965, Mueller reorganized the Gemini
Project Gemini
Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini was conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, with ten manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966....
and Apollo Program Offices, creating a five box structure at HQ and field center. This structure replicated Mueller's concept of system management and provided far better program overview. The cleverness of the idea was that inside these "GEM boxes" (named from his initials) managers and engineers communicated directly with their functional counterparts in NASA HQ bypassing all the usual chain of command and bureaucracy.
Mueller's GEM box idea worked but not until after several months of chaos at NASA HQ.
Samuel C. Phillips
General Samuel Cochran Phillips was a United States Air Force four star general who served as Director of NASA's Apollo Manned Lunar Landing Program from 1964 to 1969, the seventh Director of the National Security Agency from 1972 to 1973, and as Commander, Air Force Systems Command from 1973 to...
as program controller of OMSF. Webb agreed, and so did AFSC chief General Bernard Schriever but only on the condition that Phillips became Apollo Program Director. Phillips in turn agreed and brought with him 42 mid-grade air force officers and eventually 124 more junior officers.
Robert Seamans
Robert Seamans
Robert Channing Seamans, Jr. was a NASA Deputy Administrator and MIT professor.-Birth and education:He was born in Salem, Massachusetts to Pauline and Robert Seamans. His great-great-grandfather was Otis Tufts...
(the then NASA Deputy Administrator) stated that Mueller "didn’t sell; he dictated - and without his direction, Apollo would not have succeeded."
Also well known were Mueller's Project Status Reviews often held on Sundays and in brutal detail. The presentations were nicknamed "“pasteurized" as the tired managers' ability to absorb the detail was waning, and the charts were merely "past your eyes."
After the Apollo 1 fire, NASA Administrator James Webb became distrustful of Mueller, but commented. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn't fire him because he was manager of our successful Apollo project, and one of the ablest men in the world ... The last thing I wanted was to lose him, but I also had another desire, which was not to let his way of working create too many difficulties.”
Apollo applications and Skylab
Even while Apollo was progressing Mueller and others were pushing for an aggressive post-Apollo program. He established the Apollo Applications Office in 1965. The Applications were extensive involving a manned lunar base, an earth-orbiting space station, Apollo telescope, the Grand Tour of the Outer Solar System, and the original "Voyager program" of Mars Lander probes.Faced with Congressional disapproval and in-fighting within NASA the ambitious Apollo Applications Program
Apollo Applications program
The Apollo Applications Program was established by NASA headquarters in 1968 to develop science-based manned space missions using surplus material from the Apollo program...
was cut back time and time again until just Skylab remained.
Father of the Space Shuttle?
Mueller is often credited as being the "Father of the Space ShuttleSpace Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
". Whether this is entirely true is debatable -- Scott Pace
Scott Pace
Scott Pace, Ph.D is the current Director of the Space Policy Institute at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. Before coming to the Space Policy Institute, Dr. Scott Pace was the Associate Administrator for Program Analysis and Evaluation at NASA. Dr...
propounded the view that, in such a complex system with so many stakeholders, "everyone was a Shuttle designer." What is beyond doubt is that Mueller played a key role in early Space Shuttle decisions and in championing the cause for a reusable space vehicle. Whilst perhaps not the 'Father' he has been accurately described by Professor John Logsdon as the 'Policy Father of the Space Shuttle'.
Mueller held a one-day symposium (held at NASA headquarters) in December 1967 to which 80 people from the Air Force, NASA and industry were invited to discuss low cost space flight and shuttle-like designs. The designs ranged from 'simple' concepts like Martin Marietta's six person reusable craft similar to the Dyna-Soar (launched by a Titan III
Titan III
The Titan IIIC was a space booster used by the United States Air Force. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL., and Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. It was planned to be used as a launch vehicle in the cancelled Dyna-Soar and Manned Orbiting Laboratory programs...
-M), to partially reusable concepts like Lockheed
Lockheed Corporation
The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace company. Lockheed was founded in 1912 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995.-Origins:...
's Star Clipper or Tip Tank from McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, producing a number of famous commercial and military aircraft. It formed from a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft in 1967. McDonnell Douglas was based at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport...
, to fully reusable two-stage vehicles like the one proposed by General Dynamics
General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation is a U.S. defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2008 it is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Its headquarters are in West Falls Church , unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Falls Church area.The company has...
.
Following this symposium Mueller continued to champion a "space shuttle". Although he did not invent the term, he did make it his own. He was also a keen proponent of space station
Space station
A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a crew which is designed to remain in space for an extended period of time, and to which other spacecraft can dock. A space station is distinguished from other spacecraft used for human spaceflight by its lack of major propulsion or landing...
s and was well aware that the space shuttle was to shuttle to and from such a station.
While in London in August 1968, to receive an award from the British Interplanetary Society
British Interplanetary Society
The British Interplanetary Society founded in 1933 by Philip E. Cleator, is the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world whose aim is exclusively to support and promote astronautics and space exploration.-Structure:...
, he again trumpeted the cause of the shuttle, "...there is a real requirement for an efficient earth to orbit transportation system - an economical space shuttle". "I forecast that the next major thrust in space will be the development of an economical launch vehicle for shuttling between Earth and the installations, such as the orbiting space station that will soon be orbiting in space." He also stated, as many others would do later, that "The shuttle ideally would be able to operate in a mode similar to that of a large commercial air transports and be compatible with the environment of major airports".
Mueller's optimism grew in 1968 and he chided Wernher von Braun (who had been cautiously promoting a cheap interim shuttle-type craft), "You'd be telling me that my Shuttle was in the future and you needed an interim system." Mueller was sure that the incoming president, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, would want to go "all out" and that "this may be the big program for Nixon".
Whilst Nixon would eventually endorse the shuttle, Mueller was very wrong that the country, Congress or Nixon would go "all out" for a new expanded space exploration policy.
In 1987 Mueller had this to say about the shuttle, “It was clear to us at that time that we needed to have a joint program between the Air Force and NASA, and that that program ought to be aimed at providing low cost space transportation for all of our needs. It's just in my view unfortunate that we made the compromise, after I left NASA, in terms of a partially reusable vehicle, and all that that implies in terms of not only the cost of the throw-away parts but also the cost of the ground troops that have to process it and put it together and fly it every time. That combination—and ground support is a not insignificant part of a Shuttle cost—was a set of decisions that doomed low cost space transportation for that generation of vehicles.”
Mueller's working style
Almost everyone who worked with Mueller on Apollo agreed he was technically brilliant and exceedingly capable. Even those who frequently disagreed with him like Christopher Kraft or George LowGeorge Low
George Michael Low, born George Wilhelm Low was a NASA administrator and 14th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was born near Vienna, Austria to Artur and Gertrude Burger Low, small business people in Austria...
recognized his abilities. Whilst Mueller could be described as intellectually arrogant he was not an office tyrant, in fact, one of his colleagues, John Disher
John H. Disher
John Howard Disher was an American aeronautical engineer and NASA manager.For most of his life he worked for NASA during the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle projects....
, describes working for him as a "piece of cake". Nor did he try to belittle others or shout them down. Whilst appearing affable and reasonably charming "with the epitome of politeness, but you know down deep he's just as hard as steel!".
Interestingly, we get a rare glimpse inside the extremely rational, hard to know Mueller when he was asked what was his most memorable moment during the years of Apollo. It wasn't the first launch of the Saturn V, the Apollo 8 triumph or even the moon landing but a surprise birthday party that his staff organized for him after the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969.
Resignation from NASA
Mueller resigned from NASA on November 10, 1969 effective from December 10. Rumors had been circulating for a while that he wanted to return to private industry. The New York Times stated that 'informed sources' "alleged clashes with (Administrator) Thomas PaineThomas O. Paine
Thomas Otten Paine , American scientist, was the third Administrator of NASA, serving from March 21, 1969 to September 15, 1970.During his administration at NASA, the first seven Apollo manned missions were flown...
over space priorities for '70s and disputes with subordinates; he has twice been passed over for deputy admr post".
In an interview Mueller gives different reasons for leaving, "One is that the decision had been made to terminate the Apollo program, and that was a good time then to leave before, and let someone else take over for the next phase. From a practical point of view, I needed to go make some money so I could keep my family going. It was costly for us to join the Apollo program. My salary was half what I was making in industry when I went there, and it was just a strain to keep the family going and work going at the same time. So I went back to industry.".
Post NASA career
Senior Vice President, General Dynamics Corporation, Falls Church, Virginia (1969–1971)System Development Corporation
System Development Corporation
System Development Corporation , based in Santa Monica, California, was considered the world's first computer software company.SDC started in 1955 as the systems engineering group for the SAGE air defense ground system at the RAND Corporation...
, Santa Monica, California
Chairman, President (1971–1980)
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer (1981–1983)
Burroughs Corporation
Senior Vice-President (1982–1983)
Consultant (1984 - date unknown)
Kistler Aerospace (Rocketplane Kistler
Rocketplane Kistler
Rocketplane Kistler was a reusable spacecraft firm originally based in Oklahoma before moving to Wisconsin. Formed in 2006 by Rocketplane Limited, Inc...
from 2006)
CEO 1995-2004
Chairman and Chief Vehicle Architect 2004