John Cornelius Houbolt is a retired aerospace engineer. He is generally credited with having effectively promoted the lunar mission mode called Lunar Orbit Rendezvous

Lunar orbit rendezvous

Lunar orbit rendezvous is a key concept for human landing on the Moon and returning to Earth.In a LOR mission a main spacecraft and a smaller lunar module travel together into lunar orbit. The lunar module then independently descends to the lunar surface. After completion of the mission there, a...

or LOR. This flight path was first endorsed by 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,...

 in June 1961 and was chosen for Apollo program in early 1962. This critical decision was viewed as vital to ensuring that Man reached the Moon in the 1960s, as President John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 had proposed and, in the process, saved billions of dollars and time by efficiently using existing rocket technology.

Life

Houbolt spent part of his childhood in Joliet, Illinois

Joliet, Illinois

Joliet is a city in Will and Kendall Counties in the U.S. state of Illinois, located southwest of Chicago. It is the county seat of Will County. As of the 2010 census, the city was the fourth-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 147,433. It continues to be Illinois' fastest growing...

, where he attended Joliet Central High School

Joliet Central High School

Joliet Central High School is a public secondary school located in Joliet, Illinois. Central is part of Joliet Township High Schools, along with Joliet West and Joliet East . Prior to the opening of Joliet East and West, the school was called Joliet Township High School...

 and Joliet Junior College

Joliet Junior College

Joliet Junior College , a community college based in Joliet, Illinois, was the first public community college founded in the United States. JJC offers pre-baccalaureate programs for students planning to transfer to a four-year university, as well as occupational education leading directly to...

. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

, earning a Bachelors (1940) and a Masters (1942) degree in civil engineering. He later received a PhD in Technical Sciences in 1957 from ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....

. Houbolt began his career at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915 to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958 the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and...

 in 1942, and stayed on at NASA

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...

 after it succeeded NACA, until retirement in 1985.

Houbolt was an engineer at the Langley Research Center

Langley Research Center

Langley Research Center is the oldest of NASA's field centers, located in Hampton, Virginia, United States. It directly borders Poquoson, Virginia and Langley Air Force Base...

 in Hampton, Virginia, and he was one of the most vocal of a minority of engineers who supported LOR and his campaign in 1961 and 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

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...

 lunar landing.

He was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal

NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal

The NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal was established by NASA on September 15, 1961 when the original ESM was divided into three separate awards. Under the current guidelines, the ESAM is awarded for unusually significant scientific contribution toward achievement of aeronautical or...

 in 1963.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering

National Academy of Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...

.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate, awarded on May 15, 2005 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His papers are held at University of Illinois Archives. He is additionally commemorated in the city of Joliet: The street fronting Joliet Junior College, which he attended, was renamed Houbolt Road, and a mural in Joliet Union Station includes a Lunar Module, in reference to his work for NASA.

He lived in Williamsburg, Virginia

Williamsburg, Virginia

Williamsburg is an independent city located on the Virginia Peninsula in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of Virginia, USA. As of the 2010 Census, the city had an estimated population of 14,068. It is bordered by James City County and York County, and is an independent city...

.
He lives in Scarborough, Maine.

In the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Houbolt was played by Reed Birney.

LOR

Although the basics of the LOR concept had been expressed as early 1916 by Yuri Kondratyuk

Yuri Kondratyuk

Yuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk , was a follower, supporter and founder of cosmism, pioneer of astronautics and spaceflight. He was a theoretician and a visionary who, in the early twentieth century, foresaw ways of reaching the moon...

 and 1923 by German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth

Hermann Oberth

Hermann Julius Oberth was an Austro-Hungarian-born German physicist and engineer. He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics.- Early life :...

, no one had recognized the fundamental significance of LOR until just a few years before Kennedy's announcement. Some engineers were concerned about the risks of space rendezvous

Space rendezvous

A space rendezvous is an orbital maneuver during which two spacecraft, one of which is often a space station, arrive at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance . Rendezvous requires a precise match of the orbital velocities of the two spacecraft, allowing them to remain at a constant...

, especially in lunar orbit, where there would be no fallback options in case of a major mishap. Houbolt had presented the LOR concept to a series of panels.

Houbolt has a scheme that has a 50 percent chance of getting a man to the moon and a 1 percent of getting him back.

Max Faget:

His figures lie, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

After many technical conferences debating Direct ascent

Direct ascent

Direct ascent was a proposed method for a mission to the Moon. In the United States, direct ascent proposed using the enormous Nova rocket to launch a spacecraft directly to the Moon, where it would land tail-first and then launch off the Moon back to Earth...

, Earth orbit rendezvous

Earth orbit rendezvous

Earth orbit rendezvous is a type of space rendezvous and a spaceflight methodology most notable for enabling round trip human missions to the moon...

, and LOR, Werner von Braun supported the concept.

While some aspects of Houbolt's initial proposal were not realistic (such as a 10,000 pound Apollo Lunar Module

Apollo Lunar Module

The Apollo Lunar Module was the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft built for the US Apollo program by Grumman to carry a crew of two from lunar orbit to the surface and back...

 which was ultimately 30,000 pounds), his LOR package proved to be feasible with a single 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...

 rocket whereas other modes would have required two or more such rocket launches (or larger rockets than were then available) to lift enough mass into space to complete the mission.

Quotes

• Somewhat as a voice in the wilderness, I would like to pass on a few thoughts.
• Do we want to go to the moon or not? (In a 1961 letter to Robert C. Seamans
  Robert C. Seamans
  SSV Robert C. Seamans is a 134-foot steel sailing brigantine operated by the Sea Education Association for oceanographic research and sail training; she is named for a former Chairman and Trustee of SEA's board. She is equipped with hydrographic winches, bathymetric equipment, biological and...
  
  , NASA associate administrator.)

External links

• The Soaring Achievements of John C. Houbolt Permanent, 2-story museum exhibit about John Houbolt and his contributions to the space program.
• "Lunar Landers That Never Were The road to the moon was paved with good intentions.", Tony Reichhardt, Airspacemag.com, January 1, 2008
• The Rendezvous That Was Almost Missed
• Interview with Dr John Houbolt
• Romance to Reality - moon & Mars plans
• Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft