
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,” President John F. Kennedy said in 1962, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” No wonder, then, that a Miner played a major role in doing the hard work of ensuring a moon landing before the end of the ’60s. As an administrator in NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight from 1963-1969, George Mueller, a 1939 electrical engineering graduate, was responsible for overseeing the completion of Project Apollo. That task involved what the space agency calls “a remarkable series of management challenges … during a time when strong leadership and direction were critical to achieving success on a set of extraordinary goals.” Mueller established what came to be called the “all up” philosophy of rocket and spacecraft testing – an approach that dramatically reduced the number of tests it would take for a manned moon landing. Mueller’s philosophy made the Apollo 11 moon landing mission possible.
Share This Story
Spark a Memory?
Share your story! Fill out the form below to share your fondest memory or anecdote of S&T. If you'd prefer not typing, you can also share by phone at 833-646-3715 (833-Miner150).
Abby (Pittroff) and Ryan Riess
Student athletes Abby (Pittroff) and Ryan Riess met in August 2002 outside the campus’s Rayle Cafeteria. “I thought to myself,…
Float like a butterfly
Few have shared the ring with Muhammad Ali or been praised by the New York Times as “one of America’s…
Kayla Klossner-Thompson and Cole Thompson
Kayla Klossner-Thompson and Cole Thompson attended the same high school, but their friendship didn’t start until they met at S&T…
Stonehenge, ‘tis a magic place…’
When the band Spinal Tap sang of Stonehenge as a “magic place … where the moon doth rise with a…
Samantha (Smith) and Andrew Keeven
Although Samantha (Smith) and Andrew Keeven met thanks to mutual friends during St. Pat’s in 2014, they didn’t get to…
Clued in on Jeopardy!
This Missouri S&T professor of foreign languages was once a clue on the popular TV game show Jeopardy! If you…