On 21 May 1961, soon after the Soviet Union had launched Yuri Gagarin into space and in the aftermath of the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the beleaguered US president, John F Kennedy, made a rash promise to Congress. He pledged that the US would land an American on the moon and get the astronaut safely back “before this decade is out”. The systems engineer George Mueller, who has died aged 97, was a key reason why Kennedy’s pledge was fulfilled on 20 July 1969, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on to the moon.
Mueller arrived at Nasa as associate administrator for manned space flight in September 1963, just weeks before Kennedy’s assassination. He immediately commissioned an assessment of the prospects of fulfilling Kennedy’s goal. The odds were one in 10, he was told. Between 1963 and 1966, Mueller, drawing on his experience of US air force methods, transformed Nasa.
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