The Ultimate Engineer

The Remarkable Life of NASA's Visionary Leader George M. Low

Richard Jurek

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780803299559
• eBook ISBN: 9781496218476
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

From the late 1950s to 1976, the U.S. human spaceflight program advanced as it did largely due to the extraordinary efforts of Austrian immigrant George M. Low. Described as the "ultimate engineer" during his career at NASA, Low was a visionary architect and leader from the agency's inception in 1958 to his retirement in 1976. As chief of manned spaceflight at NASA, Low was instrumental in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. At the end of his NASA career, Low was one of the leading figures in the development of the Space Shuttle in the early 1970s, and he was instrumental in NASA's transition into a post-Apollo world. Chronicling Low's escape from Nazi-occupied Austria to his helping land a man on the moon, The Ultimate Engineer sheds new light on one of the most fascinating and complex personalities of the golden age of U.S. human space travel.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. New Beginnings
• 2. A Man in Space, Soonest
• 3. Toward a Worthy Goal
• 4. The Longest Days
• 5. Post-Apollo
• 6. Giving Back to the Future
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About Richard Jurek
• About Gerald D. Griffin
• Series List
• Illustrations