George Mueller, a coolly decisive, hard driving engineer, scientist and administrator died at the age of 97 due to cognitive heart attack on Oct 12, 2015. A career space engineer was known as the ‘Father of the Space Shuttle’ who made President John F. Kennedy’s manned moon landing possible in 1960s.

On July 21, 1969, Dr. Mueller wrote in The New York Times “This day man’s oldest dream is made a reality, this day the ancient bonds tying him to the earth have been broken”. It was the day after which Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind on the lunar surface. In less than three months before the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, Dr. Mueller was confirmed in as deputy associate administrator for manned spaceflight of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In 1971, Dr. Mueller was awarded the National Medal of Science for ‘his many individual contributions’ to the Apollo system by President Richard M. Nixon. John M. Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said that the moon landing mission of President Kennedy could not be achieved without the tough-minded management of the Apollo program.

Among his significant contributions was the ‘all up’ philosophy of rocket and spacecraft testing, which was the form of examining everything that is used for space mission all at once. It was all due to George’s ‘all up’ testing, which made the first manned lunar landing possible in 1969.