One of the most renowned hard-driving engineer and scientist, George Mueller, passed away on October 12. Mueller died of heart failure, as per the United States space agency NASA.

Dr Mueller being the associate administrator of NASA’s Office of Manned Flight from September 1963 to December 1969 was responsible for the completion of Project Apollo and to start development of the Skylab and the Space Shuttle projects.

Mueller, during his six year of service with NASA, introduced several remarkable changes in the management within the agency. These changes were introduced at a time when strong leadership and direction were very necessary to achieve success.

He was famous for his ‘all up’ philosophy of rocket and spacecraft testing. ‘All up’ testing involved live tests of rocket and spacecraft systems rather than doing individual stages.

NASA also agreed to the point that without ‘all up’ testing, the first manned lunar landing could not have taken place as early as 1969.This new approach of Mueller helped the engineers and NASA experts to reduce the number of tests for a manned moon landing.

Talking about his achievements, Dr Mueller was named as one of Missouri S&T’s initial Alumni of Influence in 2011.

As a young graduate, Mueller worked in different fields. Some of this includes working on the development of microwave tubes, television and radar. He even worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey and took graduate courses at Princeton University.

After the successful moon landing, Mueller left NASA in December 1969.