When NASA was created, Gilruth became head of the Space Task Group, tasked with putting a man in space before the Soviet Union. When that didn't happen, Giluruth suggested to President John F. Kennedy that the United States should announce a bigger goal, such as going to the Moon. Soon the Apollo program was born, and Gilruth was made head of the NASA center which ran it, the new Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center).
He oversaw a total of 25 manned spaceflights, from Mercury 3 to Apollo 15.
External links
National Academies Press Biographical memories (http://stills.nap.edu/html/biomems/rgilruth.html), written by NASA flight director Chris Kraft
Gilruth was the first director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, from 1962 to 1972.
Gilruth worked as an engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at the Langley from 1937 to 1946 before becoming chief of the pilotless aircraft research division at Wallops Island from 1946 to 1952, where he did groundbreaking research into rocket-powered aircraft.
Gilruth was a pensive man of medium build who liked to smoke a pipe and can be often seen in NASAs historical footage.
Gilruth, Robert R. An influential NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) engineer who worked at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory (1937-46), then as chief of the pilotless aircraft research division at Wallops Island (1946-52), and explored the possibility of human spaceflight before the creation of NASA.
Gilruth was also in charge of the development and operation of the Gemini spacecraft, a two-man craft used to perfect techniques for the control, rendezvous and linking of spaceships in Earth orbit.
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