Samuel K. HoffmanBorn 15 Apr 1902; died 26 Jun 1995 at age 93.Samuel Kurtz Hoffman was an American engineer who led the development of the liquid fuel rocket engines used in America's early space programs. His career began as an aeronautical-design engineer (1932-45) and then he spent four years teaching in that field. By 1949, he joined the Propulsion Section of North American Aviation which he later headed as its president (1960-70). (That division, renamed Rocketdyne, later became part of Rockwell International Corp.) He supervised the development of the first-stage Redstone propulsion system, which launched Explorer I, America's first satellite (31 Jan 1958). His work continued with the high-thrust engines used for the Mercury rockets that propelled the first U.S. astronauts into space, and the F-1 rocket engines used in the first stage of the Saturn V rockets of the Apollo moonshot program.« |
