Abe Silverstein

Abe Silverstein was an American aerodynamicist and NASA administrator credited with naming the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo human spaceflight programs, choosing names from classical mythology that he felt conveyed the ambition of each successive step. Hired in 1929 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA's predecessor, at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, he spent the Second World War directing aerodynamic research that improved American combat aircraft performance before becoming head of research at the Lewis Research Center in 1949 and, in 1952, its associate director, where he built some of the country's first supersonic propulsion wind tunnels and oversaw development of the Centaur upper-stage rocket. Moving to NASA headquarters after the agency's 1958 creation, he helped establish Project Mercury and shape the technical planning that underlay Apollo, and as chair of the Saturn Vehicle Evaluation Committee he influenced the choice of the lunar orbit rendezvous mission mode that made the Apollo 11 landing possible; he was also instrumental in planning the Ranger, Surveyor, Mariner and Voyager robotic missions. He retired from NASA in 1970 and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2015.