Eberhard Rees

Eberhard Rees was a German-American aerospace engineer who served as the second director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center from 1970 to 1973, succeeding Wernher von Braun, whom he had worked alongside as a deputy since the Second World War. After earning his engineering degree from the Dresden University of Technology, Rees managed rocket fabrication for the V-2 program at the Peenemunde Army Research Center beginning in 1939, and in October 1945 he was among the first group of German rocket specialists brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip, joining von Braun's team at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. His technical contributions there included development of the ablative heat shield technology used to protect reentering spacecraft, and as von Braun's longtime deputy and eventual successor he was widely credited with the pragmatic program management that turned von Braun's rocketry ambitions into operational hardware, including oversight of the Saturn V program and, as center director, the development of the Skylab space station and the Lunar Roving Vehicle used on the later Apollo missions.