Walter Haeussermann

Walter Haeussermann (1914-2010) was a German-American rocket guidance engineer. He studied electrical engineering at the technical universities of Stuttgart and Darmstadt and was sent to Peenemünde in December 1939, before finishing his doctorate. There he worked through Kreiselgeräte and Siemens on the gyroscopic platform of the V-2, returned to the Institute of Applied Physics at Darmstadt in 1942, and after the war was persuaded by Hölzer and Steinhoff, colleagues on the rocket team, to join Wernher von Braun's group at Fort Bliss, Texas. He worked on the Hermes II project and then on the guidance systems of the Redstone and Jupiter missiles. By 1960 he directed the Guidance and Control Division at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where he led work on the Saturn launch vehicles, and in 1973 he became director of the Directorate for Science and Engineering. He died in 2010.