Adolf Thiel

Adolf Thiel was an Austrian-born German guided missile engineer who worked on the V-2 rocket during the Second World War and on American rockets and early spacecraft afterward. An associate professor of engineering at Darmstadt, he joined Wernher von Braun's team at Peenemuende, and after the war the US Army brought him to the United States with the rest of the group. He supervised preliminary design of the Redstone missile and other short and intermediate range ballistic missiles at White Sands and Huntsville. In 1955 he moved to Space Technology Laboratories, later part of TRW, where he managed the Thor program and later directed space projects for the Explorer VI and Pioneer V probes. He retired as a senior vice president in 1980 and died in 2001.