Guy Thibodaux, Max Faget, Paul Purser INTERVIEWERS: Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ken Cox INTERVIEW DATE: Sept
53 INTERVIEW #2 INTERVIEWEES: Guy Thibodaux, Max Faget, Paul Purser INTERVIEWERS: Robbie Davis-Floyd and Ken Cox INTERVIEW DATE: Sept. 10, 1996 at the home of Guy Thibodaux in Clear Lake, Texas RECAP: Interview #1 was with Guy Thibodaux, the engineer and rocket propulsion scientist responsible for the propulsion work on Mercury and many other space projects, at his home near Johnson Space Center in Houston/Clear Lake, on Sept. 9, 1996. The following day we met again at his home, this time to conduct a joint interview with Thibodaux and his colleagues Maxime Faget, who was instrumental in the design of the Mercury, Apollo, and Gemini spacecrafts and the early shuttle, and is widely considered the father of spacecraft design, and Paul Purser, engineer and manager at Langley Research Center in the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division, which formed the early nucleus of the space program. Brief biographies of these three space pioneers can be found at the beginning of Interview #1. The following taped interview has been edited for clarity, organization, and flow. Both interviewers and all three interviewees have read and edited the interview transcript; their written commentaries are included below in italics or as parenthetical interjections. [Editorial comments from Davis-Floyd and Cox appear in brackets.] For background and context, interspersed throughout the interview text, in italics, are excerpts (sometimes adapted and amplified) from “Annals of Space: Max Faget and Caldwell Johnson,” by Henry S.F. Cooper, The New Yorker, Sept. 2, 1991, pp. 41-69. MAX FAGET: At the very top levels, these days, they don’t know or care what happened.
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