Maxime A. “Max” Faget was a NASA engineer. He served as Director of Engineering and Development at the Houston facility then known as the Manned Spacecraft Center and was instrumental in the development of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned space flight systems.
His parents were Dr. Guy Henry Faget (1891 – 1947) and Isabelle Marie LeBlanc Faget (1894 – 1970), (pronounced “fah-ZHAY”). Maxime was born in the British Honduras, now known as Belize, on August 26, 1921 while his father, a medical doctor, was living there and doing research on tropical diseases. Dr. Guy Faget is also credited for developing a treatment of leprosy and did research on other diseases including tuberculosis. Maxime was one of four children of the couple. Dr. Guy Faget died while working at a Carville, Louisiana facility known as the Leprosarium. His obituary stated that he suffered an apparent heart attack while at work, and fell from an upstairs window to his death. He had served at the Leprosarium for about six years and in some form of medicine for the United States government for over forty years.
Maxime was said to be interested in science as a child. An obituary stated that he and one of his two brothers built model airplanes and submarines. The models they built were not plastic with parts that came on a molded tree and had to be glued together. Instead they were handmade. Their submarines had rubber band motors and could submerge and surface on their own. In Maxime’s case it probably foreshadowed his education and career. After attending San Francisco Junior College, Faget earned a bachelor of science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1943. He then served during World War II as a submarine officer aboard the USS Gauvina in the South Pacific.
Following World War II, Faget began his engineering career by joining the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became part of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in 1946. NACA was not a new program. It had been commissioned by Congress in 1915 “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution.” Faget was involved in the early research and development of rocket powered vehicles that approached and then exceeded supersonic velocities, including the X-15. His work on that vehicle concerned the weight, size and performance of the aircraft. These experiences led him and his colleagues to explore the concepts of space flight.
The Russians had launched Sputnik in 1957 giving the United States the urgency to move rapidly forward. Faget and his colleagues were already at work. In early March, he presented a paper entitled “Preliminary Studies of Manned Satellites, Wingless Configuration, Non-Lifting.” Later in 1958, NACA was folded into NASA. Among his other responsibilities, Faget was named Assistant Director of Research and Development at the Manned Spacecraft Center. He was part of the task group that met for several months and came up with “all the basic principles that became Project Mercury.” Faget’s paper had already concluded that the science was advanced to the point that a spacecraft could be assembled that would allow it to be launched into earth orbit and, equally important, could be recovered by being splashed down into the ocean. As soon as NASA became operational, Faget and other scientists began meeting with Wehrner von Braun and other chief engineers deriving plans for the first manned space vehicle. Faget was one of thirty-five scientists named to the Space Task Group in November, 1958. Operations were moved from Virginia to Texas.
Faget was a scientist but could hold his own with politicians. An interesting story dates back to 1959 when NASA scientists were introducing seven of the test pilots to a Senate subcommittee after a hearing where experts were called upon to discuss the perils of space flight. Sen. John Stennis admitted that he had been in “sort of a hurry” when he studied physics and that there was much about Project Mercury that he did not understand. Faget alluded to the cost in automobile terms, miles per gallon. “On the basis of a 24-hour flight, it will burn 200,000 gallons of fuel.” After estimating the mileage to be flown, he added “if you want to look at it that way – it is a little more than 15 miles to the gallon.” [Pampa Daily News, Pampa, Texas, April 12, 1959.]
In 1962, he moved his family to Dickinson, Texas. Faget was deeply involved in the Mercury project, and then Gemini. As they proceeded, he became more involved in the concept of manned flight to the Moon. In 1962, his knowledge, experience and expertise led him to be appointed chief engineer, responsible for the design and realization of the Apollo spacecraft. As a result of his work, Faget was appointed chief engineer at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston (now the Johnson Space Center) at the start of the Apollo program in February 1962. He is credited for the concept of designing the two-unit elements of the Apollo vehicle: the command module and the lunar landing module. Testing and refinements allowed for the successful flight of Apollo 11 in 1969 that resulted in Neil Armstrong’s successful walk on the Moon.
As the Apollo program matured and continued, Faget was already working on the concept of reusable manned spacecraft, which resulted in the shuttle program. He had designed his own model of such a vehicle as early as 1969. There are photographs of Faget demonstrating his balsa wood model and its concepts. It differed somewhat from the final delta wing design of the shuttle, but Faget was involved with the design and the program all the way to the shuttle’s launch. Thus, Faget had contributed to involved in the design of every spacecraft of NASA during that period: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle.
Faget retired from NASA in 1981 after the second shuttle mission, and went on to other commercial ventures before his ultimate retirement, including Space Industries, involved with later NASA projects. He taught graduate classes at two or three universities. He had applied for and held many patents for his inventions during his career. His many honors include being elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and being awarded honorary doctorates from University of Pittsburgh and from Louisiana State University.
After a long and fascinating career, Maxime A. Faget died at his home in Houston on October 9, 2004. He was 83. Several tributes to him mention two pictures that hung behind his desk at Space Industries. One was a drawing by colleague C. C. Johnson of the Mercury capsule and another was an illustrated image of his hero John Paul Jones, called the father of the American Navy. Below the picture of John Paul Jones was the well known quote attributed to Jones. “I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go into harm’s way.”
Sources include – Henry C. Dethloff, “Suddenly, Tomorrow Came – The NASA History of the Johnson Space Center,” Dover Publications, Copyright 2012.
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