Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

M
Leonard H. Marks was one of the original Comsat incorporators appointed by President Kennedy. He resigned
from Comsat’s board of directors in 1965 to become director of the U.S. Information Agency. See “Miscellaneous
Industry,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
Robert P. Mayo (1916– ) was an economist and President Nixon’s first director of the Bureau of the Budget.
On July 1, 1970, when the Bureau of the Budget was replaced with the Office of Management and Budget, Mayo
was shifted to the White House as a presidential assistant. Shortly thereafter, he left Washington to assume the
presidency of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. See “Mayo, Robert P(orter),” Current Biography 1970,
pp. 282–84.
Richard C. McCurdy (1909– ), an engineer specializing in petroleum, was associate administrator for organization
and management at NASA Headquarters from 1970 to 1973 and a consultant to the agency from 1973
until 1982. See “McCurdy, R.C.,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
Newton Minow (1926– ) was a lawyer in Chicago before being appointed as chair of the Federal
Communications Commission by President Kennedy. He gained a reputation by attacking the quality of television
programming and threatening to revoke broadcast licenses based on programming. He returned to his law
practice following Kennedy’s assassination and joined the Public Broadcasting System board in 1973. He became
chair of that organization in 1978, and then he became director of the Annenberg Communications Program
in Washington in 1987. See “Minow, Newton (Norman),” in Bowman, The Cambridge Dictionary of American
Biography.
George E. Mueller (1918– ) was NASA’s associate administrator for manned spaceflight from 1963 to 1969; as
such, he responsible for overseeing the completion of Project Apollo and beginning the development of the
Space Shuttle. He moved to General Dynamics as senior vice president in 1969, where he remained until 1971.
He then became president of the Systems Development Corporation (1971–1980) and then its chair and corporate
executive officer (1981–1983). See “Mueller, George E.,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference
Collection.
Karl Mundt (1900–1974) (R–SD) served in the House of Representatives from January 3, 1939, until December
30, 1948. He then served as a senator from December 31, 1948, until January 3, 1973. See Biographical Directory
of the United States Congress, 1774–1996.
N
Homer E. Newell (1915–1983) earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1940 and
served as a theoretical physicist and mathematician at the Naval Research Laboratory from 1944 to 1958. During
part of that period, he was science program coordinator for Project Vanguard and was acting superintendent of
the atmosphere and astrophysics division. In 1958, he transferred to NASA to assume responsibility for planning
and developing the new agency’s space science program. He soon became deputy director of spaceflight programs.
In 1961, he became director of the Office of Space Sciences, and in 1963, he became associate administrator
for space science and applications. Over the course of his career, he became an internationally known
authority in the field of atmospheric and space sciences as well as the author of numerous scientific articles and
seven books, including Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4211, 1980).
He retired from NASA at the end of 1973. See “Newell, Homer,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference
Collection.
Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) was U.S. president between January 1969 and August 1974. Early in his presidency,
Nixon appointed a Space Task Group under the direction of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to assess the
future of spaceflight in the nation. Its report recommended a vigorous post-Apollo exploration program culminating
in a human expedition to Mars. Nixon did not approve this plan, but he did decide in favor of building
one element of it, the Space Shuttle, which was approved on January 5, 1972. See Roger D. Launius, “NASA and
the Decision to Build the Space Shuttle, 1969–72,” The Historian 57 (Autumn 1994): 17–34.
586