© by Mark Ollig
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy said these words in an address before a joint session of Congress.
A man from northern Minnesota played a significant role in achieving Kennedy’s goal.
Robert Rowe Gilruth was born Oct. 8, 1913, in Nashwauk and relocated to Duluth with his family when he was nine.
His father, Henry, served as the principal of Morgan Park High School in Duluth, and his mother, Francis, worked as a mathematics teacher.
In 1935, Robert Gilruth enrolled at the University of Minnesota and earned a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering. He finished his studies in 1936 after earning a Master of Science degree.
He also received honorary doctoral degrees from five universities.
On Oct. 4, 1957, Sputnik, the first earth-orbiting satellite, was launched by the Soviet Union.
“I can recall watching the sunlight reflect off of Sputnik as it passed over my home on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia,” Dr. Gilruth said in 1972.
Then, Nov. 3, 1957, the Soviet Union put the first living creature, a dog named Laika, into Earth orbit aboard Sputnik 2.
“When I witnessed the dog’s launch, I immediately realized that we needed to start preparing. I was certain that the Russians were planning to send a human into space,” Dr. Gilruth said.
On Aug. 1, 1958, Dr. Gilruth presented testimony to Congress regarding human-crewed US space missions.
In November 1958, Dr. Robert R. Gilruth was chosen to lead the Space Task Group at Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. This group was responsible for planning, creating, and launching spacecraft for NASA’s Project Mercury.
“A lot of people wanted to call it the task force. I didn’t think that was a good thing, task force. It was a group,” Dr. Gilruth said during an interview in 1972.
Dr. Gilruth’s apprehensions in 1957 about the possibility of Russia launching a human into space were confirmed April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, completed a single orbit of Earth aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft, attaining an altitude of 187 miles and spending one hour and 48 minutes in space.
On May 5, 1961, American astronaut Alan Shepard took a 15-minute space flight aboard the Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft. Although he reached a height of 115 miles, he didn’t go around the Earth in a complete orbit.
Although the US put an American into space, people still considered the Soviet Union ahead in the space race.
In an archived interview with the John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection, Dr. Gilruth remembered President Kennedy’s enthusiasm for human spaceflights and meeting soon after Shepard’s suborbital mission.
“We sat in his office with Senator Kerr [Robert S. Kerr] and maybe one or two other senators. He [President Kennedy] had us all sit with him in a circle around his rocking chair,” Dr. Gilruth said.
After this meeting with President Kennedy, Dr. Gilruth would attend several others.
“Going to the Moon will take new rockets, new technology, and if you want to do that, I think our country could probably win because we’d both have to start from scratch.” Dr. Gilruth said to Kennedy during one meeting.
“Look, I want to be first. Now do something,” Kennedy countered.
“Shortly after this meeting in the White House we just discussed, the President made his famous speech [May 25, 1961] declaring that flight to the moon would be a very worthy goal,” Dr. Gilruth said.
On Sept. 19, 1961, NASA announced that its new $60 million space flight center would be located in Houston, TX, on 1,000 acres of land provided by Rice University.
In November 1961, Dr. Gilruth became the director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, its mission control center responsible for conducting space flights.
On Sept. 17, 1962, the Minneapolis Star newspaper had a headline saying, “Nine Astronauts Win Places on Space Team.”
The newspaper reported, “Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, director of the manned spacecraft center, formally presented the new group to the nation at a news conference.”
Neil A. Armstrong was one of the astronauts in the group. On July 20, 1969, he was the first to walk on the Moon during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.
As director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center until January 1972, Dr. Gilruth oversaw 25 crewed space flights.
The NASA Manned Spacecraft Center was renamed Johnson Space Center Feb. 17, 1973.
Dr. Gilruth resigned from NASA in December 1973.
“I think the most satisfying thing to me is the memory of all of the years and the developments over those years, to have been an active participant in so many of the great things that the United States of America has done in aviation and in space flight,” Dr. Gilruth said March 2, 1987.
“There is no question that without Bob Gilruth, there would not have been a Mercury, Gemini, or an Apollo program,” said George M. Low, NASA deputy administrator from 1969 to 1976.
On Aug. 17, 2000, Dr. Robert Rowe “Bob” Gilruth, a native Minnesotan who fueled the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs, passed away at age 86.
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President Kennedy holds a scale model of the Apollo command module, presented to him by the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, Dr. Robert Gilruth; a mock-up of the Apollo lunar module lander sits at left in the background. |
