Former leading NASA manager Seamans dead at 89 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/07/03/former_leading_nasa_manager_seamans_dead_at_89/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Massachusetts+news
BEVERLY, Mass.-Robert C. Seamans Jr., a leading NASA manager during the race to the moon who later became secretary of the Air Force, has died after a heart attack. He was 89. Seamans died Saturday at his house in Beverly Farms, according to the Air Force. Seamans was deputy administrator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the frenzy that followed President John F. Kennedy's 1961 call to land an American on the moon by decade's end. Michael Collins, one of the Apollo 11 astronauts who was on the orbiting spacecraft while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969, told The New York Times that Seamans "was the balance" between scientists, engineers, contractors and even astronauts. "He calmed troubled waters in an enterprise as complex and with as many diverse personalities as Apollo was," Collins said. Seamans left NASA a year before the lunar landing and became the ninth secretary of the Air Force in 1969. During his four-year tenure, he oversaw a modernization toward weapons systems amid tighter budgets as the United States decreased its involvement in Vietnam. In 1974, he was named the first administrator of the Energy Research and Development Administration, which is considered a predecessor to the Department of Energy. Seamans was born Oct. 30, 1918, in Salem, the great-great-grandson of Otis Tufts, who built the first steam-operated printing press in the U.S. and invented the steam pile driver. He graduated from Harvard University in 1939. He received a master's degree in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1942 and a doctorate in instrumentation in 1951. Seamans taught aeronautical engineering at MIT from 1951-55, then left for private industry before joining NASA in 1960. Seamans is survived by his wife, Eugenia Merrill, five children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Gregory S. Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
