Dr. Fritz K. Mueller (1907 – 2001

Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville is the List of municipalities in Alabama, most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama. The population of the city is estimated to be 241,114 in 2024, making it the List of United States cities by population, 100th-most populous ...

, USA) was a German

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

. Mueller was hired by Kreiselgeräte Company in 1930. He developed the

PIGA accelerometer A PIGA (''Pendulous Integrating Gyroscopic Accelerometer'') is a type of accelerometer that can measure acceleration and simultaneously integrates this acceleration against time to produce a speed measure as well. The PIGA's main use is in Inertia ...

. and worked on

gyroscope A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining Orientation (geometry), orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in ...

s for

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

's ''

Kriegsmarine The (, ) was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official military branch, branche ...

''. Later on, he worked on the guidance and control system for the A3 test rocket, the A5, and the A4 ( V2) ballistic missile. Under Project Paperclip, Mueller emigrated to the United States on 16 November 1945 with the Argentina group. There, he worked on developing guidance systems for the

PGM-11 Redstone The PGM-11 Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile. A short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), it was in active service with the United States Army in West Germany from June 1958 to June 1964 as part of NATO's Cold War defense of ...

PGM-19 Jupiter The PGM-19 Jupiter was the first nuclear weapon, nuclear armed, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was a liquid-propellant rocket using RP-1 fuel and Liquid oxygen, LOX oxidizer, with a single Rocketd ...

MGM-31 Pershing The MGM-31A Pershing was the missile used in the Pershing 1 and Pershing 1a field artillery missile systems. It was a solid-fueled two-stage theater ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the PGM-11 Redstone missile ...

, and the

Saturn I The Saturn I was a rocket designed as the United States' first medium lift launch vehicle for up to low Earth orbit Payload (air and space craft), payloads.Terminology has changed since the 1960s; back then, 20,000 pounds was considered "heavy l ...

missiles. In 1960 Mueller left

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

for private industry.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mueller, Fritz 1907 births 2001 deaths Early spaceflight scientists German aerospace engineers German spaceflight pioneers Operation Paperclip