Maxime Allen "Max" Faget (pronounced ''fah-ZHAY''; August 26, 1921 – October 9, 2004) was an American

mechanical engineer Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations o ...

. Faget was the designer of the Mercury

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed spaceflight, to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth observation, Weather s ...

, and contributed to the later Gemini and

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

spacecraft as well as the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

Life

Faget was the son of American doctor Guy Henry Faget, and great-grandson of another prominent physician, Jean Charles Faget. Born in Stann Creek Town,

British Honduras British Honduras was a Crown colony on the east coast of Central America — specifically located on the southern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula from 1783 to 1964, then a self-governing colony — renamed Belize from June 1973

(today

Dangriga Dangriga, formerly known as Stann Creek Town, is a town in southern Belize, located on the Caribbean Sea, Caribbean coast at the mouth of the North Stann Creek River. It is the capital of Belize's Stann Creek District. Dangriga is served by the ...

Belize Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. P ...

), he attended City College of San Francisco in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, and he received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

from

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as Louisiana State University (LSU), is an American Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louis ...

in 1943. After three years as a

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

r aboard in the U.S. Navy, Faget joined the

Langley Research Center The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also ...

Hampton, Virginia Hampton is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The population was 137,148 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Virginia, seve ...

as a research scientist. While working for

NACA The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency that was founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its ...

at Langley, he worked on the design of the

X-15 The North American X-15 is a Hypersonic speed, hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft which was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the List of X-planes, X-plane series of ...

hypersonic spacecraft. In 1958, Faget became one of the 35 engineers who formed the Space Task Group, creating the Mercury spacecraft. He based his designs on the aerodynamic work of Harvey Allen from the mid-1950s, and was instrumental in selecting the blunt-body shape that won the Mercury competition over numerous contenders. He led the development of the escape tower system used on Mercury, which was used in various forms on almost all following crewed spacecraft. He also worked on the Gemini and

vehicles, which shared many design points with the Mercury. Faget filed a patent for a space shuttle vehicle design in 1972. His design, which he named " DC-3" in homage to the famed

Douglas DC-3 The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper ...

airliner, was a small two-stage fully reusable shuttle with a payload capacity around . DC-3 was officially studied by

North American Aviation North American Aviation (NAA) was a major American aerospace manufacturer that designed and built several notable aircraft and spacecraft. Its products included the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the F- ...

and shown in the press as a baseline contender for the

Space Transportation System The Space Transportation System (STS), also known internally to NASA as the Integrated Program Plan (IPP), was a proposed system of reusable crewed spacecraft, space vehicles envisioned in 1969 to support extended operations beyond the Apollo ...

(STS). North American also studied a version of the same basic system with a much larger payload. However, the DC-3's nose-high re-entry profile was controversial, and eventually doomed it when the U.S. Air Force joined the Shuttle program and demanded cross-range performance that the DC-3 could not meet. In the end, its most lasting contribution was to clearly identify the trade-offs inherent in any reusable design. In 1962 Faget became the Director of Engineering and Development at the

Manned Spacecraft Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in ...

and continued to work for NASA until his retirement in 1981, shortly after the second Space Shuttle flight (

STS-2 STS-2 was the second Space Shuttle mission conducted by NASA, and the second flight of the orbiter Space Shuttle Columbia, ''Columbia''. The mission, crewed by Joe Engle, Joe H. Engle and Richard H. Truly, launched on November 12, 1981, and lan ...

). After his retirement, he was among the founders of Space Industries Inc., established in 1982. One of the projects of the company was the Wake Shield Facility, a device to create near-perfect

vacuum A vacuum (: vacuums or vacua) is space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective (neuter ) meaning "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressur ...

in the

thermosphere The thermosphere is the layer in the Earth's atmosphere directly above the mesosphere and below the exosphere. Within this layer of the atmosphere, ultraviolet radiation causes photoionization/photodissociation of molecules, creating ions; the ...

. The WSF flew three times with a Space Shuttle in 1994–1996 ( STS-60, STS-69, STS-80). In 1962, Faget received the Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a nonprofit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest-achieving people in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet one ano ...

. Faget was inducted into the 1969 National Inventors Hall of Fame, and received the

NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal The NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal is awarded to US government employees only for notably outstanding leadership which affects technical or administrative programs of NASA. The leadership award may be given for an act of leadership, for sustain ...

and John J. Montgomery Award. He was inducted into the Houston National Space Hall of Fame in 1969, the International Space Hall of Fame in 1990, and the

National Aviation Hall of Fame The National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF) is a museum, annual awards ceremony and learning and research center that was founded in 1962 as an Ohio non-profit corporation in Dayton, Ohio, United States, known as the "Birthplace of Aviation" with ...

in 2020. Faget died of

bladder cancer Bladder cancer is the abnormal growth of cells in the bladder. These cells can grow to form a tumor, which eventually spreads, damaging the bladder and other organs. Most people with bladder cancer are diagnosed after noticing blood in thei ...

on October 9, 2004, aged 83.

Patents

Faget was co-inventor on five United States patents issued to Space Industries, Inc. between 1988 and 1992:

MAX-1 spacecraft

The

private spaceflight Private spaceflight is any spaceflight development that is not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA. During the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pionee ...

organization Copenhagen Suborbitals was developing a piloted spacecraft named after Faget, the MAX-1, but the project was halted due to issues around the effects of rapid acceleration of humans in a standing position.

References

External links

Interview with Maxime Faget for NOVA series: To the Moon
WGBH Educational Foundation, raw footage, 1998

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Faget, Maxime 1921 births 2004 deaths American mechanical engineers United States Navy personnel of World War II ASME Medal recipients City College of San Francisco alumni Deaths from bladder cancer in the United States Louisiana State University alumni NASA people People from Dangriga Project Mercury United States Navy officers 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors Deaths from cancer in Texas

Life

Patents

MAX-1 spacecraft

See also

References

External links