Howard Wilson "Bill" Tindall, Jr. (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 1995) was an American aerospace engineer, NASA engineer and manager. He was an early expert in orbital mechanics and coordinated mission techniques during the Apollo program. In the words of flight director Gene Kranz, Tindall "was pretty much the architect for all of the techniques that we used to go down to the surface of the Moon." Born in New York City in 1925, Tindall grew up in

Scituate, Massachusetts Scituate () is a seacoast town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, on the South Shore, midway between Boston and Plymouth. The population was 19,063 at the 2020 census. History The Wampanoag and their neighbors have inhabited ...

and graduated from Scituate High School in 1943. He enlisted in the Navy and served on destroyers in the Pacific, where he became interested in engineering. Tindall earned a Bachelor of Science degree from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

in 1948. On graduating, Tindall took a job at the

Langley Research Center The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, United States of America, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. It directly borders Langley Air Force Base and the Back River on the Chesapeake Bay. LaRC has fo ...

Hampton, Virginia Hampton () is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 137,148. It is the List ...

, which was part of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, a government agency devoted to aeronautical research. Tindall worked on wind tunnel instrumentation. Tindall's entry into the field of aerospace engineering came when he took a position working on Project Echo, an early communications satellite. He became an expert in the field of orbital mechanics, helping to determine trajectories during Project Mercury and to plan rendezvous techniques during

Project Gemini Project Gemini () was NASA's second human spaceflight program. Conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, Gemini started in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual ...

. During the Apollo program, Tindall was appointed Chief of Apollo Data Priority Coordination. In practice, Tindall's responsibilities were wide-ranging. He chaired meetings between astronauts, mission controllers, design engineers, contractors, and other relevant parties, adjudicating disagreements and overseeing the details of planning mission techniques. Tindall was known for the colloquial and entertaining tone of his memos, which were widely referred to as "Tindallgrams." One memo was simply titled "Vent bent descent, lament."Murray and Cox, ''Apollo'', p. 296. Tindall died November 20, 1995, at the age of 70.

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External links

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Tindallgrams: The snarky memos of Apollo’s unsung genius

Photo of Tindall
from the blog pos
The thousand-ring circus
published 16 July 2019. {{DEFAULTSORT:Tindall, Bill 1925 births 1995 deaths People from New York City American aerospace engineers Tindall, Bill People from Scituate, Massachusetts Engineers from New York City 20th-century American engineers Brown University School of Engineering alumni