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

Belize Belize (; bzj, Bileez) is a Caribbean and Central American country on the northeastern 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 wate ...

an-born American mechanical engineer. Faget was the designer of the

Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

, and contributed to the later

Gemini Gemini may refer to: Space * Gemini (constellation), one of the constellations of the zodiac ** Gemini in Chinese astronomy * Project Gemini, the second U.S. crewed spaceflight program * Gemini Observatory, consisting of telescopes in the Northern ...

and

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...

spacecraft as well as the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially 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. Its official program na ...

Life

Faget was the son of American doctor

Guy Henry Faget Guy Henry Faget (1891–1947) was an American medical doctor who revolutionalized the treatment of leprosy, by demonstrating the efficacy of promin, as described in a paper published in 1943. Promin is a sulfone compound, synthesized by Feldman an ...

, and great-grandson of another prominent physician,

Jean Charles Faget Jean Charles Faget was a medical doctor born on June 26, 1818 in New Orleans. He is best known for the Faget sign—a medical sign that is the unusual combination of fever and bradycardia. The sign is an important diagnostic symptom of yellow ...

. Born in Dangriga,

(then known as British Honduras), he attended

City College of San Francisco City College of San Francisco (CCSF or City College) is a State school#United States, public community college in San Francisco, California. Founded as a Junior college#United States, junior college in 1935, the college plays an important local ...

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, and he received a

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

degree in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...

from

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

in 1943. After three years as a

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

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, 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 ...

as a research scientist. While working for NACA at Langley, he worked on the design of the X-15 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

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

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 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 version ...

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 space vehicles envisioned in 1969 to support extended operations beyond the Apollo program. ...

(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 and continued to work for NASA until his retirement in 1981, shortly after the second Space Shuttle flight ( STS-2). After his retirement, he was among the founders of

Space Industries Inc. Space Industries Incorporated was a company formed in the 1980s for the purpose of building a privately owned space station, which was to be called the Industrial Space Facility (ISF). At the time, the idea of private development in space was a pio ...

, established in 1982. One of the projects of the company was the Wake Shield Facility, a device to create near-perfect

vacuum A vacuum is a space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective ''vacuus'' for "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. Physicists often dis ...

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 1994–96 ( STS-60, STS-69, STS-80). In 1962, Faget received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Faget was inducted into the 1969 National Inventors Hall of Fame, and received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and

John J. Montgomery Award The John J. Montgomery Award was created by the National Society of Aerospace Professionals (NSAP) and the San Diego Aerospace Museum in 1962 for aerospace achievement. It was awarded from 1962 to at least 1964. John J. Montgomery The award bears ...

. He was inducted into the Houston

National Space Hall of Fame National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

in 1969. He was inducted into the

International Space Hall of Fame The New Mexico Museum of Space History is a museum and planetarium complex in Alamogordo, New Mexico dedicated to artifacts and displays related to space flight and the Space Age. It includes the International Space Hall of Fame. The Museum of S ...

in 1990. Faget died of

bladder cancer Bladder cancer is any of several types of cancer arising from the tissues of the urinary bladder. Symptoms include blood in the urine, pain with urination, and low back pain. It is caused when epithelial cells that line the bladder become mali ...

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: Patent No. -----------------Title * Spacecraft operable in two alternative flight modes * Spacecraft with articulated solar array * Modular spacecraft system * Apparatus and method for docking spacecraft * Structural latch for vehicle coupling mechanisms

MAX-1 spacecraft

The private spaceflight 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 Belizean emigrants to the United States City College of San Francisco alumni Deaths from bladder cancer 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