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 wa ...

an-born 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 of ...

. Faget was the designer of the Mercury

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, ...

, and contributed to the later Gemini 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 n ...

Life

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

Dangriga Dangriga, formerly known as Stann Creek Town, is a town in southern Belize, located on the 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 Dangriga Airpo ...

(then known as

British Honduras British Honduras was a British Crown colony on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, from 1783 to 1964, then a self-governing colony, renamed Belize in June 1973,

), he attended

City College of San Francisco City College of San Francisco (CCSF or City College) is a public community college in San Francisco, California. Founded as a junior college in 1935, the college plays an important local role, annually enrolling as many as one in nine San Franc ...

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 17t ...

, 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 o ...

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, ...

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 n ...

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 The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

, 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 f ...

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

at Langley, he worked on the design of the

X-15 The North American X-15 is a hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. It was operated by the United States Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of the X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set spee ...

hypersonic spacecraft. In 1958, Faget became one of the 35 engineers who formed the

Space Task Group The Space Task Group was a working group of NASA engineers created in 1958, tasked with managing America's human spaceflight programs. Headed by Robert Gilruth and based at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, it managed Project Me ...

, 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 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 ...

" 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 versi ...

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 ...

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 The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

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 (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late U ...

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 ''Columbia''. The mission, crewed by Joe H. Engle and Richard H. Truly, launched on November 12, 1981, and landed two days later on November 14 ...

). 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 Wake Shield Facility (WSF) was a NASA experimental science platform that was placed in low Earth orbit by the Space Shuttle. It was a diameter, free-flying stainless steel disk. The WSF was deployed using the Space Shuttle's Canadarm. The WS ...

, 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 ...

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-60 was the first mission of the U.S./Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried Sergei K. Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a Space Shuttle. The mission used NASA Space Shuttle ''Discovery'', which lifted off from Launc ...

STS-69 STS-69 was a Space Shuttle ''Endeavour'' mission, and the second flight of the Wake Shield Facility (WSF). The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on 7 September 1995. It was the 100th successful crewed NASA spaceflight, not incl ...

STS-80 STS-80 was a Space Shuttle mission flown by Space Shuttle ''Columbia''. The launch was originally scheduled for 31 October 1996, but was delayed to 19 November for several reasons. Likewise, the landing, which was originally scheduled for 5 Dec ...

). 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 non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...

. 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. 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 ...

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 ma ...

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 Private spaceflight is spaceflight or the development of spaceflight technology that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. In the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Un ...

organization

Copenhagen Suborbitals Copenhagen Suborbitals is an amateur, crowd-funded, and open-source human space program. Since its beginning in 2008, Copenhagen Suborbitals has flown five home-built rockets and two mock-up space capsules. Their stated goal is to have one of th ...

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