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John Houbolt at blackboard, showing his space rendezvous concept for lunar landings. John Cornelius Houbolt (April 10, 1919 - April 15, 2014) was an aerospace engineer credited with leading the team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode, a concept that was used to successfully land humans on the Moon and return them to Earth. This flight path was first endorsed by Wernher von Braun in June 1961 and was chosen for Apollo program in early 1962. The critical decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that Man reached the Moon by the end of the decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy. In the process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using existing rocket technology. While some aspects of Houbolt's initial estimates were off (such as a 10, 000 pound Apollo Lunar Module which was ultimately 32, 399 pounds), his LOR package proved to be feasible with a single Saturn V rocket whereas other modes would have required two or more such rocket launches (or larger rockets than were then available) to lift enough mass into space to complete the mission. Houbolt began his career at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1942, and stayed on at NASA after it succeeded NACA, until retirement in 1985. He died at a nursing home in 2014, at the age of 95, of Parkinson's disease. July 24, 1962.
