November 1981
From The Space Library
Administrator James M. Beggs appointed Philip E. Culbertson associate deputy administrator with revised duties, serving as senior staff adviser and directing formulation of NASA policy, strategy, and planning of a facility to constitute permanent U.S. presence in space. Culbertson had served for two years as assistant for Space Transportation Systems.
Robert F. Allnutt, associate deputy administrator since mid-1978, would assume new duties as deputy general counsel for policy review, studying the long-term development of NASA and its relationship to other federal agencies as well as contractual arrangements with future users of the Space Shuttle. (NASA anno, Nov 18/81; NASA Release 81-178, 81-179)
NASA named C. Thomas Newman comptroller to succeed Wiliam E. Lilly, who retired in October. Thomas F. Campbell would replace Newman as deputy comptroller. (NASA anno Nov 25/81)
Frank J. Malina, cofounder of JPL and of the Aerojet General Corporation, died November 9 at his home in Paris. He had moved there to work with the United Nations Educational. Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after retiring in 1947 as an officer of Aerojet and JPL. He had worked for Theodore von Karmann as a researcher for Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, CalTech, leading to creation of the CalTech rocket research project in 1936 that later became JPL, which made the first successful U.S. satellites in the 1950s.
William H. Pickering, who followed Malina as JPL director from 1954 to 1976, said that inventions that made present-day rockets possible went back to work done at JPL under Malina. A leader in developing jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) rockets used in World War 11 and co-developer of the WAC Corporal, first U.S. successful stratosphere rocket, Malina had in 1942 joined von Karmann to form Aerojet General, first U.S. manufacturer of rocket engines. He left UNESCO in 1953 to start a studio as a graphic artist, working in a form he invented called "kinetic art." (LA Times, Nov 11/81; LA Star News, Nov 11/81)
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