Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.
Encyclopedia : C : CH : CHR : Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.
Chris Kraft redirects here. For the American boat manufacturer, see Chris Craft.
Christopher Columbus Kraft, Jr. (born February 28, 1924) was the first NASA flight director .
He was born in Phoebus, Virginia and graduated from Virginia Tech in December 1944.
He began his career as an aeronautical engineer with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. When NACA became NASA in the late 1950s, he was put in charge of flight control for Project Mercury, where he was responsible for developing the technology and procedures for what became known as the Mission Control Center. He was the director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center from January 1972 to August 1982.
Miscellaneous facts
- Kraft personally hand-picked and trained an entire generation of NASA flight directors, including Gene Kranz.
- He wrote Flight: My Life in Mission Control (ISBN 0525945717).
- Kraft was portrayed by actor Stephen Root in the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.
External links
- [Biography] from the New Mexico Museum of Space History
- [Entry from the list of JSC Center Directors], from the Johnson Space Center website
- [Kraft selected 2002 Ruffner Medal recipient] by his alma mater
- [Portrait of Kraft] taken in 1979, from the NASA website
- [04/17/06: Gene Kranz and Chris Kraft Honored as Ambassadors Of Exploration]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.