George Low

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  In April 1967, NASA named George Low to manage the Apollo spacecraft program. Three astronauts had just died in a fire on the launch pad. The space agency needed someone to determine what had gone wrong, fix it, and return humans to flight before the decade ended. Low took the job, and the program met its deadline. What kind of engineer and administrator could manage a recovery like that, beginning from the wreckage of a national tragedy? Low's path to that moment stretched back decades, to a family in Vienna, Austria.

• 2. From Vienna to Engineering

  ›

  Georg Michael Löw was born on the 10th of June, 1926, to Artur and Gertrude Löw, who ran a prosperous manufacturing business near Vienna. His father died in 1934, when Georg was eight years old. The family was Jewish, and Nazi Germany's occupation of Austria in 1938 forced them to emigrate to the United States. Before that departure, Low had been educated in private schools in Switzerland and England. He graduated from Forest Hills High School in Forest Hills, New York, in 1943. He enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and joined the Delta Phi fraternity.

  The Second World War interrupted his college studies. From 1944 to 1946, Low served in the United States Army. During that service, he became a naturalized American citizen and legally changed his name from Georg Michael Löw to George Michael Low. After his discharge, he completed his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering at RPI in 1948. A brief stint at Convair in Fort Worth, Texas, followed, where he worked as a mathematician in an aerodynamics group. He returned to RPI later that year and earned his master's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1950. His next position was at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, at a laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio.

• 3. The Case for the Moon

  ›

  At the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Low built the technical foundation that would later define his career. He led the Fluid Mechanics Section from 1954 to 1956 and served as chief of the Special Projects Branch from 1956 to 1958. His research covered heat transfer, boundary layer flows, and internal aerodynamics. He also worked on orbit calculations, reentry paths, and space rendezvous techniques, problems that would become central to human spaceflight.

  In the summer and autumn of 1958, before NASA formally existed, Low worked on a planning team to help organize the new aerospace agency. After NASA's formal establishment in October 1958, he transferred to the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., serving as Chief of Manned Space Flight. He was closely involved in planning Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Low testified before Congress, spoke to the media, and presented at industry conferences to argue for a lunar landing as NASA's long-term goal. In 1960, he formed the Low Committee, which produced a study on the feasibility of landing humans on the Moon. That study played a role in President John F. Kennedy's decision to set a Moon landing as a national goal. Kennedy set the end of the 1960s as his deadline.

• 4. Rebuilding Apollo After the Fire

  ›

  In February 1964, Low transferred to NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, and became Deputy Center Director. Three years later, following the Apollo 1 fire, he took charge of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. His role was to direct every change the spacecraft needed to become flightworthy again.

  Low applied a methodology called FMEA, or failure mode and effects analysis, to map the possible risks in human spaceflight. He created and chaired the Configuration Control Board, whose purpose was to monitor technical changes across the Apollo system. A change to one component could inadvertently affect another part, and the board was designed to catch such interactions before they became dangers. Flight Director Glynn Lunney praised Low's leadership through that period. It was an endorsement from someone whose own work depended directly on the spacecraft's reliability.

• 5. At NASA's Summit

  ›

  George Low became NASA deputy administrator in December 1969, working alongside Administrators Thomas O. Paine and James C. Fletcher. When Paine resigned, Low served as acting administrator. In those roles, he played a significant part in developing the Space Shuttle program, the Skylab program, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The Apollo-Soyuz mission brought American and Soviet spacecraft together in orbit.

  Rocket engineer Wernher von Braun blamed Low for what he described as shabby treatment in the early 1970s. Von Braun was serving at NASA Headquarters at the time. A 2005 biography by Bob Ward reported that von Braun believed Low was jealous of his fame. Von Braun also believed Low had helped force him out of the agency. Two other biographies challenged this account. Space historian Michael J. Neufeld's work questioned whether Low had any meaningful role in von Braun's resignation. A biography by Richard Jurek went further, documenting Low's efforts to retain von Braun and engage him in strategic planning during the early 1970s. Jurek described Low as satisfied with von Braun's contributions. He stepped away from NASA after more than six years at the deputy level. He returned to the institution that had first trained him as an engineer.

• 6. A Second Life at RPI

  ›

  As the 14th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Low held office from 1976 until his death on the 17th of July, 1984. During that time, he initiated the Rensselaer Technology Park. Shortly after his death, RPI renamed the New York State Center for Industrial Innovation in his honor. It became the George M. Low Center for Industrial Innovation.

  Low had married Mary Ruth McNamara of Troy, New York, in 1949. Between 1952 and 1963, they had five children: Mark S., Diane E., George David, John M., and Nancy A. His son David became a NASA astronaut in 1985, flew three times on the Space Shuttle, and died in 2008. On the 8th of April, 1985, the White House announced that Low had received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The award recognized his contributions to education and science and arrived posthumously, less than a year after his death.

  In 1996, the TV movie Apollo 11 cast Dennis Lipscomb as Low. Holmes Osborne portrayed him two years later in the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Those productions brought Low's name to audiences who had no direct memory of the missions he had helped guide.