Maxime Faget

Maxime Allen Faget (1921 to 2004), known as Max, was an American mechanical engineer who designed the Mercury spacecraft and contributed to the later Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and the Space Shuttle. Born in British Honduras, now Belize, he earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at Louisiana State University in 1943, served three years as a submariner in the United States Navy and then joined the Langley Research Center, where he worked on the X-15. In 1958 he was one of the 35 engineers who formed the Space Task Group, and he led development of the escape tower system used on Mercury. He became Director of Engineering and Development at the Manned Spacecraft Center in 1962, worked for NASA until 1981 and then helped found Space Industries Inc. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.