Human Space Flight Collection

• The NASA Apollo Press Releases is composed of original press releases, press kits, flight plans, NASA crew photographs, brochures, scientific reports, press conference records, newspaper clippings and articles, and miscellaneous materials, for every NASA Apollo Program mission from Apollo 7 through Apollo 17. The materials largely are original period copies distributed by NASA and Johnson Space Center.
• The most significant and largest part of the collection are the original Apollo mission press releases, including hour-by-hour and day-by-day releases providing constant updates on the progress of the missions. This is the most complete collection of press information for the Apollo Program missions outside of the originals housed at the National Archives and Records Administration. This collection also includes brochures and other officially released materials from NASA, such as original public flight plans, transcripts of post-Apollo flight press conferences, and moon rock specimen testing results.

• Samuel Nassiff joined the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, in 1963. There, he worked in the Simulation Branch, Flight Crew Operations Directorate, where he developed a Gemini reentry simulator with six-degrees-of-freedom and trained the first two classes of astronauts. In 1964, he was named Head of the Simulation Dynamics Section. Nassif continued in the Simulation Requirements and Design office through 1973. Between 1974-1975, Sam worked in the Spacecraft Design Division of the Payload Integration Office determining requirements and conducting studies for the design of the Shuttle aft crew station.
• In 1975 he moved into the Engineering & Development Directorate, Systems Design Office as a Technical Manager developing a Manned Remote Work Station (MRWS) and Open Cherry Picker Development Test Article. In 1979 he moved to the Program Development Office, also in the Engineering & Development Directorate. From 1982-1985 he worked in the Systems Engineering Division as Technical Manager for the Space Station. From 1985-1987 he worked as Technical Assistant to the Manager of the International and External Affairs Office in the Space Station Program Office, where they formulated plans and schedules relative to international projects for implementation in the Space Station Program.
• Samuel Nassiff retired from NASA Johnson Space Center in 1987. He went on to work for Eagle Engineering, Inc., where he participated in the preparation of the MDAC proposal for the Space Station Program in the area of SE&I; managed a study for an international space contractor to develop requirements and designs for an Astronaut Training Facility; and designed an Earth Orbiting Transportation Node for a NASA contracted study in the area of advanced space craft design.
• This collection represents the material Samuel Nassiff gathered for his personal files outside of his work papers, which were donated to the official NASA Johnson Space Center History Collection. The collection includes his work with Eagle Engineering, Inc. as an associate responsible for a NASDA Crew Training Facility Study, and a Systems Engineering and Integration proposal for MDAC. Papers also reflect his employment with General Dynamics (Convair) in Fort Worth, Texas, from 1956-1963. The remainder are personal papers including his personnel file, resumes, a biographical letter, personal correspondence, and other historical information he collected during his employment at NASA Johnson Space Center.

• Shelby Lee Owens III was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 23, 1935. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Louisiana State University in 1958 and worked as an engineer for Boeing Airplane Company, Hayes Aircraft Company, Dow Chemical Company, and Foxboro Instrument Company. Owens would then join the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, in June 1963. Owens held progressively more responsible positions at the Johnson Space Center, where he worked on the Apollo, Skylab, and Space Shuttle programs. Owens worked as an Aerospace Engineer and Manager of Manned Space Flight Programs, from where he retired after 27 years of service. He received numerous awards for his contributions to the Space Program including the ASME George Westinghouse Silver Medal and NASA Exceptional Service Medal. After retiring from NASA in 1990, Shelby continued to support Space Exploration in various positions with Hernandez Engineering and Barrios Technologies for 10 years. Shelby Owens passed away on August 16, 2016, in Kingwood, Texas. This collection covers Shelby Owens’s career from 1964 to 1990 and includes correspondence, documents, awards, and ephemera.

• This collection represents the material Robert F. Pannett gathered while employed with McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, from the 1950s through around the late 1960s. Pannett served as Spacecraft Manager for Gemini Spacecraft No. 4. He also worked from 1965-1969 on the Gemini B project, a U.S. Air Force project to use the Gemini design for high-altitude ground observation. While the basic design remained the same, the purpose and equipment used for monitoring was unique to the Gemini B, though in the end it was never launched.
• This collection includes a paper he co-authored for the AIAA Third Manned Space Flight Meeting. Various reports document additional projects he appears to have worked on for the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. The Project Gemini series focuses on Spacecraft No. 4, used in the Gemini IV June 1965 launch crewed by Edward H. White and James McDivitt. Pannett saved numerous photographs of various projects including the Alpha Draco 122B missile, Gemini, and the Mercury Trainer. The Alpha Draco photos are a mixture of U.S. Air Force photographs and McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, but the others are largely identified as taken by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation.

• Donald R. Puddy was born in Oklahoma on May 31, 1937. Puddy’s career with NASA began at the Manned Spacecraft Center, now known as Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1964 during the Apollo years. As an engineer on the Apollo 13 flight in 1970, he proposed the solution of using the lunar module, Aquarius, as a lifeboat that saved the lives of the three Apollo 13 astronauts. As a result, Donald Puddy’s career with NASA began to blossom as he was promoted in 1972 to Flight Director, where he commanded NASA’s final mission to the moon, Apollo 17 and the missions to the United States’ first space station, Skylab.
• Most importantly, Donald Puddy presided over the NASA program during the crucial Cold War period known as détente. The relaxation of tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was personified by joint mission programs such as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975 and Shuttle Transportation System (STS) missions to the Russian Space Station Mir in the late 1980s as the first phase of establishing an International Space Station (ISS), which was completed in the late 1990s. Throughout his lengthy career with NASA, Donald Puddy won numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts on the Apollo 13 rescue, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame in 2002. Donald Puddy passed away on November 22, 2004 in Houston, Texas.
• This collection contains the work papers of Donald R. Puddy, Johnson Space Center (JSC) engineer, flight director and manager from 1964 until 2004. Content includes documentation from Apollo, Skylab, Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), Approach and Landing Test (ALT), Shuttle Transportation System (STS), the Shuttle-Mir Program and JSC operating papers.

• The William D. Reeves Papers consists of booklets, binders, calendars, correspondence, handbooks, memorandums, operating manuals, publications, schedules, technical drawings, technical manuals, technical reports, presentations, and miscellaneous materials used by William D. Reeves during his time working at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Reeves worked at NASA from 1967 until 2001. The bulk of the collection is composed of Reeves’ copies of handbooks, presentations, technical manuals, technical reports, and other materials that include his personal notes from 1988 to 2001, that he used while working as a NASA Flight Director and the Manager of the Space Shuttle/Space Station Integration Office. Reeves was an electrical engineer known for his work with the Space Shuttle partnership with Russian Space Station MIR, as well as his help building the International Space Station. Also, within the collection are documents from the Space Station Freedom project. There are general correspondence and presentation slides from the United Space Alliance, and RID Reports are present.

• Dr. Ronald Pastrana, retired NASA scientist, first initiated the Scientist in Residence Program at Mill Road Intermediate School in 2006 as a two-day enrichment program for fourth graders. In 2008, Dr. Pastrana moved the program to first and fourth graders at Chancellor Livingston Elementary School in Rhinebeck, New York, where it subsequently grew into an all-grades week-long event augmenting their standard science curriculum. The program provides students with background information and hands-on experiences to discuss lunar geology, Earth and Life Sciences, as well as other topics related to the U.S. Space Program. The impact of the program on the student’s interests may be clearly seen through the many samples of student essay letters, images, and research papers submitted by following the program.
• When this program began at Livingston Chancellor Elementary School in 2008, Dr. Ron Pastrana donated various examples of student artwork and essay letters for the UHCL Archives. These items were housed in the UHCL Archives Vertical File under the term “Scientist in Residence Program (Rhinebeck, NY)” by the year. Dr. Pastrana annually contributed student research essays, images, artwork, thank you letters, and program overview. These items were formally processed out of the Vertical File and into the Scientist in Residence Program Records after the 2011 donation and also includes addenda up to 2013.

• Carl Douglas Scott received his B.A. degree in physics from Rice University in Houston, Texas, and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston in 1963 after he completed service in the U.S. Navy. During his career at NASA in Houston, Scott worked in the areas of arc jet flow diagnostics; aerothermodynamics; surface catalytic effects on entry heating; and on production, diagnostics, and modeling of single wall carbon nanotubes. He was a lecturer for a number of short courses on hypersonics and flow diagnostics in the U.S. and Europe. He served as co-chair of several workshops hosted by NASA, Rice University, and the Air Force on growth mechanisms of single-wall carbon nanotubes. Scott’s specialty areas of research included: hypersonic aerothermodyanmics; high enthalpy flow diagnostics; chemical reaction modeling of carbon nanotube production, hydrogen microwave plasmas, and arc jet flow; technical report writing; plasma spectroscopy. Carl Scott retired from NASA Johnson Space Center in December 2005. Since retirement, he has continued to support NASA as a consultant with Jacobs Technology, who is a contractor for NASA Johnson Space Center. This collection consists of technical experiment data, notes and calculations, presentations, correspondence, and personal data, created and used by Dr. Carl Scott throughout his time working at NASA Johnson Space Center.

• Jeanette Getz is a local mother and grandmother in the Houston, Texas, area who has long held an interest in space exploration. For many years, Getz clipped articles out of newspapers and magazines for her grandchildren, but decided they would make a nice research collection to give to an archives. The collection consists of various clippings of NASA space program articles from numerous newspapers and magazines. The original clippings were photocopied onto acid-free paper and housed in alphabetical order according to their primary topic. The articles include the Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle missions, ranging from 1965 to 2007, with an emphasis on the period 1981-2007.

• Hyman Abraham Steinberg (who went by “Hy”) was born in New York City to a Jewish family on December 15, 1925. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II from 1944-1946 as a Radioman 2nd Class at the U.S. Naval Mine Depot in Yorktown, Virginia. He received a Bachelor of Art and Bachelor of Architectural Engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1950 and 1951, respectively. In 1951, Steinberg worked as the junior architect for the New York City Public Works Department. Then, Steinberg worked at New York University’s Research Division as an engineering scientist from 1951-1955, where he co-developed the first engineered solar oven.

• He next worked as an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, from 1955-1958. From 1958-1960, Steinberg worked as the Public Relations Account Executive for Basford Inc. in New York City. At the same time, he served as an industrial engineering consultant between 1958-1959 with Carmer Industries in New Jersey. He worked from 1960-1963 as the editor of Family Handyman Magazine in New York City; then followed this as an building consultant editor American Home Magazine.

• Steinberg worked from 1967 to 1971 as an engineering specialist for Catalytic-Dow, Saturn 5 systems at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He also worked on the Apollo 8 program. From 1955 to 1980, Steinberg received 14 U.S Patents for Solar-Thermal energy conversion. In his career, he received 20 patents for his own inventions. Some of his best-known inventions today are the solar energy grill, inner channel hearing aid, and rotary electric shaver. Steinberg then worked as a real estate investor, architectural consultant, artist, and inventor until his death on February 12, 2016.

• This collection contains writings, invention materials, photographs, and publications related to the life and career of Hyman A. Steinberg’s career at NASA that impacted human space flight. Most of the materials date from 1967 to 1973, though there are materials from Steinberg’s later independent consultancy with NASA while not a full-time employee.

George Strouhal Papers

• The George Strouhal Papers is composed of NASA corporate contractor records and reports, reports, white papers and papers, manuals, research binders, memorandums, brochures, booklets, a poster, college course lecture notes, course assignment records, and miscellaneous materials, created and used by George Strouhal during his career working at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (later Johnson Space Center) between the 1960s and 1970s. Strouhal was a mechanical engineer known for his work focusing on thermal protection systems for the Apollo Program and Space Shuttle Program. The bulk of the collection is composed of Strouhal’s copies of official NASA corporation contractors’ reports, papers, records, and other materials, from the 1950 through 1970s. There are miscellaneous NASA, contractors, and various organizations’ aerospace research materials that he retained while working at NASA. The collection includes course notes kept by Strouhal during his undergraduate and other educational course work in the 1950s and 1960s.

Reuben E. Taylor Papers

• The Reuben E. Taylor Papers is composed of memorandums, operating manuals, publications, technical drawings, technical manuals, technical reports, presentation slides, and miscellaneous materials, used and kept by Reuben E. Taylor during his time working at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The majority of the materials within the Reuben E. Taylor Papers were used by Taylor during his time working in the Space Shuttle Program Management Operations Effectiveness office. The bulk of the materials are memorandums, technical manuals, and operating manuals used by Taylor between 1981 and 1984 in regards to the planning for the Space Shuttle Program’s launching of the Orbiter. Also within the Reuben E. Taylor Papers are the plans for the Vandenberg Project, and documents from NASA’s partnership with Ariane Space. Similarly, technical drawings, technical reports, publications, and presentation slides from NASA general management are kept within the Reuben E. Taylor Papers collection.

• The Teacher in Space Program Records is composed of correspondence, presentations, press releases, educational records, media plans, guides, photographs, and miscellaneous materials, documenting NASA’s Teacher in Space Project (TISP) program from 1984 to 2005. The collection appears to have been the personal collection of an unidentified individual connected with NASA and/or Johnson Space Center, transferred to the University of Houston-Clear Lake Archives and Special Collections by the Johnson Space Center History Office.

• The Joseph G. Thibodaux Papers is composed of correspondence, photographs, memoranda, telegrams, programs, certificates, meeting minutes, artwork, scrapbooks, family genealogical and biographical data records, newspaper articles, journal articles, and miscellaneous materials, documenting the personal and professional career of Joseph Guy Thibodaux Jr. Thibodaux first began working for National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1946. He would go to work at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, in 1964, serving as the Chief of the Propulsion and Power Division before retiring from NASA in 1980. The collection materials date from 1915 to 2008, including family records and information for the Thibodaux family.

John Trebes Papers

• John M. Trebes was born on July 1, 1932, in New London, Connecticut. He worked as an aerospace engineer at NASA for 30 years. He was Space Station mockup manager for the Man-Systems Division at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, around 1986. He also served as the preflight adaptation trainer (PAT) at Johnson Space Center. Trebes was chairman of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 1990 to 1991. John Trebes died on July 25, 2002. John Trebes married Alyce E. Dillinger, who worked for Lockheed Electronics Company during the Apollo Program. In 1962, she worked for NASA’s Preflight Operations Division at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. In 1963, she worked for the organization’s Flight Operations Division. Dillinger was born on September 25, 1930. Alyce Dillinger Trebes died on October 30, 2012.     

• The collection contains materials spanning across the NASA careers of husband and wife John Trebes’ and Alyce Dillinger Trebes. It includes information on the Preflight Adaptation Trainer (PAT), Apollo Earth Landing System, Apollo Program training, Space Shuttle program, Life Sciences Directorate, and NASA-related photographs.

• Chester A. Vaughan (who goes by “Chet”) graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1959 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering. In 1955, he joined NASA at the Langley Research Center at Langley Field, Virginia. Vaughan worked in the Cooperative Education Program and the Space Vehicle Group, Applied Materials and Physics, until 1961. Then, Vaughn joined the new NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (later Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas. For a number of years, he worked as a senior engineer. Vaugn served as the deputy director of engineering at Johnson Space Center from October 1993 to January 1995. From December 1991 to October 1993, he served as the chief of the Propulsion and Power Division at JSC; and from January to December 1991, he served as the chief engineer in the Office of Space Flight at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Vaughn was named to the newly created post of chief engineer for the International Space Station Program at JSC in January 1995. Vaughan retired in 1996 from NASA as Chief Engineer, Space Station Program. Around 2013, Vaughan worked as a consultant for Boeing on the International Space Station.
• This collection is composed of technical reports, presentations, white papers, summaries, analyses, and correspondence regarding Dr. Chester A. Vaughan’s work at NASA from 1974 to 1994.

• The Dale E. Wolfe Collection is composed of reports, correspondence, memorandums, training manuals, handbooks, personnel records, presentation slides printouts, photographs, booklets, newsletters, cartoons, and miscellaneous materials, created, used, or collected by Dale E. Wolfe while he worked with NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) as a NASA contractor working for Boeing’s Houston operations. Wolfe worked as an electrical engineer with Boeing and NASA JSC on the Apollo Program missions, Skylab Program, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), and various other program from 1967 through the 1980s. The bulk of the material in this collection are various manuals and handbooks relating to the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, as well as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project with the Soviet Union.

• The largest and most significant set of materials in the collection is Wolfe’s binder of reports and correspondence spanning the entire Apollo program between 1967 and 1975, focusing primarily on the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. The set contains original notes, manuals, reports, data, and company correspondence. The most interesting items in the collection are two of Wolfe’s original green fabric personal meeting notebooks, in which he took notes and wrote ideas own during meetings with Boeing Houston and NASA JSC between January 1973 and February 1975 at the height of the Skylab Program and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The collection is an important representation of the work of a Boeing contract employee with NASA Johnson Space Center at the height of the United States’ space program.

• The Charles W. Yodzis Papers is composed of correspondence, memorandums, organizational charts, handbooks, manuals, technical reports, technical drawings, handwritten research and calculations, engineering performance studies, general propulsion studies, research files, notes, scientific studies, presentation slides, staff lists, photographs, 35mm slides, directories, magazine issues, and miscellaneous materials, created, used, or collected by Charles W. Yodzis from 1957 to 1994. Yodzis served as the Chief of the Primary Propulsion Branch of the Propulsion and Power Division at NASA Johnson Space Center from 1964 through his retirement.

• Most of the materials were used by Yodzis in his research and design for the engine systems for the Apollo Command Service Module and Lunar Module, and for the Space Shuttle Orbiter—for which he and his team were primarily responsible for developing. The collection consists of materials stored in Yodzis’ original office subject and research files by project, purpose, engine type, and mission names. The collection is unique in that there is a large amount of Yodzis’ original handwritten scientific calculations and notes on all aspects of the development of primary propulsion systems for spacecraft.