Lec 8 MIT 16.885J Aircraft Systems Engineering, Fall 2005
Allen Louviere started life as an airplane designer, went to Lamar University in Texas and then worked at General Dynamics in Fort Worth. You told me about the YB-57. I don't know what other planes you worked on up there, but -- Oh, B-58s, B-36s, F16s, F111s and B-57Fs. Then they wanted to send him all around the world and had a young family. And that was about the time that Johnson Space Center, which at that time was called the Manned Space Flight Center, was getting started in Houston in 1962. So, Allen came to work. And his specialty is mechanical systems. We had a little discussion last night about some of the things that he has designed, but for me one of the most amazing is the landing gear on the Lunar Module. I mean when you think that you can actually design the first piece of the hardware that touches down on another planet that's pretty exciting. And, like most of the people who have been lecturing, he went onto work in similar systems for the Shuttle....