George Mueller (NASA) - Mueller's Working Style

Mueller's Working Style

Almost everyone who worked with Mueller on Apollo agreed he was technically brilliant and exceedingly capable. Even those who frequently disagreed with him like Christopher Kraft or George Low recognized his abilities. While Mueller could be described as intellectually arrogant he was not an office tyrant, in fact, one of his colleagues, John Disher, describes working for him as a "piece of cake". Nor did he try to belittle others or shout them down. While appearing affable and reasonably charming "with the epitome of politeness, but you know down deep he's just as hard as steel!".

Interestingly, we get a rare glimpse inside the extremely rational, hard to know Mueller when he was asked what was his most memorable moment during the years of Apollo. It wasn't the first launch of the Saturn V, the Apollo 8 triumph or even the moon landing but a surprise birthday party that his staff organized for him after the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969.

Read more about this topic:  George Mueller (NASA)

Famous quotes containing the words mueller, working and/or style:

    I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.
    —Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)

    English audiences of working people are like an instrument that responds to the player. Thought ripples up and down them, and if in some heart the speaker strikes a dissonance there is a swift answer. Always the voice speaks from gallery or pit, the terrible voice which detaches itself in every English crowd, full of caustic wit, full of irony or, maybe, approval.
    Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)

    It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
    Karl Kraus (1874–1936)