Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox Read Free Book Online Page A

first making his name in the world beyond Langley as the man who developed the “blunt-body” shape for the Mercury capsule.* It was a considerable triumph. Others, notably at Ames Research Center, had been arguing for a lifting body, a shape with some of the characteristics of an aerodynamic wing. Faget demonstrated that the blunt ballistic shape (he had adapted it from the blunt-body concept used for ballistic missile nose cones) not only would be simpler and faster to implement, an exceedingly important consideration after Sputnik, but also would have enough lift to be maneuverable.
    Markley first realized what Faget was up to sometime in 1957, before the Space Task Group was formed. Markley was walking through the P.A.R.D. shop at Langley when he looked up and saw Max, all by himself, standing on a balcony overlooking the shop. He was throwing what looked like paper plates out over the balcony. “I thought he was crazy at first,” said Markley. “I just stood there and looked at him.” He finally walked up the steps to the balcony. As he got closer he could see that Faget had taped pairs of paper plates together, back to front.
    “Max, what are you doing?” Markley asked.
    “I think these things will really fly. We have some lift over drag in this thing,” Faget answered, as he sailed another pair of plates out over the shop floor. Down on the floor, the shop technicians continued to work unperturbed. They were used to this sort of thing from Max.
    Standing only five feet six inches tall, slight, natty in his bow tie when he got dressed up for outsiders, Faget looked deceptively boyish and harmless. This impression usually lasted only briefly, however. “He was opinionated, completely outspoken—he wouldn’t pull back an iota,” said John Disher, who had to deal with him from headquarters. “If you had a dumb idea or he thought you were dumb, he’d tell you to your face.”
    Along with that bluntness went supreme self-confidence. “It never occurs to him that he can be wrong,” said his closest collaborator, Caldwell Johnson. “A lot of people have got a great deal of self-doubt, they hesitate to do things, because they’re not all that damn sure they’re right. Max is never in any doubt in his mind whether he’s right or wrong. And that’s good. Goddamn, if you don’t have a few people like that, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
    And yet, oddly for a man of such strong opinions and large ego, Faget seems to have been liked by just about everyone who worked with him. “A sweetheart,” said Owen Maynard. “He was always laughing and joking,” said Markley, “a great guy to grow up under.” “Max was a very likable guy,” Disher confirmed. “He just detested higher authority.”
    Perhaps the best way to describe Faget’s style is cheerful ruthlessness. His associates recalled knock-down, drag-out technical arguments with him. Faget’s voice would rise, his face would flush—and then it would pass as quickly as a summer storm and Max would be off on something else. The only thing you had to remember when you were around Faget was that once he got absorbed in something, you were well advised to keep a safe distance. One engineer who used to play squash with him in the astronauts’ gym at Houston recalled that Faget would “beat the hell out of you with the racket if you didn’t watch out.” The two men were the best of friends, had been for years—but, nonetheless, “you had to play defensively, because Max didn’t make any effort whatsoever to avoid hitting you. And you’d lose a lot of points that way.”
    On the other hand, once Faget’s absorption in something was finished, that was it. He was curiously detached about his spacecraft once they had left his hands. He didn’t go to see them launched. He could have—he was not required in Mission Control the way Operations people were—but he always managed to be too busy with something else. In later years he relented and