David Packard (1912–1996) was a co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company. He was deputy secretary of defense in the Nixon administration, 1969-1971. Thomas Paine (1921–1992) was appointed deputy administrator of NASA in 1968, acting administrator later that year, and then NASA's third administrator in 1969. During his leadership, the first seven Apollo manned missions were flown. Paine resigned from NASA in September 1970 to return to the General Electric Company, where he remained until 1976. In 1985 the White House chose Paine as chair of a National Commission on Space to prepare a report on the future of space exploration. The Paine Commission report, Pioneering the Space Frontier, was released in May 1986. It espoused a "pioneering mission for 21stcentury America"-"to lead the exploration and development of the space frontier, advancing science, technology, and enterprise, and building institutions and systems that make accessible vast new resources and support human settlements beyond Earth orbit, from the highlands of the Moon to the plains of Mars.” The report also contained a "Declaration for Space" that included a rationale for exploring and settling the solar system and outlined a long-range space program for the United States.

Samuel Phillips (1921-1990) was an electrical engineer who had a distinguished military flying record during World War II. He became involved in the development of the successful B-52 bomber in the early 1950s and headed the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile program in the latter part of the decade. In 1964 Phillips, by this time an Air Force general, moved to NASA to head the Apollo lunar landing program, which, of course, was unique in its technological accomplishment. He returned to the Air Force in the 1970s and commanded the Air Force Systems Command prior to his retirement in 1975.

William Proxmire (1915– ) (D-WI) served as a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, 1957-1989. He was well known for his congressional investigations of government waste and abuse of funding.

Stanley Resor (1917-) was the secretary of the Army during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, 1965–1971.

John (Jack) Ryan was an Air Force general who became the Air Force chief of staff.

Spencer Schedler was assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management.

Julian Scheer (1926– ) was a newspaper reporter who served as NASA's assistant administrator for public affairs, 1962–1971.

Willis Shapley (1917– ), son of famous Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, joined the Bureau of the Budget in 1942 and held increasingly more responsible positions in military and space affairs at that agency for more than 20 years. In 1965 he moved to NASA as associate deputy administrator, with his duties including supervision of the public affairs, congressional affairs, DOD and interagency affairs, and international affairs offices. He retired in 1975 but rejoined NASA in 1987 to help it recover from the Challenger disaster. He served as associate deputy administrator (policy) until 1988, when he again retired but continued to serve as a consultant to the administrator.

Joseph Shea (1926- ) joined NASA Headquarters' Office of Manned Space Flight in 1962. The next year, he was named the Apollo program manager at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. In 1967 he returned to NASA Headquarters as deputy associate administrator for manned spaceflight. He joined the Raytheon Company in 1968 and served on the NASA Advisory Council for several years. Shea returned to NASA again as head of Space Station redesign efforts in the early 1990s, and he also served as chair of a task force that reviewed plans for the first servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Alan Shepard (1923-) was the first U.S. astronaut in space. Following cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight in April 1961, Shepard flew on a short suborbital flight in May 1961. He also flew to the Moon on Apollo 14 in 1971. He is currently the president of Seven Fourteen Enterprises in Houston.

Abe Silverstein (1908– ) worked as an engineer at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 1929-1943, and moved to the Lewis Laboratory (later Research Center) to a succession of management positions, the last (1961-1970) as director of the center. When T. Keith Glennan arrived and NASA began in 1958, Silverstein was director of the Office of Space Flight Development. While at Headquarters, he helped create and direct the efforts leading to the spaceflights of Project Mercury and to establish the technical basis for the Apollo program. As director of Lewis, he oversaw a major expansion of the center and the development of the Centaur launch vehicle. He retired from NASA in 1970 to take a position with the Republic Steel Corporation.

Jack Stempler (1920–) was the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, 1965-1970 and 1977-1981. In between (1970-1977), he served as the general counsel for the Air Force.

Curtis Tarr (1924- ) was the assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, 1969-1970. He then became the director of the Selective Service System, 1970-1972.

Albert Thomas (1898-1966) (D-TX) chaired the House Independent Offices Appropriations subcommittee that had jurisdiction over NASA. First elected to Congress in 1936, he ran this powerful subcommittee for almost 15 years. He used his political influence to have the $250 million Manned Spacecraft Center located in Houston, near his congressional district.

Floyd Thompson (1898-1976) joined the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in 1926 as part of a staff of only about 150. He became chief of the Flight Research Division in 1940 and assistant chief of research for Langley in 1943. In 1960 Thompson became director of Langley. He also served briefly as a special assistant to the NASA administrator in 1968 before retiring later that year.

Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) was the leader of the "rocket team" that had developed the German V-2 ballistic missile in World War II. At the conclusion of the war, von Braun and some of his chief assistants came to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to work on rocket development and use the V-2 for high-altitude research. In 1950 von Braun's team moved to the Army's Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama. From 1960 to 1970, he was the director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where he was instrumental in supervising the Saturn rocket program for the Apollo lunar missions. James Webb (1906-1992) was NASA administrator between 1961 and 1968. Previously, he had been an aide to a congressman and a business executive with the Sperry Corporation and the Kerr-McGee Oil Company. He also had been director of the Bureau of the Budget, 1946-1950, and undersecretary of state, (1950-1952).

Edward Welsh (1909– ) had a long career in various private and public enterprises. He served as legislative assistant to Senator Stuart Symington (D-MO), 1953-1961, and was the executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council through the 1960s.

Edward White (1930-1967) was the first astronaut to "walk" in space, which he did in 1965 as part of the Gemini IV mission. A lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and son of an Air Force general, White joined NASA in 1962 as a member of its second class of astronauts. White was killed, along with crewmates Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom, when their Apollo 204 capsule was engulfed in flames on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center.

Philip Whittaker was NASA's assistant administrator for industry affairs in the 1960s. President Nixon later appointed him assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations and logistics.

Jerome Wiesner (1915-1994) was science advisor to President John F. Kennedy. He had been a faculty member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had served on President Eisenhower's Science Advisory Committee. During the presidential campaign of 1960, Wiesner had advised Kennedy on science and technology issues and prepared a transition team report on the subject that questioned the value of human spaceflight. As Kennedy's science advisor, he tussled with NASA over the lunar landing commitment and the method of conducting it.

Source: Biographical reference files, NASA Headquarters History Office, Washington, D.C.