Burt Rutan
Burt Rutan (born 1943): The founder of Scaled Composites LLC, Rutan designed and built SpaceShipOne. In 2004, it became the first privately-owned craft to enter outer space; its second and […]
Robert A. Rushworth
Robert “Bob” Aitken Rushworth was born on October 9, 1924, in Madison, Maine and graduated from Madison Memorial High School in 1942. He graduated from Hebron Academy in Hebron, Maine […]
Stuart A. Roosa
Piloted the command module on Apollo 14 mission. Stuart A. Roosa was born August 16, 1933, in Durango, Colorado. His father worked for the U.S. Corps of Engineers and the […]
Klaus Riedel
Pioneering Rocket Engineer
Sally K. Ride
Sally Ride was born on May 26, 1951, in Encino, California. Her father was a political science professor, and both of Sally’s parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Sally […]
Thomas Reiter
Thomas Reiter is a retired Brigadier General with the German Air Force. As a GAF pilot, Reiter flew more than 15 types of military combat jet aircraft, including the Tornado, […]
Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov
Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov was born on April 27, 1942, in Tula, USSR. His original name was Valeri Ivanovich Korshunov, but he changed it after being adopted by his step-father in […]
William H. Pickering
Directed NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. William H. Pickering was born on December 24, 1910, in Wellington, New Zealand. After attending Havelock School in Marlborough, New Zealand he entered Wellington College […]
Jean Felix Piccard
Jean Felix Piccard and his identical twin brother Auguste (who in 1931 made the first stratospheric balloon flight in Europe) were born in Basle, Switzerland on January 28, 1884. Their […]
Jeannette Ridlon Piccard
Jeannette Ridlon was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 5, 1895, one of two identical twin girls. Her father, Dr. John Ridlon, was a well-known orthopedic surgeon. She earned Bachelors […]