John Houbolt

John Cornelius Houbolt was an aerospace engineer credited with leading the team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode, a concept that was used to successfully land humans on the Moon and return them to Earth. This flight path was chosen for the Apollo program in July 1962. The critical decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that man reached the Moon by the end of the decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy. In the process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using the rocket and spacecraft technologies.

10 April 1919

Born on the same birth day (10 April): April 10 • Bob Bell (motorsport) • Chaz Mostert • David Moorcroft • Delphine Seyrig • George William Russell • Harry Morgan • Iván Alonso • Jim Burns • John Watkins (South African cricketer) • Ky Baldwin • Lee Jung-seob • Lew Wallace • Michel Corrette • Omar Sharif • Pavlos Fyssas • Petros Passalis • Stefan Heym • Steve Glasson • Steven Seagal • Terence Lewis (choreographer) • Yefim Bronfman

Born in the same month (April 1919): Alberto Breccia • Clairette Oddera • Don Cornell • Donald J. Cram • Esther Afua Ocloo • Finn Helgesen • Gilles Lamontagne • J. Presper Eckert • Joseph Murray • K. Saraswathi Amma • Licio Gelli • Oleg Penkovsky • Roger Doucet • Roger Lemelin • Roland Gaucher • Sol Kaplan