Joseph Francis Shea was an American aerospace engineer and NASA manager. He worked for Bell Labs on the radio inertial guidance system of the Titan I intercontinental ballistic missile. As Deputy Director of NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight, and later as head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, Shea played a key role in shaping the course of theApollo program.
About Joseph Francis Shea in brief
Joseph Francis Shea was an American aerospace engineer and NASA manager. He worked for Bell Labs on the radio inertial guidance system of the Titan I intercontinental ballistic missile. As Deputy Director of NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight, and later as head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, Shea played a key role in shaping the course of theApollo program. While sometimes causing controversy within the agency, Shea was remembered by his former colleague George Mueller as “one of the greatest systems engineers of our time” Shea was forced to resign from the position due to health issues. He was a consultant for NASA on the redesign of the International Space Station in 1993, but died in 1998. He is buried in the New York City borough of the Bronx. He had no interest in engineering; he was a good runner and hoped to become a professional athlete. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and enrolled in a program that would put him through college. He went on to earn a MSc and a Ph. D. in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Michigan. He also worked as a senior manager at Raytheon in Lexington, Massachusetts, and thereafter became an adjunct professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. His specialty was systems engineering, a new type of engineering developed in the 1950s that focused on the management and integration of large-scale projects, turning the work of engineers and contractors into one functioning whole.
He died of lung cancer in 1998 at the age of 80. He leaves behind a wife and two children. He has a daughter and a son. He served as an Ensign in the Navy and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics. He later worked as an engineer at Bell Labs in Whippany, New Jersey. In 1961 he was offered and accepted a position with Space Technology Laboratories, a division of TRW Inc., where he continued to work on ballistic missile systems. In December 1961, NASA invited Shea to interview for the position of deputy director of the Office ofManned Space flight. He left NASA shortly afterwards. He lived in New Jersey until his death in 1998, when he was buried in New York. His wife and three children are still living in the same New Jersey home he shared with his first wife, who died of cancer in 2008. She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, both of whom he married in 1989. She had a son, Joseph Francis Shea, Jr., and a daughter, Jennifer Francis Shea. She died in 2010. She was buried at the New Jersey State Medical Center in Paramus, New York, where she had lived for more than 30 years. She also has a step-daughter, Jennifer Shea, who was married to former NASA administrator Michael O’Leary, and has two sons, Michael O’Leary, Jr. and Michael O ‘Leary, III, and Michael “Mike’ O” O‘Leary Jr., Jr., who is also a former NASA director.
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