About 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 available rocket and spacecraft technologies. He was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1963. He was awarded an honorary doctorate, awarded on May 15, 2005, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his papers were deposited in the University of Illinois Archives.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.