Maus Credit - NASA

Personal: Male.

German expert in rocket power units during World War II. As of January 1947, working at Fort Bliss, Texas. Worked his entire life with the rocket team, at Fort Bliss, White Stands, and then at Huntsville. As of 1960, Director, Fabrication and Assembly Engineering Division, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Died at Huntsville, Alabama.

6 November 1961 - Working group on large launch vehicles. In a memorandum to D. Brainerd Holmes, Director, Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF), Milton W. Rosen, Director of Launch Vehicles and Propulsion, OMSF, described the organization of a working group to recommend to the Director a large launch vehicle program which would meet the requirements of manned space flight and which would have broad and continuing national utility for other NASA and DOD programs. The group would include members from the NASA Office of Launch Vehicles and Propulsion (Rosen, Chairman, Richard B. Canright, Eldon W. Hall, Elliott Mitchell, Norman Rafel, Melvyn Savage, and Adelbert O. Tischler); from the Marshall Space Flight Center (William A. Mrazek, Hans H. Maus, and James B. Bramlet); and from the NASA Office of Spacecraft and Flight Missions (John H. Disher). (David M. Hammock of MSC was later added to the group.) The principal background material to be used by the group would consist of reports of the Large Launch Vehicle Planning Group (Golovin Committee), the Fleming Committee, the Lundin Committee, the Heaton Committee, and the Debus-Davis Committee. Some of the subjects the group would be considering were:

1. an assessment of the problems involved in orbital rendezvous,
2. an evaluation of intermediate vehicles (Saturn C-3, C-4, and C-5),
3. an evaluation of Nova-class vehicles,
4. an assessment of the future course of large solid-fuel rocket motor development,
5. an evaluation of the utility of the Titan III for NASA missions, and
6. an evaluation of the realism of the spacecraft development program (schedules, weights, performances).

• The Saturn C-5 launch vehicle and earth orbital rendezvous were considered the primary mode for the lunar landing.
• Full-scale orbit operations development, including ground testing, would be accomplished, using S-I boosters and orbital upper stages. This development would be planned so that upper stages and rendezvous techniques would be developed by the time the C-5 was operational. Planning would consider both connecting and fueling modes.
• The development of a two-stage Nova with liquid-propellant engines in both stages would be activated as early as realistically feasible. This would provide an alternative, direct flight mode carrying the same orbital launch vehicle as developed for the C-5.
• There would be no solid-propellant vehicle development.