MODERN ROCKET PROPULSION Dr. Kurt H. Debus (1908- 1983) served as a V2 engineer with Werner von Braun and escaped to America with him at the end of the war. From 1952 to1960, Debus was chief of the missile firing laboratory of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) located at Cape Canaveral Florida, where he supervised the launching of the first ballistic missile fired from there, an Army Redstone. When ABMA became part of NASA, Debus continued to supervise missile and space vehicle launchings, as director of the Launch Operations Center and then of the Kennedy Space Center as it was renamed in December 1963. He retired in 1974. 21 of 32
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