Miss. trio helped put man on moon

OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. - In September 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered a historical speech in which he said America would accept the challenge of putting men on the moon, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” The task of completing the hard work inherent with sending men to the moon would require the efforts of thousands of people, which stretched between multiple facilities, mostly across the Southeast. Among those people were Michel Streiff, Barry Zuber and Charlie Munn, young men working to make Kennedy’s goal a reality 50 years ago on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 delivered. All three now live in Jackson County, Miss. The Mississippi Press spoke with Streiff and Zuber, both of Ocean Springs, about their memories and contributions to the Apollo program. Fresh out of Mississippi State University, Streiff arrived at the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Ala., in January 1966, where he would be one of 4,800 Boeing engineers assigned to implement and analyze all procedures necessary to launch the Saturn V rocket and Apollo capsule. A few months after Streiff started with Boeing, Zuber was going to work for the Space Division of the Chrysler Corp. at its Slidell, La., facility. Both men were computer programmers, but Zuber came to Chrysler almost by chance. The Southeastern Louisiana University graduated was working in marketing for the Carnation Co. But, one night sitting in a bar in Mandeville, La., Zuber found himself sitting next to Chrysler’s Director of Space Technology, who asked him to sign up to be a computer programmer. In his role with Chrysler’s Space Division, Zuber worked closely with the manufacturing process taking place at NASA’s Michaud facility in New Orleans East, where the F1 and J2 engines, which powered the Saturn V rocket, were being built with engine testing taking place at the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Miss. (Source: Mississippi Press 07/14/19)