Early Rocketeer Homer Stewart Dies
baa...@earthlink.net
For Immediate Release
May 31, 2007
Early Rocketeer Homer Stewart Dies
PASADENA, Calif.--Homer Stewart, an early pioneer
of rocket research who helped develop Explorer I,
America's first satellite, died Saturday, May 26,
at his home in Altadena, California. He was 91.
A native of Dubuque, Iowa, Stewart came to the
California Institute of Technology for graduate
study in 1936 and became interested in the early
pioneering rocket research that was being carried
out at the time by a small group of Caltech
engineers and scientists, chief among them
Theodore von Karman. Stewart, von Karman, and
others began testing rockets in a rugged foothill
area of the San Gabriel Mountains about five
miles northeast of the Pasadena campus, thereby
forming the nucleus of the research group that
would evolve into the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In 1938, Stewart joined the Caltech faculty from
1938, teaching both aeronautics and meteorology;
but for many years he divided his time between
his faculty duties and research at JPL. As chief
of the research analysis section, he participated
in many rocket projects, including the WAC
Corporal, the Corporal, the Sergeant, and the
Jupiter C. He was chief of JPL's liquid
propulsion systems division when JPL and the Army
Ballistic Missile Agency (now the Marshall Space
Flight Center) developed and launched Explorer I.
His research interests included rocket exhaust
velocity requirements for maintaining the exact
trajectories of spacecraft. He also conducted
research in wind-driven energy, using his
knowledge of fluid flow to construct with von
Karman a turbine known as "Grandpa's Knob." Built
in the mountains of Vermont in the late 1930s,
the machine generated up to a megawatt of power
and operated through World War II in cooperation
with a local electrical company. The project was
abandoned after the war, in part because of the
easy availability of cheap fossil-fuel energy.
Stewart earned his bachelor's degree at the
University of Minnesota in 1936 and his doctorate
in aeronautics at Caltech in 1940. He served
continuously on the Caltech faculty from 1938
until his retirement in 1980.
He is survived by two daughters, Barbara Mogel of
Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, and Kay Stewart of
San Diego; a son, Dr. Robert J. Stewart of
Burien, Washington; and two grandchildren.
Contact: Robert Tindol
(626) 395-3631
tin...@caltech.edu