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| birth_place = New York City, U.S.19952002|20}}| death_place = | nationality = American| other_names = Howard Wilson "Bill" Tindall, Jr.| alma_mater = Brown University, B.S. 1948| occupation = Aerospace engineer and early expert in orbital mechanics| years_active = 1950s-1980s| known_for = Chief of Apollo Data Priority Coordination| notable_works = "Tindallgrams"}}File:Bill Tindall (left) and Gene Kranz in Mission Control during Apollo 11.png|thumb|Bill Tindall (left) and Gene Kranz in Mission Control during Apollo 11Apollo 11Howard Wilson "Bill" Tindall, Jr. (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 1995) was an American aerospace engineer, NASA engineer and manager. He was an early expert in orbital mechanics and coordinated mission techniques during the Apollo program. In the words of flight director Gene Kranz, Tindall "was pretty much the architect for all of the techniques that we used to go down to the surface of the Moon."Kranz, Oral History, January 8, 1999, p. 23Born in New York City in 1925, Tindall grew up in Scituate, Massachusetts and graduated from Scituate High School in 1943. He enlisted in the Navy and served on destroyers in the Pacific, where he became interested in engineering. Tindall earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Brown University in 1948.NEWS, Rendezvous Planner, The New York Times, December 16, 1965, 29,weblink On graduating, Tindall took a job at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, which was part of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, a government agency devoted to aeronautical research. Tindall worked on wind tunnel instrumentation.Tindall's entry into the field of aerospace engineering came when he took a position working on Project Echo, an early communications satellite. He became an expert in the field of orbital mechanics, helping to determine trajectories during Project Mercury and to plan rendezvous techniques during Project Gemini.During the Apollo program, Tindall was appointed Chief of Apollo Data Priority Coordination. Catherine Osgood, an aerospace engineer who worked with TIndall at NASA, noted that "Bill would just dive into any problem he found, no matter where it was".BOOK, Atkinson, Nancy,weblink Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions, 2019-07-02, Page Street Publishing, 978-1-62414-491-2, en, {{Rp|page=39}} In practice, Tindall's responsibilities were wide-ranging. He chaired meetings between astronauts, mission controllers, design engineers, contractors, and other relevant parties, adjudicating disagreements and overseeing the details of planning mission techniques.Tindall was known for the colloquial and entertaining tone of his memos, which were widely referred to as "Tindallgrams."Mattingly, Oral History, November 6, 2001, pp. 21-23. One memo was simply titled "Vent bent descent, lament."Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 296.Tindall died November 20, 1995, at the age of 70.

Notes

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References

• WEB,weblink Kranz, Gene, January 8, 1999, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, 2008-12-23,
• NEWS

• WEB,weblink Mattingly II, Thomas K., November 6, 2001, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, 2008-12-23, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110817224659weblink">weblink August 17, 2011,

• BOOK, Charles, Murray, Catherine Bly Cox, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989, 0-671-61101-1,

External links

• WEB

• WEB, Tindallgrams,weblink" title="web.archive.org/weweblink">weblink20140521223745/http:tindallgrams.net/, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140521223745weblink">weblink May 21, 2014,

• Photo of Tindall from the blog post The thousand-ring circus published 16 July 2019.

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