Jesco von Puttkamer

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For the colonial official, see Jesko von Puttkamer.

Jesco Freiherr von Puttkamer (born 22 September 1933) is a German-born rocket engineer and senior NASA manager from Leipzig.

He belongs to a widely extended noble family von Puttkamer (also spelled v. Puttkamer) whose earliest ancestor is first recorded between 1257 and 1260. While some of its branches have the title of Graf (count), others are entitled to the lesser Freiherr (baron). According to a widespread family tradition, each firstborn Puttkamer receives the first name of "Jesco".

After the war, during which his family lived in Switzerland, von Puttkamer studied mechanical engineering at Konstanz and the Technische Hochschule in Aachen, graduating with a master's degee. In 1962 he left Germany for the United States, where he joined Wernher von Braun's team at NASA in Huntsville, Alabama as an engineer during the Apollo Program. He received United States citizenship in 1967. He later became a NASA program manager in charge of long-range planning of deep space manned activities (flights beyond Earth orbit) and he was/is an ardent advocate of manned space exploration and SETI. He also worked with Gene Roddenberry as Technical Advisor to Paramount Pictures for the Star Trek: The Motion Picture movie of 1979, contributing, among else, the hypothetical theory behind the faster-than-light space warp drive and the promotional slogan "Space - The Human Adventure is just beginning".

From 1985 to 2000 he also lectured at the RWTH Aachen University at Aachen/Germany as an Honorary Professor. He has said that among his most treasured achievements at NASA were his contributions to the Apollo program Lunar Landing in 1969, which fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's mandate of 1961; helping to rescue America's experimental space station Skylab after its near-disastrous launch into orbit on May 14, 1973, making it habitable and eminently successful for three sets of U.S. Astronauts later that year; and also "rescuing" the backup Skylab version from being discarded so it could be publicly displayed in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, instead of being sold for scrap.

Von Puttkamer has been honored with numerous high NASA awards, among them NASA's prestigious Exceptional Service Medal, which he received in 2004. He is the author of more than a dozen books on Spaceflight, and, during his post-WWII student years in Germany, also of many well-known science fiction novels. In the English language he has among else authored the novelette "The Sleeping God" published in "STAR TREK: The New Voyages 2", edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, ISBN 0-553-11392-5.

As of 2005, Puttkamer was providing management leadership at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, on the programs of the International Space Station (ISS), Space Shuttle and, since 2004, President George W. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, stationed in the HQ Office of Space Operations.

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Regarding personal names: Freiherr is a title, translated as Baron, not a first or middle name. The female forms are Freifrau and Freiin.

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