John F. Yardley | |
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Born | |
Died | June 26, 2001 St. Louis, Missouri, US | (aged 76)
Alma mater |
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Occupation | Engineer |
Employer | National Aeronautics and Space Administration |
Spouse | Phyllis Steele |
Children | 5 |
Awards |
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John F. Yardley (February 1, 1925 – June 26, 2001) was an American engineer who worked for the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He joined McDonnell in 1946, and contributed to the design and development of aircraft such as the McDonnell FH Phantom, F2H Banshee and F-101 Voodoo.
He was the McDonnell project engineer for the Project Mercury spacecraft from 1958 to 1960, and was its the launch operations manager at Cape Canaveral from 1960 to 1964, and its technical director for Project Gemini from 1964 to 1968. In 1968, he became vice president and deputy general manager of the Eastern Division of McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics, and worked on Project Apollo and Skylab.
In 1974, he became NASA's associate administrator for manned space flight. After the inaugural flight of the Space Shuttle in 1981, he returned to McDonnell-Douglas as president of its McDonnell Douglas Astronautics subsidiary, a position he held until he retired in 1989. He was known for "Yardley's Law": "Pretty is what works", his response to someone who said that the Mercury spacecraft looked like a waste paper bin.