John Hodge

John Dennis Hodge (10 February 1929 – 19 May 2021) was a British aerospace engineer. He worked for the CF-105 Avro Arrow jet interceptor project in Canada. When it was cancelled in 1959, he became a member of NASA's Space Task Group, which later became the Johnson Space Center. During his NASA career, he worked as a flight director and planner. As the on-shift flight director of the Gemini 8 spaceflight crewed by Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott as it entered a spin, Hodge was credited with the safe landing of these astronauts. When he returned to NASA in the 1980s, he worked as a manager on the Space Station Freedom project, which later became the International Space Station. He also served as an administrator at the United States Department of Transportation. Early life Hodge was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 1929, and attended Minchenden Grammar School in Southgate, London. He studied at the Northampton Engineering College at the University of London, graduating in 1949 with a first-class degree in engineering. From 1950 through 1952 he worked as an engineer at Vickers-Armstrongs in Weybridge, beginning upon graduation in the Aerodynamics Department. In 1952 Hodge took a job at the Avro Arrow project in Canada, where he was head of the air loads section. NASA career When the Avro Arrow project was cancelled in 1959, 32 Avro engineers including Hodge followed the lead of Jim Chamberlin and migrated to join NASA's Space Task Group. The group, based at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, was responsible for America's crewed space program, Project Mercury. At Langley, Hodge became the assistant to Chris Kraft, who was the head of the Space Task Group's operations division and NASA's first flight director.