AL EGGERS
One of UNO’s brightest graduates ever, Alfred Eggers made his mark in the space above the skies. It turns out his legacy might include the skies, too. A 1944 University of Omaha graduate, Eggers was part of the early NASA brain trust that turned space travel from science fiction into reality. The Omaha native pioneered research on atmospheric re-entry, making possible the return of astronauts in spacecraft from Mercury capsules to space shuttles. His contributions came as chief of the Supersonic Wind Tunnel Branch of the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory. He conceived of and constructed a simulator that accurately replicated the motions and aerodynamic heating of missiles subjected to speeds of 13,000 mph. That helped Eggers and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA — NASA’s precursor) to the crucial discovery that spacecraft could avoid burning up during re-entry by sporting rounded noses. (The front of space shuttles look the way they do thanks in large part to Eggers). Eggers in 1964 was named NASA’s deputy associate administrator for advanced research and technology. In 1968 he became the space agency’s assistant administrator for policy. He left NASA in 1971 to become assistant director for research applications at the National Science Foundation, a post he held until 1977. He also held a professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1977 Eggers was presented the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, the federal government’s highest honor for civilian employees. After leaving the NSF, Eggers devoted himself to developing alternative sources of energy, especially wind power, with his own company, Research Applied to National Needs. He worked with RANN from 1977 until shortly before his death in 2006 in Atherton, California. “My dad was an exceptional figure,” says son Phil Eggers. “The NASA stuff gets all the press, but I believe his work in alternative energy is more prescient.” That view was echoed in an email from Dr. Glenn E. Bugos of the NASA Ames History Office in Moffett Field, California. “While I don’t think his legacy in hypersonic entry vehicles will be surpassed,” Bugos wrote, “his son is right in that his work on very large wind turbines in the 1970s gets more and more appreciation as wind energy grows in importance.”