John Michael Klineberg (October 16, 1938 – December 31, 2022) was an American aerospace engineer and NASA official who directed two of the agency's field centers. He began his NASA career as a research engineer at the Ames Research Center in 1970 before moving to NASA Headquarters, where he helped develop the Aircraft Energy Efficiency Program, a federal effort to reduce aviation fuel consumption after the 1973 oil crisis. He became deputy director of NASA's Lewis Research Center in 1979 and served as its sixth director from 1987 to 1990. Under Klineberg, the center expanded its space portfolio, reactivated test facilities at Plum Brook Station, and helped establish the Ohio Aerospace Institute. In 1990, he was appointed the seventh director of Goddard Space Flight Center, arriving just as the newly launched Hubble Space Telescope was found to have a flawed primary mirror. He oversaw the recovery effort that led to the telescope's repair during the 1993 STS-61 servicing mission, which was awarded the Collier Trophy, and later managed the Cosmic Background Explorer. Klineberg retired from NASA in 1995 and received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the agency's highest honor. After leaving NASA, Klineberg joined Space Systems/Loral, where he led the development and deployment of the Globalstar satellite telephone constellation and served as company president from 1999 to 2001. He later became CEO of Swales Aerospace and advised the federal government through the National Research Council, chairing a panel on NASA's aeronautics research and serving on a committee that studied options for extending the life of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Early life and education Klineberg was born in Scarsdale, New York in 1938 as the middle child of Selma and Otto Klineberg, who were Jewish. His father was a Canadian social psychologist who conducted pioneering research on the intelligence of white and black students in the American South during the 1930s. In 1954, Otto presented evidence against scientific racism as an expert witness for the Supreme Court, helping to sway the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that struck down racial segregation in American schools. Otto's work shaped Klineberg's interest in the relationship between science and public life, and he later pursued graduate study in both aeronautics and political science. He attended Princeton University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in engineering in 1960. Klineberg joined Grumman and the Douglas Aircraft Company as an engineer before enrolling at the California Institute of Technology. He received financial support from Douglas from 1961 to 1963 and graduated with a Master of Science in 1962. He earned a Ph.D. in aeronautics and political science from Caltech in 1968. His doctoral research on fluid dynamics developed a theoretical method for predicting how laminar boundary layers, the thin regions of slow-moving air that form along a surface, interact with external supersonic flow, a problem relevant to drag and heat transfer on supersonic aircraft and was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. His thesis is maintained in the archive of the Defense Technical Information Center.
Career
Early years After leaving Caltech, Klineberg joined NASA's Ames Research Center as a research engineer in aeronautics in 1970. He cited President John F. Kennedy's 1962 "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University as an inspiration.
At Ames, he conducted computational research into the behavior of airflow near the surface of aircraft at transonic speed, studying the separation behavior of boundary layers using numerical methods. Four years later, he joined NASA Headquarters to head the Low-Speed Aircraft Branch and was later appointed deputy associate administrator of the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST). In early 1975, Klineberg was a "key member" of a program that represented one of the largest coordinated fuel conservation efforts ever attempted in the United States. He served on the Aircraft Fuel Conservation Technology Task Force (the "Kramer Committee"), a 15-member NASA body established by Associate Administrator Alan M. Lovelace in response to the 1973 oil crisis. Directed by James J. Kramer, a colleague at OAST, Klineberg later "recalled how closely it listened to the needs of industry". The central thesis was that high-risk technology development would be unlikely to be pursued by industry alone, and that federal investment was required to address the externality. The committee developed a 6-point plan to improve aircraft efficiency by developing advanced turboprops, aerodynamic drag reduction, and laminar flow control. Independent economic analysis projected that the resulting Aircraft Energy Efficiency (ACEE) program would save the equivalent of 677,500 barrels of oil per day. As chief of the Aerodynamics and Active Controls Branch, he testified to Congress about the Aircraft Energy Efficiency Program in September 1976.
Lewis Research Center
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