Faget was the son of American doctor
Guy Henry Faget, and great-grandson of another prominent physician,
Jean Charles Faget. Born in Stann Creek Town,
British Honduras (today
Dangriga,
Belize), he attended
City College of San Francisco in
San Francisco, California, and he received a
Bachelor of Science degree in
mechanical engineering from
Louisiana State University in 1943. In 1958, Faget became one of the 35 engineers who formed the
Space Task Group, creating the Mercury spacecraft. He based his designs on the aerodynamic work of
Harvey Allen from the mid-1950s, and was instrumental in selecting the blunt-body shape that won the
Mercury competition over numerous contenders. He led the development of the escape tower system used on Mercury, which was used in various forms on almost all following crewed spacecraft. He also worked on the
Gemini and
Apollo vehicles, which shared many design points with the Mercury. Faget filed a patent for a space shuttle vehicle design in 1972. His design, which he named "
DC-3" in homage to the famed
Douglas DC-3 airliner, was a small two-stage fully reusable shuttle with a payload capacity around . DC-3 was officially studied by
North American Aviation and shown in the press as a baseline contender for the
Space Transportation System (STS). North American also studied a version of the same basic system with a much larger payload. However, the DC-3's nose-high re-entry profile was controversial, and eventually doomed it when the
U.S. Air Force joined the Shuttle program and demanded cross-range performance that the DC-3 could not meet. In the end, its most lasting contribution was to clearly identify the trade-offs inherent in any reusable design. In 1962 Faget became the Director of Engineering and Development at the
Manned Spacecraft Center and continued to work for NASA until his retirement in 1981, shortly after the second Space Shuttle flight (
STS-2). After his retirement, he was among the founders of
Space Industries Inc., established in 1982. One of the projects of the company was the
Wake Shield Facility, a device to create near-perfect
vacuum in the
thermosphere. The WSF flew three times with a Space Shuttle in 1994–1996 (
STS-60,
STS-69,
STS-80). In 1962, Faget received the Golden Plate Award of the
American Academy of Achievement. Faget was inducted into the 1969 National Inventors Hall of Fame, and received the
NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and
John J. Montgomery Award. He was inducted into the Houston
National Space Hall of Fame in 1969, the
International Space Hall of Fame in 1990, and the
National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2020. Faget died of
bladder cancer on October 9, 2004, aged 83. ==Patents==