Donald Arabian

NASA Legend Donald D. Arabian, SpaceCoast Daily
“He had a long and distinguished career as a senior NASA engineer, working on all the major U.S. manned space programs from Mercury through Apollo. He headed the Test Division at Johnson Space Center and was Chief of the Mission Evaluation Room (MER) responsible for solving in-flight problems throughout the Apollo Program. Don and the “Mer-men” as they liked to refer to themselves are best known for solving the problems on Apollo 13 that brought that crew home safely.”
– Donald Arabian, Legacy
– Donald D. Arabian, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, Edited Oral History Transcript

Keith Cowing

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

One response to “Donald Arabian”

1. mfwright says:

   August 25, 2020 at 4:29 pm

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   RIP to a very interesting man, I learned about him from the book “Apollo: Race to the Moon” where it described him as “Mad Don” and the MER. Some called him by that name because he managed to be a “slash and burn, cut to the chase” and Don had amusing labels i.e. NASA HQ “hubcaps, useless ornamentation.”

   Gene Kranz said in 1990s if you want to know specific technical details about Apollo, Don can remember. I remember speaking with him in 1990s by phone, his mind was sharp and seemed like he can recall many details just as good as he did in the 1960s.

   MER was a big room with tables of blueprints and paper, there were
   monitors along the walls which many of his team used binoculars to view
   the consoles from other side of room. I mentioned using his idea of binoculars in our control rooms (though many people didn’t like it) in some mail correspondence, he wrote back “I have many other ideas you can try!”

   Thanks for that oral history link, will take a look.