Donald Puddy, 67; Flight Director for Apollo, Space Shuttle

Donald Puddy, 67, a veteran NASA flight director who supervised Apollo, Skylab and early space shuttle missions from Mission Control in Houston, died Monday in Houston after a lengthy illness, NASA officials said.

A native of Ponca City, Okla., Puddy joined NASA’s Johnson Space Center in 1964, becoming the agency’s 10th flight director.

His long career with NASA also included stints as lunar module section engineer from 1969 to ‘72, flight director for all three manned Skylab missions and flight director for the Apollo-Soyuz test project mission. As flight director for STS-1, Puddy was responsible for all aspects of the entry-phase first orbital flight of a space shuttle. He became director of flight crew operations in 1987, directing all shuttle and space station flight crews, flight crew engineering support, selection of astronaut candidates and shuttle program aircraft operations.