James Miller

James “Jim” Miller received his Master’s in electrical engineering and joined the Air Force in 1956. While stationed at Cape Canaveral, he discovered a fascination with rockets and pursued a doctorate with the Instrumentation Lab in the late 1950s. He received that doctorate in 1961, just as the Apollo Program began. Miller was a part of the Advanced Guidance Group and began working on round trip and abort trajectories. He eventually shifted into leading the team that wrote the code for the Apollo computer simulator, the base of which became a hugely important part in testing and training for spaceflight. Miller moved up to take the position of mission program leader for Sunburst; a computer program used in the Lunar Module.