1912–1953, born in New York, N.Y.
Wyld’s enthusiasm for space travel began in the 1930s when he read Conquest of Space, a pioneering book by American Rocket Society founding member David Lasser. Wyld, a mechanical engineer, soon joined the society.
A key problem rocket pioneers faced was the self-destruction of liquid-fuel rocket motors due to the intense heat they produced. Many of the early pioneers had thought of cooling the engine by circulating one of the propellants in a jacket around it, a method called regenerative cooling. Wyld became the first in the United States to build a successful regeneratively cooled liquid-fuel engine.
