posted 11-06-2020 12:24 AM               

From his obituary:

Jerry was a manned space vehicle and cruise missile Guidance & Control Systems engineer at McDonnell Aircraft (later McDonnell Douglas) for over three decades, retiring in 1989.

He was initially assigned to the Mercury Program followed by Gemini, Manned Orbital Laboratory, and Skylab. Jerry was a crew member in the Mercury program from 1960-1962 and had access to the blockhouse to T-60 minutes, access to blockhouse and part of the John Glenn launch crew.

Jerry started each manned vehicle assignment with design and development in St. Louis and then transfer to Launch Operations in Cape Canaveral, Florida. He was a valued member of the blockhouse crew for vehicle launch and recovery operations on each manned program.

After Skylab, Jerry returned permanently to St Louis, was involved in GCS design and development for various cruise missiles (Tomahawk, Harpoon, etc.), and finished his career as Chief Design Engineer and Design Dept. Manager in the Astronautics Division.

Roberts first job for Project Mercury was central to the American space program, for getting a man into space and bringing him down. He helped design the Mercury spacecraft autopilot, the Automatic Stabilization and Control System. The spacecraft "literally could have been flown by a monkey," Roberts explained. "You didn't ever say that around an astronaut, but that's true."

Among his first tasks was designing a console for functional testing of the Mercury autopilot components. The jury-rigged test console was Roberts' first contribution to Project Mercury, and he recalled with pride that "it worked pretty good."

The test console represented the seat-of-the-pants engineering typical during the early days of the Space Race—procuring parts from hardware stores in nearby Cocoa Beach, inventing a kluge and figuring out a way to make it work.

Once the engineers validated the design for the Mercury autopilot, the arduous task of installing it in the spacecraft began. The ASCS consisted of a horizon scanner, attitude indicator (pointing down at Earth), pitch, roll and yaw rate sensors.