{"id":8602,"date":"2010-01-14T13:01:12","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T17:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123185589"},"modified":"2010-01-14T13:01:12","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T17:01:12","slug":"space-and-missile-pioneer-passes-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=8602","title":{"rendered":"Space and missile pioneer passes away"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123185589\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" style=\"margin-right:15px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/shared\/media\/photodb\/thumbnails\/001001-F-1234F-097.jpg\"<\/img><\/a><\/div>\n<p>One of the Air Force space and missile Pioneers, retired Col. Albert J. &#8220;Red&#8221; Wetzel, 91, passed away Dec. 26, 2009. His burial at Arlington National Cemetery is scheduled for Feb. 1. <\/p>\n<p>Air Force Space Command inducted Colonel Wetzel to its Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2003 for his contributions to the Air Force space and missile program. <\/p>\n<p>Colonel Wetzel served as chief project engineer for Matador, the Air Force&#8217;s first ground-launched cruise missile, during 1947-1948. After earning a master&#8217;s degree in aeronautical and astronomical engineering, the New Orleans native became the executive officer to President Harry Truman&#8217;s guided missile advisor in 1952. He later served as the Air Force executive to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Applications Engineering from 1953-1955. <br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123185589\">more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-force-space-command"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}