My grandfather took this challenge square on his shoulders and met it. Have you figured out what he did yet? It gets a bit tricky. My grandfather is from the generation that was extraordinarily modest and humble with sharing their merits and accomplishments. He'd mention something in passing and when that moment was over that was it. My Dad and I recently realized that if we'd been paying attention to all those little disclosures like "that was when I worked on helicopters," we'd know a whole lot more about the giant of Gramps. As a kid I thought he made one of the lunar rover vehicles. No one in my family really talked about what Gramps did because they most likely thought I understood because they all lived and breathed the Space Program growing up. It wasn't until middle school and we were stationed in Florida that I finally understood what he created. Even then I didn't understand the immensity of the project. I sure knew to be proud.
Going through my Gramps' office, that is more of a Space museum than office, after my Grandma's death, showed me that I knew just the tip of the iceberg of his accomplishments. I have been reading a 500 page NASA government document of the official history of the Apollo program so that I could have more authority in my assertions of things that happened long before I was born. Seeing his designs and pictures of him as a younger man make my heart soar. I now know that I wasn't proud enough. I stand in awe of this man's creation. He is a legend.
The man I knew was the most competitive person I ever met. He was a grandpa who demanded to be called Grandfather Sir, but never got his way. He was lovingly called Gramps. He played golf every morning at 7am with his buddies from NASA. He drove a Mercedes like it was a jet plane. He was a master carpenter and spent a huge amount of time in his wood workshop in his garage creating wonders. He made zero mistakes. There was no problem he could not conquer. Every card game was played as if his entire worth was on the line. His pursuit was excellence. This was a man who had the makings of a touchstone in history, a courier of the American dream.
How does one go from a Coca-Cola delivery boy to magician who brought to life the bones and structure of the Space Program? He had the formulation for greatness yet lacked the opportunity to bring it to fruition. The G.I. Bill was the jump start he needed to show the world his abilities. In the war, he was an Army Air Corps mechanic on P-51s and P-47s in England. He could take the plane apart and put it all back together all by himself. After the war, he married my Gram and went to the University of Virginia majoring in mechanical engineering. He secured a job at Langley Research center in 1949 as a research design engineer. Four kids were born over those ten years of marriage and in 1956 the family relocated to Huntsville, Alabama. He worked for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at the Redstone Arsenal with Werner Von Braum, the father of the V-2 Titan Rocket.
We all think that our race for space started with Kennedy's 1961 proclamation speech of man going to the moon. The dreams of space and a lunar landing by NASA had been in the works since 1957. NASA's proposal was for a 1967 lunar landing. Eisenhower stalled the program by giving it a tiny budget. Eisenhower was more concerned about funding military ventures like the Korean War and didn't consider the space mission a military matter. It was the Russians who gave our Space Program credibility, and became non expendable in the eyes of the American public, making it mission critical to not be outdone by our enemy with the satellite Sputnik in 1959.
Funding was still small and hard won, but the search for a launch site began. Earth's maximum rotation velocity is at the equator and it's slowest at its poles. For successful launches, you are best suited to be at the equator. The United States doesn't have land on the equator. Building a secure launch site on foreign soil sounds like a logistical nightmare, right? And funding is small. After multiple studies and lots of man hours of searching out sites, Cape Canaveral, Florida at 28*N was decided upon: Patrick AFB already existed there to assist in operations, missiles had been launched there for ten years, and ten missile tracking stations already existed. Why reinvent the wheel entirely? Especially since money was not free flowing for this project. The other top contender for location was an island in Georgia. How weird would that be if it had won on location? The key frustration about the Space Race before Kennedy was lack of funding. Teams of men spent countless hours on projects only to have them scratched or put on hold because of money. Design after design was worked on and offered up to be scrapped or told there was a change in direction. Get on board with the change of direction quick. How hard would that be for you? Or this teammates' design was chosen, run with it. Hours of work lead to nothing. That's a tough work environment. You would need to be made of stern stuff to make it there. This program had very dedicated men with a vision of Space and were determined to get there no matter the hurdle.
In 1960, my Gramps joined NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in the Design Engineering Directorate as the lead engineer for designing and development of the launch support equipment and launch pad complexes 34 and 37 on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. You totally guessed this, am I right? In 1963, he was assigned the responsibility of the design and development of the launch support equipment and launch pad facilities for launch complex 39, Pads A and B. What does this even mean? This is where the 500 page NASA government official history of the Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations Moonport I've been reading, came in very handy. There are pictures and diagrams of the models, pictures of my Gramps with his teammates, a first hand account of all aspects of the program of what they tried and why; how much every thing cost; and every detail of how what you see today came to fruition.
Launch pad complexes 34 and 37 were the prototypes for what was to come with launch pad complex 39. The team my gramps was on had to design the pads and equipment for the lunar launch and all future space programs. All of them. Can you imagine trying to design a system that works for the right now and the whatever is to come in the future like interplanetary flights which was NASA's penultimate goal? The scientists and engineers were working in an exploratory field. They were choosing the terminology for the new gadgets and there were no existing definitions for their concepts and designs because they didn't exist previously. They were a new field, setting the parameters, and they had better get it right. Failure was not an option due to time, hello Space Race, and money. The launch site at The Cape required that no buildings be downrange for safety when explosions and accidents happened at takeoff. This safety precaution wasn't just about being cautious; five percent of the experimental launches exploded within seconds of takeoff. It was a matter of life. The launch pads also needed to be away from potential explosive hazards and away from the possibility of airplanes flying overhead. Flat land and a clear line of sight was necessary from the Launch Control Center to the launch pad and other sites. They had to be able to see everything that was going on. Oh and every material you use will need to stand up against the salty ocean air. You will be combating corrosion. Those are all pretty self explanatory and reasonable requirements when dealing with exploding the largest rockets known to mankind.
* For scale, see the person next to the support arm looking as if he's trying to hold it up or something.
Imagine the swinging arms on the scaffolding that hold the upper stages of the rocket and shuttle. Those are courtesy of my gramps. He reconfigured it for the later programs. The original model looked a bit different. There are eights arms. Four arms powered by nitrogen could return to stabilize the Saturn rocket if an engine failed in 0.16 seconds. Four arms held on for 3 seconds after the ignition to test the engine thrust at takeoff. Gramps' design section team considered twenty different proposals before suggesting one design for the support structure of the Saturn rocket. The design settled upon was based on an old German bottle top. There was a great debate on the flame deflector. Should it have two or four sides, be dry or wet with cold water in the pipes under the metal shield? Essentially, money chose the method of a two way uncooled deflector because of the sheer size and cost of parts.
Gramps' launcher system and umbilical tower design team decided on 80* deflectors and the contract was sent off to the company to be delivered to The Cape in November 1960. In August of 1960, Gramps' changed his mind after determining that a 60* deflector with a 30* angle of impingement would reduce the backflow of flames even more. Gramps petitioned Werner von Braun to modify the contract and the first deflector arrived at The Cape in April of 1961. It arrived in seven sections. It's measurements: 6 x 8 x 13 meters and weighed in at 99 tons. For us Americans who do not have a clue about the metric system that is: 19 ft 8.22 inches x 26 ft .3 inches (rounded) ft x 42 ft 7.811inches. And 198,000 lbs.
What I am trying to communicate is the immensity of the project. The numerous factors that had to be considered and gotten right without having much groundwork laid to show the way. The years of man hours in design and implementation and the sheer size of the objects being dreamed up. The power of the dream. By June 5, 1961 the launch complex 34 was the largest launch facility in the free world. It was just a test run of what was to come with my Gramps at the helm of launch complex 39, Pad A and Pad B.
No comments:
Post a Comment