Tindall seemed to have a knack for finding the right people with the right talents and then pushing them to do their absolute best. If anyone in the rendezvous group made a comment or decision without citing every single fact or without thinking things through, Tindall could chew them out and take them under his wing at the same time. He had the ability to see the broad view of the entire mission in order to solve the specific problem of rendezvous.
“Bill was brilliant, enthusiastic and energetic and he completely engaged all viewpoints,” said Glynn Lunney. “He could tell people to sit down and be quiet when he needed them to, but he also had a way of coaxing out details when people had trouble explaining something. We weren’t always articulate, and sometimes we got pretty emotional about our viewpoints.”
Early on at Langley, Tindall was a friend and mentor for Lunney, and Lunney watched as his friend became involved in almost every aspect of Mercury. In addition to working on mission planning and trajectories for the first Mercury flights, Tindall’s insights dramatically simplified the operations concept for the MCC in Florida and the remote stations around the world. His ideas promoted improvements in the worldwide communications network, and he was now providing valuable inputs for the new Mission Control Center being designed at MSC. In fact, it was Tindall who suggested to Christopher Kraft that Mission Control should be in Houston, where everyone was going to be living, instead of keeping it in Florida. While focused on making everything as streamlined as possible, Tindall understood and valued the importance of home and family.
It was the Tindall family—Bill, Jane and their four children—who first welcomed the young Lunney family to Virginia, and the Tindalls helped the Lunneys with their new home in Houston. Their children played together, and the families began a lifelong connection and commitment to each other.
Tindall provided his expertise in a variety of areas as NASA was planning for Gemini and Apollo, and somehow always got plugged in to the point position for the most challenging subjects—which was why he was handed the job coordinating the Rendezvous Analysis Branch. His approach was to systematically start through all the mission phases and then narrow things down for the specific missions, exercising different rendezvous techniques. His process reduced complexities down to easy-to-understand building blocks.
The rendezvous team started having weekly meetings, during which Tindall asked each person to write down what they’d learned that week. Tindall himself would make meticulous notes on various sheets of paper and then dictate them to his secretary, Patsy Sauer, who would have everything compiled, typed out and distributed by the next day. Eventually, all the input helped create the team’s official handbook. Tindall would review the “Rendezvous Notes,” making modifications as necessary. It was all a work in progress.
“No, no, no, that’s not quite right, where’s the original?” Tindall stomped around the office, looking in the trash for his original handwritten notes. “Now, this is what I want sent out.”
The frequency of the meetings increased and then began encompassing other aspects of the missions as Tindall saw that rendezvous was just one piece of the entire puzzle. The meetings turned into official events called the Trajectory and Orbit Panel, then evolved into what Tindall called Data Priority, since one of the early issues was which sources of navigation data and other mission-critical information should be used for the particular phases of the missions. And then they had to come up with a plan for how to make all those choices in real time.
Group shot of the nucleus of the 1962 Flight Operations Division for the Mercury program. Image taken at the Houston Petroleum Center in Houston, Texas, prior to their move to the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). The women are (left to right) Doris Folkes, Cathy Osgood, Shirley Hunt and Mary Shep Burton. The men are (left to right) Dick Koos, Paul Brumberg, John O’Loughlin, Emil Schiesser, Jim Dalby, Morris Jenkins, Carl Huss, John Mayer, Bill Tindall, Hal Beck, Charlie Allen, Ted Skopinski, Jack Hartung, Glynn Lunney, John Shoosmith, Bill Reini, Lyn Sunseith, Jerry Engel, Harold Miller and Clay Hicks. Credit: NASA.
That’s when the flight control team started getting involved in these discussions, involving other mission planners. Then the meetings quickly evolved into a more comprehensive process that included several other systems, such as the flight software team and the experts from the Flight Crew Operations Division who were creating flight checklists and flight plans.
“Then, most significantly, the flight crews enthusiastically got engaged,” said Lunney, “and it was a forum in which we systematically talked through and vehemently argued about every step and decision in the process, precisely defining all the flight techniques necessary to use the best of the spacecraft capabilities to accomplish backup launch, guidance, rendezvous, docking, docked propulsion burns, deorbit and entry.”
Tindall would orchestrate the discussion and arguments, encouraging everyone’s input and often sketching out the details on a blackboard. If the debate turned spirited or heated, Tindall would declare that whoever held the chalk at the end of the meeting was the winner.
“This one talented individual started coordinating other talented people to get the job done,” Catherine Osgood said, “and Bill would just dive right into any problem he found, no matter where it was. It was really fascinating to be in that sort of environment.”
It was in this atmosphere of resolving the most intricate details for flight operations that the Gemini and Apollo missions started taking their specific shapes.
The original seven Mercury astronauts, each wearing new cowboy hats and a badge in the shape of a star, are pictured onstage at the Sam Houston Coliseum. A large crowd was on hand to welcome them to Houston, Texas. Left to right are astronauts M. Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra Jr., Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Donald K. Slayton. Credit: NASA.
WITH THE MSC CONTINGENT GROWING in numbers, Houston decided to crown itself as “Space City, USA.” The chamber of commerce coordinated a huge Fourth of July event to welcome all the newcomers to their community. The day started with a thirty-six-car parade: A police escort led the astronauts and their families, along with several hundred NASA engineers, scientists and other “Space Age celebrities,” as the chamber of commerce promoted them, including several prominent politicians who helped bring the MSC to town. Rounding out the parade was a genuine Mercury spacecraft mounted on a special trailer. Lines of convertibles curved through downtown Houston, with the distinguished passengers waving at thousands of Houstonians who came out to cheer.
The motorcade arrived at the Sam Houston Coliseum. Inside the cavernous exhibit hall came speeches from politicians. (Senator John Tower proclaimed, “We rejoice in your presence here; we like you and hope you’ll like us.”) There was a mass barbecue and the local Texans were decked out in cowboy hats, boots and big belt buckles, but they handed out hats and sheriff’s badges to the newcomers. Strains of “Deep in the Heart of Texas” and “The Eyes of Texas” blared from local high school bands. A variety of entertainment included a family-friendly version of a fan dance by renowned stripper Sally Rand.
More speeches came from MSC director Gilruth, deputy director Walt Williams and his assistant Paul Purser. Shorty Powers, the man known as the “Voice of Mercury Control,” introduced the seven astronauts to an adoring crowd of about five thousand. Houston Magazine touted the event as the “most meaningful Fourth of July parade that Houston has had in recent times.”
“They were genuinely happy to have us here in Houston,” said Glynn Lunney, “and they made sure that we had all the beer and barbecue that we could handle. This was an amazing change from the locals in Virginia. The people of Houston seemed to love everything about the idea of space and the fact that we were moving into their community. We could not have imagined a more friendly welcome.”
Meanwhile, construction of several buildings at the new MSC site started in earnest during the summer of 1962, and Ken Young would drive by the site regular
ly to check out how things were progressing. It was fun and exciting to see this place come together, just sort of popping up out of the prairie. Two different construction companies were hired to turn the cow pasture into a college campus–like setting by first bringing in the needed utilities and then creating a maze of new streets. The first buildings under construction were Building 1, the headquarters of MSC, which housed the senior management; Building 2 was the public affairs office, with media briefing rooms and other facilities; Building 3 housed the all-important cafeteria and Building 4 would be home to Mission Operations offices for the flight directors and the Flight Crew Operations Division, which included the Astronaut Office.
Mainly due to the persistence of Bill Tindall, NASA transferred its solid-state IBM 7094 computer from Langley to temporary facilities at the University of Houston so that its computing power could be put to work analyzing the new systems being designed and built in the temporary facilities scattered across southeast Houston.
Earlier in the year, Tindall had started a memo-writing campaign to consolidate NASA’s computing systems in Houston. He argued that since the MSC would soon be home to the flight control team and because Gemini would be a more complex program, keeping the computers (and programmers) at Goddard and the flight controllers at Cape Canaveral created serious problems for communications and efficiency. He also made recommendations for the new computer center that was going to be built in Houston, called the Real Time Computer Complex (RTCC). Eighteen companies were bidding on building the facility and providing the computers for the RTCC, and in the fall of 1962, IBM was awarded the contract.
THERE’S AN APOCRYPHAL TALE FROM September 12, 1962, the day that President John F. Kennedy visited the MSC in Houston. The story goes that during the visit, Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. Interrupting his tour, JFK walked over to the man and said, “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?”
“Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
This anecdote has come to exemplify that no matter how large or small the role, everyone can contribute. And it also illustrates that NASA had come to feel that every job was vital to the effort, and every employee at MSC was dedicated to the mission of Apollo.
But what really happened on September 12, 1962, is that a young spacesuit engineer named Joe Kosmo saved Wernher von Braun’s life. But first, Kosmo had to give the president some spare change.
Kennedy was on a whirlwind two-day tour of the country’s space installations. He’d brought an entourage to see the launchpads and other facilities at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and he’d toured MSFC in Alabama where the big Saturn V rocket was being designed and built. Now he was in Houston to visit some of the temporary MSC facilities and get an update on how work was progressing for Apollo.
Kennedy, Vice President Johnson and about thirty other dignitaries—NASA officials, politicians and military advisers—sat in on an hour-long classified briefing. Knowing of Kennedy’s back problems, Gilruth had arranged for a rocking chair for the president. When JFK entered the room, he smiled when he saw the chair, took off his suit coat and threw it to his assistant. Then he rolled up his shirt sleeves and sat down comfortably.
Kosmo was there, wearing a fully pressurized spacesuit, waiting his turn during the show-and-tell-type demonstrations of the top-secret strides being made in regard to space. Even in the spacesuit, Kosmo felt out of place. He looked around the room at all the famous people and felt equivalent to the guy with a shovel who comes behind the elephants in a parade.
Dr. Robert R. Gilruth (left), director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, and President John F. Kennedy look at a small model of the Apollo Command Module during Kennedy’s visit to Houston in 1962. Credit: NASA.
President John F. Kennedy delivering a speech at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas, on September 12, 1962. Credit: NASA.
Then came his turn to stand up in front of the group and show off some of the advances in this new version of the Apollo prototype suit, while his division chief, Dick Johnston, gave an overview of the spacesuit and the life-support system.
All of a sudden, Johnston reached in his pocket, threw a quarter on the floor and said, “Watch this, Mr. President, as Joe can now pick up the quarter.”
Kosmo’s eyes shot open. What the hell was Johnston doing? They hadn’t practiced this. They had never even tried anything like this before, and now—in front of all these people—he hoped he damn well could bend over. Kosmo is relatively tall, and the suit’s waist joint wasn’t the greatest thing the spacesuit team had ever designed. He shimmied over to one side and gradually leaned over. After some effort, somehow he was able to reach the floor and, even with the bulky gloves, pick up the quarter. Not sure what to do next, Kosmo handed the quarter to a delighted President Kennedy. The group applauded. Kosmo breathed a sigh of relief.
Later, there was a larger event for the press and MSC employees held in MSC’s current Spacecraft Research Division facility, which was the former Rich Fan Manufacturing Building. When first acquired by NASA, this had been a rather drab industrial plant, but NASA had painted it white and put a large “Manned Spacecraft Center, Site 3” sign and NASA logo out front. Two stories of offices lined one side of the building with a complex maze of halls and partitions, and there was a large, open bay where fan-making equipment once stood. When Kennedy’s visit was announced, NASA got busy painting corridors, installing new flooring and telling workers to tidy their workspaces.
The big bay was now filled with mock-ups of a Gemini spacecraft, two different Apollo Command Module designs and a Lunar Module (reporters called it the “Lunar Bug” because of its odd shape), as well as the actual Aurora 7 Mercury capsule flown by Scott Carpenter. A vibration table and numerous other pieces of test equipment were on display. Several of the astronauts—Grissom, Carpenter, Shepard, Glenn and Slayton—were present. There was NASA administrator James Webb, MSC director Gilruth, von Braun and other NASA leaders; a few local politicians; Texas governor Price Daniel; Kennedy and Johnson and several military officials including Air Force general Curtis LeMay.
Kennedy sat inside one of the Apollo Command Modules with Slayton, then a queue of people waited to climb up a set of stairs to look inside the Lunar Module. Kosmo nervously noted that von Braun was ahead of him in line. After the German engineer had climbed the stairs and peered inside, as he turned to come back down the stairs, he stumbled and fell. Kosmo saw the whole thing and reached out to grab von Braun, who landed on top of him, cushioning the fall. The crowd of people gasped and rushed to check if the two men were okay. As Kosmo helped von Braun to his feet, the stunned rocket engineer straightened and brushed off his suit, looked Kosmo in the eyes and said, “Thank you, young man, I think you just saved my life!”
Kosmo figured he would probably remember this day for the rest of his life.
But this day would become memorable to many Americans for another reason. For those who were present, their most vivid recollection might be how quintessentially hot and humid it was at Rice Stadium, where the president gave a speech. Kennedy himself compared the day’s heat to the temperatures experienced by a spacecraft reentering the atmosphere. But what everyone else recalls—and perhaps holds dear—are the president’s now-famous words:
Its [space’s] conquest deserves the best of us all and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.
But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask: Why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard—because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills—because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.
After the eighteen-minute speech, the crowd rose in a resounding ovation, then left the st
adium galvanized in this historic effort to reach beyond Earth. Kennedy’s words propelled the space program to the forefront of American culture and consciousness, and what was once deemed impossible was now considered something that absolutely had to be accomplished. The president had asked the dreamer in all Americans to imagine a new and bold future.
AS THE HEAT OF SUMMER BEGAN TO wane and autumn approached, everyone at MSC began to fall into their new routines of work, family and more work. The rendezvous team made significant headway in their calculations. Dottie and John Lee moved into their new home. Glynn and Marilyn Lunney named their son Glynn Jr. And, after some reorganization at the MSC, Glynn Sr. was named the section head of the Mission Control Center Branch. For the time being, just one other person—Lunney’s friend Cliff Charlesworth—shared his office. Norman Chaffee continued his work with Henry Pohl, Chester Vaughan and other young engineers, sometimes getting input from their division chief, Guy Thibodaux.
“Then something would come up, and we’d have to go talk to the program manager or something like that, and I’d go up and there would be this room full of senior folks,” Chaffee said. “I’d get to say what the division thought, knowing that my division management stood behind me. I was always given a very polite, thoughtful audience by those people. I was thanked or often was questioned and queried. For a twenty-six-year-old kid being in this situation, it was remarkable.”
Chaffee was sure that in no other set of circumstances could he have this type of experience: to become an expert in an area where there were few experts, to be involved in a project of such importance, to be challenged with all he could do and more but also feel he was getting away with the greatest heist in the world and doing exactly what he was meant to do.
Portrait of the first two groups of astronauts. The seven original Mercury astronauts plus new members of the astronaut corps. Seated from left to right are Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. Standing from left to right are Edward White, James McDivitt, John Young, Elliot See, Charles Conrad, Frank Borman, Neil Armstrong, Thomas Stafford and James Lovell. Credit: NASA.
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