One tower was for vibration—researchers could put in a spacecraft and shake it in “free” mode or they could tie it down and do a fixed-base mode, depending on what kind of conditions they needed to test. The shaker system could shake up to 10,000 pounds (4,536 kg).
“The other tower would be where we were going to put great big old acoustic horns in there, like your speakers for your hi-fi or your stereo equipment,” Wren said. “But these were huge, huge power amplifier drivers, so we had some problems to solve with that.”
Like everything with Apollo, the design had to be done quickly.
“The environment was hectic, to say the least,” Wren said. “We had a big job to do and we weren’t quite sure how to do it. But we were lean and mean and going around the clock 24/7, and we weren’t encumbered with a lot of paperwork. A lot of us came from the military, so we knew how to work with preciseness and keeping up with parts and testing the parts and equipment, but we didn’t have to go through a lot of paperwork rigmarole. Our administrator, James Webb, he worked with Congress and took care of all the money aspects and that allowed us in the technical world to just go like crazy and get the job done.”
A Saturn rocket on the Mobile Launch Platform outside the newly built Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in 1966. Credit: NASA.
CONSTRUCTION WAS UNDER WAY AT A frenetic pace at the other NASA centers involved with Apollo as well. The launch complex at Cape Canaveral in Florida grew from its origins as the Missile Firing Laboratory under the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in Huntsville, and when the ABMA was usurped by NASA to become the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), the launch facilities in Florida became the Launch Operations Directorate. In 1962, with expanding operations in the buildup to Apollo, it received the status of a full-fledged center, called the Launch Operations Complex (LOC).
Two launchpads were constructed for the Saturn I and IB rockets at the northernmost end of the site, LC-34 and LC-37. The new facilities were on Merritt Island, immediately north of Cape Canaveral and the Air Force station and included a launch control center, and a 130-million-cubic-foot (4-million-cubic-meter) Vertical Assembly Building (VAB). This monstrosity, still under construction in 1963, measured 525 feet (160 m) tall by 716 feet (218 m) long by 518 feet (158 m) wide, with the largest interior volume in the world. More launchpads were required to handle the giant Saturn V for sending spacecraft to the Moon, so Launch Complex 39, with pads A and B, was being erected. In addition, NASA had plans to build at least two more launchpads.
A cutaway illustration of the Saturn V launch vehicle with the major components. Credit: NASA.
The rockets would be assembled and joined with the spacecraft on a mobile launcher platform inside the VAB and then moved on a giant mobile transporter to one of the launchpads. Also under construction were two vacuum chambers for tests and an Operations and Checkout Building where the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft could be received before being joined to their launch vehicles. Kurt Debus, a member of von Braun’s original V-2 rocket engineering team, was named the LOC’s first director. He led the design, development and construction of the center.
Von Braun remained the head of his rocket-building team and director of MSFC, where a rapid buildup of facilities was also taking place. The main headquarters, the nine-story Central Laboratory and Office Building (irreverently called the von Braun Hilton) opened in July 1963. Since MSFC was NASA’s lead center for the development of rocket propulsion systems and technologies, other facilities being built included the Dynamic Test Tower to perform shaking and vibration tests, and a giant, 405-foot (123-m) high static test stand capable of handling boosters up to 178 feet (54 m) in length and withstanding a thrust of up to 7.5 million pounds (3.4 million kg) in order to test-fire the Saturn V booster.
Artist concept illustrating relative size of Apollo vehicles. Credit: NASA.
The engineering required to leave our planet resulted in a construction and manufacturing boom across the country, along with the development of new technologies that previously had never even been considered. Although the Saturn V was developed in Huntsville, all the various stages and pieces were constructed by multiple contractors.
“Understandably, the entire aerospace industry was attracted by both the financial value and the technological challenge of Saturn V,” von Braun wrote about the project. “To give the entire plum to a single contractor would have left all others unhappy. More important, Saturn V needed the very best engineering and management talent the industry could muster. By breaking up the parcel into several pieces, more top people could be brought to bear on the program.”
The Boeing Company was the successful bidder on the first stage of the Saturn V (S-IC), North American Aviation won the second stage (S-II) and Douglas Aircraft fell heir to Saturn V’s third stage (S-IVB). The inertial guidance system had emerged from a Marshall development in-house, creating what could be considered the big rocket’s central nervous system, called the Instrument Unit (IU), housing all the electronic gear to make the rocket function. IBM produced the launch vehicle computer, and RCA was tasked with building nineteen ground-computer systems to be used in the checkout, static test and launching of Saturn IB and Saturn V vehicles at Marshall.
Artist concept of the various launch vehicles used by the United States and their payload capabilities. Credit: NASA.
But the giant rocket soon grew too large and complex for just one facility. New sites were needed, and engineers realized that some of the sites needed to be far away from populated areas yet near easy transportation routes. Waterways provided the simplest means of transportation, so several sites were chosen: the Michoud Assembly Facility at New Orleans, an old sugar plantation used for military manufacturing during World War II and the Korean War; the Mississippi Test Facility at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi; and the Slidell Computer Facility at Slidell, Louisiana. Then there were the NASA Rocket Engine Test Site at Edwards Air Force Base in California and the production facilities stage at Seal Beach, California. Apollo was truly becoming a nationwide enterprise, and the increase in facilities meant new roads, railway lines and shipyards were needed (not to mention special barges, ships and airplanes).
The Saturn rocket itself was a complicated, massive beast needing a variety of new technology and cobbled-together previous parts and pieces, which came in a jumble of confusing names and acronyms. Originally, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the concept for Saturn was to have a family of multimission rockets in various configurations and names, since at first it wasn’t clear what the Saturns were supposed to do. When Kennedy chose the Moon, and when LOR was chosen in 1962, the path became clearer—the family of rockets was reduced from nearly a dozen configurations (with names such as the Saturn C-1, C-2, C-3 and so forth) to three. To avoid any confusion regarding nomenclature, in February 1963, the NASA Project Designation Committee suggested renaming the three to Saturn I, IB and V.
The two-stage Saturn I and IB rockets were developed to test some of the Saturn V hardware, perform preliminary flight tests and send up the first Apollo astronauts into Earth orbit.
The difference between the two configurations was that the IB was slightly taller, to carry more propellant so it could lift a more massive load. These rockets were based on the earlier Juno and Redstone rockets.
Saturn V would consist of three stages: The first, called S-IC, was powered by five F-1 engines—the largest rocket motors ever built—burning kerosene and oxygen. The second stage, S-II, would need about a million pounds of thrust, requiring the development of new 200,000-pound hydrogen-oxygen engines called J-2. The third stage, S-IVB, would rely on a single J-2 engine to boost the Apollo CSM and the LM, as well as the “brains” of the rocket, the IU. That same S-IVB stage would serve as the second stage for the Saturn I and IB rockets.
Apollo needed one final kind of rocket, since the Saturn would require a launch-escape system for the astronauts in case of a launch failure. General Dynamics, Convair division, was s
elected to provide the relatively small and aptly named Little Joe II rockets to pull the Command Module (CM) away from the rest of the Saturn stack in the event of a life-threatening emergency.
LAUNCHES FOR THE MERCURY PROGRAM came to an end with Gordon Cooper’s Mercury 9 mission, which launched on May 15, 1963. This was the only “long-duration” flight of Mercury, lasting thirty-four hours, nineteen minutes, forty-nine seconds, with Cooper completing twenty-two orbits to evaluate the effects of a full day and more in space. Cooper’s flight plan had him conducting Earth observations and photography—he was tasked with looking for potential Soviet nuclear launch sites among other things—collecting urine samples and monitoring his ship’s status.
All went well until the twenty-first orbit, when he lost most of the electrical power inside the spacecraft. Cooper also noticed the carbon dioxide level was rising in the cabin and in his suit. As he realized multiple systems were failing, the low-key Cooper only commented to one ground controller, “Things are beginning to stack up a little.” When it was time for deorbit, astronaut John Glenn talked Cooper through the steps, counting down to retrofire over the radio. Cooper hit the button—which didn’t light up—so the only confirmation it worked was the change in velocity he could feel as the three small engines ignited behind him. Ground controllers could see the retro-rockets were fired on the mark. Glenn reassured Cooper, “Right on the old gazoo. It’s been a real fine flight. Real beautiful. Have a cool reentry.”
Even if the reentry wasn’t cool, it was nearly perfect. The automatic reentry system wasn’t working, so Cooper had to control the spacecraft’s motions by hand during descent and manually deploy both his drogue and main parachutes. Faith 7 landed within sight of the recovery ship, the USS Kearsarge, in the Pacific Ocean.
With that, the Mercury program ended and was deemed a remarkable success. Everyone—flight controllers, communications teams, spacecraft engineers, launch technicians, astronauts and more—gained experience on each flight. As the work moved toward Gemini, the concepts were further developed, expanded and improved—all essential steps to get to the Moon.
An additional Mercury flight, a proposed three-day extended Mercury mission, wasn’t to be. The spacecraft, Freedom 7-II, would have been flown by space veteran Alan Shepard, but there had been rumors for quite some time this flight might be cut. Several NASA officials, including administrator James Webb, argued that Gemini was already primed for long-duration missions, and it was pointless to demonstrate a capability just once with a system about to become obsolete. Moreover, an accident on Shepard’s flight could set the whole space program back, which NASA couldn’t afford. In mid-June, the flight was officially canceled and the spacecraft put into storage. Everyone in the agency could now focus their efforts on the upcoming Gemini and Apollo missions.
AT THE SMALL AIRPORT IN CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, two men strode out of a DC-4 airplane, down the mobile stairway and onto the tarmac. All eyes turned in their direction. Their black, well-tailored, fine-line gabardine suits, Stowe-Ivy collared shirts and colorful ties weren’t often seen in these parts. They were outfitted with dark sunglasses and rich leather briefcases. People around them wondered if they were possibly FBI, or maybe even CIA. But then they noticed the shoes. One of the men sported flamboyant, bright yellow patent-leather dress shoes. Definitely not CIA. Could they perhaps be movie stars? Here in Iowa?
Astronaut Gordon Cooper leaves the Faith 7 spacecraft after a successful recovery operation. The MA-9 mission, the last flight of the Mercury Project, was launched on May 15, 1963, orbited the Earth 22 times and lasted for 11/2 days. Credit: NASA.
But now, what was this? One of the men—the one without the yellow shoes—was approached by a small group of people, and there were handshakes all around, even a few hugs. Family? If he were a movie star from Cedar Rapids, he certainly would be known. But none of the gawking onlookers recognized him or his family. Curiosity abounded. Who were these guys?
In the summer of 1963, these two well-dressed men were part of the fast-paced, high-demand, high-stress, high-paying world of contract engineers. In the dawn of the space age, electrical engineers were a sought-after commodity. Contract engineers moved from company to company, from military base to government installation, wherever the demand and dollars were, especially for engineers with the rare skills these two possessed.
“I grew up in vacuum-tube technology but also am a transistor expert,” said Earle Kyle, the engineer without the yellow shoes. “So, I’m not only an analog and a digital guy but also a vacuum-tube and solid-state microchip guy.”
Because the US was so desperate for electrical engineers, the joke was, Kyle said, if you could fog a mirror and hold a soldering iron, you were a wanted man, even if you didn’t have a college degree.
“Even two years before I graduated, the phone was ringing off the hook,” he said. “Somehow they tracked me down, and I got lots of job offers, with salaries that were crazy.”
Kyle was tempted by the offers but had just gotten married, and his wife was an intellectual who insisted he not follow temptation and get his degree. In the end, it was the right thing to do, but Kyle often thinks about the money he missed out on during those years.
Originally from Minneapolis, Kyle had been living in Los Angeles, working several contract-engineering jobs for various military installations. Most recently, he had been in Goodyear, Arizona, working on the classified SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. That’s where he met his yellow-shoed compatriot, Paul.
“We worked hundred-hour weeks—it was a crash program, making big bucks,” Kyle said. “We didn’t get any benefits, but they paid us cash in envelopes at the end of the week. Since Paul’s last name is similar to mine, they always got us mixed up, which ticked me off because I was making more than him.”
Kyle is hesitant to provide Paul’s last name, as there still may be warrants out for his arrest; at the very least, he probably has a number of unpaid speeding tickets. During the Blackbird contract period, Paul rented a luxury home in Scottsdale from a professional baseball coach who never lived there in the summer. The house had an indoor-outdoor sunken pool and a beautiful view of Camelback Mountain out the front window. Paul lived the life of a playboy bachelor, with lovely looking girls seemingly always on one or both arms. He hosted parties every Wednesday night, which Kyle said were legendary across the nation in the contract-engineering world. There may have been times the police were involved.
Kyle commuted from LA to Phoenix, and during the week he stayed with Paul.
“Paul drove a Jaguar XKE convertible—always with the top down—and it seemed like we were constantly late to work,” Kyle smiled. “This was all government secret stuff, with chain-link fences. They closed the main gate at 8 a.m. sharp, and if you were a minute late, you had to go to a different parking lot and walk way around to get in. So, we’d be racing down the highway from Phoenix into the desert at 120 miles [193 km] per hour, with cops chasing us. But they could never catch us with that V-12 engine.”
Their latest contract had Kyle and Paul on a six-month stint at Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids, working on specialized communications equipment for Apollo. While Paul was dismal about the party scene in Iowa, Kyle was ecstatic. He was really, truly working on something for NASA and the space program. Since he was young, he had been captivated by the idea of exploring space. As a science fiction nut for as long as he could remember, he’ll never forget the day during his eighth-grade year when his parents’ Collier’s magazine arrived.
Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at the Civil Rights March on Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. Rowland Scherman, Photographer. National Archives.
“The cover story had Chesley Bonestell paintings of spacecraft going to explore Mars and the solar system,” Kyle recalled. “It just knocked my socks off, it just grabbed me.”
For Kyle, space exploration is what he calls “the tuning fork of the soul”—where, if you’re lucky, something grabs you so hard that you know
it’s what you want to do for the rest of your life.
“I was always talking about space,” Kyle said. “My parents were supportive but my teachers and friends laughed and said, ‘Forget about that crap, nobody is going to send things into space, not to mention people, so go do something practical with your life.’ But after Sputnik, it wasn’t so far-fetched anymore. Suddenly I wasn’t a kook anymore.”
So, even though working in Iowa wasn’t glamorous, it was Kyle’s open door to the real world of space travel. Collins Radio had built the communications systems used for the Mercury spacecraft and now they were working on the Apollo USB radio systems for the CSM and LM. They also were creating the voice-communications headsets that would be placed in the spacesuit helmets so the astronauts could talk directly with Mission Control.
Collins Radio paid for Kyle and Paul to fly to Iowa, as well as for their temporary housing. “I think they were kind of spooked about guys like us,” Kyle said, “so they wouldn’t let us in the main factory area. Instead, they put us in rented offices in the basement of the Younkers department store in a shopping mall down the street. I think they wanted to keep us away from the country bumpkins so we didn’t contaminate them.”
Their contract had them working on the helmet headsets, and the two engineers quickly figured out the issues that Collins had hired them to fix. “They thought the work was more complicated than what it really was, so as time went on, we started coasting, just letting the rest of the contract run out,” Kyle said. “And as a consequence, we started getting sort of mischievous.”
It was a hot and humid summer that year in Cedar Rapids. Down in the bowels of the shopping center, it was steamy, and dumpsters with rotting garbage from nearby restaurants attracted cockroaches.
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