“These cockroaches were huge,” Kyle laughed, “and we’d catch them, stick a wad of chewing gum on them and stick in a toothpick with a handwritten banner attached with various obscenities. There was a bank of typists just down the hall, working on typing up manuals for various equipment, and we’d let the cockroaches go and take bets on how long it would take to hear screaming.”
As thrilling as it was to be working on equipment for the space program, Kyle found the contract-engineering life tiresome. He missed his wife and their baby out in LA, he was worried about his mom and he was concerned about the racial situation in the US.
As he watched the news every night on the fuzzy black-and-white television screen in his Cedar Rapids apartment, it seemed as though each newscast would bring a new dramatic turn to the racial tensions permeating the country and the world in 1963. There was Alabama governor George Wallace standing on the steps of his state capitol declaring, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and later, he literally stood his ground to block three black students from registering at the University of Alabama. Then, during a protest in Birmingham, policemen turned dogs and high-pressure water hoses on children as young as six. As the summer wore on, there were hundreds of demonstrations across the country, both for and against civil rights. From marches to mass meetings to nonviolent sit-ins at Woolworth’s lunch counters, people were enduring physical attacks and getting arrested for their beliefs. Some were getting killed.
On the evening of June 11, President Kennedy addressed the nation on the issue of civil rights, for the first time roundly condemning segregation and announcing his intention to submit a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress. And the very next evening, Medgar Evers of the NAACP was assassinated in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi.
Marches and protests continued throughout the summer. A march for jobs and freedom was scheduled for late August in Washington, DC, and Kyle’s mother was planning to attend with a delegation from the Twin Cities.
“She was a civil rights proponent, and she was getting heavily involved in the movement,” Kyle said. “I talked to her on the phone, trying to stop her from going as I was afraid there would be violence, as had happened in Birmingham. But she was determined to go.”
On August 28, Kyle took part of the day off from work at Collins to watch the television coverage of the march. He saw clips on the news of how the event drew about 250,000 people. And Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech. In one piece of news footage, Kyle thought he could just make out his mother’s face on the left front side of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
As he watched the TV, Kyle reflected on his heritage. “My great-grandfather had been a slave in Claiborne, Alabama; and my dad was born before the Wright brothers took man’s first flight. So here I was, one of the few black aerospace engineers in the country, on the threshold of helping humanity go to another celestial body, and yet we still had racial hate.”
AS 1963 PROGRESSED, THE ENVIRONMENT in the young NASA organization was unsettled. From its inception, the agency had been asked to grow quickly and do extraordinary things. But as work proceeded on the rockets and spacecraft, a number of technical problems unveiled themselves, promptly leading to scheduling issues—the timelines for Gemini and Apollo started to slip. It was becoming apparent NASA might not get to the Moon before 1970 unless things changed. Clashes emerged between management styles in the organization’s upper echelons. In the meantime, Congress decided to cut NASA’s budget.
The primary technical issue came with the F-1 engine, which would power the first stage of the Saturn V rocket needed to launch the Apollo spacecraft into Earth orbit. During a test firing of an F-1 in late 1962 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the engine destroyed itself. The cause, after detailed assessment, came from what rocket engineers call combustion instability, meaning the propellants—in this case, RP-1 (a type of kerosene) and liquid oxygen—weren’t properly flowing together to produce the correct burn, which in turn meant the engine had to be redesigned. Von Braun’s team worked with the contractor, the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International, to rejigger the 2,500-pound (1,134-kg) turbopump that was supposed to pump in the propellants at 42,500 gallons (161,000 L) per minute. Uneasiness prevailed in the intervening months, and the redesigned F-1 wouldn’t be delivered to MSFC for more testing until October 1963.
While NASA’s budget had been on the increase in 1961 and 1962, Congress decided in 1963 to cut the agency’s budget by 10 percent. The widespread political and public support for the lunar initiative—buoyed by the early successes of Mercury—was beginning to wane, and by 1963, with reports of problems and possible delays, criticism came from several fronts. Some in Congress felt Kennedy should be spending more money on strengthening military efforts rather than on the somewhat intangible, far-off missions to the Moon. Even some leading scientists suggested that Project Apollo was a distortion of national priorities and many worthier pursuits existed for the funds being spent on landing humans on the lunar surface.
All this led to tensions among NASA leaders on how to proceed. It was no secret a strained relationship existed between administrator Webb and deputy administrator of manned spaceflight Brainerd Holmes. As stresses heightened, Holmes submitted his resignation on June 12, 1963. It took NASA more than a month to find a replacement, George Mueller (he pronounced it like “Miller”), who managed the Minuteman ICBM program at a space technology research laboratory. He reported to his new job on September 1.
If everyone at NASA thought Holmes moved as a whirlwind to get things accomplished for Apollo, Mueller must have looked like a hurricane. He covered vast swaths with decisions across NASA and was indefatigable, traveling to all the NASA centers frequently. The day of the week and time of day meant nothing to him. He scheduled meetings on Saturdays and Sundays and in the evenings.
Dr. George Mueller being sworn in as associate administrator for the Office of Manned Space Flight for NASA, by Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, NASA’s deputy administrator. The ceremony took place at NASA HQ in Washington, DC, on September 3, 1963. Credit: NASA.
Mueller was used to applying a systems-engineering approach, where he could look at how all the parts fit together to create an interrelated whole. He felt NASA needed the same cohesive tactics. Soon after he arrived at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, Mueller focused his attention on relationships between his office and all the NASA centers, as well as all the contractors. He implemented a major reorganization, in which the heads of the field centers working on Apollo reported directly to him. Mueller made known he was the undisputed boss: the chief executive officer, chairman of the board. There would be frequent top-level meetings to discuss any problems and decide how to go about solving them.
Realizing NASA was understaffed in many areas, he also made a number of key personnel changes, bringing in new people and reassigning others. Reorganization at MSC aimed at strengthening the Apollo and Gemini program structures, where management was regrouped into seven major areas, and personnel who performed during the highly successful Mercury flight program were reassigned to support the upcoming missions. Mueller assigned George Low and Joe Shea—who both welcomed their new assignments—to Houston, Low to become deputy director under Robert Gilruth and Shea to head the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. Air Force Brigadier General Samuel Phillips took over the Apollo Program Office at NASA Headquarters.
“George came in and did a remarkable job,” said Shea. “One thing he did was to get more senior people running the program. We had a hard time hiring people from industry to come in and take jobs in NASA. Obviously, they were going to take a big reduction in pay. But he had a list of something like thirty Air Force generals and admirals that he wanted, and, by golly, we got most of them. That was something.”
Mueller instigated an independent review of the agency’s overall activities, and it quickly became apparent that Apollo would not make it to the Moon until well into 1971 without a
more aggressive approach to its Saturn V rocket development. To deal with the schedule slips and budgetary issues, Mueller soon announced a new strategy to prepare for missions to the Moon known as “all-up testing” rather than testing components separately, as had been standard practice since the earliest days of NASA.
The idea was simple: For every launch, put the final version of the rocket on the pad with as much real flight hardware as possible, rather than testing each rocket stage bit by bit and each piece of the spacecraft separately. Ultimately, Mueller wanted the first flight of the Saturn V to be conducted with all three stages fully fueled, carrying a live Apollo Command and Service Modules as payload, with a sophisticated trajectory that would permit the CM to reenter the atmosphere under conditions simulating a return from the Moon.
Every test flight they could take out would save at least three months and lots of money.
So the first thing Mueller did was cancel the flights of the Saturn 1 booster—which were going to be used only for test flights—so that attention could be shifted to the upgraded Saturn 1B, which would use the same upper stage as the Saturn V. Mueller sent a teletype message to the Apollo field centers proposing the new accelerated schedule of Apollo flights, reiterating his “desire that ‘all-up’ spacecraft and launch vehicle flights be made as early as possible in the program.”
“The first schedules had about ten incremental vehicle tests in them,” said Shea. “We finally cut it down to two. In other words, on the first launch, all stages would be a real stage rather just putting ballast in the second or third stage. Put a lot of telemetry on it, and if it all works, by God, you’re ahead of the game already. Then shoot a second one up to make sure the first one wasn’t a random success.”
Members of NASA leadership (L-R): Dr. Charles Berry, MSC medical director; Donald (Deke) Slayton, director of Flight Crew Operations; Eugene Kranz, flight director; Charles Matthews, Gemini Program manager; William Schneider, Gemini mission manager; General Leighton Davis; Dr. Robert Gilrath, MSC director; and George Mueller, associate administrator for Manned Space Flight. Credit: NASA.
The rocket engineers at Huntsville, in particular, were aghast. Von Braun and his team argued that by combining testing, it would be impossible to pinpoint where a particular failure occurred. The Saturn rockets were not being mass-produced like the Minuteman missiles Mueller previously dealt with. From von Braun’s point of view, the two programs were unalike and could not be managed in the same way.
Mueller countered that sequential testing on a stage-by-stage basis just spread the risks among many tests rather than minimizing them. Mueller also knew that the Apollo program would not reach the goal set by President Kennedy using von Braun’s approach.
Von Braun later wrote that “George Mueller visited Marshall and casually introduced us to his philosophy of ‘all-up’ testing.”
Actually, it was more of an edict.
“Selling it to Wernher was not easy. He said it would never work, but we sold it to Wernher,” said Shea. “We just finally told him that’s the way it’s going to be.”
And it was.
THROUGHOUT THE SUMMER AND INTO the fall of 1963, John Painter and George Hondros worked to understand the Apollo Unified S-Band System and write their technical reports. One of the first things they did was contact Christopher Kraft’s Flight Operations Division and have them compile a set of operational requirements for the USB system. Flight Director John Hodge was a British-born engineer who came to the Space Task Group from the Canadian Avro Arrow project and was one of the two flight directors for Cooper’s Mercury 9 mission. Hodge agreed to meet with Painter and Hondros for an entire day—a Sunday no less—and by 5:00 that afternoon the three engineers had an approved set of requirements for the system.
Painter and The Greek had visited both North American and Grumman to understand how each company would incorporate the Apollo radio system into the CM and the LM. Grumman was still working on the design of the LM and hadn’t yet finalized their requirements for the communications system. Grumman admitted they could use all the help they could get and were happy to work with Painter and Hondros to iron out the details.
North American, on the other hand, wasn’t excited to have two outsiders from MSC come to Downey to tell them how to define the requirements for the radio system.
“To understand the magnitude of what we were trying to do,” Painter said, “take a look at the complicated organization all of the contractors who were to provide the hardware making up the system. North American’s subcontractor for communications was Collins Radio; however, Collins chose to build only part of the communications hardware, so they, in turn, took on a sub-subcontractor for the actual S-Band hardware, which was Motorola, Inc., of Scottsdale, Arizona. So just for the command module, we had three industrial companies involved in the design of the system.”
Grumman’s communications subcontractor was RCA, another major electronics company, headquartered in New York City. But, as with the CSM, RCA sub-subbed the actual S-Band hardware to Motorola.
There would also be a prime contractor and other subcontractors for the ground stations, which would be built in California, Spain and Australia.
“Now, since the entire system closely resembled a system JPL had invented, it was decided that at least part of the ground station hardware would be acquired through an extension of JPL’s contract from their S-Band contractor,” Painter said. “And guess who that was? Motorola.”
Ah, finally some continuity in the whole process.
By this time, Goddard had set up a project office to start organizing the S-Band ground stations. The Greek started spending time in Maryland, helping them with the specifications, requirements and documents. In the meantime, George Mueller had asked for an investigation of the Apollo communications setup to see if everything was in order; Painter and Hondros worked with the investigator to provide MSC’s plans and ideas on the USB. The work hours were piling up.
“Mind you, the system still hadn’t been designed as a whole system—for both the spacecraft and the ground,” Painter said, “but work was necessary now, because of the short schedules and long procurement times involved. Something had to be specified now.”
Barry Graves organized a meeting to be held in November 1963 to get the MSC and Goddard people together to unify the plan and reach an agreement on how to proceed.
ON NOVEMBER 16, 1963, PRESIDENT KENNEDY flew on Air Force One to Cape Canaveral, where he was met by Kurt Debus, Robert Seamans, James Webb and Florida senator George Smathers. They briefed Kennedy on the progress being made on Apollo and provided a helicopter tour to see the VAB, the new launchpads and other sites.
A few days later, Kennedy came once more to Houston. Although he was in town for a political fundraiser and didn’t visit MSC, there was a motorcade through the city of Houston and the route would pass by some of the MSC temporary sites. NASA employees were encouraged to participate in the event.
Norman Chaffee brought his wife and young daughter to stand with several other MSC staffers and their families on Broadway and wave little US flags as President and Jackie Kennedy passed. Those who worked in the Houston Petroleum Center had only to step outside their building to see the motorcade and cheer on the Kennedys. The procession was a big event, with the Gulf Freeway closed in one direction so the presidential motorcade could pass by an estimated seventy-five thousand enthusiastic Houstonians. That night, Kennedy spoke of the future.
“In Texas and the nation … growth has meant new opportunities for this state, progress has meant new achievements,” the president said, “and we dare not look back now. In 1990, the age of space will be entering its second phase, and our hopes in it to preserve the peace, to make sure that in this great new sea, as on Earth, the United States is second to none.”
President Kennedy, center, attends a briefing at Cape Canaveral for an update on the Apollo program. At the far left sit NASA administrator James Webb and Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
Credit: NASA.
The next morning, November 22, the Kennedys flew to Dallas.
That same morning, the first meeting was held between MSC and Goddard Space Flight Center to coordinate the ground communications with the Apollo USB on board the spacecraft. W. Paul Varson, who was leading the efforts at Goddard, and his technical assistant, Fritz von Bun, flew to Houston to join the meeting with several flight controllers, including John Hodge and Rod Rose—two members of the original Avro Arrow team—along with Howard Kyle, John Painter and George Hondros from the GSPO.
By noon, the group had made good progress and the administrators, flight controllers and engineers were comfortable with one another, having aired a number of management and technical issues to everyone’s satisfaction. They adjourned and drove to a nearby restaurant for lunch. On the way back, Painter punched in the car’s radio to get a little music. Instead, there was a special news program. Painter asked everyone to be quiet so he could hear better. Then came an announcement that President Kennedy had just been killed in Dallas.
“When we reassembled for the meeting, we just sat and looked at each other,” Painter said. “Soon, someone suggested that we just go home and reassemble the next morning. That was what we did.”
The news shocked the country and the world. Everyone found it hard to concentrate. People were glued to the radio and television, following everything that happened over the next few days: Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and then was dead two days later, shot by Jack Ruby. The swearing in of a new president, the procession and funeral. A three-year-old boy saluting his father’s casket.
A week after being sworn in, in the rear galley of Air Force One, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, announced in a nationwide television address that the launch center in Florida would be named in Kennedy’s honor.
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