Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program

by Glynn S. Lunney

  John and I worked the MA-7 flight of Scott Carpenter together in the MCC at the Cape. From the beginning of the flight, there were problems with the spacecraft attitude reference. They were never really worked because Carpenter did not report that the instruments did not agree with the out the window view. He was also using an excessive amount of fuel trying to understand the source of “fireflies” around the spacecraft. John Glenn had reported on that phenomena, but Scott seemed determined to find out the source of the problem and solve the mystery of the fireflies. This caused a serious problem with the attitude control fuel that later ran out during re-entry. The upshot of this distraction and the attitude reference problem was that, at retrofire time, Carpenter was late getting in retrofire attitude and still less than one hundred percent focused on the retro sequence. At retrofire, the spacecraft was still out of planned attitude in the yaw axis by a significant amount and the retrofire impulse did not deliver all of the in-plane required braking velocity to land at the planned landing location. It wasn’t long before the tracking data began to display an overshoot in the landing position. Llewellyn reported to Chris, “Flight this is Retro, he’s coming down about two hundred fifty miles long” and that’s where the para-rescue team found Carpenter and Aurora-7 an hour later. When Carpenter was back on the carrier, he announced, “I didn’t know where I was and they didn’t either.” John took this as a personal affront to his manhood and Chris Kraft took it as incompetence on Carpenter’s part.

  During the run-up to and conduct of any flight, the press corps shows up and press conferences and interview abound. Sometime during the flight PAO was receiving a lot of press questions about trajectory subjects. This was understandable because all of this was brand new to them. At any rate, Walt Williams and Chris Kraft called me over and Chris said, “Glynn, the press wants to understand more about ascending nodes and other trajectory stuff, why don’t you go out there and start their education on your subjects.” Both of them were chuckling to each other as my discomfort about this was obvious.

  So, off I went to my first press conference, at age twenty-five to explain what the “longitude of the ascending node” was all about. It was the beginning of interaction with the press that carried throughout my career. These were testy at times because the press seemed to assume that we were not being truthful and/or accurate and they tried to catch us in mistakes. Over time, most of the press corps came to believe and even trust us. And we developed a better grasp of where the press fit in our American system and gave it its due. Many of the press regulars became lifelong supporters of manned space flight. Although in early times, we had a lot of laughs over how press reporting varied so far from the truth as we explained it. My wife, Marilyn, would be exasperated after listening to my press conference and then seeing the report either in print or on TV. “They never get it right, why do you guys bother?” was her recurring assessment.

  Walt Williams joined the STG in September 1959 from the world of high-speed aircraft testing over the California desert at a facility known as the Muroc Army Airfield and then later Edwards Air Force base. He went there in 1946 from the NACA Langley center and was involved in the testing of all of the historic and breakthrough aircraft of that period. He was named the first Chief of the NASA High Speed Flight Station at that location in 1949.

  After over thirteen years in that crucible of modern aviation, he saw the beginnings of the reach to go beyond the atmosphere. This was done first by stretching aircraft beyond any current limits at the time and then joining the STG on a new path to “higher and faster.” The new path envisioned propelling a crewed vehicle on an ICBM class launch vehicle to speeds and altitudes beyond the reach of aircraft even today, fifty years later. Walt was titled as an Associate Director working for Bob Gilruth, the Director of STG. His role was to help define and oversee the operations of this new venture into space.

  Walt brought three important strengths to the space theater: a wealth of flight experience, tremendous respect for the flying machines, and even greater respect for the men who flew them. His presence set the tone and the priorities with the operations elements at STG. He helped make the operations team – the astronauts, the flight crew support division and the flight operation division, that I was in, into a real force. He also brought an attitude, much like that of a middle linebacker.

  Williams, Kraft and Hodge

  When you had a briefing for Walt, it was really necessary to prepare well and get it right. Walt had his own way of listening. He put feet on the desk, closed his eyes, and gave the appearance of napping. But after thirty minutes of an hour briefing, he would shrug himself to a standing position and summarize all of the essential points that were made. And then of course, he ruled on the issue that was being discussed. No games, nothing but the hard substance.

  In both Mercury and Gemini, NASA bought the launch vehicle service from the Air Force and NASA dealt with the Aerospace Corp. (technical advisors to the AF) on all matters technical. I did not work with Walt much on the first program procurement, but I did on the Titan for Gemini. To my knowledge, Walt ran that activity with one technical helper, Bob Harrington. Bob kept the minutes and occasionally offered inputs, but Walt ran it as a one-man show. He must have had contracts and financial support but I never saw those functions in play. Maybe, Bob Harrington oversaw them. There were joint team efforts on the new abort sensing system for Mercury and its counterpart on Gemini, the malfunction detection system. These efforts involved additional NASA personnel, like Chris for the abort sensing system, on these specific subjects. But, Walt was the boss. When he walked in to run the meeting, the Aerospace Corp. team rose as one. The leader of that team was Ben Hohman, whom I understood to have worked at Peenemunde. It was probably my imagination but I could almost hear heels clicking at Walt’s entrance. It was quite a performance for this twenty-five-year-old to witness.

  Cliff Charlesworth

  In the first acquisition for what became the Flight Dynamics Branch two years later, I hired Cliff Charlesworth into the emerging Mission Logic Section in March 1962. If I had written a specification for my first hire and canvassed the country, I could not have selected better. Cliff was the first achiever in a long line of young men who joined the Flight dynamics team at the new Manned Spacecraft Center during the sixties. The solid majority of these young men, like Cliff, were exceptional and the work we were about to do offered them the opportunity to demonstrate their true potential.

  Cliff was the start of that staffing process and he helped to frame what we were doing in so many ways – big and small. I don’t credit any magical interviewing skill on my part. Cliff, and the rest, came because they wanted to participate and contribute to this historic program. They selected themselves.

  Cliff brought a demeanor of calm, thoughtful competence with a no-nonsense attitude towards people’s behavior, probably developed in his upbringing in Jackson, Mississippi and his couple years of service in the U.S. Army. He had nicknames like Mississippi Fats and the Riverboat Gambler – all of which conveyed a man of reflection and action, an ability to assess situations and handle them. That was also the job description for a Flight Dynamics Officer, Flight Director, Program Manager, Head of a Directorate, Deputy Center Director – all of which were positions Cliff served in with distinction over his career.

  Cliff had various quirks, like: be on time, you are responsible for your work, take care of your hygiene duties before you come to work, get to the point and be clear in what you are saying and recommending. He also believed in supporting people, providing encouragement when folks screwed up, and helping them grow in their assignments. On visiting Cliff at home, I often found him in a lawn chair, having a beer and watering his lawn by hand. He claimed that he did his best thinking while watering.

  He was a major contributor to the formation and leadership of the Flight dynamics team and in all his subsequent positions. Cliff was five years older than me, and although I was nominally the boss, he was always like th
e older brother I never had. He was always a good friend to me, and a trustworthy partner, in whatever we were doing. He tried to restrain my enthusiasm when appropriate by observing, “Lunney, you will never get an ulcer, you just give them to other people. You are a carrier.” And, he did temper my passion occasionally with just the code word “ulcer.”

  Cliff recommended and we hired Bobby Spencer a few months later. Bobby was a friend and colleague of Cliff’s at his last job. Bobby joined the section in June 1962 and was assigned to the Apollo group in the July 1964 organization of FDB. Bobby served as a Retro throughout his FDB career and was the technical point man for the FDB command function of the Little Joe abort test at White Sands Missile Range, north of El Paso. Bobby sent the destruct command to the solid rocket when it got to the desired test conditions and that started the spacecraft abort sequence. We shared that project out at White Sands. When I was named as a Flight Director in August 1964, I was assigned as the over-all lead for the post-liftoff activities associated with these test flights, just like the handover between the MCC and the Launch Control Center. The White Sands Little Joe project was also my first opportunity to work with George Page of the Kennedy Space Center launch team. George went on to work Apollo, Skylab and Shuttle at KSC in various capacities, as did I.

  Cliff and Glynn

  Moving to Houston

  We knew there was a site selection team formed to look for a permanent location for STG, as it was on its way to becoming the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). I was happy that we were going to move from Virginia, because, although it was home to many of the men I worked with, I was not wild about it and looked forward to the change. The decision was made and announced in December 1961 that we were moving to Houston, Texas and to a particular area of Houston around Clear Lake, twenty miles south of Houston on I-45.

  Immediately prior to this announcement, the area had been hit by Hurricane Carla. Marilyn was active in some of the volunteer efforts to collect and ship supplies to the “poor” people in Houston. Little did we know that we would soon be living there. We all had many questions about it and felt that we knew little about Texas except for the movie portrayals of the state.

  After MA-7, I drove our ’58 Chevy convertible, with no air conditioning, to Houston, while Marilyn and our daughter Jenny enjoyed their last visit for a while with her parents. As I was getting closer to Texas, I began to think of those movies, John Wayne – great big steaks and cold beer. And I couldn’t wait to get to a Texas town to enjoy some of that fare. However, as I ordered my first steak in Texas, I found out about the dreaded “dry county.” Yes, it meant you could not buy a beer to have with your steak, or anything else alcoholic for that matter in that county. I wondered what John Wayne would think about that.

  I went on to Houston, and eventually got to a rental home in Deer Park. Our friends, the Tindalls, had rented this home, and gave us the key to stay there until they arrived later. This was the last part of June, and was my first experience with the wonderful heat and humidity so well renowned in Houston. In due course, Marilyn and Jenny, now seventeen months, were due to arrive in Houston at Hobby Airport. At this time, Marilyn was almost eight months pregnant with our second child. She had made matching outfits for herself and Jenny for this auspicious trip. Airports in the sixties did not have long tunnels that now permit people to leave the plane and remain in at least some air conditioning. In those days, exit from the plane was accomplished with a set of stairs that are rolled over to the plane, secured in place, so that the plane door opens at the top of the stairs. Other people came off and I was just inside the door watching for Marilyn. It was about 3 p.m. and when she showed up at the door of the airplane holding Jenny’s hand, the heat and humidity hit her “face-on.” Marilyn staggered back into the airplane as if the wall of heat was assaulting her.

  That was her welcoming moment to Houston, and I’m sure she wondered what she was doing here. Off we went, in our car without air conditioning, and we stayed in the Tindall rental house for a couple of weeks, which also had no A/C. When I got home from work, I often found Marilyn and Jenny in the tub, sometimes with ice cubes on special occasions.

  Shortly after arrival, the city sponsored a welcoming event in the Houston Coliseum in downtown. This was the original site of what is now the Houston Rodeo currently housed in Reliant Center. This started with a parade, where the Mercury astronauts and much of the brass of MSC were paraded through town. It was a fantastic reception. In the Coliseum, there was all kind of entertainment including bands, and even a family version show by a well-known stripper named Sally Rand. Houstonians were uniformly dressed in cowboy boots, big buckles, and cowboy hats. They were genuinely happy to have us here in Houston, and 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.

  As the time for the Tindalls’ move to Houston approached, we found an apartment, in a unit called the Chateau. It was South of 610 and a little west of the Gulf freeway.

  We moved in, just in time for the birth of our second child, Glynn, Jr. born August 14, 1962. Our offices were close by on the Gulf Freeway, and I started in the Houston Petroleum Center at first. At about this time, there was some reorganizing and, in July of 1962, I became a section head in Tec’s Mission Control Center branch, with one person in the section, Cliff Charlesworth.

  Just days before Glynn, Jr. was born, the Russians launched another space first. Vostok-3 flew into orbit on August eleventh, followed by Vostok-4 on the next day. The two cosmonauts, Nicolayev and Popovich flew by each other, with the closest approach being three point two miles. At first, this was portrayed as a rendezvous and/or formation flying, but it was not quite that advanced. They just flew by within a close distance of each other. It was not a real rendezvous and certainly not a docking. But it was still a first. Both landed on August fifteenth within six minutes of each other.

  News of the flight must have come to the U.S. on the weekend. We were still asleep and expecting a hospital baby run at any moment. Our morning rest was over when John Llewellyn showed up banging on our door. He was very upset that the Russians had pulled this off and reminded me that we were still behind in this race. He wanted me to get up and go to work with him so we could “do something.” John was very passionate about our space program. He did not want to lose any more time. But he did eventually settle for coffee and talk on that morning.

  Completing Mercury

  After a gap between MA-7 in May, MA-8 flew in October 3, 1962. This period allowed many of us to relocate and find our initial housing in Houston before the whirlpool of another flight. It also gave us time to properly welcome young Glynn, our first son, to the family, our first born in Texas.

  The astronauts must have been chagrined at the crew performance during the flight of MA-7. From the outside, it felt like a blood oath had been taken by the rest of the seven to deliver a textbook flight on MA-8. We all believed that Wally Schirra was the guy to do that. The flight was planned for six revolutions, nine plus hours and a big step along the way to a twenty-four plus hours flight on MA-9. We were still cautious about pushing the flight duration too quickly. On MA-8, our two consoles had a very nominal flight to monitor, as Wally ticked through the scheduled spacecraft tests. This performance was crowned by a Pacific landing within sight of the carrier. Even by the name of his spacecraft, Sigma 7, Wally was promising a precise performance that would redeem the past and open the door to the future. He delivered on that pledge and we celebrated the flight. Our mission control act was continuing to improve.

  MA-9 was scheduled first for a one-day duration and, as launch date approached, increased to about thirty-four hours. The astronaut was Gordo Cooper, legendary for his stick and rudder skills, but sometimes used in buzzing the ground dwellers and ticking off his bosses. Be
cause of the long duration, Cliff and I would share duties on the FIDO console, John and Carl on Retro. Because of concern for running into some software “funny” under new conditions, we ran the GSFC computer complex and the flight dynamics consoles in MCC in a full up dress rehearsal of the thirty-four hour mission. All worked as it should and we proceeded to the countdown on May fifteenth with confidence, as did the whole MCC team.

  Nominal was the flight until very late when an.05g light was reported by Gordo. This eliminated the automatic mode for retrofire. Closer to retrofire, the automatic control system inverter failed. Gordo would now do a manually controlled retrofire and reentry. MA-9 landed within a few miles of the target ship, not bad for an astronaut uncompromised by thirty-four hours of zero g space travel. A great finish to our beginnings in space flight.

  During the time from MA-7 until one month after MA-9, the Soviet Union conducted four crewed missions. On Vostok-3, Nikolayev was launched into orbit on August 11, 1962, for what was announced as a longer duration flight. On the next day, Vostok-4 carried Popovich into orbit. The Vostok-4 launch was timed to accomplish a near- approach to Vostok-3. And it did with a closest approach of three point two miles between ships. Then, during June 1963 and a month after MA-9, the Soviet Union performed an “almost” repeat of Vostok-3 and -4. Bykovsky launched on June 14, 1963 in Vostok-5, followed two days later by Vostok-6 which carried the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, on another near-approach flight. They also passed very close, three point one miles, to each other’s ship. The flight durations were five and three days respectively.

  These were not a rendezvous, nor a docking, nor even formation flying. But, it was a demonstration of four crewed flights within a year, two on-time launches (necessary for this close approach) and a crew total of fifteen days in space with Bykovsky logging five of those days. Later reports indicated that Tereshkova had coping difficulties during and after the flight. Still, it was an impressive display of an up-tempo operation, even with the near-approaches accruing more credit than deserved. The Soviets played them straight and brief but western observers were disposed to overplay their significance.