Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (11 page)

On November 8, 1960, our fellow citizens elected our next President, a young senator from Massachusetts named John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It was a heady time, full of possibilities and promise. But none of us could imagine what this President, in a few short months, would ask us to do. And so, we began the flight test campaign to put an American in space, on a mission designated MA-6.

MA-6 minus 15 months

November 19, 1960
– As discussed earlier, this flight of the Redstone rocket with the Mercury spacecraft on the front end was a very short and low altitude flight of about four inches. After which time, the escape tower fired and the landing parachutes deployed. This was a very precarious condition – a fully fueled rocket with engine already fired and shut down, all systems armed for flight, standing free on the pad with no hold-down devices engaged, parachutes billowing in the wind and threatening to fill with air and topple the entire stack to a fiery death on the pad. After considering some risky alternatives to safe the situation, it was finally decided to wait, as long as the winds stayed low. Do not take precipitous action and let the batteries bleed down to the point where the propulsion system valves would go to the unpowered (closed) position. This course led to a safe condition by the next day.

In the space business, like many others, a failure (or near failure in this case) can lead to much more in terms of lessons learned than a nominal success. The lessons from this attempted flight are dramatic testimony to this truth. First, there has to be integrity in the allegiance of the organization. The booster engineer was from the Redstone organization at the Marshall Space Flight Center and spent his time after the incident speaking to the blockhouse in German and ignoring Kraft. You can imagine how that went down. Suffice to say, it never happened again. Second, all the thrashing about what to do reinforced the admonition to “do nothing if you don’t know what to do.” Third, we really needed better drawings and information on how the flight vehicles were configured. Fourth, I was amazed at how this situation escalated in complexity. It was nowhere near as straightforward as I assumed. It was like suddenly being able to see brand new dimensions to situations, when before, I only saw two. And it all can happen very quickly.

MA-6 minus 14 months

December 19, 1960
– MR-1A flew a nominal flight.

MA-6 minus 13 months

January 31, 1961
– The Mercury/Redstone, MR-2, was launched with the chimp, Ham, onboard. By this time, those of us not assigned to the MCC or a downrange tracking ship, remained at Langley, getting ready for later Atlas launches. Again, the MR-2 events deviated from nominal because this Redstone burned its fuel at a higher rate than was planned. We therefore had an “early” shutdown, which triggered an escape tower abort, rather than a tower jettison from the spacecraft. This gave a very high 17-G kick to the occupant who was also being shocked despite his correct response to stimulus because of equipment failure. Events had not been kind to Ham, but he endured.

February 1, 1961
– Our first child, Jenifer, arrived on this planet.

MA-6 minus 12 months

February 21, 1961
– Mercury/Atlas, MA-2, was launched and proved that the STG design solution of a structural belly band between the Atlas and the spacecraft worked properly and was accepted as the definitive fix for the failure of MA-1 on July 29, 1960.

MA-6 minus 11 months

March 1961
– The Redstone team at MSFC wanted one more test of the Redstone and it worked fine. The STG team thought the extra test was unnecessary and cost time and effort. But it was done and time to move on.

From left: Tec Roberts, Carl Huss and John Glenn

April 12, 1961
– Yuri Gagarin flew one revolution around the earth. And, in the midst of so much progress in our program, the Soviet Union was back in the news with a really major step and we were still playing catch-up.

MA-6 minus 10 months

April 25, 1961
– MA-3, slated for an orbital flight, had a launch vehicle failure in the planned pitch and roll program and was destroyed by the Range Safety Officer (RSO) at forty-three seconds into the flight. Thirteen days after the Gagarin success, the hole seemed even deeper.

MA-6 minus 9 months

May 05, 1961
– Finally, the flight of Alan Shepard on MR-3 worked to perfection and America had its first manned space success. We were still behind – Yes. But, our stuff – the spacecraft, the launch vehicle, the flight crew, the MCC team, the launch ops team, the network and the recovery team – was coming together. Yes. The national reaction of pride and joy at our success was a major lift to our spirits. We can do this. And Alan was his charming and effective self in the White House and the Rose Garden. Little did we know of the efforts of a small study team lead by George Low to chart a course for the space program that went far beyond bold and daring. Little did we know of the vision and determination of our young President.

May 25, 1961
– What a speech – What a challenge. To go to the moon and to land there within the decade. My personal reaction was like many others of our brotherhood. Without knowing how such a thing could be done, it sounded way beyond any capability we would be able to achieve. Even today, I wonder if the President and his advisors really grasped the scale and difficulty of this endeavor. It sounded impossible. This may be how the big breakthroughs of history really happen. What a privilege to be part of it. And so we went back to work. The reaction of our fellow citizens to Al’s flight was an incredible morale booster in itself. And then this unbelievable and unexpected demonstration of confidence dominated our lives for the next ten years and beyond.

MA-6 minus 7 months

July 21, 1961
– MR-4, piloted by Gus Grissom, roared off the pad to duplicate the performance of MR-3. And it did. But another unexpected event almost caused the drowning and death of Gus and did cause the loss of the spacecraft. Something caused the backup explosive system to fire and blow the hatch allowing seawater to flood into the ship. The proximity of, and the skill of, the helicopter crew saved Gus because his suit was not completely closed and was also filling with water. I never heard an official closeout of this problem – as to whether it fired as a result of an equipment failure or, as some suspected, that the crewman inadvertently hit the trigger. Either way, it hung over Gus’ head for a while.

August 6, 1961
– Again, a reminder of our position in the space race was emphasized by the seventeen revolutions of the earth by Cosmonaut Gherman Titov.

MA-6 minus 5 months

September 13, 1961
– The campaign to test the Mercury and Atlas vehicle moved into high gear with the preparations for MA-4. It was an unmanned spacecraft planned for a one revolution orbital flight. This was the first time for the spacecraft to perform in orbit and the first time that the Atlas would be used to lift the spacecraft to its intended orbit. And the first time that I had the opportunity to see the Atlas cutoff conditions in velocity and the flight path angle of the velocity vector. The solution was a little noisy but still clearly a “GO” for orbit. It felt a little strange to see the actual orbital conditions on the plot board, rather than on a piece of paper, after so many discussions and speculation as to how good the processed data would be. It was a real pleasure to report to John Hodge, the Bermuda Flight Director, “Flight/FIDO, we have a ‘GO’ orbit.” This was a continuum from the work that John Mayer did to reduce the actual radar tracking to confirm that the X-1 flight of Chuck Yeager at Muroc (Edwards) actually broke the sound barrier (one day after the fact) to one of his protégés confirming that the first Mercury spacecraft was really in orbit (and within a few seconds).

September 19, 1961
– The awaited announcement came out. The STG was moving to Houston, Texas. This selection had been pending for some time and I was oblivious to the political process that arrived at that decision. Several factors came to my mind.

Several months previous, my wife Marilyn had been sending clothes and supplies to the people of Clear Lake who had been devastated by Hurricane Carla. Marilyn’s questions ran to, “Why are we going there? Isn’t it flooded? How far away is Texas?” When our Dad returned from the Army Air Corps in 1946, he had been stationed at Shepherd Field in Wichita Falls, Texas. I remember him clearly announcing that he did not want to hear about Texas again, saying, “All I ever saw was sand and rattlesnakes.” And that was probably true for him. Our experience was exactly the opposite of Dad’s. We found a place where the people had the same attitude as President Kennedy, as in, “Anything is possible. But you have to work at it to make it happen. Your future is what you make it.” The Texans really loved the space program. They loved the astronauts and the idea of a grand challenge to visit our nearest neighbor in the solar system. This was in stark contrast to our neighbors near Hampton, Virginia. Many of whom referred to NACA (the predecessor to NASA) people as “NACA-Nuts.” Our first impressions of local Texas support carried through a lifetime. We always felt most welcome and appreciated for what we brought to the State. Texas is home.

MA-6 minus 3 months

November 29, 1961
– The last precursor to a manned flight was the MA-5 flight of a Mercury spacecraft for a three-revolution mission carrying a chimp named Enos. It was only later as a Flight Director that I came to appreciate the situation the astronauts faced with the chimp flights. I should have been more empathetic. These guys came from a world of alpha males, fighter pilot squadrons and national test pilot schools for only the best in their profession. No room for chimps. And they heard the slurs from their fellow-jocks to their manhood when the description of space flight was “man-in-a-can,” or “chimps were the first.” I am sure they were happy to see the “long hairy line” of chimps at an end. The MA-5 launch was nominal and I got to see that beautiful radar tracking transformed on my plot board into the clear display of a “Go” orbit. Things settled down for a while on orbit but conditions in the spacecraft deteriorated. We all followed the changes in the first two orbits. Finally, because of elevated cabin temperature and excessive firing of the control engines, Chris Kraft ordered the mission terminated after two orbits. The MCC team concept was maturing and gaining confidence.

December 1961
– The follow-on to the Mercury program was announced. It was named Gemini, a two-man spacecraft for the constellation of the twins. In my opinion, the Gemini program was the enabler of the rapid pace of the Apollo flights once we began the flight campaign in 1968. The design teams and the operations teams – planners, flight controllers and flight crews – profited immensely from the “boot camp” of ten manned Gemini flights to roar into Apollo with a competence and confidence that only “being there and doing it” can provide. The Gemini systems transitioned from analog to digital. We learned and tested rendezvous and docking under multiple conditions (prepping for the lunar rendezvous), docked propulsion maneuvers (as in the Apollo command ship CSM and the Lander LM), guidance controlled entries (as in Apollo re-entries), long durations up to two weeks (the longest expected Apollo flight) and the space walk technology and techniques. To a man, the flight controllers and crews would testify that Gemini made Apollo possible in the time allowed. The experience gained avoided the need for an excessively long series of flights before the landing on the fifth manned Apollo. Imagine how history might look if Apollo XIII (the seventh manned Apollo) happened before the landing mission and with an operations team with less experience.

MA-6 arrives

February 20, 1962
– After multiple scrubs and delays, MA-6 lifted off on this date in February. Tens of thousands of Americans worked for this day and each can treasure the achievement and their role as a reward that they will always own. During the flight, a situation developed that was enough to try any man’s fortitude. During the second orbit, an obscure telemetry signal was observed that indicated that the impact bag had deployed. It normally deploys in the landing sequence in order to cushion the landing in the water. The real significance was that the bag was behind the heat shield and this indication could mean that the heat shield was not firmly attached for re-entry. This was an extremely difficult decision to grapple with. If the signal was not valid, the best and safest approach was to proceed nominally and jettison the spent retro package after the firing of the retro rockets. If the signal was valid, any assistance in keeping the heat shield in place (such as retaining the spent retro package after firing the rockets and reentering with the spent retro package in place) would serve to help keep the heat shield in place but the burning of the retro package could damage (or even destroy) the heat shield and/or change the vehicle aerodynamics to an unsafe condition. There were very competent advisors with strong opinions on both sides of the issue.