Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (12 page)

It was ultimately decided to retain the retro package for re-entry and John Glenn was so informed. He accepted the decision and it worked fine. The arrival of MA-6, coming through blackout, the parachute sequence and landing, was a special moment for this young space team. We had put our American in orbit and he was back home safely. But, again, we were forcefully reminded how quickly conditions could develop which can be a most serious threat to the survival of the astronaut and how we can be confronted with choices that have never been considered or studied.

The lessons learned from this experience still flow through the processes today. Much greater attention was (and is) paid to including redundant and/or complementary methods to absolutely confirm any indication of a threat by multiple paths. Gemini and Apollo quickly benefitted. In order to have a final authority, the mission rules now include an unequivocal statement defining the Flight Director as that final authority for any decision involving the safety of the crew and/or the success of the mission. Certain protocols were established to provide the program and engineering personnel with a communication path for answering questions or making inputs. This protocol evolved over the early programs to become a very well controlled, documented and powerful adjunct to the conduct of manned space operations, right up until today.

The significance to our country of this first big achievement in what had become known as the “space race” was manifested best by the outpouring of celebration and recognition of John Glenn across the country. One space flight and John went from a relative unknown to a national and international celebrity. And he carried it off with grace and dignity.

Completely absorbed at the time, we did not enjoy a lot of reflection time. But that period of fifteen months was a measure of what this country, and NASA in particular, can do. Six Redstone flights, five Atlas flights with three of them to earth orbit, two new programs: Gemini to prepare for the future and Apollo to be the future, and a prospective move to Houston. It was a time to really enjoy the enthusiastic support of our fellow citizens.

During this fifteen-month campaign, the Soviet Union flew two manned flights. Yuri Gagarin in Vostok-1 flew for one orbit on April 12, 1961. Gherman Titov launched in Vostok-2 on August 6, 1961, and flew for one day. The Soviets probably had other un-crewed test flights during this time, but not announced as elements of the manned program. We had not won, we were still behind, but we certainly felt a lot better about our prospects.

John Glenn Ingresses Friendship 7

John Llewellyn got the prime retro assignment for MA-7 and Carl Huss, our across the street Friendswood neighbor, took on the mentoring role for John and later for Jerry Bostick. By this time, Carl’s duties as John Mayer’s deputy in the Mission Planning Branch were growing with the upbeat of Gemini and Apollo. It was interesting to watch this interaction between John and Carl. Carl was almost over-the-top rigorous; they could not have been more different in approach, but they made it through.

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.

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 the 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.