Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (44 page)

To illustrate some of that parallel traffic, I selected two typical status sessions with Kraft. One is while we were preparing for Skylab and ASTP; the second one is after the Skylab missions were finished with ASTP left to go. The informal notes are those of Chris Kraft, as he received our weekly communications. Mostly, he is recording my report or occasionally his questions, suggestions or directions to the project. The notes are cryptic and I don’t remember what every item is about, but it conveys the type of significant activity that was constantly going on in parallel with the working groups and joint activities with the Soviet side. Chris took these notes on a simple tablet and when the meeting was finished, he had his office forward them to Virginia Tech where he was keeping his archives.

The meetings with Kraft served another very valuable purpose for the projects. These discussions were the first level of engagement that might lead to discussions with NASA HQ. On some occasions, issues were seen as requiring the attention of George Low. I always felt that the management chain was fully familiar with the major issues we identified within the project. Sometime this led to a discussion, but eventually we had complete agreement as to the positions we were going to take. We must have looked like a wall of Clones to the Soviets, because I, Kraft, Lee and George Low used identical language and positioning in our discussion of issues. The handwritten pages are copies of Kraft’s notes and capture a sense of the typical traffic before Skylab flies in 1973 and afterwards in 1974.

Chris Kraft’s Meeting Notes Page 1, May 8, 1973

Chris Kraft’s Meeting Notes Page 2, May 8, 1973

Chris Kraft’s Meeting Notes Page 3, May 8, 1973

In the fall of 1973, our family moved into our newly built home. It was five acres, half for Jenny’s horse and ponies and most of the rest adjoining a large section of woods for the boys. We often had our overseas visitors to our homes. One of the Soviet Flight Directors, Bobkov, gave our young Bryan a Soyuz model. They saw each other on several visits and interacted well. Interesting that some twenty years later, Bryan was on his way to becoming a Flight Director and worked at a console called Russia Interface Officer (RIO) for the Shuttle flights to their MIR space station. Bobkov was on the other end of the line. Small world. Bryan always took Professor Bushuyev out to the woods and gave him a running commentary on all they did out there. Bushuyev was fond of telling others that he understood Bryan better than he did me.

During the ninth to twentieth of July, there was a meeting of Working Groups 0, 1 and 2. This meeting was intended to complete some specific items and confirm project readiness for the October mid-term meeting. Most of the subjects for this meeting were under the purview of Pete Frank and now Alexei Yeliseyev as WG1 chairmen. Both of these chairmen would also serve as Flight Directors. The Soviets explained their plan to launch a precursor flight of a Soyuz equipped in ASTP configuration. The team sought additional opportunities to exchange observers and specialists in tests and flight preparations. More experience together was shown to be very helpful. Six safety assessment reports (SARS) were approved by the technical directors and turned over to the working groups. Professor Bushuyev was dismayed by the WG4 problems on the Soviet side and promised steps to resolve the problem. The PAO work and the communications interface between control centers was transferred to WG1. U.S. experiments were still under review, but the preliminary concepts were discussed to provide a basis for mutual understanding. The U.S. side of WG1 offered some specific suggestions for a future spacecraft such as hatch size and stronger latches for a larger docking structural ring. This was accepted as info but the Soviets wanted to put that subject on hold till after the ASTP launch. WG2 continued its discussion of the use of the control systems during the docked phase of the mission. This subject also was dragging.

Pete Frank and Alexei Yeliseyev (WG1)

In mid-July, we took Bushuyev and some of his delegation to Downey, California, for a tour of the factory where our flight hardware was in flow. The Rockwell team put on a great show. We received an orientation briefing on the state of the ASTP hardware in process there and the various facilities being used to finalize development, test and house the simulators for the spacecraft – all of which we then toured. The social activities involved receptions and dinners each evening at some of the best venues in Los Angeles: the Queen Mary in Long Beach harbor and the original Disneyland in Anaheim. Hard to top that.

Approaching the fall of 1973, Sid Jones went over to the Shuttle program to help Aaron Cohen with the Orbiter project. Arnie Aldrich came to my office as Deputy. This was very comfortable for me since I had known Arnie from the early days of Mercury when Arnie was one of those brand new graduates and lead flight control teams to our various stations around the globe. At the time, I thought this experience would serve any aspiring young flight controller as a great opportunity in technicals and leadership. It was for Arnie, as he delivered the right sense of calm control in difficult situations. He became the Branch Chief of the Spacecraft Systems Branch for Gemini and Apollo. We were peers as Branch Chiefs in the Flight Control Division, headed by John Hodge. Like my move to program management in 1972, Chris must have felt that Arnie was ready for that step also. So, he came as my deputy as Fall approached. Arnie was a great addition to the Office. I had every confidence that he would do a great job and he did, representing us in Moscow later when we had a late change to the docking system to settle with the Soviets.

In the lead-up to what became the mid-term review in October of 1973, George Low sent a letter to Academician Keldysh in August expressing his interest in a joint assessment of the project status and special attention to at least four related subjects. They were:

1. Soyuz 11 and the Salyut status
   

2. Joint participation in test and flight preparations
   

3. Project milestones
   

4. Preparation of documents
   

Keldysh responded in the positive at the end of August. However, in our early project meeting in Moscow, we learned that Keldysh had taken ill again. And he still wanted the mid-term meeting to go ahead and appointed Petrov to head the delegation. Chet Lee notified Low. It was decided that Low and Frutkin would continue on schedule.

Mid-Term Review George Low, Arnold Frutkin, Tom Stafford, Pete Frank, at table Prof. Bushuyev

Soyuz 11 Drawing

In our project meeting before the October mid-term review, there was another involvement by a NASA HQ office, Public Affairs, and that had gotten off to a bad start. The reason for the bad start was the attitude that I received from the chief of that office, John Donnelly. If his attitude animated the discussions with the Soviets, it would make things unnecessarily difficult. We had spent three years keeping this project on a constructive, but firm, basis. It would have been more constructive for the PAO Chief to have prepared a written set of four to five principles that would govern the PAO policy rather than just show up with attitude. That bad start led to an intervention by George Low. I considered that a failure on my part. I should have found a way to avoid it. George Low was concerned that we continue to maintain the longstanding NASA position on media access to the project and not compromise it for project reasons. Low also felt that the in flight TV was very high priority and we should accommodate inputs by the PAO office. (Of course, I agreed on both counts.) Bob Shaefer, an assistant to Donnelly, really wanted to manage that subject, and that seemed preferable to a continuous wrangling over the subject. Bob had obviously given it a lot of thought to it and seemed capable of leading it. That was how we left it. Path of least resistance but, hopefully, no more whining to Low.