Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (9 page)

This was great operational experience for me and taught me how to get a station ready for its mission. All of our learning curves were very steep and I went on to be the Flight Dynamics Officer in MCC at the Cape for the next three flights, MA-7, -8 and -9. The early opportunity to serve at Bermuda was a great assist to my knowledge and confidence. With all of the other stations around the world, it was also a great opportunity for STG to develop many of our young engineers into competent and confident operators ready to take their place in the MCC for Gemini and Apollo.

No record of these times can be remotely complete without testimony to the pervasive influence that Christopher Columbus Kraft had on the programs, the organization, and especially all of us, his young followers. Whatever his various titles were during those years, he was our leader – “the” Flight Director – and our role model. His influence was always a lesson in leadership, and we strove mightily to emulate the same.

Over five decades, while he and I were sometimes in different organizations but still associated, Chris demonstrated over and over again that great leadership cannot be overrated. Chris had the skill of clarity of thought in defining issues and solutions. In a world of many new and compounding complexities, Chris reduced problems to a crisp definition, to a few options and then a decision. He often left me wondering, “Why didn’t I think of that?” His calibration of his people at all levels seemed unerring and he located people where their talents were a match to the assignment. To others, he seemed to delight in stretching them to levels that they did not know they were capable of. Decisions were often quick and always crisp, “Yes, we’ll do it that way.” On personnel matters, he would ask, “So you want to move to this job? Tell me why.” Listening and then, “Fine, I agree, the discussion is over.” And I never saw Chris avoid a difficult decision; he seemed to enjoy them and even to seek them out. Once made, everybody moved on. Things were not allowed to fester or to sit on hold.

Chris had real respect for his troops and it showed in how he dealt with subjects that might impinge on them. On one occasion after a scrub and a launch delay of several days, he decided that all of us at stations around the world would stay at our respective sites and forgo travel back home. We did have one higher-level management person from a different organization who was in Bermuda to observe. He asked for an exception in his case, on the communication loop, essentially in front of the rest of us, and we all knew immediately how dumb that was. And, yes, he stayed deployed with all the rest of us. Perhaps the strongest demonstration of Chris’s leadership was his trust in us. That trust actually empowered and challenged us. You did not want to be found unworthy.

The work itself forced us to strive for crisp, clear communications. This was best illustrated in our mission rule discussions of what level of failure would cause a major deviation to the plan. As most of us came to operations work, there was a natural tendency to avoid or stall on a decision. Usually this manifested itself as a discussion of symptoms or preliminary troubleshooting steps, but not the final decision on a failed or failing system. This learning stage was often made apparent by the admonition, “Yes, but after all those preliminaries, what do you want me (or the crew) to do?” Since we had all been there, we recognized the clarity on the final recommendation being sought, and the implied rebuke to the stall tactic. By the way, this constant need for clarity in discussions, decisions, et cetera probably inhibited the already meager poetic in us and, I would guess, frustrated the interviewers who were always trying, properly so, to evoke some expression of feeling and/or emotion from us.

The benefit of the impassioned debates over the mission rules was real and enduring. The discussions forced out all aspects of any applicable considerations and there were always champions for more or less risk or response to each of all the failures under consideration. It was not apparent at first but after months of this, we began to be able to generalize what was evolving. For example, we wanted enough redundancy so that we could still tolerate one more specific failure and still recover the crew safely. In the early days, these were aimed at deciding the redundancy levels necessary to continue on-orbit, or conversely to terminate the mission early. As these rules were tested in the integrated simulations with the crew in the simulator and the MCC, they eventually became, in essence, a code of ethics that defined the risk-reward tradeoff. All of the operators and the crews gradually came together on a deep understanding of our compact with each other as to how we would manage risk. It was the process of going through each and every postulated condition and response, and testing of that framework in simulations that built the team confidence. The payoff is in invoking the familiar thought and judgment process when something outside the mission rules discussions occurs. And the unexamined conditions did happen. In those cases, we got to an answer consistent with our risk-reward framework.

The understanding that the team created was sometimes underappreciated. There were several occasions in the future when a compulsion to manage and be the decision maker would infect people. This usually showed up as HQ people attempting to inject themselves into operational decisions. It is probably a common disease, but, in these cases, they skipped all the prior steps that created a common understanding of the risk-reward trade. They probably viewed it as more of a prerogative matter and less as a culmination of the invention and training process. The foray never lasted long enough before correction so that it never did any harm, but it could have. Some incidents were testy and there will be more on some of those later.

Chris relished the give-and-take, the arguments, the new insights from our flight experience and all the other factors informing us of ways to improve the rules and the process. A favorite of Chris’s was the simulation (sim) ordeal. After each sim, there was always a debriefing – what was done well or badly and why. These sims were a baptism by fire – the palms always got sweaty; any decision had to be justified, and one’s honor was at stake, naked in front of his peers and the boss. And, most all of us spent some time in that naked position. But, it did raise one’s determination to avoid screwing up. These screw-ups were also the feedstock for ridicule afterward at every opportunity. Sympathy and propriety norms were uncommon. We had adult leadership role models all around us. Another of those, mentioned earlier, was Tecwyn “Tec” Roberts. Tec came by way of Canada and the AVRO windfall to STG. Originally from the country of Wales, he was raised in the small town of Trefnant Bach, Llanddaniel. He was the branch chief and leader of the Mission Control Center branch. He was about ten years older than the rest of us in the unit. But he patiently required our boisterous opinions to be backed up and reinforced by well-studied background, compelling logic and reasoning to support any positions we took. It was a maturity lesson that we all internalized very well and enjoyed using to the fullest with our other colleagues who did not have the benefit of Tec’s coaching. He was a quiet spoken man, but did not shy away from pushing a discussion to what he thought was the correct conclusion. And he did it with grace, charm and a kind of impish style with which one could not be angry.

All twenty-two-year-olds should have an engaging, talented role model like Tec to start their career with. We would all be better off. When I went to meet with Tec at my request, he often started with, “Well, Mr. Lunney, what are you trying to sell to me today?” Guilty as charged. To whatever extent I was successful at the art of framing and selling ideas, Tec was the teacher who got me started. I sometimes am unhappy with and disagree with what I say or write, but looking back on my oral history interviews, I was happy with these comments about Tec, only slightly edited for clarity.

“So for a number of years, Tec was our leader and mentor and kind of a – not quite a father, but maybe an uncle figure – to a lot of us young fellows in the flight dynamics discipline and he was a tremendous help to Chris in putting together the Control Center concept in both of its locations. Tec was the original Flight dynamics officer at the Cape when they operated out of the Mercury Control Center. But he was such a gentle and yet demanding kind of guy – those two words don’t go together, but he was that. He was kind of gentle with people and also demanding of their performance, and because of his talents, he evoked a tremendous amount of confidence that people had in him, management had in him, and it was like he was a perfect match for us.”

“We were a random group of young engineers that arrived from all over America and a little brash and a little hasty at times and sometimes a little emotional and he would counsel us along. After Tec died a few years ago, I wrote a note to Doris expressing my appreciation for all that Tec had meant to me personally, and I told her how much I and the rest of the men who worked for him had learned from him and how I felt that I used a lot of what I learned from Tec in raising our family. So I wanted her to know that there was some of Tec Roberts floating around here in Houston in the next generation of Lunneys. Tec was one of a kind and I felt blessed because Tec was such a jewel and he got to be our boss. We had a wonderful time learning from him, and he had a hell of a time dealing with us, I’m sure.”

In May 1962, Chris Kraft was Chief of the Flight Operations Division (FOD). Tec ran the Mission Control Branch and I was head of one of his three sections with an overly complicated title of “Mission Logic and Computer Hardware.” There were two of us – myself and Cliff Charlesworth. John Llewellyn was not yet a formal member of this section, but that happened soon thereafter. This unit was the precursor to the eventual Flight Dynamics Branch (FDB), formed later. Tec had to leave Texas for reasons of health before that August 1964 change. With his departure and the growing workload, a division reorganization formed the Flight Dynamics Branch.

Tec transferred to GSFC where he served in various management roles for the near-earth communication and tracking network that we used for manned flights. As expected, he was a great help to the network team and to us on the Houston end of the data lines. His example and teaching continued to make my life better long after he left us in Houston.

In 1964, the FDB had twelve men besides myself – seven assigned to the upcoming Gemini and five to Apollo – a very small staff indeed for the total effort. As another indicator of their task, I was also selected as a Flight Director in October 1964, joining Chris, John Hodge and Gene Kranz. Cliff Charlesworth, who was the FDB deputy Chief, was also selected as a Flight Director in January 1966 in the middle of the Gemini flight phase. We managed both jobs until March 1968 when we were both transferred to a new Flight Director Office as Apollo approached. It is up to the FDB-ers to say whether this organization arrangement was a problem or an opportunity for them. With Cliff and I not available for assignment to any flight dynamics console positions, I would wager on opportunity. But, I get ahead of the story.

My assignment as the Flight Dynamics Officer at Bermuda was a great opportunity to gain experience in what flight operations was becoming. The Bermuda station was in an excellent location to evaluate trajectory conditions after engine cutoff. At this point, it will aid in understanding to review the general subject of the launch phase and the abort (escape) modes available to the operations team.

The Atlas launch vehicle was selected for the Mercury program on the basis of its stage of development and its lift capability. Probably, the most significant reason was that it was the only national system available to perform the mission on the planned schedule. I was amazed at the design of this launch vehicle. The structure of the vehicle was basically two compartments containing kerosene and liquid oxygen respectively, separated by a common bulkhead. The overall structure was a very thin sheet of aluminum fairly close to what we know as aluminum foil. The vehicle structure was so light that it had to be pressurized with a gas like nitrogen for most of its life on the ground. The internal pressure is what gave it shape, form and whatever rigidity it had. Yes, it was like a high-tech balloon. It was equipped with three engines in a horizontal row at the aft end. Like other rockets, it employed some degree of staging but it only dropped off the two outboard engines, no tankage. The vehicle continued under the thrust of the middle engine, called the sustainer engine, until commanded to be cut off by the guidance system. Unlike all successor orbital launch vehicles that have onboard inertial guidance systems, the guidance was performed by a ground-based tracking and computing system at the Cape, known by its suppliers – GE (tracking) and Burroughs (computer for guidance).

Various factors combine to make the launch phase a very critical period of flight – booster reliability (about fifty percent in those years), short reaction times, high rates at which some failures develop, the catastrophic consequences of some malfunctions, limitations of the escape systems and techniques – to name some of the most obvious. I had the sobering experience of reviewing most of these films of launch vehicle failures. They stay with a person for life, just like the Challenger videos do.

The function of range safety (i.e. the protection of personnel on the ground, property and facilities) is discussed elsewhere in the Mercury Redstone experience and was a good starting point to begin to conceptualize how to protect the spacecraft and crew. Range safety required an onboard destruct system, basically a shaped charge running the length of the tanks and on both sides of the vehicle. The concept was to stop the propulsion and disperse the propellants so they did not land in a concentrated mass. For staged vehicles, they required a hot wire type system between stages to fire the destruct system in case of the stages separating in an uncontrolled fashion.