A Space Junkie's Space Junk

Touring the KSC Apollo 8 Firing Room exhibit

2010-03-01T13:54:00.005-05:00

When I was in Florida for the STS-130 launch, I had the opportunity to take an after-hours tour of the Apollo 8 Firing Room 1 exhibit at the Saturn V Center. I photographed every workstation and console in the exhibit, and I'll be posting my Virtual Tour shortly.

In the meantime, work progresses on my Saturn IB Operations and Saturn IB Networks panel. I'm about to start connecting to the backplane on the Networks panel so I can start testing switches! More on that soon, too.

Countdown test demonstration

2009-10-12T12:40:00.003-04:00

I obtained a DirectLogic 205 PLC this past weekend. The trainer module only has 4 outputs, but that was enough for me to practice programming a launch timer connected to my S-IB Operations panel. It's shown here as a proof of concept:

I only threw one switch, which started the countdown clock at T-10 seconds. The rest of the lights went on via program control: ignition at T-3 seconds, all engines running at T-1.75 seconds, and liftoff at T-0. This was the sequence for the Skylab 2 launch.

I ran wires directly from the D2-08CDR relay interface on my DL205 to the terminals at the back of the Roto-Tellite enclosures.

This will be a fabulous way to drive the display!

Can I light up these panels?

2009-10-10T11:25:00.011-04:00

Cleaning off the indicators was a relatively straightforward task. If I did nothing else to the panels, they look much better now, and they'd be suitable for building into some sort of display. But I don't want to stop here. There is so much potential to make these beauties really "pop" back to life. Going to the next level means getting the indicators to light up.

I must state at this point that I am most decidedly not an electrical engineer, nor have I had any formal training in electronics. I do have some experience in building simple circuits to light LEDs in model airplane and rockets. I have a healthy respect for electricity, but I'm not afraid to experiment. Some of what I will describe here will be grossly oversimplified and the result of trial-and-error compared to what might happen if I actually knew what I was doing. I'm just documenting my learning process.

On the other hand, there isn't a lot of documentation for these panels. No instruction manuals or wiring diagrams have survived the past 35 years.

I knew from my experience with a segment from another control panel (see the thread here from collectSPACE.com) that these panels use 28V GE 327 aircraft lamps. In my previous project, I substituted 12V equivalents of the lamps. I decided to stick with 28V lamps for this project.

The other decision point here is: do I use the existing wiring, or do I use alligator clips to attach to the Roto-Tellite power posts like I did in my other project? In my other project, the wires had been clipped off when the display segment was removed from the larger panel. The panels I have now are complete and (apparently) undamaged - no wires have been cut, and they are attached to the original connectors.

Here you can see a portion of the back of the S-IB Operations panel. It appears relatively straightforward, since it is only comprised of indicator lamps in Roto-Tellite enclosures. The primary concerns here are:

Do the lamps work? Which ones are burned out?
Are there any short circuits in the wiring?
How does the connector map to the lamps? (i.e., which holes in the connector are attached to which lamps?)

The mapping task with the S-IB Networks panel is going to be a lot more complicated. In addition to the 49 lamps in Roto-Tellite enclosures, there are 8 analog meters, 9 individual lamps, a mechanical counter, 1 rotary switch, 18 three-position switches, and 3 push button (momentary) switches. There are 9 resistors on the backplane, and wires go to both posts on the frame as well as to 3 circular connectors.

So, let's start simple, with the S-IB Operations panel. To assist in documenting the functions of the panel, I created an Excel spreadsheet that lists each indicator and its position on the panel. There are location designations stenciled onto the back of the faceplate. For example, the "LOX LOADING REVERT" indicator is in the upper left corner of the panel, and it is labeled "DS1" on the back of the faceplate. The numbers run consecutively along the rows (DS1 through DS8 on the top row, DS9 through DS16 on the second row, etc.). I transferred these designations to the spreadsheet.

Now, it was time to see what worked and what didn't. For my first simple test, I wired two 9V batteries in series, figuring that 18V would be enough to produce at least a little light from the 28V bulbs. My past project taught me that the center post of each Roto-Tellite enclosure was the ground and the two outside posts were +. I connected the battery negative terminal to a center post, and then clipped the power alligator clip to the power post on the "ALL ENGINES RUNNING" indicator (DS23). Success! The lamp lit, probably for the first time in 34 years!

Two more alligator clips were attached, to the IGNITION and the LIFT-OFF indicators, just for fun at this point. Fortunately, the lamps in these indicators were still good, so they glowed as well. I dutifully photographed the indicators as my inspiration for lighting up the panels.

At this point, the simplest thing to do would have been to touch the positive alligator clip to a post on each indicator to see which bulbs were still working and which were burned out. I opted to combine two steps here, by also seeing which pin on the connector corresponded with which indicator.

The connectors on these panels are "24-61" connectors, which are standard military hardware. Each hole has a corresponding letter. Unfortunately, the placement of the labels on the connector for the S-IB Operations panel was pretty inconsistent. The letters were often not immediately adjacent to a hole. This quickly became a problem as I worked my way around the connector, sticking a probe into a hole and seeing which lamp lit, then making notes on my spreadsheet. By the time I had worked about 1/3 of the way around the outside of the connector, I was losing track of which hole corresponded to which letter.

To aid in my documentation, I needed to make a diagram of the connector, invert the colors on my PC (to make a better printout), and then draw lines connecting each letter to its corresponding hole. That way, I could ensure that I was being consistent.

I found that as I worked around the connector from A-Z, the lamps lit in order, running horizontally. "A" corresponded to DS1, "B" to DS2, etc. A little lesson I learned, so that I wouldn't have to keep craning my neck from the back to the front of the panel, was to put a mirror in front of the panel so that I could see the bulbs light up while I stayed at the back of the panel.

I found that the bulbs in nine of the indicators were burned out and would need to be replaced. I may be able to move some bulbs from unused indicators to the ones that need new bulbs. A little spark told me that pins aa and bb were ground, which I should have determined first, before checking the bulbs!

So now I have the connector mapped to the indicators in the S-IB Operations panel. This was also documented in my spreadsheet.

As I mentioned, I would like to explore powering this panel through the 24-61 connector rather than with alligator clips. I will need to find out what kind of plug corresponds to this receptacle. They are labeled "Burndy MS3124E 2461S."

Next time: What does it mean?

Taking a new direction: A restoration project

2009-10-09T09:59:00.011-04:00

I've decided to take my blog in a different direction. It's still going to be dedicated to my space collection, but I'm going to concentrate most of the posts on a few items of particular interest to me at the moment: my control panels from the Apollo-era firing rooms at Kennedy Space Center.

I highlighted these panels in a previous post early this summer. I have started working to restore two of the panels, with the goal of "lighting them up" again and having operate similarly to how they might have looked during the launch of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

I'm going to use this blog to document the process that I'm going through to bring these relics back online.

Let's start with general clean-up.

I purchased these panels from Steve Hankow at Farthest Reaches in June. Steve's consignor acquired them from the estate of Charles Bell. Bell was a NASA inventor and engineer who was involved in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. He amassed a huge junkyard full of rockets, spare parts, control panels, test equipment, and just about anything that could be salvaged when NASA junked the items. Bell's materials were not catalogued or kept in environmentally-controlled conditions, so they were not in pristine condition (to say the least) when his estate was auctioned off.

The S-IB Operations Panel displayed the critical events in the countdown and flight of the Saturn IB, the first stage of the Saturn rockets that flew Apollo 7, as well as the crews of the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project missions, into Earth orbit. Although I don't know for sure, I assume that this was used by a person in a supervisory function, who was monitoring the overall progress of the countdown.

The panel is a 19" x 5-1/2" bank of 40 indicator lamps in "Roto-Tellite" enclosures. Each enclosure has one or two 28V indicator lamps, a colored gel (usually green, blue, or red), a translucent white plastic piece, and a clear plastic insert with lettering stenciled on. In many cases, a lot of dust had accumulated in these enclosures when I opened up the panel. Also, the ink from the stenciled lettering had bled, and some of the gels may have melted slightly in the Florida heat of Bell's junkyard, causing the gel to wick between the indicator's plastic inserts. You can see that some of these labels were almost illegible from the accumulated grime.

My first task, after photographing the panel to document its original condition, was to clean up these plastic inserts. To do this, one first has to remove the inserts from the Roto-Tellite enclosures. You have to push on one side of the enclosure to rotate the cell. In some cases it was easier than others. These cells hadn't been moved in 35 years, so they were very reluctant to turn. Once the cell is rotated 45 degrees, you then have to pop open the clip on the end of the enclosure. This was particularly hard on my fingernails and fingers, and I was lucky not to get a lot of blood on the panel!! After opening the clip, the plastic insert can be slid out. In some cases, it was stuck to the enclosure and had to be gently loosened with an X-acto knife.

The plastic inserts were generally stuck together. I was able to separate most of them into their component pieces using my thumbnail at the corner of the insert, gently pulling the stuck pieces apart. I tried a variety of methods, starting with mildly soapy water, to clean up the plastic inserts. Soaking in water didn't get rid of the gunk. I found that the colored gels and the translucent white pieces could be rubbed clean with a paper towel with a little rubbing alcohol on it.

With the lettered inserts, I wasn't sure if rubbing alcohol was a good idea. Gentle rubbing with a paper towel accidentally rubbed off the ink on one letter, much to my horror. I switched to rubbing alcohol, applied gently with a Q-tip. That worked much better and didn't seem to damage the lettering. In 90% of the cases, the Q-tip removed the dirt and left the letters intact. In a few cases, though, the ink seemed to start to dissolve in the alcohol, so I quickly dipped the label into water and blotted it dry.

After drying each piece of the insert, I reassembled them and put them back into their original cell. You can see here the side-by-side comparison of this one bank of indicator lights, before and after cleaning off the "LOX TANK PRESSURIZED" indicator.

Repeat forty times, for this panel...and forty-nine times for the S-IB Networks panel. But the end result was well worth it. All of the indicators survived the cleaning process, with the loss of only one letter on one label. Below are comparisons of the two control panels, before and after cleaning up the inserts.

Next time: Testing the lights and connectors!

The future of manned spaceflight?

2009-09-27T14:52:00.003-04:00

A year ago this week, the Peoples Republic of China flew three taikonauts aboard Shenzhou 7. The mission was the third of the Chinese manned spaceflight program, their first flight with three passengers, and the first EVA conducted from a Chinese spacecraft.

The anniversary of this flight comes on the heels of some very sobering news for the US manned spaceflight program. The Augustine Commission reported that the US program is significantly underfunded and will be unable to achieve the goal of a manned lunar landing. The Space Shuttle will be retired in late 2010 or early 2011, and there is still debate as to whether the US should continue to develop the Orion launch vehicle or adapt the existing Delta IV booster to get crews into low Earth orbit. In my opinion, each month of debate further reduces the US's likelihood of getting anyone to the Moon in the next 15 years.

In fact, it has been noted that other than astronauts hitching rides aboard the Soyuz, the only near-term option available to the US for supporting the Space Station after retiring the Shuttle will be commercial vehicles like SpaceX's Falcon 9.

I am frustrated at the lack of direction, commitment, and willpower shown at present. A recent survey asked a random sample of Americans what percentage of the Federal budget went to the space program. The average guess was 24% - when it fact it's closer to 0.5%, and never exceeded 5% even during the Apollo program. As someone pointed out during Apollo, not one dollar of the NASA budget was spent on the Moon - it was all spent here on Earth, in employing over 400,000 engineers, scientists, plumbers, electricians, seamstresses, and other trades who were all vital to the success of the program. We have an opportunity to put a lot of people to work on something positive and inspiring, but we appear to lack the vision and leadership to make it happen.

I hope that the Shenzhou rocket (depicted in the souvenir pen shown in the illustration) won't be the first picture that comes to mind for our kids when they think about manned spaceflight.

Ride 'em, Cowboy!

2009-09-13T20:19:00.007-04:00

This week marks the anniversary of the flight of Gemini XI, which flew from September 12-15, 1966.

Commander Pete Conrad and Pilot Dick Gordon made space history by docking with their Agena target vehicle on the very first orbit after liftoff. This "M=1" rendezvous plan required extremely precise timing. The launch window was only 2 seconds, which would have been an unthinkably thin margin only a few years before. The Titan II lifted off less than 1/2 second into its launch window, and Conrad and Gordon were on their way to a rendezvous only 85 minutes later, over California.

Once docked, they set an altitude record, by using the Agena's rocket engine to propel themselves into an orbit with an 860-mile apogee. Other than the Apollo flights to the Moon, no other manned vehicle has flown that far from Earth to this day.

While the Gemini and Agena were docked, Dick Gordon undertook the first of two space walks. One of his tasks was to attach a 100-foot tether to connect the two vehicles for subsequent experiments. Sitting astride the nose of the Gemini while he worked at the Agena's docking collar, Gordon reminded Conrad of a bronco buster, and he called out, "Ride 'em, cowboy!" That image, captured on film and shown to American audiences after the mission ended, became the memorable image of the mission. It's certainly the one I most remember from that mission.

As with the spacewalks on Gemini IX and X, the EVA proved much more strenuous than anticipated. Gordon became so over-exerted that it was necessary to end the spacewalk early. A second EVA, in which Gordon stood up in his seat for two hours and leaned outside the hatch was as relaxing as the first EVA had been strenuous. Gordon fell asleep while he was standing in the hatch!

Conrad and Gordon were a fun-loving crew. They flew together again three years later, on Apollo 12. Conrad was smitten with the idea of flying a modified Gemini mission around the Moon - something he had been pushing for as a mission objective for Gemini XI. He didn't make it to the Moon on that flight, but he realized his dream on Apollo 12.

's SMEAT time!

2009-09-04T20:29:00.004-04:00

The Beta cloth patch at left ranks as one of my all-time favorite Apollo-era mission emblems.

SMEAT, short for the Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test, was a full-up dress rehearsal for missions aboard Skylab, the US's first space station. SMEAT duplicated all of the medical experiments, food, and equipment that were planned for Skylab. It even duplicated Skylab's reduced-pressure atmosphere. Since it was conducted on Earth, though, the crew obviously could not experience weightlessness.

SMEAT ran from July 26 through September 20, 1972, simulating a full 56-day duration Skylab mission. The crew consisted of Commander Robert Crippen, Karol "Bo" Bobko, and Dr. William Thornton, M.D. None of the crew actually flew during Apollo or Skylab, but all three subsequently flew on the Space Shuttle. Crippen was the Pilot for the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle.

SMEAT was invaluable in testing medical equipment and systems before they were installed aboard Skylab. Once Skylab was launched, there would have been no way to replace equipment that didn't work properly or subsequently broke. Thornton, a large and powerful man, was particularly noted for his ability to destroy test equipment during his "normal" exercise routines. Several pieces of exercise equipment were beefed up after Thornton defeated them, and none of those uprated items subsequently broke down during the Skylab missions.

Peanuts creator Charles M. Schultz designed the SMEAT patch, continuing his long association with the American space program. Symbolizing the "grounded" nature of the mission, a distressed-looking Snoopy is being held back to Earth instead of flying among the stars!

Happy Anniversary, Discovery!

2009-08-29T09:18:00.003-04:00

At about midnight last night/this morning, the shuttle Discovery blasted off on a mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). This is Discovery's 37th mission, and her 10th to the ISS.

This week marks the 25th anniversary of Discovery's maiden flight, STS-41D, which flew from August 30 to September 5, 1984.

Given her role in constructing the ISS, it's perhaps fitting that one of the primary experiments on Discovery's first flight was a test of the OAST-1 solar array. This was a prototype of the solar panels that now supply power to the ISS. Folded into a package that was 13 feet wide but only 7 inches deep, the OAST-1 was extended to a full length of 102 feet. Discovery also deployed three communications satellites during the mission.

Discovery's launch had been delayed since the originally-scheduled date in June 1984. A launch attempt on June 26, 1984 resulted in the shutdown of the Space Shuttle Main Engines after a few seconds. (Astronaut Steve Hawley quipped, "Gee, I thought we'd be a lot higher at MECO [Main Engine Cut-Off]!") About 10 minutes later, while the crew were still strapped in their seats, there was a hydrogen fire at the base of the launch pad. It was a very tense and dangerous situation, and NASA revised its safety procedures using the lessons learned from this pad abort.

It's sad to note that this was Judith Resnick's first flight, and that her first launch attempt was such a scary one. She perished a year and a half later aboard Challenger.

When Discovery flew, she was the third and newest Space Shuttle. With the loss of Challenger and Columbia, Discovery is now the oldest orbiter in the fleet.

There is speculation that Discovery will replace the Shuttle Enterprise at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center once the Space Shuttle program ends in late 2010.

Apollo-Saturn 202 and the USS Hornet

2009-08-23T13:18:00.005-04:00

I've been leading workshops in Santa Cruz, California for four weeks this summer. My last one concluded this past Friday, August 21, at 10:30 a.m. I had a 10:30 p.m. red-eye back to Washington DC from San Francisco, and I wondered what I could do to fill in my time before my flight. Several people at collectSPACE recommended that I tour the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, docked at Alameda Point on San Francisco Bay. I'm very pleased that I took their advice!

The Hornet was commissioned in 1943 and saw action in the western Pacific during some of the major campaigns at the end of World War II. Perhaps its most famous role was as the recovery ship for Apollos 11 and 12 when they returned from the Moon in 1969.

The Hornet hosts what is billed as the largest collection of Apollo-related material on display on the West Coast. Among the exhibits one can see:

A Sea King helicopter which was last used in the movie Apollo 13, and which is painted identically to the helicopter that brought the Apollo 11 crew on board the Hornet following splashdown.
Painted footprints on the deck, tracing the Apollo 11 crew's walk from the Sea King to a Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF) van.
The MQF, which is the one used by the Apollo 14 crew, the last crew which was quarantined following a Moon landing. The tabletop in the MQF is autographed by Ed Mitchell of the Apollo 14 crew!
A 1/48 scale model of the Saturn V launch vehicle, nearly 9 feet tall.
A 1/12 or 1/10 scale contractor's model of an early version of the Lunar Excursion Module.
A Moon rock from Apollo 15 (not present during my visit).
Numerous Lucite displays with pieces of Kapton insulation from Apollos 11 and 12.

Most noticeable on the hangar deck is an Apollo capsule. This is CM-011, which was flown on the Apollo-Saturn 202 mission (informally also called Apollo 3).

My visit to the Hornet was, coincidentally, just four days shy of the anniversary of the AS-202 flight on August 25, 1966.

AS-202 was an unmanned test of the Command and Service Modules in Earth orbit, primarily to test the Service Propulsion System and the ability of the CM's heat shield to withstand a high-velocity reentry. The tests were successful, although the capsule splashed down nearly 200 miles off target. The capsule was recovered by the Hornet about 8-1/2 hours after landing.

I wish I'd had the foresight to bring a camera with me to California this trip. However, I doubt that I could have captured the scale of the Hornet or the sense of history that I felt getting to tour her. The ship's website provides information for potential visitors, including several Quicktime-VR panoramas of various locations on the ship. If you scroll this panorama about 180 degrees around and zoom in, you'll see the capsule as well as the MQF and Sea King helicopter.

Addendum - One More Capsule Mystery

2009-08-15T20:57:00.003-04:00

While on the tour of MSC and JSC, my dad snapped this photo of a flown Apollo Command Module on a platform. There's no explanatory information in this photo. I'm relatively certain it's at MSC in Houston, since none of the VIP party are wearing hard hats. (They were all wearing hard hats in the photos within the VAB at Kennedy Space Center.)

I believe that this might be Columbia, the Apollo 11 Command Module.

After the crew splashed down in the Pacific on July 24, 1969, Columbia was brought aboard the USS Hornet and secured to the quarantine facility. All of the rock boxes, film, space suits, and other materials were removed from the spacecraft. The spacecraft was decontaminated and the hatch sealed again on July 26.

The Command Module arrived at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the MSC on July 30. It was transferred to North American Aviation's Downey, California facility on August 14, where it was prepped for turnover to the Smithsonian.

So, given that my dad's tour fell within the first two weeks of August 1969, it is quite conceivable that this CM is indeed Columbia, two weeks after its historic return from the Moon.

The Apollo 10 Command Module was sent to Downey in June, so this is not Charlie Brown.

A VIP tour of MSC and KSC, August 1969

2009-08-11T21:12:00.031-04:00

My dad was a career civil servant, who worked in the CIA from the days of the Korean War past Vietnam. He started off pretty low on the totem pole and was promoted one grade at a time until he achieved the "exalted" status of GS-14 Branch Chief in 1969.

In recognition for his accomplishments, and with a light on his future development, he was selected in June 1969 to participate in a special management program. From his memoirs,

In June 1969 I was selected to attend the Mid-Career Executive Development Course, an honor which meant that Management had identified me as a “comer.” The course provided not only a broad overview of the U.S. Government, but considerable in-depth coverage on Congressional dynamics, the election process, new Department of Defense development programs, interrelationships of components of the Intelligence Community, NASA, NATO, and other public affairs. First-rate and high-level officials gave us candid briefings, private "think-tank" analysts gave us an outside look at how our government was working, and we were privileged to meet the Director of Central Intelligence and learn about White House views of the Agency's role in the national security establishment.

In addition, we were put aboard chartered aircraft and flown to Norfolk for NATO briefings and a luncheon aboard a new nuclear aircraft carrier, then to Houston for a full day NASA briefing and tour and a sneak preview look at the moon rocks bought back only two weeks before by the crew of the first lunar landing. This was followed by a full day at Cape Kennedy and a VIP tour of the facilities. We received the whole treatment and I don't remember any of my classmates who did not grow a little vain as a result of the experience. Pretty heady stuff for an old paramilitary type, used to stumping along the corridors on his knuckles or brachiating along on the overhead pipes in the bowels of the old tempo buildings on the Mall.

Forty years after my dad's tour of MSC [now the Johnson Space Center] and KSC, I'm honored to present here some of the photos he took in the second week of August 1969. Unfortunately, he did not label where the pictures were taken, so if there are cases where there were duplicate facilities at MSC and KSC, I'm not entirely sure which is which. I'm very open to and appreciative of comments from folks who can help me identify places and objects that I may have missed.

First, the sneak peak of a Moon rock. As my dad mentioned, this sample was brought back by the Apollo 11 crew only two weeks previously! Forty years hence, it's hard to conceive that this sample had been on the Moon only two weeks prior to this photograph. This represented one of the first public views of the material brought back by mankind's first exploration of our Moon.

While at the MSC, my dad snapped this photo of the ascent stage of Lunar Module 2 (LM-2). LM-2 was at the MSC for "drop tests," where it was dropped from various heights and at different angles to see how well the Lunar Module would hold up in various Moon landing scenarios. The last drop test was in May 1969. No longer needed for testing, the ascent stage is packaged here prior to its shipment back to Grumman, where it was reunited with the descent stage and prepared for its eventual display at the National Air and Space Museum.

Edit: I just noticed for the first time, in looking at the picture today, that you can see the descent stage of LM-2 in the background of this picture, too! Some of the supports for one of the landing legs, wrapped in silver foil, can be seen sticking out from a black panel, just to the upper left of the plastic sheeting around the ascent stage. Perhaps one of the reasons I didn't notice the descent stage before is that the color scheme is "wrong" compared to what I am used to seeing, which would be the gold Kapton foil.

Also at MSC, Dad was given a briefing on various aspects of the Apollo hardware. Here, he is attending a lecture on the PLSS, the Portable Life Support System backpack that the astronauts wore on the Moon. The table holds a demo until as well as a peek of the "guts" of the hardware.

Here's the centrifuge, where the crews practiced for the G-loads they would experience during ascent to orbit and during re-entry. The centrifuges evolved significantly since the early days of Mercury. The Apollo-era centrifuges contained simulated crew compartments for the entire three-man Apollo crew.

Also at MSC was this Apollo Command Module on display. Unfortunately, the number on the side of the vehicle is turned away from us, so I am not sure which one it is. Since there is so much of the Kapton foil still attached to the CM (i.e., not burned away from the heat of re-entry from return from a Moon trip), I assume that it was from an Earth-orbital mission, either one of the unmanned flights or Apollo 7.

The vacuum chamber shown here was used for full-scale tests of Apollo hardware. It could simulate not only the vacuum of space to test for leaks, but also the differential between solar heating (via heat lamps) and the unlit portion of a spacecraft in vacuum. This chamber was the home for the 2TV-1 "mission" (in which the crew spent more than a week sealed inside a Command Module) as well as LTA-8, vacuum tests for the Lunar Module.

The MSC also housed simulators for the Apollo missions. Here's a view of the Translation and Docking Simulator (TDS). In this simulator, crews could practice the maneuvers associated with lining the Command Module up with a Lunar Module, and then moving in to dock. The spacecraft moved on all axes, enabling the crew to experience how their command inputs would translate into actual spacecraft movements.

Other simulators at the MSC were the Command Module Simulator and the Lunar Module Simulator. The first photo in this series is an overhead view of the simulator controls for the CM simulator. Inside the jumble of boxes at the top is a complete CM interior, with every switch and circuit breaker duplicated for the mission being flown. The boxy structures are the hardware for simulating the view out the windows.

Since computer graphics were non-existant in 1969, TV camera shot scenes of a simulated environment, and images were shown on TV displays outside the windows on the CM. It was very crude, but it gave the crew a good impression of what they would see in the mission. You can also get a look at the computers that were required to drive the simulation...quite an array of hardware! I imagine a modern-day laptop could easily surpass all of the computing power in this room.

The Lunar Module Simulator was slightly less boxy than the CM simulator, primarily because there weren't as many windows for which to generate displays. Not shown in this photo is a key element of the LM simulator, which was a large plaster 1:2,000 scale model of the landing site, over which a TV camera "flew" in response to the crew's guidance. The model/map for a given landing site was 32 feet by 14 feet and weighed over 600 pounds, with over 500,000 craters.

At KSC, Apollo 12 and 13 were both being stacked in August 1969. I'm not sure of the exact date of my dad's visit. Two weeks after the Apollo 11 return to Earth would have placed his trip at about August 6 or 7. The Apollo 13 stack was moved from High Bay 2 to High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on August 8, so he was just a few days away from having witnessed that activity. This shot appears to be the Apollo 13 vehicle "stack," with a boilerplate Command and Service Module on top, as was the case at the time of the roll-around. Unfortunately, I can't tell if they're putting the CM boilerplate on top of the stack or removing it from the stack.

Dad got some pretty spectacular views of the base of the first stage of Apollo 12's Satuvn V rocket, which is clearly labelled S-IC-7 (the 7th S-IC stage produced). It's hard to get a feel for the immense scale of this vehicle.

It's interesting to note that the fairings are removed from the forward (upper) ends of the engine cowlings. Just follow the parabolic outlines above the engine cowlings. In flight, after the first stage burns out, the fairings are jettisoned and retro rockets fire through these openings to help separate the first and second stages. You will also note the hold-down arm that kept the monster from lifting off the pad until all engines were running at constant thrust.

Here's a shot from the base of the Saturn V, looking up into the High Bay. You can't see the upper stages of the rocket, more than 300 feet above the floor level. I have a hard time what it must have been like to work on something so immense. I also have a hard time imagining what was going through my dad's head, as he stood here next to the rocket that would carry the second group of humans to land on the Moon, only two weeks after the first crew had come back!

Here's a view of another of the High Bays in the VAB. In here, you can get a sense of scale from the Econoline van in the background. The CM/SM/adapter section on the floor here appears to be a boilerplate and may be a Block I. The skeletal hemisphere above the van attaches to the top of the first stage of the Saturn V when it is being hoisted into position. I look at this photo and think that none of this existed - even in anyone's mind - only 8 years prior to this photo being taken. Not only did we build the vehicles to put men on the Moon within 8 years of Kennedy's challenge, but we also had to design and construct the infrastructure to build the rockets themselves! Nothing on this scale existed prior to Apollo.

Here's a view inside one of the VAB's Low Bays. Here, the various stages of the Saturn V were brought in through the doors at the end of the bay. From here, they were lifted to a verticle position and moved into the High Bays to stack the vehicle. Even the Low Bay is pretty darned tall!

Leaving the VAB, we move to a view of one of the Firing Rooms in the adjacent Launch Control Center. Here, all aspects of the countdown and launch were controlled, until the point where the vehicle rose above the launch tower. At that time, mission control was transferred to Houston. It's humbling for me to think that some of the scrapped launch control panels that I have now may have been in this very Firing Room. I can't tell for certain, since there were three Firing Rooms in use during the Apollo program.

This is one of the "crawlers" which transported the stacked Saturn V rocket from the VAB to the launch pad. Once the vehicle was in place on the launch pad, the crawler would then move over to pick up the Mobile Service Structure (MSS) and move it into place alongside the Saturn V. These same crawlers have been refurbished and are still in use 40 years later with the Space Shuttle program. This has to be some sort of longevity record for a Government-owned land vehicle!

Here's a view (from a bus) from the roadway adjacent to the crawlerway, approaching the launch pad. It's a very gentle slope, but you would obviously not want to tilt a 360 foot tall launch vehicle at this angle on the ground. The crawler deck is maintained in a level position with hydraulic pistons as the crawler ascends the ramp to the launch pad.

The final stop on our tour is the launch pad itself. Here, we have an excellent view of the flame trench. The flame diverter, the triangular metal structure at center left, was place directly beneath the engines. As they ignited, the flame diverter directed the flames and hot gasses out either side of the launch pad, thus protecting the engines from overpressure and excessive heat.

So, that's the tour. I have some other photos that my dad took in the Rocket Garden at the Canaveral Air Force Station later that day, and I'll share those in another post.

I was incredibly fortunate to grow up during the Apollo era. I was even more fortunate that my dad inspired me to learn and explore. Although I didn't get to go with him on this trip, he made me feel like I had been there. I'm happy that he was able to go and get this sneak peak behind the scenes of mankind's greatest adventure. It's been my pleasure to share these photos with you, 40 years after my dad's tour. Here's to you, Dad! --Jonathan

Remembering Apollo 15

2009-07-30T22:40:00.007-04:00

Apollo 15 was without a doubt my favorite of the Apollo Moon landing missions when I was growing up. The mission launched on July 26, 1971, when I was on summer vacation between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. That was the first summer that I worked as a volunteer tour guide at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, when Mike Collins was the Director. It was the perfect summer for a space geek!

The mission had it all. The Lunar Module Falcon was the new J-type, which would enable the astronauts to stay on the Moon for 3 days. This was the first mission for the Lunar Roving Vehicle (a.k.a. the Lunar Rover, or Moon Buggy), which could take the astronauts miles away from their base on the Moon. The mission also landed in one of the most spectacular locales of any of the missions, with miles-high mountains on either side of the landing site and a mini Grand Canyon (Hadley Rille) in front of the landing site. Finally, there was a spacewalk outside the Command Module as it returned home from the Moon.

The TV coverage did not disappoint us. The TV networks actually covered most of the moonwalks, the last time this would happen during the Apollo program. On Apollo 11 and 14, the camera was mounted on a fixed tripod and could not follow the astronauts if they walked out of the field of view. On Apollo 15, the color TV camera was mounted on the Rover and showed all of the work the astronauts did as they ventured far afield from the Falcon. We got to visit all of the exotic places with them. It was a great front-row seat for the mission!

The last treat for this mission from the Moon's surface was watching the crew blasting off and returning to orbit, thanks to the TV camera mounted on the Rover and parked several hundred feet behind the Lunar Module.

I have many, many badges, patches, and the like for Apollo 15, but I wanted to show something a little different. At the top of this post is a ceramic "launch team" commemorative plaque, issued to Hal and Mary Shelton. Hal was a cartographer and employee of the US Geological Survey. Hal Shelton (1916-2004) is best remembered as a pioneer in producing natural-color relief maps, which were very similar to what a pilot or astronaut would see from on high.

At left is a commemorative display from Dow-Corning, celebrating the use of Fiberglas in the Apollo 15 mission. The acrylic item encapsulates a Beta-cloth Apollo 15 patch, as well as a miniature representation of the Lunar Rover.

An Apollo 11 Beta cloth patch

2009-07-21T12:00:00.004-04:00

Shown here is a commemorative "patch" printed on Beta cloth, the fireproof Fiberglas material used to make the outer layer of the Apollo space suits. This patch was produced by Dow-Corning in celebration of its role in the Apollo 11 mission. Instead of the usual 4-inch diameter emblem, this one is 8 inches across. The piece of Beta cloth it's printed on (not all of which is shown here) is nearly 12 inches by 18 inches!

I had the item signed at Spacefest this year. Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin signed for the crew. The two other signatures are from two other Apollo astronauts who were CAPCOM (capsule communicators) for the mission. Charlie Duke (later LMP on Apollo 16) was CAPCOM during the landing, and added his famous, "We copy you down, Eagle!" This made Duke the first human to talk to a astronauts on another heavenly body.

Bruce McCandless II, who never flew on Apollo but later was the first person to fly untethered in space, was CAPCOM during the Moon walk. He inscribed, "Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now," which he said just after the TV camera was turned on and Armstrong was descending to the lunar surface. McCandless became the first person to talk to someone standing on another heavenly body.

Monitoring Apollo 11

2009-07-18T15:20:00.007-04:00

Perhaps the only people on Earth watching Apollo 11 more intently than me were the NASA folks in Launch Control and Mission Control. (Okay, I'll admit that perhaps that this is a slight exaggeration.) As glued as I was to my TV set, I was just an amateur. These folks were paid to stare at their screens, bite their nails, and chain smoke their way through the mission..

The Firing Room at Launch Complex 39, in a building adjacent to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, was responsible for all operations from prior to launch until the vehicle rose completely above the launch tower, about 7 seconds after liftoff. The Firing Room staff controlled the preparation and execution of the launch sequence. The Firing Room staff also monitored all of the status readouts for the immense Saturn V rocket and the systems aboard the Apollo spacecraft, which was at the time the most complex machine ever built.

At the back of the Firing Room was a small glass-in enclosure known as the Operations Management Room. The team that worked in this area supervised the Firing Room and made the executive decisions. This is also where the VIPs (NASA brass like Werner von Braun) observed the launch. The red stripe on this badge indicates a security clearance for its bearer.

When the vehicle cleared the launch tower, control transferred to the famed Mission Operation Control Room (MOCR) was located, on the third floor of Bldg 30 (Mission Control Center, or MCC) at the Manned Spaceflight Center, now the Johnson Spaceflight Center, in Houston. The remainder of the mission, through splashdown, was run from this room. The badge shown at left was issued to Edward Pavelka, who supervised the Flight Dynamics Officer (FIDO) team for Apollo 11.

Other NASA Centers played a vital role in the Apollo 11 mission. For example, Goddard Spaceflight Center (GSFC), in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, provided computer support and radar tracking of the flight through a network of ground-based sites. The colorful badge at left was issued to a GSFC employee for Apollo 11.

And, of course, contractors got their own badges, too. The example at the bottom of this blog was issued to George Faenza, a McDonnell Douglas employee who oversaw Apollo/Saturn testing during the Apollo era.

As a 12 year old boy during the mission, my role was to have my models of the Saturn V and the LM constantly at the ready in front of the TV, in case there was an urgent need to act out some portion of the mission as a critical event occurred. No one issued me a badge, but I belonged to that program!

July 1969: Moon Fever!!

2009-07-14T17:04:00.010-04:00

In July 1969, the eyes of the world turned to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as we waited for the launch of Apollo 11.

NASA invited dignitaries and media representatives from around the world, and they gathered by the thousands. Even the most jaded person knew that this was not "just another launch" - this was a key landmark of human history, and everyone wanted to be there.

Those fortunate enough to be attending as invited guests received badges that would eventually become collector's items (for people like yours truly). In addition to the "Official Guest" badge, there was a more colorful VIP launch badge which is more commonly seen. A sample of this badge, which displays the mission patch, is shown at left.

The tens of thousands of people who gathered along the highways lining the Cape had to content themselves with unofficial, but nonetheless cherished, mementos of the occasion, such as the "Launch Witness Certificate" shown below. Everyone wanted to be able to prove "I was there!"

Thanks to worldwide, live TV (which wasn't even technologically possible a mere 7 years earlier in the decade!), people around the world were able to share in the event. We all watched as the countdown clock click inexorably downward. The final two minutes seemed interminable to me, yet the steps of launch sequence began happening so quickly that Public Affairs Officer (PAO) Jack King, the "Voice of NASA Launch Control," could barely keep up. I held my breath...

PAO: T minus 60 seconds and counting. We have passed T minus 60. 55 seconds and counting. Neil Armstrong just reported back: "It's been a real smooth countdown". We've passed the 50-second mark. Power transfer is complete - we're on internal power with the launch vehicle at this time. 40 seconds away from the Apollo 11 lift-off. All the second stage tanks now pressurized. 35 seconds and counting. We are still Go with Apollo 11. 30 seconds and counting. Astronauts report, "It feels good". T minus 25 seconds.

PAO: Twenty seconds and counting. T minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal. 12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence starts...6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero, all engine running, LIFT-OFF! We have a lift-off, 32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off on Apollo 11!

Apollo Saturn 203 - another test on the road to the Moon

2009-07-07T22:30:00.002-04:00

On July 5, 1966, NASA launched Apollo Saturn 203. It was the 6th launch of a Saturn vehicle in preparation for the eventual flight of manned Apollo spacecraft.

Apollo Saturn 203 (also sometimes informally called Apollo 2) provided the first flight test of restarting the S-IVB upper stage in orbit. This was a key requirement for manned flights to the Moon. The S-IVB was the third stage of the Saturn V rocket. It would first be used to put the Apollo spacecraft into orbit around the Earth while systems were checked out. After everything was confirmed to be okay, the S-IVB would fire again to send the spacecraft en route to the Moon. This was one of the first rocket stages to use liquid hydrogen as fuel. Engineers weren't entirely sure how liquid hydrogen would behave in the fuel tank in weightlessness, so the fuel tank was heavily instrumented for this flight.

Apollo Saturn 203 launched without an Apollo capsule on top, so its blunted nose looked quite unusual compared to subsequent Apollo flights. The liquid hydrogen fuel behaved as predicted in orbit, and the engine was successfully restarted. The S-IVB was certified as operational and ready to be used with a manned vehicle.

Another milestone was passed that would lead to landing men on the Moon just three years later.

Launching Apollo

2009-07-01T23:19:00.005-04:00

I recently acquired three control and indicator panels that were in the Firing Rooms of the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center during the Apollo era.

Two of these panels are for the S-IB, the first stage of the rocket that was used to launch Apollo 7, the Skylab crews, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). The panel at the top of this entry is the "S-IB Networks" control panel. It monitored the state of the electrical power transfer between the various stages of the Saturn rocket. Interestingly, this panel also includes switches for simulation as well as ignition. The stickers on the gauges at the top of the panel indicate its certification for use with the ASTP.

The panel at left is an "S-IB Operations" panel. It is composed strictly of indicator lights, but it has some very interesting ones, including "IGNITION," "ALL ENGINES RUNNING," and "LIFTOFF." I have already begun cleaning the plastic inserts over the indicator lights, getting rid of 40 years of accumulated gunk.

The third panel is for the S-IC, the first stage of the Saturn V rocket that launched the missions to the Moon, as well as Apollo 9 and the Skylab orbital workshop. This "S-IC Control and Purge" panel dealt with venting the oxygen that boiled off from the LOX tanks in the S-IC after the initial fueling of the vehicle several hours before liftoff.

When I was a kid, I used the top of a washing machine as a control panel and view screen when I played "Star Trek" with my friends. (The timer knob and start button were the only switches available, and we would open the lid to expose the 'view screen' - cutout pictures of the Enterprise and other vessels!) I'm tremendously excited about bringing these actual launch control panels into my life, as they were critical parts of the ground support equipment that made the Apollo program possible. It's quite a step up from the top of a washing machine!!

I'll be updating this blog regularly with my progress in researching and restoring these panels. Stay tuned.

Renovation of LM-2

2009-06-26T22:18:00.005-04:00

The Lunar Module that is currently on display at the National Air and Space Museum is undergoing renovation. (See this article in Smithsonian online.)

The Smithsonian houses LM-2, the second Lunar Module built by Grumman. It was originally intended to fly in space as an unmanned test vehicle. However, the flight of LM-1 on Apollo 5 was so successful that NASA determined it was not necessary to fly LM-2. LM-2 was used for "drop tests" on Earth, to see how much stress the vehicle could take in simulated landings. As I posted in a blog entry last year, my dad actually saw the LM-2 ascent stage wrapped in plastic at the Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston in August, 1969.

After the flight of Apollo 11, NASA donated LM-2 to the Smithsonian. It went on display at what was then the Air and Space Museum, in the Arts and Industries Building, in late 1970 or early 1971. Here's how the LM looked in its old housing, in a photo I took in June 1971 - certainly seeming to me to be a jarring juxtaposition of 1880's architecture and the height of modern technology.

As mentioned in my blog entry earlier this week, I did some research for a Smithsonian curator in May 1971. When I gave him the results of the research, I asked him, "Can you recommend me for a job?" That took him aback! Here I was, a teenager, asking for a job at the Smithsonian! He told me that the only positions they had were for volunteer tour guides, which of course is exactly what I wanted. He recommended me to the docent coordinator, even though I was several years younger than the usual requirements (rising high school seniors).

Shortly after I began working as a tour guide, a curator made some adjustments to LM-2 to improve its display. Part of his work involved cutting off a small strip of the Kapton foil, the aluminized Mylar that covered the descent stage. Several of the other docents and I got small pieces of that Kapton foil from him. I kept it for several years in the same frame as my photo of Neil Armstrong.

In the current renovation of LM-2, the Smithsonian is removing all of the original Kapton from the Lunar Module and replacing it with something that I assume is equivalent but in better shape. I'm happy to have my little piece of history as a souvenir of my working "up close and personal" with this Lunar Module!

Our new Lunar Orbiters

2009-06-23T21:05:00.003-04:00

Two new US space probes, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS, entered orbit around the Moon today. These are the first US Moon probes since Clementine, which studied the Moon in the mid-1990's, and they will certainly entail our most detailed study of the Moon since Apollo.

To pave the way for Apollo, the US sent five appropriately named satellites (Lunar Orbiters I through V) into orbit around the Moon from August 1966 to August 1967. The Lunar Orbiters photographed the potential Apollo landing sites in high resolution, mapped more than 90% of the lunar surface at medium resolution, and discovered the "mascons" (mass concentrations) which cause the Moon's gravitational pull to be stronger in some spots. Combined with the data from the Ranger crash-landers and the Surveyor soft-landers, the US gained the information that it needed to send astronauts to orbit and land on the Moon.

The book illustrated above is NASA Publication SP-200, "The Moon as Viewed by Lunar Orbiter," from 1970. This is actually the oldest item in my collection which I bought with my own money. When I was in 8th grade, I was introduced to a curator from the Smithsonian, who had several poster-size Lunar Orbiter photographs that he could not identify. I offered to find out what they were for him. The only resource I was aware of was this recently-published book that I had seen at the public affairs office at NASA Headquarters. It cost $10, which was a lot of money to a kid who was only getting a $1.00 per week allowance. My dad suggested that to earn the money for the book, I should saw up a large tree that had fallen in our backyard. Much to his surprise (I was, after all, a bookish, overweight, nerd who was not predisposed to anything resembling physical labor), I took our bow saw and cut up the 40-ft. tree in one afternoon.

I was very pleased to have a real, official NASA publication of my very own. I spent a lot of time studying the photos. Perhaps the best part of the book was the four pages of 3-D anaglyphs. The book came with a set of red-blue glasses for the 3-D photos. The photo of the crater Tycho was particularly eye-popping!

I am pleased now that I can share in the images from LRO and LCROSS in real-time. In addition, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is applying modern image processing techniques to the original Lunar Orbiter data tapes, with astonishing results. All this , without my having to get out of my comfy chair, and without having to saw up trees!

Flight of the Seagull

2009-06-16T10:46:00.002-04:00

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space on June 16, 1963. Vostok 6, with the call sign Seagull, carried Tereshkova for 48 orbits of the Earth over the course of 3 days.

It was only recently revealed (in the last 5 years) that Tereshkova experienced some serious problems during her flight. An error in the onboard computer programming caused her ship to go into a higher orbit rather than descending as intended. She was able to reprogram the computer with data called up from the ground, and she re-entered safely. After she ejected from the capsule just before landing (as the early cosmonauts did), high winds nearly blew her into a nearby lake.

Her flight was another propaganda victory for the USSR in the early space race, ostensibly illustrating the equality of the sexes in Soviet society. However, it would be more than 19 years before the Soviets launched another woman into space. Only three female cosmonauts have flown in the entire history of the Russian space program, while the US has flown more than 40 female astronauts during the Space Shuttle era.

Remembering Deke Slayton

2009-06-14T21:34:00.006-04:00

Donald K. "Deke" Slayton died 16 years ago this past week. He was, to me, the least familiar of the original Mercury astronauts. As mentioned in a prior post, his paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, which was discovered after he was named to the Mercury program, grounded him for more than a decade. He was in line to fly next after John Glenn but was taken off the rolls once his heart condition became apparent.

Deke was a fighter, first and foremost. Even after he was grounded, he vowed to stay involved in the space program however he could, hoping that someday he would be allowed to go into space. He volunteered to head the Astronaut Office at the Manned Spaceflight Center, and as such, he was the person who made the recommendations about who would fly and who would not. He is generally credited with establishing the crew rotation system, where a crew would act as backup on one mission, and then be assigned as the prime crew three missions later.

According to the book "Moon Shot," by Jay Barbree and Howard Benedict (although ostensibly written by Alan Shepard and Slayton, who actually died before the book was published), Slayton took megadoses of vitamins and was somehow able to eliminate all symptoms of his atril fibrillation. [I haven't tried that for my symptoms - maybe it's worth a shot!] The NASA flight surgeons certified him as fit to fly, and he pushed for a spot on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Trying to pull seniority, he insisted on commanding the mission, but higher authority ruled in favor of the much more experienced Tom Stafford to be Commander. Slayton decided not to press the issue, deciding to be satisfied with having a seat on the mission at all. The pin shown at left was one of Slayton's commemorative lapel pins from the mission.

This last item is one of the more unusual in my collection. It's Slayton's International Certificate of Vaccination from 1982. I picked it up -- accidentally -- at the first live online auction in which I participated.

One wonders how the thread of US manned spaceflight would have spun out in Gemini and Apollo had Slayton not been so influential behind the scenes. He was a tough boss, but generally fair. He would also fight for his fellow astronauts against political pressure - not always successfully, but the astronaut corps knew he was on their side.

A birthday shout out to Jim McDivitt

2009-06-09T23:33:00.003-04:00

Yet another of the early astronauts reaches his 80th birthday on June 10, as hard as it is to believe. Jim McDivitt, who was the Commander of Gemini IV and Apollo 9 has reached this milestone.

McDivitt was "at the stick" when Ed White took his famous spacewalk on Gemini IV. When I met McDivitt at Spacefest this year, I told him that I always thought it unfair that he didn't get EVA credit. At the same time that White was outside the capsule, the door was open and McDivitt was exposed to hard vacuum just as much as White was - he just wasn't standing up in his seat or leaving the confines of the ship. Nowadays, on Space Shuttle and Space Station missions, the start of an EVA is counted from the time when the hatch is opened, even before the astronauts have ventured outside. By that definition, in my humble opinion, McDivitt could have gotten EVA credit both for Gemini IV and Apollo 9! He said he agreed with me but it wasn't worth arguing with anyone about!

McDivitt had the most infectious laugh of anyone I have met. Even though he didn't know me from Adam, he pulled me right away into some hilarious stories about NASA in the good ol' days and some of the characters that he used to work with. I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him over the weekend at Spacefest!

Happy birthday, General, and many many more --

Happy birthday, Bruce McCandless

2009-06-08T23:55:00.004-04:00

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II turned 72 on June 8.

McCandless, whose father was a highly-decorated hero in World War II, went to the US Naval Academy. He graduated in 1958, in the same class as John McCain. He flew fighters off of the USS Forrestal and the USS Enterprise, including flights from the latter during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

McCandless was one of the "Original 19", the third group of astronauts selected by NASA, in 1966. He is sometimes called "the first human to speak to a person on another planet," because he was the CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator) during the Apollo 11 moonwalk, when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the Moon. However, it would be 18 years from his selection as an astronaut before McCandless would fly into space himself.

McCandless's big moment came in February 1984, when McCandless flew as a Payload Specialist in Challenger on STS-41B. McCandless flew the first tests of the Manned Maneuvering Unit, which he had helped develop, dating from a prototype that flew inside Skylab. Donning the MMU and releasing his tethers, McCandless became the first human being to fly free from a spacecraft in orbit. He flew several hundred feet away from Challenger and spent four hours as a "human satellite." The photo of him floating free is one of the iconic images of the Space Program.

I enjoyed spending some quiet moments with McCandless during Spacefest in February. He was a quiet and unassuming man yet extremely friendly and eager to discuss his experiences. I asked him about his extraordinary patience, to have waited so long before getting his first flight. He said he had been keeping plenty busy during the intervening years, developing the MMU and providing astronaut input into the development of several important technologies that would come of age in the Shuttle program. He knew that his time would come, so he kept with the program.

All of his friends in the space community wish him a very happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Dave Scott

2009-06-05T22:06:00.006-04:00

Dave Scott, American astronaut, turns 77 on June 6.

Dave's first mission was the ill-fated Gemini VIII mission, which he flew alongside Neil Armstrong. After piloting the world's first on-orbit docking with an unmanned Agena rocket, the spacecraft began to tumble violently. The Gemini capsule undocked and then went into an even faster spin, exceeding one revolution per second. Almost at the point of blacking out, the crew regained control but was forced to make an emergency splashdown near Okinawa.

My family and I lived on Okinawa at the time. I was in 4th grade at an elementary school on the Air Force base in Naha, the port where the crew returned from their journey. Feigning illness, I stayed home from school so I could watch them on TV as they came into port. Unfortunately, the crew were whisked away immediately and I didn't get to see them.

Scott flew next as the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 9, the first test of the Lunar Module. It was as part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of that flight that I got to meet Scott and the rest of the crew at Spacefest in San Diego this year.

Scott's finest hours were as Commander of Apollo 15, in July and August 1971. It was the first extended-stay lunar mission and the first to use the Lunar Rover. I followed that mission intensely, because it was a true adventure - landing in the middle of mountains and a deep valley, and exploring far from the safety of "home base." They broadcast some of the most spectacular TV images I have ever seen.

Just prior to Spacefest, I picked up an interesting "Apollo 15 Descent/Ascent Summary" chart, which detailed the ground track of the Lunar Module Falcon just prior to landing and after liftoff. It also included profiles of the flight, a map of the landing site, and a simulated view out of the Commander's (Scott's) window. I asked Scott to sign it at Spacefest, and he spent a good 5 minutes looking it over and remarking that he had never seen it before. Just above the view from the cockpit, he signed "Flight of the Falcon."

The next night, at the reception prior to the Spacefest banquet, Scott got into line behind me at the bar. I got a chance to buy a drink for one of my boyhood heroes. It doesn't get any better than that!

America catches up with the Russians

2009-06-03T15:03:00.005-04:00

June 3, 1965 was the date on which the Americans caught up with the Soviet Union, in terms of proving the nation's capabilities in manned spaceflight. Ed White II became the first American to "walk" in space, less than 3 months after Alexei Leonov performed a similar feat.

The Soviets trumped the Americans in many important "firsts" during the early years of the space race. It was frustrating for me as a kid - of course I knew that we Americans were superior but we always seemed to be getting beat. I can only imagine how infuriating it was to America's adults, and to the Government, Department of Defense, and NASA in particular.

Ed White's EVA in Gemini IV brought us up to par on all of the important technical capabilities that the Russians had demonstrated. From that date forward, the US clearly became the leader in the race to the Moon, as we publicly tried out complex techniques in orbit change, rendezvous, docking, and performing useful construction tasks outside of the spacecraft that would be needed to execute a successful lunar mission.

There were no cameras on board the Gemini IV capsule, so we couldn't watch the spacewalk live. I clearly remember listening to it on TV. I don't recall if it was being broadcast live, or if I listened to a replay at a later time. I do remember that this was on an afternoon when we lived in North Carolina, and the spacewalk did occur in the afternoon Eastern Daylight Time, so perhaps it may have been a live news broadcast.

The photos that we saw in Life magazine a week later, after Gemini IV returned from orbit, were incredible. Unaccustomed to the strange sight of someone outside of a space capsule, it was sometimes hard for me to tell exactly what I was looking at. The tether and nitrogen jet gun were strangely alien. I remember being particularly intrigued by the blackness of space as reflected in Ed White's visor...how eerie! Where was his face? But I knew from these photos that my concept of spaceflight would never be the same again.

"If you can't be good, be colorful"

2009-06-02T20:13:00.006-04:00

Charles "Pete" Conrad, astronaut extraordinaire, would have been 79 years old today. The title of today's blog was Pete's personal motto. He was nothing if not colorful -- and he was very good, too.

I first heard of Pete when he flew Gemini V with Gordon Cooper in August 1965. Gemini V had an ambitious goal of "eight days or bust" in Earth orbit. That mission, the equivalent time for a trip to the Moon and back, nearly doubled the cumulative total of America's total time in space to date. Pete later commanded the Gemini XI mission with Dick Gordon as Pilot.

Pete and Dick flew together on Apollo 12, joined by Alan Bean. They had the most harrowing launch of the Apollo program, when their Saturn V was struck by lightning just after liftoff. The lightning strike scrambled all of the Apollo capsule's instruments. Luckily, the rocket - which was still accelerating - had its own guidance system which was unaffected by the power surge. Conrad had nerves of steel and was not about to abort the mission unless things became hopeless. A quick-thinking technician in Mission Control suggested a fix that enabled the mission to continue. I remember watching the liftoff from a small TV in my 8th grade shop (industrial arts) class when I was in middle school. I couldn't believe they let the mission continue after that lightning strike!

Pete flew his Lunar Module Intrepid to a pinpoint landing 3 days later. Pete's first words upon becoming the third man to walk on the Moon were, "Whoopee!! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that was a long one for me!" We were disappointed that the Apollo TV picture tube burned out, but I enjoyed listening to the audio broadcast of both moonwalks nonetheless. Pete's and Al's descriptions were very vivid ("colorful" comes back to mind again as the perfect word), and they seemed to be having an incredibly good time as they went about their tasks. I dearly wished I could have seen them working at the Surveyor 3 lander in the last half of their second spacewalk.

Pete's outstanding work as commander of the first Skylab crew was noted in my post last week. After retiring from NASA in 1973, Pete worked for several NASA contractors, including McDonnell Douglas and Martin Marietta. At Martin, Pete was a consultant on the "Large Space Telescope" project, which eventually became known as The Hubble Space Telescope.

Pete was motorcycling with friends in Ojai, California, in July 1999 when his motorcycle skidded off the road. He seemed to be fine after the crash, but he died of internal bleeding 6 hours later. His death was a real shock to all of us who had followed his exploits over the years. I deeply regret that I never had a chance to meet him and thank him for all the good times he gave me.

Keeping the rain and critters out

2009-05-29T21:20:00.007-04:00

The spate of rain showers and thunderstorms we have been enduring here in the Washington DC area this past month makes me think of weather-proofing. In particular, I am reminded of the challenge of keeping rain, insects, and other critters out of the many external apertures in the Space Shuttle in times when it is exposed to the elements.

This is not a trivial problem in an area with such abundant fauna as coastal Florida. Whilst on the launchpad, the Shuttle has been attacked by woodpeckers, necessitating a return to the Vehicle Assembly Building to repair the External Tank's insulation. A bat clung tenaciously to the External Tank during a recent launch.

The device shown above is a ground cover for the one of the 'Aft 3' vernier motors that form part of the Space Shuttle Reaction Control System (RCS). The RCS is comprised of the relatively small engines that fire to help the Space Shuttle make small attitude and translation changes in space. Once the Space Shuttle is back on the ground, the servicing crews place covers like this one over all of the exposed engine openings.

This cover is about 13 inches in diameter and it is about 15 inches deep. Once the cover is placed over the engine aperture, the technician pushes to the side the lever that's in the center of the cover (as seen at left in the illustration). Moving this lever causes the end of the shaft (the black rubberized part shown near the center of this picture) to expand and firmly clamp within the throat of the vernier engine. (I don't know about you, but I get excited just writing about it!) Anyway, this locks the cover firmly into place over the engine. The cover is removed once the Shuttle is inside the Orbiter Processing Facility. It is eventually replaced by a paper covering which burns off or ruptures when the Shuttle launches.

The illustration below shows Discovery being towed out of the Orbiter Processing Facility en route to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Near the base of the tail I have drawn in an arrow pointing to the Aft 3 vernier motors at the top of the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) Pod. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see that the red engine covers for the other small thrusters along the side and bottom of the OMS Pod have been replaced by white covers.

Pete Conrad and crew to the rescue!

2009-05-27T19:41:00.009-04:00

Skylab, America's first space station, was launched on May 14, 1973. It rode the last Saturn V in NASA's inventory, one which was originally intended for a canceled Moon landing. Less than a minute after launch, as the vehicle broke through the sound barrier and the zone of maximum dynamic pressure, the meteoroid shielding on the lab tore off, taking with it one of the station's two primary solar panels and jamming the other one.

As soon as Skylab reached orbit, controllers knew that something was seriously wrong. Temperatures inside the lab began to rise far outside normal ranges, eventually getting as high as 140 degrees F. There was also no power to the lab other than what was coming via the solar panels on the Apollo Telescope Mount.

I watched the launch on TV and I remember clearly the "oh no" reaction when we heard that Skylab might never be occupied because of the power and temperature problems. Pete Conrad, Commander of the first Skylab mission, and his crew of Paul Weitz and Joe Kerwin, were to have launched the next day. Their launch was scrubbed while NASA determined how to repair the station. Timing was of the essence - if NASA waited too long, the intense heat inside the lab would eventually melt the plastic and render the station uninhabitable.

In what had to be the most intensive spacecraft rescue mission ever undertaken, in less than 10 days NASA designed and built -- and trained the crew to use -- a "parasol" that could be deployed via a small airlock on the side of the station and which would bring the station's temperature back to livable levels. NASA also loaded the Apollo spacecraft with several tools that the crew could use to try to free the stuck solar panel.

The daring tactics of Conrad and crew are almost unthinkable in today's environment. Before docking with the station, Conrad maneuvered the CM close to the stuck solar panel so that Weitz, standing in the CM's open hatch, could try to cut loose the debris that held down the panel. When that didn't work, Conrad then tried to dock with Skylab. The docking mechanism refused to latch on several docking attempts. Conrad backed away and then tried again several times. Maneuvering fuel was running low, and Conrad was given one final chance to try to dock. This time he was told to continue pushing forward for 10 seconds with the CM after the probe had entered the drogue, in hopes that the pressure would cause the latches to fire. This final attempt worked; otherwise, the mission - and Skylab - would have been abandoned. Listening to this on the TV was sheer knuckle-biting tension!

Conrad and crew deployed the parasol successfully, which eventually brought the temperature inside the station down into the mid-80's. Prior to that, the crew were only able to enter the lab for a few minutes at a time without risking dehydration and heat prostration.

Finally, on June 7, 1973, Conrad and Kerwin undertook one of the most dangerous spacewalks ever attempted, to free the stuck solar panel. They worked in an area outside the station that was never meant to be serviced by astronauts, so it had no handholds or railings. They used tethers and their adapted limb pruning tool to get close to the stuck solar panel and eventually snip the metal debris that was holding it in place.

Because of the determination and skill of Conrad and his crew, the Skylab program was a complete success. The lab was occupied by three crews on and off over the next year, and America gained substantial experience in living for extended periods in space.

Aurora 7 and Scott Carpenter

2009-05-23T21:47:00.006-04:00

On May 24, 1962, Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit the Earth, riding Mercury-Atlas 7, which he dubbed Aurora 7. This capsule and launch vehicle were originally intended to be flown by Deke Slayton. However, he was diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation - a heart irregularity which I share - and was barred from flight status. (Had Slayton flown, MA-7 would have been designated Delta 7.)

Carpenter's three-orbit mission was dedicated to scientific experimentation. He concentrated so much of his attention to science and observation that some people (particularly Chris Kraft in Mission Control) felt that he was neglecting flying his spacecraft. A malfunction in the attitude control system caused the spacecraft to expend much more fuel than planned, requiring Carpenter to go into free-drift mode. He had to align the capsule manually for retro fire. Again, some say that Carpenter was overly distracted by Earth observation, which caused him to mis-time retro fire and subsequently land hundreds of miles off target. Others say that the malfunctioning system required Carpenter to intervene manually, which made the retros fire later than the sequencer should have fired them, and also which caused them to fire in a less than ideal sequence.

Aurora 7's flight was considered a technical and scientific success. It paved the way for Wally Schirra to attempt a six-orbit flight in the next Mercury mission. However, Kraft was so furious about the missed landing and other glitches that Carpenter was essentially blacklisted from flying again. Carpenter permanently injured his arm in a motorcycle accident several years later, which made him unqualified to fly as an astronaut.

Carpenter, who was a Navy pilot before joining NASA, returned to the sea as an "aquanaut" in the Navy's Sealab program. He made a 28-day extended underwater mission in 1965 in Sealab II. There is a hilarious recording available of a call from President Johnson to Carpenter in Sealab. Unbeknownst to Johnson, Carpenter was in a decompression chamber, breathing an atmosphere in which nitrogen was replaced with helium, to prevent the bends. Carpenter's voice therefore sounds as high-pitched as would be the case for anyone inhaling helium from a balloon. In th is recording, you can vividly picture the look of bewilderment that must have been on Johnson's face as he read his prepared remarks to Carpenter.

Pictured at left is a photo I took of Carpenter in February 2009 at Spacefest, talking to Jim McDivitt.

Joe Engle and the X-15

2009-05-22T09:28:00.006-04:00

I had the pleasure of attending Joe Engle's lecture at the National Air and Space Museum last night. Engle spoke on the X-15's role in expanding our understanding of hypersonic and high-altitude flight.

I was fascinated by the X-15 when I was a kid and the program was in full swing in the early 1960's. For my money, there was never another aircraft or spacecraft that embodied pure speed. Sure, it was technically an aircraft, but let's face it - this was a rocket with wings!

As a kid, I focused on the X-15's altitude and speed records. What I was not aware of was how important a role the X-15 played in the evolution of the Space Shuttle in unpowered flight. Engle put up a chart that showed how similarly the X-15 and the Space Shuttle behaved in their approach and landing characteristics, without engine power. One of the key lessons from the X-15 program was energy management - how to bleed off speed while the aircraft drops like a rock, set up an approach, and make a precision landing at about 200 mph.

Engle had some great stories, too. My favorite was his discussion about how the cockpit windows would occasionally "glaze" - the expansion of the airframe from frictional heating would sometimes shatter one of the two windows. In such a situation, the pilot would set up an approach where he would look out the other window. If both windows were to glaze, the planned procedure was that the chase plane would talk the pilot down to a safe altitude, at which time he would jettison the canopy. Engle said he lived in hope of this happening to him on one of the flights. He even carried a silk scarf in his pocket to tie around his neck. He thought it would be great to come back from a hypersonic flight in an open cockpit, wearing his silver space suit with a scarf blowing in the wind!

Engle graciously signed autographs after the lecture. I was able to complete my crew signatures on the 2TV-1 Beta cloth patch shown in the previous post about Vance Brand. I can't imagine a starker contrast than what Engle must have felt between the short hypersonic X-15 flights and being Earthbound for 8 days sealed in a vacuum chamber!

Apollo 10 Flight Dynamics

2009-05-19T20:09:00.003-04:00

The Flight Dynamics Officer - called the FDO or more commonly "FIDO" - is the person in Mission Control charged with determining the appropriate flight paths and maneuvers for a space vehicle, in orbit and to and from the Moon. FIDO was one of the four positions in "The Trench," the first row of consoles in Mission Control.

Ed Pavelka, whose Apollo 10 Mission Control Access badge is shown at left, was a FIDO during the Gemini era, then moved up to a supervisory position during the Apollo program. He trained and oversaw the FIDOs who manned the station during the Apollo trips to the Moon. Pavelka was also responsible for "Captain REFSMMAT" - whose story will be told another time.

People who didn't have the luxury (or pressure) of being in The Trench during the mission could also follow the key guidance and trajectory events with devices such as the Raytheon "Mission Analyzer." This multi-wheeled slide rule allowed one to see the events happening at a given point in the mission by dialing in the date and time in question.

Apollo 10 to the Moon!!

2009-05-18T16:39:00.006-04:00

On May 18, 1969, Apollo 10 lifted off for the Moon, on what was the final "all-up" test of the Apollo mission hardware and flight procedures prior to the first attempt at a lunar landing. Given the critical importance of this mission, NASA selected an all-veteran crew to fly Apollo 10. Tom Stafford commanded the mission, John Young piloted the Command Module, and Gene Cernan was the LM Pilot.

Apollo 10 was an extremely exciting mission. This was America's second trip to the Moon, and we keenly experienced a sense of anticipation for this flight. The LM had performed flawlessly in Earth orbit on Apollo 9, but the risks seemed exponentially higher on this mission. What if something happened when the two craft were separated on the far side of the Moon?

There was also endless speculation in the press as to whether Stafford and Cernan would violate orders and try to fly the last 50,000 feet to the lunar surface. The press said that NASA had given the LM less fuel than it needed for the landing in order to preclude such a possibility. That of course was nonsense. Stafford would never have done anything that he hadn't trained for or that was outside of the flight plan. And the actual reason that the LM didn't have enough fuel to land was because this LM was overweight and couldn't have possibly carried enough fuel to support a landing. But it all made for great "What if?" conversation. That the crew dubbed the Command Module "Charlie Brown" and the LM "Snoopy" also added to the mission's popular appeal. We all knew that the success of this flight meant that we would try for a lunar landing in the summer.

The document at right is an official invitation to the Apollo 10 launch, extended to Mae Burke. Ms. Burke, call sign W3CUL, of Seminole, Florida, was a renowned amateur radio operator who provided invaluable service in establishing radio contact between servicemen overseas and their families back in America. At the time she earned an Edison Award, she had handled some 312,000 messages between 1949 and 1957. She earned a historic record of traffic handling honors over her lifetime handling overseas traffic for US service personnel, MARS, Red Cross and other emergency messages during the Korean, Vietnam and Cold War eras.

Also shown at left is a VIP guest badge for the viewing stands.

Who's the best pilot you ever saw?

2009-05-16T12:11:00.008-04:00

If you answered "Gordon Cooper," then you obviously have The Right Stuff.

Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper's record-breaking spaceflight happened 46 years ago, on May 15 and 16, 1963. He made 22 orbits of the Earth in Mercury-Atlas 9, which he christened "Faith 7." During a flight that stretched over a day and a half, he became the first American to go to sleep in space. He also dealt with a plethora of issues, as the systems on his Mercury spacecraft, which were not designed for long-duration flight, began to break down.

These access badges are the only Mercury-era badges in my collection. The one shown at left granted the bearer access to the Engineering and Operations Building, which was adjacent to Hangar AE in the NASA area at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. These buildings were renovated and now house operations related to NASA's Expendable Launch Vehicle program.

The other badge does not designate a level of access. However, the "22" indicates the targeted number of orbits for the mission.

Cooper's mission was considered a complete success. There was one Mercury spacecraft remaining, which Alan Shepard had hoped to fly - and had already dubbed Freedom 7 II. However, NASA decided to terminate the Mercury program and concentrate its efforts on Gemini and Apollo. Following Cooper's mission, it would be 22 months before the next Americans went into space.

Happy Birthday, Vance Brand

2009-05-09T11:23:00.003-04:00

Apollo-Soyuz pilot Vance Brand is 78 years young today. Jane and I had the pleasure of sitting at Vance and Bev's table at dinner at Spacefest in February this year. Someone said after Spacefest that they thought that Vance and Bev were the kind of people you would want to have as your next-door neighbors, and I certainly share that assessment. They were charming and very down-to-Earth folks!

After being selected as an astronaut in 1966, Vance's first "mission" was 2TV-1, an Earthbound simulation of a full-length Apollo mission, with the Command Module sealed inside a vacuum chamber for 8 days. I asked him if boredom was a problem during that time locked in a small capsule. He said that the real problem was that the 1-G toilet that had been installed in the capsule overflowed several days into the mission!

Vance served as backup Command Module Pilot for Apollo 15, and as backup Commander for Skylabs 3 and 4. When problems developed on the Skylab 3 spacecraft, he was pressed into service as Commander for the Skylab Rescue Mission, which ended up never flying. He eventually made it into space as CMP for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the last Apollo mission. He subsequently commanded three Space Shuttle missions. On STS-35 in 1990, Vance was at age 59 the oldest person to fly in space, a record which was broken by John Glenn in 1998.

Here's to John Glenn

2009-05-03T14:43:00.004-04:00

Two friends of mine are having lunch with John and Annie Glenn tomorrow - at the Glenns' invitation!! While trying desperately not to be overwhelmed with envy, I thought I would put up this photo of something from my collection in the Senator's honor.

I meant to wear this button at Spacefest but forgot to take it with me. It's definitely going with me to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation's Astronaut Autograph and Memorabilia Show in November!

Whilst awaiting delivery of my tasty quad venti skim latte at Starbucks this morning prior to church, a man walked up to me and asked if I had ever been involved with the Space Station Freedom program. I told him that I had, in 1987-1989. He said that sounded like the right time frame. He said he was from JPL and he knew he recognized me from then. He then said, "You were Chris Kraft's replacement at Johnson Space Center, right?" That's where I had to say "no." He said that I am a dead ringer for the fellow that stepped in for Kraft after Kraft retired in 1982, when it was announced that the Space Station program would be managed in the Washington, DC area.

Staking my claim to lunar real estate

2009-04-25T23:04:00.006-04:00

On April 27, 1972, when I was in high school, I purchased from Lunar Services Corporation of Alexandria, Virginia, a deed to a small portion of lunar real estate near the crater Agrippa, for the grand total of $5.00. The purchase was documented with the quitclaim deed shown in this post, as well as several lunar maps.

I would have been surprised in 1972 to hear that it may be 50 years before anyone goes back to the Moon. I guess my chances of putting my own feet on "my property" are pretty slim. I'm especially upset that Lunar Services Corporation is apparently no longer around to help me assert my claim!

Project Highwater

2009-04-24T10:57:00.007-04:00

On April 25, 1962, the United States launched the second Saturn rocket into space. The suborbital flight was both a test of the booster as well as an interesting scientific experiment.

The Saturn-Apollo 2 vehicle had a standard S-IB first stage. The upper two stages were dummies ("battleships," in rocket parlance) filled with 95 tons of water. When the first stage cut off at about 65 miles altitude, the upper stages were detonated, and the water was released into the upper atmosphere. Rapidly-expanding ice clouds formed, and lightning-like static discharges were observed from the ground. The cloud continued moving upward to a height of about 100 miles.

Investigators were interested in examining the effects of a sudden discharge of liquid into the upper atmosphere (such as would happen if a rocket exploded at high altitude). They also tested the effects on radio transmissions from such a disturbance in the ionosphere.

On the Moon with Apollo 16

2009-04-22T14:33:00.002-04:00

Apollo 16 landed in the Descartes Highlands of the Moon on April 21, 1972. John Young and Charlie Duke spent three days exploring the craters and mountains around their landing site.

This was another landing that almost didn't happen. After the Lunar Module Orion separated from the Command Module Casper, Ken Mattingly had difficulty with the backup system for steering the Service Module's main engine. This could have affected the crew's ability to return to Earth. The landing was delayed, and Orion and Casper flew in formation for 6 hours, until Mission Control assured the crew that everything was ok.

One of the most uncomfortable situations for the crew resulted from potassium supplements which had been added to their food and orange juice. Flight surgeons believed that the heart problems experienced by Apollo 15 moonwalkers Dave Scott and Jim Irwin were attributable to loss of potassium, so they added large doses of the mineral and citrus fruit to the Apollo 16 crew's diet. The potassium acted as a laxative, and the crew nearly depleted their supply of fecal bags. John Young was infamously and unknowlingly captured on his open mic talking to Charlie Duke about his reaction to the potassium: "I got the farts again, Charlie...I mean, I haven't eaten this much citrus fruit in 20 years! And I'll tell you one thing, in another 12 f*cking days, I ain't never eating any more."

Farewell Aquarius, and we thank you

2009-04-18T21:45:00.002-04:00

April 17, 1970 saw the crew of Apollo 13 return to Earth after their harrowing journey.

This photo commemorates one of the heroes of Apollo 13, the Lunar Module Aquarius, which helped to bring the crew home safely. Aquarius provided shelter, oxygen, and water, which kept the crew alive, and an engine, which brought the crew home.

The inscriptions on this photo tell a little of Apollo 13's story. First, Jack Lousma, who was the CAPCOM at the time of the accident, communicated to the crew that the Command Module wouldn't be able to keep them alive, saying, "We're starting to think about the LM lifeboat." In the lower right corner, Joe Kerwin, who was CAPCOM at the end of the Apollo 13 voyage, has written what he spoke just after Aquarius was jettisoned and before the Command Module re-entered: "Farewell, Aquarius, and we thank you!"

Two of the crew members, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, would have flown Aquarius to the lunar surface, also inscribed this photo. Lovell has written on this photo, "LM Aquarius, jettisoned 11:43 am EST, 4/17/1970 - She was a good ship!" and Fred Haise added, "Our lifeboat!"

Aquarius was a space vehicle that was pressed into service to do things it was never intended to do - keep 3 crew members alive for 4 days - and did them remarkably well.

Another first to celebrate

2009-04-13T16:16:00.004-04:00

April 12 is a special date in the history of manned spaceflight. As noted in my previous post, it was the date of Yuri Gagarin's launch in 1962. Twenty years later to the day, the Space Shuttle took its first trip into space.

The launch of STS-1 was record setting in many regards - first launch of a winged manned spacecraft, first re-usable spacecraft, first time humans had flown on a booster powered by solid rocket motors, first time a spacecraft had been ridden by people before it had been tested unmanned. John Young, the STS-1 Commander and NASA's most experienced astronaut, was flying his fifth space mission. He was now the first person to have flown in four different types of space vehicles (Gemini, Apollo Command Module, Apollo Lunar Module, and Space Shuttle).

Since the Shuttle had never been launched into space before, there was a tremendous number of unknowns about how everything would work. After Columbia reached orbit, the crew discovered that several tiles from the heat shield were missing, and no one knew whether this would affect the ability of the craft to survive re-entry. After Columbia successfully returned, engineers discovered that the force of booster ignition had moved the Orbiter's body flap farther than it was designed to move. This could have rendered the craft unable to glide to a landing. Young said that had he been aware of the condition during launch, he probably would have aborted the mission, which would have destroyed Columbia and might well have been the end of the Space Shuttle program.

I watched Columbia's return from the Public Affairs auditorium at NASA Headquarters, which was just up the street from where I worked in Washington, DC. It was a nail-biting experience waiting for the Shuttle to emerge from radio blackout during re-entry! And of course, the crowd assembled in the auditorium erupted into tremendous applause after Columbia touched down at Edwards Air Force Base.

Happy Yuri's Night

2009-04-11T18:34:00.004-04:00

Early in the morning of April 12, 1961, a Vostok spacecraft carrying Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) was launched from the secret Soviet base at Turyatam. Gagarin became the first human in space and the first man in orbit.

For nearly 30 years, the Soviets hid the fact that Gagarin ejected from his spacecraft about 23,000 ft above the ground. For the flight to have been officially declared a spaceflight under FAI rules, Gagarin would have had to land inside the capsule.

Whether this was an "official" flight or not, nothing can detract from Gagarin's heroism in taking this first flight into the unknown. "Yuri's Night" is now celebrated at parties all around the world.

This postcard from 1962 bears the pre-printed signature of Gagarin at bottom, as well as his hand signature along the right-hand side.

Launching Apollo 13

2009-04-10T23:00:00.007-04:00

On April 11, 1970, the US launched what may be (in our day) the Apollo mission that more people have heard about than any others - Apollo 13. Thanks to Ron Howard's film, the words, "Houston, we have a problem" - even though a misquote of Jim Lovell - are just about as famous as Neil Armstrong's words on his first step onto the Moon.

Apollo 13 lifted off from Pad 39A at 13:13 Houston time. The ascent into orbit was far from ordinary. As the second stage pushed the craft toward orbit, violent "pogo" oscillations caused the center engine to cut out 2 minutes early. Had the engine not cut out, the entire vehicle might have been torn apart by vibrations that reached 68 times the force of gravity. The other four engines burned longer to compensate for the loss of thrust, and Apollo 13 eventually achieved a normal orbit.

The crew felt that this brush with danger was their major glitch for the flight. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and thought that things would go smoothly for Apollo 13 from there on out.

The first badge on this post was an access pass for official guests to view the launch. The other two badges gave access to the Firing Room, the headquarters at Kennedy Space Center which is responsible for overseeing the launch of a vehicle. Once the vehicle has "cleared the tower," responsibility for the mission is passed on to Mission Control in Houston.

Prepping for moonwalks that never happened

2009-04-08T21:48:00.005-04:00

On April 9, 1970, the final map of the planned moonwalks for Apollo 13 was distributed for the planning team and crew. This map was based on Lunar Orbiter photography and showed a relatively detailed view of the Fra Mauro highlands, the landing site for Apollo 13.

The map included three sets of potential moonwalks. One was based on the LM touching down at the intended landing site (LM-1, visible near the intersection of the horizontal fold and the rightmost vertical fold). The EVA routes for this option included a visit to the rim of Cone Crater, the large crater at far right in this map. The second and third options were contingencies, in case Aquarius landed "long." Since the crew did not have a lunar rover, visiting Cone Crater would be too far for them to travel on foot. Consequently, there were additional sites for them to visit in the opposite direction, further downrange.

Of course, Apollo 13 never made its landing at Fra Mauro. The site was considered so geologically important, though, that Apollo 14 was targeted to the same landing site. Apollo 14's Antares landed very close to the spot originally chosen for Aquarius to land. Although the Apollo 14 moonwalk plans differed somewhat from those of Apollo 13, the general traverses and locations visited matched very closely with the plans for Apollo 13. Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell got within about 50 feet of the rim of Cone Crater, but the slopes were so gentle that they did not realize they were so close.

The original owner of this map had it postmarked at the Houston Post Office on April 17, 1970, the day Apollo 13 safely returned from its harrowing journey.

45 years since Gemini 1

2009-04-06T10:27:00.006-04:00

On April 8, 1964, the unmanned Gemini 1 was launched. It was the first test of the Gemini-Titan spacecraft and launch vehicle combination. The Titan II was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that was being adapted for use with a manned spacecraft. Gemini 1 carried a load of instrumentation to measure performance and ballast to simulate the weight of two astronauts. There was no intent to recover the spacecraft. Indeed, the heat shield had holes drilled into it to ensure that the vehicle burned up on reentry.

This Mission Control Center badge was issued to G. Merritt Preston, who at the time was Chief of Preflight Operations for Gemini. Shown below are photos from President Kennedy's tour of the Cape in November 1963, one week before he was assassinated. These two photos were taken in front of the actual Gemini 1 spacecraft. The first photo shows, from left: George Low (Chief of Manned Spaceflight), President Kennedy, Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom, and Preston Merritt. The other photo shows a wider view of the dignitaries gathered around Gemini 1.

Badges? We don' need no [more] steenkin badges!

2009-03-28T23:09:00.006-04:00

I enjoy collecting access badges that were issued to people who worked in the early days of the US space program. These simple pieces of paper and plastic granted their bearers access to the inner workings of the launch vehicles, spacecraft, and even to the decisions that made the missions possible.

I began collecting access badges from Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo several years ago. I hit a bonanza this year with the Lunar Legacies auction in March, when I was able to add several missions for which I previously had no access passes. I now have at least one access badge for every manned Gemini and Apollo mission, and for many of the unmanned ones as well. They include passes to the White Room, launch vehicle, Operations Support Room, Flight Readiness Reviews, Launch Readiness Reviews, booster tests, Engineering and Operations Building, Mission Control, and Firing Rooms, as well as press passes, parking passes, vehicle roll-outs, and launch viewing stand passes.

The photo to the left is a collage of all the passes currently in my collection. (Please click the image for a clearer view.) The next challenge is to figure out how best to display them!

I'm also researching the holders of the passes to learn more about them and their work. For example, I have several that were issued to G. Merritt Preston, who was the Branch Chief for all ground facilities at Kennedy Space Center during Gemini and Apollo.

Happy birthday, Jim Irwin

2009-03-17T22:44:00.003-04:00

Happy birthday to Jim Irwin, one of the moonwalkers who I regrettably will never be able to meet.

Irwin's only mission was as the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 15, which landed near Hadley Rille in July 1971. Irwin and Dave Scott were the first mission to use the lunar rover and to take three moonwalks during their stay. The two astronauts exerted themselves so greatly in their final day on the Moon that they were both showing signs of irregular heartbeats after they rendezvoused with the Command Module. [Dave Scott told me at Spacefest that Mission Control was monitoring their hearts, but never actually told the astronauts that they were seeing the irregular heartbeats.] Irwin later suffered two heart attacks, the second of which proved fatal on August 8, 1991.

The photo above is from the pre-launch breakfast for the Apollo 15 crew and their backups. It shows Irwin and Vance Brand, who was the backup Command Module Pilot, obviously having an enjoyable time together.

Also shown is a photo of Irwin on the Moon. For autograph requests, he had copies of this photo printed with the pre-inscribed notation, "His love from the Moon." After leaving NASA in 1972, Irwin founded High Flight, a Christian ministry. Beginning in 1973, he led several expeditions to Mt. Ararat, Turkey, in search of the wreckage of Noah's Ark.

Happy birthday, Alan Bean!

2009-03-15T21:52:00.004-04:00

Apollo 12 Lunar Module Pilot and Skylab 2/3 Commander Alan Bean turns 77 today. Al Bean is perhaps one of the friendliest astronauts you will ever hope to meet. He's a fabulous artist, too.

After getting into the astronaut corps, Bean looked to be on the track to go straight to the Apollo Applications Program (later called Skylab), bypassing the Moon missions. After astronaut C. C. Williams died in an air crash, Bean, his backup, moved into the rotation at the behest of Pete Conrad, who was Bean's instructor at the Naval Flight Test School. Conrad and Bean were perhaps the best matched pair of moonwalkers - at least they had the most fun!

I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Al Bean at Spacefest in February. I asked him if he had ever considered painting scenes from Skylab. His response was fascinating. First, he said, there was a purely technical reason. It normally takes him a month or two to get a scene just right when he paints an Apollo moonwalk picture. With Skylab, since there was so much complicated equipment to be considered, he said he could spend 6 to 8 months before getting the equipment and perspective right. The primary reason for not painting Skylab, though, was the historical significance. He said that in generations to come, the Apollo Moon landings will be all that is remembered about this time in space exploration - not Mercury, Gemini, and certainly not Skylab. Therefore, he said, it was more important for him to be capturing what it was like to be part of Man's first voyages to the Moon.

Happy birthday, Wally Schirra

2009-03-12T08:06:00.004-04:00

Greetings from Pittsburgh, with a big "Happy Birthday" to Wally Schirra, who would have been 86 years young today.

Wally was the only astronaut to fly Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. He was a larger-than-life presence in the nascent space program. His sense of humor was legendary and infectious. He played practical jokes on anybody and everybody. And was he a Turtle? You bet your sweet ass he was!

I got to meet Wally one time, at the National Air and Space Museum on November 3, 2006. Wally was there with Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan to talk about their missions together and what it was like to fly in the early days of the space program. By now, all of his jokes were old and familiar, but it was great to hear him talk about him. Jane had had a crush on him ever since her early childhood. When we met Wally after the talk and shook his hand, I told him that now that Jane had met him, I would never be man enough for her. Wally got a good laugh out of that. So that's my memory of Wally - him laughing at something I said! And I think that's how we all remember him - the man who could be incredibly serious in the spacecraft, but who loved to laugh whenever and wherever possible.

Living history

2009-03-05T14:43:00.005-05:00

Hi from Cairo - I'm still on the road and waiting to get back home to take a breather. I'm finding out all kinds of interesting stuff about what the Internet does when you're abroad. I spent half an hour this evening trying to force the Blogger sign-in screen to appear in English instead of Arabic!

I received this wonderful photo this morning from Mark Usciak, the official Spacefest photographer. I'm just blown away to see myself and my lovely bride in the presence of so much history. Half of the men who walked on the Moon are in this photo with us!

Front row: Scott Carpenter, Gene Cernan, Ed Mitchell, Jane and me, Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Duke, and an unusually glum-looking Dick Gordon. Back row: Al Bean, Hank Hartsfield, Vance Brand, Jack Lousma, Dave Scott, Jim McDivitt, Rusty Schweickart, Mike Collins, Rick Searfoss, and Charlie Walker. Too bad Bruce McCandless was running late, or he would have been in this photo with us too. This still feels too strange to be real!

This week is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 9 mission, including the first flight of the Lunar Module. Mission Commander Jim McDivitt was making his second (and last) space flight; he would go on to become the Apollo Program Manager. Command Module Pilot Dave Scott was also on his second mission, and he would later command the Apollo 15 lunar landing mission. Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart was on his first and only flight. Rusty was one of the first astronauts to get space motion sickness, which hampered his functioning for several days and caused the delay of a planned EVA.

The rumor was that Rusty was grounded after the mission because of his space sickness. At the time, we knew very little about the syndrome, though, and it was later discovered that most astronauts get it to some degree or another. The Mercury and Gemini missions did not have the problem because the astronauts remained confined in their seats for most of the mission. It was only with the ability to move about the more spacious Apollo capsules that astronauts became succeptible to this form of motion sickness.

Back from Spacefest

2009-02-24T23:08:00.002-05:00

Holy moley, I don't know where to start. I was at Spacefest 2009 in San Diego this past weekend. I will endeavor to provide some photos and commentary over the course of the coming week(s). Suffice it to say at the moment that at this conference, I met half of the men who have walked on the Moon - Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Ed Mitchell, Dave Scott, Charlie Duke, and Gene Cernan - in addition to about a dozen other Apollo-era and Space Shuttle astronauts. I spent waaaaaaaaaay more money than I intended to on autographs, but I now have some very cool Apollo-era artifacts that are signed by participants in every lunar landing.

This photo is Jane and me with the crew of Apollo 9, together again for the first time since 1972, in front of their Command Module, "Gumdrop." This was at a reception at the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

More later, I promise... for now, I'm getting ready to go off to Cairo on Thursday...

Prepping for a mission

2009-02-16T20:27:00.004-05:00

Among the artifacts that I have most enjoyed collecting over the years are items that were used by astronauts or mission support teams in the endless planning and practicing that preceded missions.

This training manual belonged to Dave Scott, who later commanded the Apollo 15 mission to Hadley Rille. The manual predates the Apollo 15 training, however. It was issued to Scott in February 1970, before even the Apollo 13 mission. In fact, it was for an "H mission," using the same types of LMs as Apollos 11-14. In these missions, the LM's powered descent started from a 60-mile orbit, and there was no lunar rover. The "J missions," Apollos 15-17, had an extended duration LM, used the lunar rovers, and used the Command/Service Module to take the LM down to 50,000 feet before turning the LM loose to land on its own. Moving down to the lower altitude using the CSM gave the heavier J-mission LMs more fuel for the critical last minutes of landing.

Scott annotated this manual heavily. It's fascinating to see what he chose to concentrate on in learning the techniques for lunar descent. For example, Scott has underlined a section that says, "If the LR [landing radar] altitude data-good signal has not been received by a PGCNS [guidance system] indicated altitude of 10,000 feet, the crew will abort." This is precisely the scenario that was mentioned in my recent post about Apollo 14 [a year after this manual was written], where the lack of landing radar data almost caused the crew to abort the landing, until it was corrected at the last possible moment.

Remembering Stu Roosa

2009-02-08T22:57:00.002-05:00

Apollo 14 returned to Earth on February 9, 1971, steered by Command Module Pilot Stu Roosa.

I hesitated to call this post what I did, because I actually remember very little about Stu Roosa. He was completely overshadowed by the mission commander, Alan Shepard, and also by his crewmate Ed Mitchell, who quickly gained notoriety after the flight by announcing that he had performed ESP experiments during the mission. Roosa did his job competently, with little or no fanfare. He never flew another mission after Apollo 14, although he was backup CMP for Apollo 16 and 17. He was assigned to the Space Shuttle Program after Apollo, but he retired from NASA and the Air Force 5 years before the Shuttle's first flight.

Roosa died of complications from pancreatitis in 1994. He was the fifth of the Apollo astronauts (counting Deke Slayton) to die of natural causes.

His son is a Colonel in the Marine Corps and is currently deployed to Iraq. He wrote a touching remembrance of his father recently, which can be read here.

Antares on the Moon

2009-02-05T16:26:00.004-05:00

Apollo 14's LM, Antares, landed at Fra Mauro on February 5, 1971. It seemed doubtful for a while that the landing would happen. A loose piece of solder in a switch kept signaling an 'abort' condition. Even though everyone knew it was a small and intermittent hardware problem, there was concern that the flight computer would get the erroneous signal during powered descent and abort the landing. MIT software engineers hastily wrote a patch to work around the condition. They radioed it up and Ed Mitchell, LM Pilot, entered the changed software by hand on the DSKY keypad.

Unfortunately, the software patch contained a bug which caused the landing radar not to lock on. Flight rules called for an abort if the radar did not lock on. Mitchell reset the circuit breaker, and that did the trick. There was a lot of speculation later on as to whether Shepard, intent on making a Moon landing, would have proceeded with the landing even without the radar. As it was, he made the closest landing to the designated landing spot of any of the Apollo commanders.

So, this was yet another nail-biter to listen to as we followed the TV coverage. Pete Conrad and Al Bean in Apollo 12 had the only trouble-free touchdown to this point.

I'm looking forward to meeting Ed Mitchell at Spacefest in San Diego in two weeks! I can't wait to hear from him what it was like to work with Al Shepard in such close quarters. I can only imagine that one would have to give Shepard plenty of leeway.

This booklet, "Science at Fra Mauro," was put out by NASA shortly after the mission ended. I picked up this copy at NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs in June 1971.

Beep Beep, My Ass!

2009-02-04T12:38:00.007-05:00

Less than a year after the Apollo 13 near-disaster, NASA was sending another crew on its way to the Moon. Apollo 14 launched on January 31, 1971 and headed toward Fra Mauro, which was Apollo 13's intended target.

The official crew patch designates the NASA Astronaut Pin headed toward the Moon, and lists the name of its three crewmen. Alan Shepard, the first American in space, commanded the flight. He had been grounded for an inner-ear disease since the early 1960's, and following an operation that cured the problems, he demanded to be put back into the flight rotation. Some say that he stole command of Apollo 14 from Gordon Cooper, although the semi-official word was that NASA management pulled Cooper for his somewhat lackadaisical approach to training.

In any case, Shepard was at 47 the "old man" of the program, the oldest astronaut on flight status. The backup crew of Gene Cernan, Joe Engle, and Ron Evans, secretly had a patch made for themselves. They stowed the patches in every compartment of the Command Module, so that one would drift out every time someone opened a locker. The patch depicts an aged Wile E. Coyote heading toward the Moon, to which the Roadrunner 'B Team' has already beaten him.

Whenever Shepard encountered one of these patches on the flight, he is reported to have radioed to the ground, "Tell Cernan, 'Beep beep, my ass!'"

Missing Columbia

2009-02-01T14:47:00.003-05:00

Six years ago today, Space Shuttle Columbia was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere following a 15-day research mission. It disintegrated over Texas less than 20 minutes from its scheduled landing at Kennedy Space Center.

I was leaving a church choir rehearsal that Saturday morning when I turned on the car radio and heard the heartbreaking news. I raced home to turn on the TV. The video of Columbia breaking apart into multiple streaks was devastating to watch. Debris rained down across Texas and Louisiana, and people were recovering pieces of the spacecraft for weeks afterward.

I couldn't believe that we had lost a Shuttle during re-entry; that part of flight seemed almost routine at this point. However, it made me recall Columbia's maiden flight, the very first Space Shuttle mission in 1981. When the payload bay doors opened and the cameras pointed aft, we saw to our horror that several thermal tiles were missing from the left OMS pod. There was serious concern about if and how the loss of this thermal protection might impact re-entry. Fortunately, she made it home safely that mission. Unfortunately, that helped start the perception that the Shuttles were able to take punishment to their thermal protection system and still make it back home okay.

Columbia's loss grounded the Shuttle for a year and a half until safety could be improved. Although the Shuttle is flying again, next year is scheduled to mark the end of its missions.

I've lived to see three fatal accidents on US spacecraft as well as several on Soviet capsules. I know that there will be more someday...but I hope not for a long, long time.

Beginning NASA's toughest week

2009-01-26T22:35:00.003-05:00

January 27 begins a sad week for NASA. We observe the anniversaries of the Apollo 1 fire, the Challenger explosion, and the loss of Columbia this week.

January 27, 1967 was the date of the launch pad fire that killed the crew of what became known as Apollo 1. The crew died of asphyxiation in a fire that swept through the pure oxygen atmosphere inside their capsule while they were performing a test. America had lost several astronauts before in jet aircraft accidents, but never in an actual space vehicle

This badge is from the "Mission Failure Investigation Team," which was charged with finding and correcting the cause of the fire. The team quickly learned that, in the rush to get the mission into orbit, NASA and its contractors had allowed a horrible collection of stripped wire, 34 square feet of flammable Velcro, and nearly 70 pounds of other flammable materials to creep into the design. In a high-pressure, pure oxygen environment, the slightest static spark could have been enough to start a raging inferno.

I remember hearing the news of the fire on the radio. We were riding in our Ford Econoline van that morning in Naha, Okinawa, where my dad was stationed. We were completely stunned at the news. As much as a 10-year-old boy could understand the situation, my feelings were disbelief that something like that could happen to a US space capsule, and a deep fear that the Apollo program would be cancelled. I was particularly sad at the loss of Ed White, who had been very much a personal hero and a source of fascination for me after his Gemini IV spacewalk.

As horrible as the tragedy was, the prevailing opinion is that NASA would never have gotten man to the Moon by 1969 had the accident not occurred. It focused NASA on doing things right rather than rushing ahead blindly, making for much safer spacecraft. It also forced NASA to rethink its strategy for incrementally testing the Apollo hardware in Earth orbit, helping NASA instead focus on "all-up" testing that began with Apollo 8 in December 1968.

In memoriam Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee...

Opportunity on Mars - 5 years and counting

2009-01-24T14:12:00.004-05:00

On January 24, 2004 (US time), the Mars rover "Opportunity" joined her twin sister, Spirit, on the surface of Mars. Spaceflight fans from around the world were once again able to follow the evens of entry, descent, and landing via live broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

When Opportunity sent back its first images shortly after landing, we were astonished to see what appeared to be cliff faces in the distance with outcrops of layered rock, the very thing Opportunity was sent to look for. It looked like a totally alien landscape compared to that in which Spirit landed. Spirit's landing site was strewn with volcanic rocks and looked very much like what we saw with the two Viking landers and the Mars Pathfinder. Opportunity's environs, on the other hand, showed no rocks at all on the surface around her, just sand, and what appeared to be cliff walls all around.

My first impression on seeing the first panorama from Opportunity was, "Gee, it landed in a crater!" Much to my delight, that turned out to be correct. The distant cliff walls were in fact only a few dozen feet away and were not much bigger than a roadside curb on Earth. Opportunity was able to drive over to the outcrop and explore it thoroughly in a couple of weeks.

With a 'warranted' lifetime of 90 sols and a couple of hundred meters of driving, Opportunity has really shown its mettle. It has lasted 5 Earth years on Mars and has driven 14 kilometers away from the crater in which it landed. It proved the past existence of surface water on Mars, spent much of a year inside Endurance Crater, photographed the wreckage of its own heat shield up close, returned the first images of a meteorite sitting on the surface of another planet, got stuck several times in sand dunes, survived a crippling dust storm, and most recently spent more than a year exploring Victoria Crater. It has now embarked on a multi-year, 12 km journey to Endeavour Crater. I hope she gets there!

I'm eternally grateful to JPL for giving the public immediate access to the photos from the rovers. Talented image specialists on sites such as unmannedspaceflight.com can quickly turn these into full-color or amazing 3D images for the world to see. With Spirit and Opportunity on the move, we get an unprecedented chance to "be there" on Mars while sitting in the comfort of our own homes.

These two launch team patches were produced before Spirit and Opportunity were given their names. MER-A became Spirit and MER-B was Opportunity.

NASA tests the Lunar Module

2009-01-22T13:16:00.003-05:00

On January 22, 1968, NASA launched the Apollo 5 mission, the first - and only - unmanned test of the Lunar Module. The Saturn I rocket used for the launch was the one originally intended to launch the Apollo 1 crew into space in 1967. It was undamaged by the capsule fire and was available for this flight.

Nothing like this had ever flown before - a spacecraft with an engine that could be throttled, and which would by itself not be capable of returning its crew to the Earth.

The LM was already 8 months behind schedule in its development. To prevent further delays, NASA decided to launch the LM without its landing gear, since the legs were not crucial to the test.

A software bug prematurely shut down the descent engine on its initial test. NASA engineers executed a workaround and were able to fire the descent engine twice, and then run a "fire in the hole" test of an emergency separation of the LM's descent and ascent stages.

The test was considered successful enough that a second planned unmanned flight of the LM was deemed unnecessary. The LM for that flight now sits in the National Air and Space Museum.

Happy birthday, Buzz Aldrin

2009-01-20T21:36:00.004-05:00

Buzz Aldrin, the second human being to walk on the Moon, turns 79 years young today.

"Dr. Rendezvous" was not one of the more popular astronauts among his peers. However, no one could dispute his mastery of rendezvous theory (which was immensely useful in shaping the Gemini missions), or his flawless EVA techniques on Gemini XII, which proved that man could work effectively outside of a space capsule.

I put together this "Buzz at the ladder" diorama in 2006. It uses a Dragon 1/6 scale Buzz Aldrin figure, which is posable and remarkably detailed. The LM leg is made from wooden dowel and PVC pipe, wrapped in two colors of Mylar insulation blanket and Cadbury chocolate wrapper. The LM ladder rails and "rivets" are made from aircraft aluminum, which was kindly supplied by a fellow space enthusiast from collectSpace. I made the Apollo 11 commemorative "We came in peace for all mankind" plaque by scanning a photo of the actual LM plaque and printing it on aluminum colored contact paper.

I'm looking forward to meeting Buzz at Spacefest next month!

Gemini 2

2009-01-18T22:59:00.003-05:00

Gemini 2 was the second unmanned test flight of the 2-seat Gemini spacecraft. It was launched into a suborbital flight on January 19, 1965.

This flight was the first monitored from NASA's new Mission Control Center at the Cape. Shortly after launch, the Mission Control Center lost all power and blacked out. This failure was traced to overloaded electrical circuits from the network television equipment that was brought in to cover the flight!

The Gemini 2 capsule was the first US spacecraft that was reused in a subsequent spaceflight. After its mission, the capsule was in good enough shape that it was fitted with a new heat shield and new instrumentation - and flown as a test vehicle for the US Air Force's "Blue Gemini" (Manned Orbital Laboratory) program. It was the only Gemini vehicle that ever flew with USAF insignia.

Gettin' on the Space Station Program

2009-01-16T17:22:00.003-05:00

In January 1987, I was a Contracts Manager for Boeing Computer Services, a division of The Boeing Company. I had just been pulled from the commercial contracts side of the house to the Government contracts section, because I had Government contract experience, and the company needed someone to manage the contract for a new project we had just won with the Army at Ft. McPherson, Georgia. Two weeks after I started that project, the contract award was protested by an unsuccessful bidder, and to our shock, the Army cancelled the contract.

As I was preparing to leave Atlanta to return to Washington, I got a call from my director. I was ordered to fly to Houston and go to Johnson Space Center, where we were being awarded a contract with NASA for the Space Station Freedom Technical and Management Information System (TMIS). I was to be the contract manager for this $350 million, 8-year project! I couldn't believe it...I was part of the space program! -- and totally without any effort on my part.

TMIS was NASA's way of bringing all the technical and design documents for the budding Space Station Freedom, no matter where in the country they were produced, into one system. This was before the Internet was accessible commercially, before there were common document formats. TMIS gave NASA the first capability to transmit and share rich-content documents across NASA centers. We were also implementing what was at the time one of the largest Oracle databases ever designed - several terabytes (which is pretty small by today's standards).

I was on the program for more than two years. My office was right across the parking lot from the Space Station Program office. I really enjoyed being able to say I was part of the program. Things got messy in 1989 when I became aware of some improper behavior by a NASA manager. I got drawn into a whistle-blowing situation and ended up being taken off of the program. I left Boeing a month later. And ultimately, Freedom never flew, although many of its design ideas were eventually used by the International Space Station program.

I found this TMIS paperweight on eBay in 2006, celebrating the completion of the Preliminary Design Review for the system.

The Bulls-eye on the Moon

2009-01-13T22:24:00.006-05:00

This week's full moon - supposedly one of the 'biggest' in many years (because the Moon was full when it was at perigee) - reminded me of a feature that we never really get to see from Earth, the Mare Orientale basin. It is just over the eastern rim of the Moon as seen from Earth, and is just becoming illuminated at full moon.

Telescopic observers have known about Mare Orientale since 1906. It sometimes peeks over the rim when the Moon is turned toward us the right way, and at best we can only see a portion of it, and that edge-on, from our vantage point on Earth. So, we all shared a collective gasp at the shock of seeing it when Lunar Orbiter 4 sent back the first dramatic image of it from directly overhead in 1967.

The 600-mile wide basin forms a perfect bulls-eye. The impact that created the feature left a dark 'sea,' and the resultant shock waves from the impact created two perfectly circular and concentric mountain ranges around the maria, the Rook Mountains and the Cordillera Mountains.

This feature is so huge that it could easily be visible with the naked eye from Earth if the Moon were rotated by 90 degrees. Scientists speculate that our ancestors would have evolved their own mythologies or religions based on Mare Orientale if it had been pointed at Earth.

This map is from the US Geological Survey from 1978. It shows the Orientale basin in great detail. This has always been one of my favorite lunar features. I have seen it edge-on in my telescope a couple of times, and I have seen the Rook and Cordillera Mountains as bumps on the rim of the Moon. I would dearly love to see it from lunar orbit someday!

Skylab student project entry form

2009-01-11T21:36:00.002-05:00

Here's a little something that I picked up at NASA Headquarters in the summer of 1971. It is an entry form for students to submit ideas for projects to be flown aboard Skylab.

NASA wanted to use Skylab not only for 'official' experiments from scientists and researchers, but also as an opportunity for creative ideas from students to be investigated. At this point in the space program, we didn't have experience with microgravity for more than a few days at a time, and the time and space available for experiments on the Apollo flights were next to nothing. Skylab offered the chance to see experiments unfold over the course of up to 84 days, and there was plenty of room to try new things.

An illustrative example cited in the application form was an experiment to investigate the behavior of paper airplanes in zero-g. Interestingly, Al Bean and his Skylab 2 crew actually played with paper airplanes in the cavernous Skylab interior. Bean noted that you had to make them with more folds than traditional Earth-bound paper airplanes. You also had to be careful not to give them too much lift (bending the ailerons up), or they would circle in ever-tighter spirals. Bean and crew almost filmed some of their experiments with the paper airplanes, but they decided not to, believing that the public would think they were wasting taxpayer money.

Perhaps the most famous of the Skylab student experiments was to see how spiders would spin webs in zero-g. Arabelle the spider became world-famous. Her initial webs were chaotic, but within a week, she spun normal webs just like those on Earth. Bean and crew were somewhat resentful of the attention that Arabelle got. The media paid much more attention to her than she did to all the other science being conducted on Skylab. Indeed, many people seemed to think that Arabelle was the only experiment being conducted on board, and they wondered why NASA would spend so much money and effort just to study spider webs in space.

Skylab 3 Beta cloth crew patch

2009-01-10T15:42:00.003-05:00

On January 10, 1974, the Skylab 3 crew (also known as SLM-4) was in its 55th day on board the Skylab space station, with another month to go in their mission. The crew, Jerry Carr, Bill Pogue, and scientist/astronaut Ed Gibson, stayed on board for 84 days. This was the first all-rookie American space crew since Gemini 8 in 1966.

The patch shown in this picture is printed on fireproof Beta cloth, the material that all Apollo-era space suits were made out of, following the Apollo 1 fire. It is from the personal collection of ED Gibson. The inset shows Gibson signing the patch.

The last Surveyor en route to the Moon

2009-01-08T21:49:00.007-05:00

Surveyor 7 was the last of the US's unmanned probes to soft-land on the Moon. It was launched on January 7, 1968, and landed three days later on the rim of the crater Tycho. It was a fitting and spectacular end to the Surveyor series.

The key question the Surveyors needed to answer was simply, "Is there a solid surface that will support the weight of a Lunar Module (and a man)?"

Before we sent the Surveyors, we literally had no idea what the surface of the Moon would be like. Would 4 billion years of impact by microscopic meteoroids create a layer of fine dust that was several feet or more deep? We did not know. We could make educated guesses, and while most scientists believed that there was a solid surface, there was not a consensus in the scientific community. We had to find out, or we risked our astronauts getting into a dangerous situation that they could not escape.

In yet another of their Space Firsts, the USSR beat the Americans to a soft landing on the Moon by about four months, landing Luna 9 on February 3, 1966. Luna 9 was the 12th attempt at a soft landing by the Soviets. The US's Surveyor 1 landed on June 2, 1966. At least the US could claim to have been successful on its first landing attempt.

The mid-1960's vintage tie tack depicted above represents the Surveyor lander. The image below is of a Surveyor engineering test article. I took this picture in the Smithsonian's Arts & Industries Building (first home of the Air and Space Museum) in July 1971.

Looking back on this some 38 years later, I can remember how exciting it was to have a relatively "new" spacecraft (less than 5 years old) so close at hand! This same Surveyor now hangs from the ceiling in the National Air and Space Museum, barely noticeable among all the other artifacts.

The birth of the Space Shuttle program

2009-01-05T21:12:00.003-05:00

On January 5, 1972, President Nixon said that "The United States should proceed at once with development of an entirely new transportation system designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970's into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavor in the 1980's and 1990's." Thus, NASA announced the Space Shuttle as the future of NASA's manned spaceflight program.

Apollo 16 had yet to be launched at this time. In fact, it was on April 21, 1972, literally at the moment that John Young was on the surface of the Moon doing his famous "jump salute" to the flag, that the CAPCOM relayed the news that the House had passed NASA's budget, which included funds for development of the Space Shuttle. Young replied, "The country needs that Shuttle mighty bad. You'll see. "

The pictured 1972 Space Shuttle brochure included some hopeful selling points for the Space Shuttle, many of which seem almost laughable with the benefit of 36 years' hindsight:

"Launch vehicle and satellite failures...will become things of the past."
"The shuttle is the only meaningful new manned space program which can be accomplished on a modest budget."
"You don't have to be an astronaut to ride the Space Shuttle...Passengers such as scientists, engineers and others will be able to ride in ordinary clothing, as in an airliner."

Delays and cost overruns would move the Shuttle's planned debut from 1977 to 1981. Two major catastrophic failures would cause the deaths of 14 astronauts. Spiraling costs and reduced tolerance for risk have limited the Shuttle's mission for nearly the past decade almost exclusively to construction of the International Space Station.

Those of us who grew up in the Apollo age feel like the Shuttle has kept us stuck in low Earth orbit, its massive budget swallowing up funds for developing other technologies. NASA will have to ground the Shuttle in 2010 to free up funds for construction of the next generation of manned spacecraft, which is an even more frustrating situation.

Things may not have turned out as originally envisioned, but the Shuttle has performed admirably in over 120 missions. The Shuttle launched Ulysses, Galileo, Magellan, and the Hubble Space Telescope. It enabled the first retrieval and repair of malfunctioning satellites. And it kept us in space for another 25 years.

The Lunar Module rolls out to the launch pad

2009-01-04T20:21:00.003-05:00

Forty years ago this week, the "Year of Apollo" began as the Saturn V stack for Apollo 9 was rolled out to the launch pad. It was only 11 days since Apollo 8 had blasted off from that same launch pad for the Moon!

Following the completion of Project Gemini in 1966, the next scheduled launch was Apollo 204 (later called Apollo 1), which was to lift off in February 1967. The launch pad fire that killed the crew also delayed the first Apollo launch until October 1968. So, nearly two years passed between Gemini 12 and Apollo 7, which seemed an interminable time as the end of the decade neared and Kennedy's challenge had yet to be fulfilled. The Soviet manned program had been on hold nearly the same amount of time, after Vladimir Komarov was killed in Soyuz 1 in April 1967.

So, the world had gone for a long time without manned space launches. And now, both the USSR and the US were back in space again and launches were coming very frequently. The US was so intent on getting to the Moon in 1969 that launches were planned every two months until a successful landing was achieved.

We certainly felt the anticipation and excitement. Apollo 8 had focused the public's attention to the space program once again. The Moon was now within reach, and there was new and exotic hardware to test before we could attempt a landing.

Apollo 9 would see the first manned flight of the Lunar Module. Apollo 9's LM was designated LM-3, and was later given the call-sign "Spider." LM-1 was a legless test article that flew on the unmanned Apollo 5. LM-2 was originally scheduled for another unmanned test, but after the success of Apollo 5, LM-2 was set aside for ground testing and eventually donated to the National Air and Space Museum.

This badge was from a worker for Grumman Aerospace Engineering Company, which built the Lunar Modules for the Apollo Program at their plant in Bethpage, New York.

5 years on Mars and still going strong

2009-01-03T14:40:00.005-05:00

On January 3, 2003, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER-A), a.k.a. "Spirit," landed on Mars, bouncing across Gusev crater in its airbag cocoon. The airbags retracted, and the tetrahedral lander opened up to reveal the rover. After about two weeks of checkouts, Spirit left her nest and headed out to explore.

Original mission objectives were for Spirit to last for 90 Mars days (Sols, equal to about 24-2/3 Earth hours). So far, she has survived 1,423 Sols and is still limping along. She has sent back tens of thousands of pictures during her journey. I enjoy keeping track of her progress via unmannedspaceflight.com and the Mars Rovers home page.

Pictured is a really nice 1/18 scale die-cast model of the MER that was released shortly after the landings. It features folding solar panels and other movable parts, which include the high-gain antenna, camera mast and camera head, wheels, instrument deployment device, and rocker-bogie suspension. Its display base is the lander, opened up to prepare the rover for rolling off.

Closing out a fun year of collecting

2008-12-31T15:47:00.005-05:00

It has been a good year. It started with the birth of my first grandchild, Molly, on January 3. My son returned safely from Afghanistan in February. My friends and family have had more than their share of trials and tribulations, but everyone's spirits remain high. We won't talk about the economy!! I can't do anything about it, so there's no use worrying about it. I closed out the year being cited in the Planetary Society's blog!

I have enjoyed a fun year of treasure hunting. The occasional trinket reconnects me with my past, and I hope will help build a bridge from my past to the future of my kids and their children. I have met some new friends, online and in person, who share my dedication to preserving the memory of the Golden Years of space exploration.

For 2009, I'm looking forward first and foremost to Spacefest in February, and to any Astronaut Scholarship Foundation events I can attend later in the year. There should be some fun celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the "Year of Apollo," and I hope to take part in them, too.

A Senator with an Action Pack

2008-12-29T16:56:00.003-05:00

How many US Senators have their own Hot Wheels Action Pack? I'm guessing there aren't that many.

I'm only aware of four Senators who have been into space - John Glenn, Harrison Schmitt, Jake Garn, and Bill Nelson (who flew on Shuttle Columbia when he was a US Congressman). Jack Swigert ran for Senate but was defeated in the primaries; he later became a US Congressman.

I liked this Hot Wheels Action Pack because it tells John Glenn's story in such a cute way - with a Mercury capsule and Glenn in his Mercury space suite, with the Space Shuttle and Glenn in his Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES), and then Glenn in his Senator suit!

I suppose that if a NASCAR champion ever becomes a US Senator, he will certainly get his own Hot Wheels Action Pack.

An unexpected Christmas present

2008-12-26T16:40:00.004-05:00

I received a wonderful surprise in the mail today - an autographed and personalized photo of John Glenn! I shouldn't say it was a total surprise, but the timing made for a perfect Christmas present.

After seeing John Glenn at the National Air and Space Museum in November at the lecture for the Apollo 8 crew, and realizing that he was now 87 years old, I thought I had better hurry if I was ever going to get a personalized photo from him. He looked in relatively good health, but at 87, every day is a gift.

Senator Glenn (or "Payload Specialist II Glenn," as they jokingly referred to him at the NASM lecture), is renowned for his generosity in filling every autograph request he gets through the mail. I ordered on eBay a great photo of him being loaded into Friendship 7 on the day of his historic flight. After that photo arrived, I sent the photo, a letter, and a prepaid return envelope to Glenn's suburban Washington DC address. That was the week of Thanksgiving, and I frankly didn't expect a reply for several months.

Today's mail delivery brought my return envelope and the picture, beautifully signed in silver pen and personalized to me with the date of December 22, 2008. It's so incredible that this man still signs autographs - and does it for free. I heard somewhere that even if he wasn't necessary thrilled about signing, he felt it was the least he could do as a representative of the country that he loves and who sent him into space. He is a class act in every respect and a true gentleman.

God bless you, John Glenn, and thanks for a wonderful Christmas present!!

Merry Christmas to "all of you on the good Earth"

2008-12-24T10:08:00.003-05:00

On what was the most memorable Christmas Eve of my lifetime, the crew of Apollo 8 orbited the Moon and sent us back live TV from another world.

All of the horrible events of the year were forgotten for that one moment. If your skies were clear that night, you went outside, looked up at the Moon, and marveled that there were actually people up there, so very far away.

The footage from their TV broadcast looks washed out and blurry to modern eyes, accustomed to the clarity of high-def TV. But in 1968, it was amazing to see the Moon from 60 miles up in the comfort of our living room.

The best Christmas gift of all was hearing that Apollo 8's engine firing had been successful, sending them back home again.

It was an audacious mission, one calculated to give America an insurmountable lead in the propaganda of the Cold Ward. However, the success completely transcended nationalism and politics, actually bringing humanity closer together rather than widening the distance between us.

Apollo 8 to the Moon!!

2008-12-21T23:10:00.004-05:00

Forty years ago today, the first men to leave the Earth's vicinity were launched aboard a Saturn V rocket.

Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders began this historic journey when we needed it most. Were it not for Apollo 8, I have no doubt that 1968 would have gone down in history as one of the worst years for Americans in modern times. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy tore the country apart. There were riots in the streets, and I remember seeing the pillars of smoke rising above Washington DC as many neighborhoods burned. Protests about the Vietnam War and at the Democratic National Convention highlighted how angry Americans were.

Apollo 8 focused our attention on the best that Americans - and mankind - could do. The world took a 6-day time-out and watched three brave men journey a quarter-million miles away from their planet. They saw, as no one had ever seen, how small and fragile our Earth is. And they shared that image with us through their onboard TV camera.

The Christmas season of 1968 will never be forgotten by those who were alive then.

Today's word is ... "frangible"

2008-12-18T09:23:00.005-05:00

Frangible items are designed to break into fragments, rather than deforming and remaining a single piece.

The space program makes wide use of frangible nuts and bolts as connectors that hold items together until an exact moment when they have to be separated quickly. This quick separation is accomplished with an explosive charge, referred to as a "pyro" (for pyrotechnic device) or an NSD ("NASA Standard Detonator"). The astronaut (or the computer system) throws a switch to activate a certain sequence; the pyro blows and the frangible nuts and bolts that held the item together shatter, allowing the items to separate.

Examples of this in action would be separating the spent solid rocket boosters from the Space Shuttle, releasing a satellite from the Shuttle's payload bay, or even deploying the spring-loaded solar panels on the MER Mars rovers. The frangible nuts and bolts in the picture above are from the Space Shuttle program.

In my mind, the most famous film depiction of pyros was in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the explosive bolts were used to blow off the EVA pod's door so that Dave Bowman could quickly enter the emergency airlock.

Gemini VI and VII rendezvous

2008-12-15T23:00:00.004-05:00

Gemini VI, commanded by Wally Schirra with Tom Stafford flying as Pilot, was launched on December 15, 1966. In what was perhaps the most significant "space first" of the US to that date, it was the first time two piloted vehicles had successfully rendezvoused in orbit.

The mission of Gemini VI changed substantially from its initial concept. Originally, Gemini VI was to have docked with an Agena target vehicle in October 1966. However, the Agena failed during launch and never reached orbit. The Gemini VI vehicle lacked the fuel cells needed for a long-duration space flight like Gemini VII, but NASA worked out a quick mission that would demonstrate rendezvous capability.

I remember the excitement of seeing the photos from the mission, which quickly became available just after Gemini VI landed the next day. There was no TV from spacecraft at that point, so we couldn't see the event as it happened, and we had to settle for still photos in the newspapers and magazines. It was so cool to see a photo of an actual capsule in orbit. It was the first time the general public had ever seen something like that...our views of spaceflight up to that point had only been launch, recovery, and pictures taken out the window. Now, we got to see the full Gemini spacecraft, with its contrasting black capsule and white adapter sections, and the surprise of the gold foil tendrils snaking out the back of the ship.

These two items from my collection are an access badge to the Gemini VI spacecraft, from the collection of a former ground crew worker at KSC, and a small fragment of the heat shield from Gemini VI.

Challenger on the Moon

2008-12-12T21:27:00.005-05:00

Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt landed "Challenger" in the Moon's Taurus-Littrow valley on December 11, 1972. They spent three days exploring the hills and valley, sending back the clearest TV pictures yet from the surface of the Moon.

On board the LM, like every spacecraft, was the equivalent of a car's "owner's manual," describing all the systems in case something needed troubleshooting when 240,000 miles away from home. This diagram is a page taken from Gene Cernan's actual Flight Data File for the Apollo 17 mission. It went with him to the surface of the Moon, and it is perhaps the prize of my collection. Cernan signed it for me when I met him at the National Air and Space Museum on November 3, 2006. This particular page of the Flight Data File deals with overcoming trouble with the Abort Guidance System (AGS), one of the two navigation systems on the LM.

The Flight Data Files were kept in pouches behind the Commander's station. This photo, taken in the LM after the conclusion of the third and final moonwalk of the mission, shows the astronauts' helmets and space suits piled on the cover of the ascent engine. The pouches on the wall on the right side of the photo contain the Flight Data Files. I get chills every time that I think that I have a page of one of the notebooks inside those pouches, something that went to the Moon and back!

Skylab Rescue Mission (SL-R)

2008-12-10T22:07:00.005-05:00

Skylab is considered the least-remembered part of the Apollo program. If people do recall Skylab, it is likely because of the "sky is falling" fears it evoked in 1979 when it was about to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Because it was an uncontrolled re-entry, no one knew how much of it would survive re-entry, or even where or when it would come down. I remember "Skylab pools" with people betting on the date it would come back to Earth.

Those who were really paying attention may remember that the entire Skylab project was in serious jeopardy starting 63 seconds after the station's launch, when the meteoroid shield ripped off of the space station and tore off one of the station's two key solar panel wings. The heroic efforts of the first crew to man the station, led by Pete Conrad, led to Skylab becoming habitable and useful for its three long-duration crew stays.

The second crew to visit Skylab, commanded by Al Bean, encountered difficulties with their Apollo spacecraft prior to docking, when one of the four quads of reaction control system (RCS) thrusters on the Service Module developed a leak and had to be shut down. A second RCS quad also developed a leak and also had to be disabled. There was deep concern that the Apollo spacecraft, which the crew would need for return to Earth, could not be controlled adequately with half of the RCS thrusters out of action.

The 1969 movie "Marooned", followed by the 1970 Apollo 13 near-disaster, were still fresh in people's minds. We didn't want to contemplate a crew of astronauts stranded in orbit.

NASA decided to prepare a spacecraft for a potential rescue mission, should it become necessary. A Command Module was adapted to hold five crewmen instead of three. Astronauts Vance Brand and Don Lind were selected as the crew for SL-R, the Skylab Rescue mission. NASA ultimately determined that the Skylab crew would be able to get home safely. Nonetheless, they retained the idea of using a modified ship as a contingency rescue vehicle for the last Skylab crew.

The vehicle was rolled out to the launch pad on December 3, 1973. It was ultimately not needed, so it was rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building after the conclusion of the last Skylab mission. This CM became the backup CM for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). It is on display in the visitors center at the Kennedy Space Center.

Vance Brand got to fly on the ASTP mission in July 1975. Don Lind wouldn't get his first flight for 11 years, on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-B in 1985.

Apollo 17 special crew commemorative patches

2008-12-09T23:14:00.004-05:00

The Apollo 17 crew commissioned a special set of patches from AB Emblem. These were larger than the 'standard' crew patches, and they were marked with initials of each crew member sewn into the background between Apollo's shoulder and the galaxy. There were reportedly about 150 of these patches made for each crewman's initials. The star above Apollo's shoulder also distinguishes these from other embroidered patches. It's there on the Beta cloth patch and the original artwork, but on neither AB's standard patch nor the Lion Brothers version.

Two of the patches in my collection are still in their original plastic wrappers, making it somewhat hard to see the initials in this scan. Ron Evan's patch is at the upper left, Gene Cernan's in the middle, and Harrison Schmitt's is at the lower left.

These patches were not available to collectors at the time of the flights. They only started coming onto the market in the 1990s

Launch of the last Moon mission

2008-12-07T14:12:00.005-05:00

December 7, 1972 opened with a spectacular nighttime launch of Apollo 17. It was the first launch of an American manned mission at night, and the only night launch of the Apollo program. The next night launch of an American manned mission would not be until 1983.

This was the first Apollo launch that I wasn't able to hear on the radio or watch on TV, as I was in the hospital. I was back home in time to catch some of the lunar EVAs, but the networks were no longer covering them in toto.

This cover is from Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan's collection. He had it autographed by his crewmates, and it was postmarked on the 25th and 30th anniversary of the launch. I find it somewhat unusual in that Harrison Schmitt signed this as "Jack" Schmitt. I have not seen any other signed items where he used his nickname. Perhaps it was because he was signing for his crewmate rather than for the general public. This is also the only item I have that is signed by Ron Evans, who died in 1990.

Race for the Moon

2008-12-06T20:10:00.004-05:00

Forty years ago today, Time magazine's cover story was about the final sprint to the Moon, as the US and USSR raced to be the first country to send people there. The cover art accurately portrayed the feeling of the time, that this was indeed a high-stakes race. We had been beaten by the Russians in so many 'firsts' that we were constantly wondering what they would and could do to trump us, always unexpectedly.

The US had publicly announced plans to send Apollo 8 to orbit the Moon in December. The earliest we could send a mission was to launch on December 21, 1968. The launch window was dictated by the need to get to the Moon when it was at the same phase for the planned landing attempts in 1969, and also to time the mission so that splashdown back on Earth would be in 'friendly' waters.

We did not know what the Russian plans were, but we could guess. The Soviet launch window was earlier in the month, and there was a real fear that the Russians would send men to the Moon before us. Indeed, the Russians had sent up circumlunar spacecraft in September and November that year. It wasn't publicly known in the US at the time, but these two spacecraft were not just Moon probes - they could have carried a manned crew. Had the USSR been willing to take the risk, they could have beaten us to the Moon by at least a month. They could not have made a landing in 1969, but their having sent men to the Moon before the US would certainly have lessened our feeling of accomplishment.

As it turned out, the decision not to send men on the November flight was the correct one. The 'crew' of biological specimens perished when a faulty O-ring gasket caused the cabin to depressurize before reentry, and a parachute deployed early, causing the capsule to crash. Either failure would have killed a human crew. The Soviets were not able to fix the design faults in time to make an early December launch, which enabled the US to be the first to send men around the Moon.

Gemini VII in orbit

2008-12-05T17:07:00.004-05:00

The Gemini program concentrated on answering some basic questions that needed to be resolved before the moon landing missions could be attempted. One of these was, can people live in space for 14 days, the maximum length for a moon mission? To find out, Gemini VII was launched on December 4, 1965 for a 14-day mission.

Command Pilot Frank Borman and Pilot Jim Lovell lived for two weeks in an enclosure the size of the front seat of a Volkswagen Beetle - most of the time wearing pressure suits! This is another one of those scenarios that's difficult for me to imagine. Lovell said that he could either stretch his legs or straighten his back, but not at the same time. I just can't picture how they could remove their suits, and where they could put them once they had come off. To top off the ordeal, a urine sample bag ruptured the first day of the mission, which made the capsule smell like a public restroom for the remainder of the two weeks.

When the crew emerged on December 18, the crew jokingly remarked that they were now engaged to be married.

I recently took this photo of the Gemini VII capsule at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center. You can see the headrest and part of Borman's seat in the foreground, and the bottom of Lovell's seat on the other side of the flight control grip.

Mars Pathfinder begins its journey

2008-12-04T00:03:00.003-05:00

On December 4, 1996, Mars Pathfinder was launched toward the Red Planet. This mission included the first roving vehicle to be sent to another world since Lunokhod 2 in 1973. It was also the first probe to use airbag technology for landing on another world. It was also the first landing on Mars since the Vikings in 1976.

Pathfinder made a brilliant, prime-time landing on July 4, 1977. Our imaginations were captured by the rover "Sojourner" when she rolled off of the lander and began exploring the immediate vicinity. Even the most die-hard engineers found themselves anthropomorphizing this plucky little adventurer as she bumped into rocks and drove around. We all died a little inside when Pathfinder stopped calling home in September, after its batteries died. Many people imagined poor little Sojourner circling around her "mother," waiting for her to wake up and talk to her again.

This Hot Wheels Action Pack featured the Pathfinder lander, the Sojourner rover, and the package inside its aeroshell, all in vastly different scales!

Apollo 17 rollout

2008-12-02T21:49:00.003-05:00

This is not the anniversary of the Apollo 17 rollout from the VAB to the launch pad - that was on August 28. However, we're approaching the anniversary of the Apollo 17 mission, so that's why I pulled out this badge. Save for the Skylab Orbital Workshop, this was the last rollout of a Saturn V, and it was the beginning of the end of the lunar exploration program in the 20th century.

Since so much of my life and dreams revolved around the space program, I was deeply depressed (and I don't use the term lightly) to think that the Government could just let it end. What seems an incredible waste now is that we actually had built all the hardware we needed for more lunar exploration missions...the Government was just unwilling to commit the funds for the support costs for Apollos 18 and 19. The incremental cost of flying those missions would have been much less than what we spend on a Space Shuttle launch, in 'real dollar' terms.

It wasn't just the money. NASA was becoming gun-shy after the near miss of Apollo 13. Many in NASA were happy just to have the program end without loss of life.

But this one last time, we were rolling out a manned moon rocket to the launch pad. It would have been glorious to be there!

Apollo mission challenge coins

2008-11-30T23:00:00.003-05:00

The challenge coin tradition goes back at least as far as the forerunners of the Air Force, depending on whose legend you listen to. The basic idea is that everyone in a military unit carries the unit's challenge coin as a way of demonstrating membership in the unit.

Challenge coins have also been minted as souvenirs for servicemen participating in major events (task forces, special operations, etc.). One such series of special events was the US Navy's support of the rescue and recovery operations for the Apollo missions. This set of commemorative coins was made available to crewmen of the USS Ticonderoga, the last carrier to recover a Command Module from a Moon landing mission.

Appreciating the Space Junkie community

2008-11-28T20:04:00.004-05:00

I'm visiting my son, Kenny, in Fayetteville, NC over the Thanksgiving holiday. In the week prior to leaving home, I purchased a Gene Cernan-autographed Apollo 17 Beta cloth patch from an online auction site. As luck would have it, the seller lives and works within 20 minutes of Kenny's home. I was able to meet him in town today and pick up the patch, saving him the hassle and me the expense of his mailing it. It was also a great opportunity to meet yet another member of the space collecting community and hear, even in just a few minutes, some stories about the treasures he has found over the years.

Yesterday, I received a "happy Thanksgiving" email from another collector in England. This is someone I have never met, but who has corresponded with me regarding the Apollo 8 lecture I saw earlier this month. What a nice gesture, especially from someone for whom this is not even a holiday!

I'm never sure quite what the collectors' attitudes are going to be toward each other, especially since we may end up competing for the same items. However, the "thrill of the hunt" and the shared love for the space program and our heroes bind us tighter together than competition can push us apart.

And I got a big item OUT of my collection this holiday. I finally was able to deliver to Kenny the model of the UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter that I started building for him 1-1/2 years ago!

LM-8803

2008-11-25T17:55:00.003-05:00

Okay, this isn't exactly a lunar module or a space collectible, but it's where I was living during the Apollo program - 8803 Badger Drive, Alexandria, Virginia.

Like many kids my age...let me rephrase that - like many of the nerds my age at the time of the moon landings, I did my share of pretending to be an astronaut. In addition to my models of the Saturn V and the LM, I made good use of walkie-talkies and cardboard boxes. The porch and stairs down from the back of the house were just as good as a LM, except that I got an occasional splinter from the wooden stairs. I'm sure that splinters were never a problem for Neil and Buzz.

Once on the "surface," I used a flexible grabber (used for clearing drain clogs) as my lunar sampler. I also went through many boxes of Baggies to store the rock samples I collected in the yard.

In the summer, when we deployed our above-ground pool, I would occasionally tether myself to the pool ladder as I did underwater spacewalks to clean the inner wall of the pool.

Perhaps it was a good thing that I did this in the back yard, out of view of the rest of the neighborhood!

It's ... Different!

2008-11-24T11:36:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, I was unusually fortunate (for the space collecting community) that my very first autograph was of the famous Apollo 8 Earth rise photo, signed in person for me in February 1969 by Bill Anders. I have had this picture in my possession for nearly 40 years, and I know it like the back of my hand.

Realizing that the crews are getting old - Frank Borman and Jim Lovell are both 80 now - I thought that I might be approaching the last opportunities to get the whole crew's signature on this photo. I got in touch with local DC-area collector Steve Smith, who was going to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation show at Kennedy Space Center this month, and he agreed to take the photo to get it signed by Lovell. Steve snapped this photo of Lovell with the picture as documentation of it being personally signed.

So now I have this picture with Lovell's signature added, and I am surprised that I feel conflicted on seeing it!! The feeling is very much like a friend who I have known for 40 years suddenly getting a tattoo on their face...a very nice tattoo, but their face is forever changed from the way I have always known it. Am I getting that old and resistant to change? Or am I that attached to a "thing" that I have trouble letting go of the way it was? Or am I just whining? I'm sure there are plenty of people who would gladly take this item off my hands to put me out of my misery!!

Anyway, I do hope to add Frank Borman's signature the next time he does a signing. And I promise not to whine about it.

Apollo 12 mission analyzer

2008-11-23T15:21:00.003-05:00

Something you'd probably never see for a space mission in the age of ubiquitous computers is this "Guidance and Navigation Mission Analyzer" from Raytheon. It consists of three concentric circular scales on the front and two on the back. It's basically a portable flight plan for the key events of the mission. These were used by engineers and support team members. Since each mission was different, there were separate analyzers provided for each Apollo mission.

To use it, you align the arrow on the blue ring for the first key event, Translunar Insertion, with the actual day and time that it occurred, as shown on the outer ring. Then, by rotating the inner ring so that its arrow points to a day and time of interest, you can read in the cutout window the events scheduled to transpire at that time.

The back of the analyzer deals with launch, lunar module activities, and Earth reentry activities. When I scanned in the image above, I set the window to show the activities during EVA 2 at the Surveyor 3 site.

I would have killed to have something like this back during the missions! Circular slide rules still have their uses today, primarily by pilots.

Lunokhod 1 ends its first lunar day

2008-11-22T19:45:00.002-05:00

When Apollo 12 left the Moon, we didn't know that the next moonwalker would not be a human. The Soviets launched Luna 17 to the Moon on November 10, 1970. After achieving a parking orbit, the probe descended to the surface on November 17 and deployed the first roving vehicle on another planet, Lunokhod 1 (literally "moon walker"). The solar-powered Lunokhod 1 drove about 650 feet in its first lunar day, until local sunset on November 22. Over the next 10 months, the rover drove nearly 7 miles.

It's hard for people nowadays to understand the shock that the Soviet space program inflicted on the American psyche. The closest analogy I can make is that it was like a terrorist attack on our sensibilities. Everything the Soviets did was completely cloaked in secrecy until the event happened, and it was always timed to take the wind out of the US's sails. For instance, the West would not find out until after the fall of the Soviet Union that the USSR had been working on this program since 1966, and had attempted to launch a Lunokhod to the moon in February 1969. Had the launch vehicle not exploded shortly after liftoff, the USSR would have been "walking" on the Moon 5 months before Apollo 11 got there.

This Lunokhod 1 commemorative watch is obviously a modern creation, but I thought it was interesting. One doesn't often find watches with 24-hour dials, for example. These watches were apparently made by Raketa in St. Petersburg in the 1990s. The Cyrillic writing on the dial includes the vehicles Luna-17, Lunokhod 1, and the Russian name of Mare Ibrium, the Sea of Rains, where the vehicle landed.

Apollo 12 footprints on the Moon

2008-11-21T16:55:00.004-05:00

After 31-1/2 hours on the Moon, Intrepid left the Ocean of Storms on November 20, 1969. Intrepid rendezvoused with the Yankee Clipper, and the crew of Apollo 12 headed for home. We now had four men's footprints in the dust of the Moon. The next landing was scheduled for April the following year. I had gotten used to the fast pace of launches between Apollo 7 and Apollo 12, and the idea of waiting 5 months for the next mission was almost too much to take. Little did I (or anyone) know that Apollo 13's close call would mean that we would not land on the Moon again until February 1971.

This Apollo 12 commemorative plaque was designed by artist John Sims of Jacksonville, Florida. John, who goes by the handle "moonwalkerjohn" on collectSpace, has a replica of the Apollo moon boots, which he presses into Sculpy as the basis for his plaques. He has also added a replica of the aluminum plaque from Intrepid's landing gear, which simply says, "Apollo 12/November 1969." This simple wording was used on the plaques for Apollos 12-16.

I obtained this presentation directly from John in September 2008.

Alan Bean at Surveyor 3

2008-11-20T14:52:00.004-05:00

On the second of their two Apollo 12 moon walks, Pete Conrad and Al Bean visited the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which landed 3 years beforehand. Pete and Al's planned prank, of using a shutter timer on their camera to photograph both of them at the Surveyor, fell through when they couldn't find the timer in the rock box. So, they had to settle for "super tourist photos" of them individually at the Surveyor.

Back home, the TV networks scrambled to salvage what they could from what was supposed to be a prime time, full-color TV broadcast from the moon. NBC used marionettes to try to illustrate what was going on during the moonwalk. I took this picture of the TV - as you will see from the caption, we were hearing "astronaut voices live from the moon" but only watching a puppet show. It was decidedly low tech, but at least the moonwalk was covered. In subsequent missions, it became increasingly more difficult to find a network that would cover the moonwalks live. This was due both to waning public interest as well as much longer excursions. The Apollo 11 EVA was just over 2 hours, while Apollo 17 astronauts spent 22 hours walking on the moon over three days.

Apollo 12 on the Moon

2008-11-19T15:08:00.005-05:00

Apollo 12 landed on the Moon 39 years ago today. Unlike the Apollo 11 landing, which we watched on a Sunday afternoon, this landing was late at night for us on the US East Cost, after midnight on Tuesday.

Perhaps the biggest contrast was the completely different feeling we got about the landing as we listened to the ground to air conversation. Apollo 11 had been all tension, from the moment the LM rounded the Moon's limb, with communications dropouts, computer alarms, and then the low fuel warnings. On Apollo 12, we were treated to Pete and Al's ecstatic and jubilant exclamations all the way down. "There it is! There it is! Son of a gun - right down the middle of the road!!" And just after landing, there was Al's, "Good landing, Pete! Outstanding, man!" You never would have heard that from Neil and Buzz. It was so much fun to listen to.

The first moonwalk of the mission started later that morning. My parents let me stay home from school to watch it on our brand new color TV. Unfortunately, Al Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the sun when he was setting it on a tripod, and it burned out the camera's vidicon tube, completely ruining the picture. The networks still carried the audio of the moon walks.

This litho is one of my favorites of Al Bean's work, "Heavenly Reflections." I think Al's description of the work is almost as beautiful as his painting.

I have painted Pete Conrad and myself 239,000 miles from Earth, standing on the Ocean of Storms, looking homeward. Pete and I had come a long way together. We had met some ten years before. I was a student in Navy test pilot school and Pete was one of my instructors. I admired him for his professional skills and for his relaxed, colorful attitude. He is the best astronaut I have ever known. It was incredible to be standing on the Moon with him. It was good to take a moment to reflect on all the dedicated people it took to get us here for America. We were the lucky ones.

The stars were not visible because the sunlight reflecting from the bright lunar surface caused the irises of our eyes to contract, just as they do on Earth at night when standing on a brightly lit patio. As we looked up, the sky was a deep, shiny black. I guessed that deep, shiny black was the color one sees looking into infinity.

As I touched Pete's shoulder I thought, can all the people we know, all the people we love, who we've seen on TV, or read about in the newspapers, all be up there on that tiny blue and white marble? Earth is small but so lovely. It is easily the most beautiful object we could see from the Moon. It was a wondrous moment. If there is a God in heaven, this must be what he sees as he looks toward his children on the good Earth.

Happy 85th birthday, Alan Shepard

2008-11-18T16:59:00.004-05:00

Today would have been Alan Shepard's 85th birthday. I never got to meet the man, but I certainly remember watching his launch aboard Freedom 7 in May 1961. It's among my earliest memories. We were living on "The Farm" near Williamsburg, Virginia. I recall being called in to the TV room just before he blasted off. Watching that pencil-thin Redstone rocket lift off made quite an impression on me. Looking back now at films of the launch, it certainly paled in comparison to the smoke and fury of Apollo and Shuttle launches. But at the time, it was amazing to think that there was really a man on that rocket.

Shepard didn't fly again until he commanded Apollo 14 in 1971, as the oldest astronaut in the US program. He died of leukemia in July 1998.

Happy birthday, Old Man!

Pieces of Kapton foil from LM-6, "Intrepid" and LM-2

2008-11-17T19:42:00.007-05:00

This Lucite display purports to contain a piece of foil trimmed from LM-6, which was the Apollo 12 lunar module "Intrepid." It was not uncommon for workers in the space program to save bits and pieces of foil and other unusable leftover fragments from the vehicles they were assembling or working with, as mementos of their connection to the great events of the time. We, the average collectors of space memorabilia, are happy that they did! Of course, it is pretty much impossible to prove that any given piece of Kapton foil, which must have been used by the square mile during the Apollo program, is really from one vehicle or another. We must rely on the word of the worker who originally saved the piece, and whoever they then gave it to.

I have a similar piece of foil which came from LM-2, the lunar module at the National Air and Space Museum. I was personally given this 1" square piece of Kapton in the summer of 1971 by a museum curator who was making some adjustments to the LM as displayed. trimming off some bits of the foil. He gave several pieces of the foil to the tour guides (including me) on duty that day. I have no pictures to prove that the item came from there, other than photos I had taken of this item as far back as 1972. So I have to say: trust me, I know this one is real - even if I can't directly prove it 37 years later.

Apollo tin toy

2008-11-16T17:22:00.003-05:00

Apollo 11 was a worldwide sensation. It seemed like the whole world had Apollo 11 fever in 1969. There was a collectible or memento of just about any kind you could imagine with the Apollo 11 label on it, whether or not the item actually had anything to do with the moon landings. Surely wanting to do Apollo 11 one better, this Japanese tin toy from the time bears the designation Apollo 12.

I suppose we'll see a mild echo of Moon Fever in 2009, for the 40th anniversary of the landing. I'm sure it will be a bigger deal in 2019, for the 50th anniversary of the landing...but at that time, the people who were alive in 1969 will be a relatively small portion of the population. Today, fewer than half of America's people were alive in 1969!

Apollo 12...39 years and counting

2008-11-14T23:35:00.003-05:00

Apollo 12 launched 39 years ago today, on November 14, 1969. I was in 8th grade shop class at the time of the launch. I couldn't persuade the teacher to order a TV set from the library, but he did let us listen to it on the radio. We knew that something was going on (the lightning strike) from a little of the crew-to-ground radio, but it was hard to figure out. I was really upset that I had to miss seeing the launch on TV. The mission was taking a color TV camera to the moon's surface, and my dad had finally broken down and bought us our first color TV for the occasion. Here was my first chance to see a launch in color, and I had to miss it! I probably didn't miss too much, since the Saturn V disappeared into clouds only seconds after clearing the tower.

This is a VIP launch badge for the mission.

Apollo 12 prime crew

2008-11-12T09:10:00.002-05:00

Apollo 12 launched on November 14, 1969. Its prime crew was: Charles "Pete" Conrad, Commander; Dick Gordon, Command Module Pilot; and Al Bean, Lunar Module Pilot. Conrad was making his third trip into space and Gordon his second. Conrad flew on Gemini V with Gordon Cooper (another Gordon!); Conrad and [Dick] Gordon flew together in 1966 on Gemini XI. This was Bean's first spaceflight. He was was head astronaut for the Apollo Applications Project (later Skylab). He was moved into the Apollo 9 backup role (putting him in line for Apollo 12 prime crew) after astronaut Clifton "C.C." Williams was killed in a plane crash. Conrad, who had been Bean's flight instructor, personally requested Bean on the crew. So, this was a tight, friendly, and fun-loving crew of Navy pilots. If I could have tagged along on any mission, this crew would easily have been the most fun to be with.

Gemini XII anniversary

2008-11-11T13:33:00.002-05:00

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the launch of Gemini XII, the last mission of the Gemini program, carrying Command Pilot Jim Lovell and Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. By now, we had repeatedly demonstrated the rendezvous and docking techniques that would be critical to the lunar missions of Apollo, but EVA was still proving much more difficult than anticipated.

Gene Cernan, Mike Collins, and Dick Gordon had substantial problems in their spacewalks on Geminis IX, X, and XI. Having rehearsed in a neutral buoyancy tank, and with the addition of handholds and foot restraints on the vehicle, Aldrin almost made spacewalking look easy. This mission paved the way for the EVAs on Apollos 15-17, in which the CMP retrieved film from the SIM bays on the side of the Service Module. It also pioneered the techniques that would be necessary for the EVAs from the Space Shuttle and the assembly of the International Space Station.

The Martin Co. badge in this photo gave its wearer access to a test of the Gemini XII launch vehicle. It also grants the wearer the permission to keep the badge as a souvenir afterward!

Intrepid? or Aquarius? or Antares?

2008-11-10T23:40:00.006-05:00

In August 1969, my dad went on a VIP tour of Kennedy Space Center. His office had been responsible for developing - and letting NASA borrow - the TV camera which Apollo 11 used on the lunar surface. I believe that as an informal 'thank you,' he and some of his coworkers got to take the KSC tour. You can't believe how jealous I was that he got to go and I didn't, but at least he brought back some great souvenirs and photos. I'll post more pictures of the tour later on.

One of the things he saw on his visit to the Cape was this Lunar Module ascent stage. The Apollo 12 launch vehicle was being stacked in the Vehicle Assembly Building that month, so this ascent stage could possibly have been that of Intrepid. However, as you'll see in the other attached photo, the CSM was already atop the vehicle stack, which may have meant that the LM was also in place inside the S-IVB adapter. If that was the case, then this LM might have been Aquarius (Apollo 13), or even Antares (Apollo 14).

The original flight schedule for 1969 was that Apollo 11 would fly in July, followed by Apollo 12 in September (in case Apollo 11 was unsuccessful) and Apollo 13 in November. Once Apollo 11's mission ended in July 1969, and NASA met President Kennedy's challenge to land men on the Moon and return them before the end of the decade, the pressure was off, and Apollo 12 was slipped to November 1969 to allow more time for preparation. In any case, the delivery schedule was tight, and there were usually several vehicles in various stages of assembly at the Cape during the heyday of the Apollo landings.

41 years since Apollo 4

2008-11-09T16:25:00.002-05:00

Today marks 41 years since the first launch of a Saturn V...then and still the world's biggest rocket. I have read accounts of the people who witnessed that first launch. They knew it was going to be loud, but none of them appreciated how truly overwhelming it would be. Walter Cronkite stood and laughed with joy as pieces of his broadcast booth came down around him!

This booklet from my collection was published as a public service (i.e., bragging rights) by the prime contractor, North American Aviation. "This is the first of the big shots - NASA's Apollo 4. 8 hours, 43 minutes, and 30 seconds when America will hold its breath."