NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo

248 Pages·2015·21.34 MB·English

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NASA Engineers and

the Age of Apollo

NASA SP-4104

NASA Engineers and

the Age of Apollo

Sylvia Doughty Fries
The NASA History Series
NI/\SI\
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
SCientific and Technical Information Program
Washington, DC 1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
NASA engi neers and the age of Apollo / [compiled by] Sylvia
Doughty Fries.
p. cm. --(NASA SP: 4104)
Includes bibliographical references.
I. United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration-­
Officials and employees--Biography. 2. Aeronautical engineers--United
States--Biography. 3. Project Apollo (U.S.) I. Fries, Sylvia Doughty.
II. United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
III. Series.
TL52U12.N365 1991
629.1 '092'273--dc20
[BJ 90-39761
CIP
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328
ISBN 0-16-036174-5
Contents
Preface ............................................................................ ............... ............... ................ vii

Acknowledgments .......................................... .......................... .. .. ..................... ... ....... ix

Introduction ................ .................................................................................................. xi

Chapter 1 Beginnings, 1918-1932 ......................................... .. .. ........ .. .... .................. 1

Chapter 2 Beginnings, 1932-1948 .............. .... ......................................................... 27

Chapter 3 What Goes Up .......................................... .......................................... ..... 59

Cha pter 4 Journeys ........................................... ......................................................... 89

Chapter 5 Scientists, Engineers, and Managers .................................................. 123

Chapter 6 Changes ............................................................................................ ...... 153

Epilog ............. ................................................... .. .................................... ...... ..... .. ... .. .. 187

Appendix A NASA Managers Solicited for Names of

"Representative" NASA Engineers ................... .. .......... ................. 193

Appendix B Demographic Tables ......................................................................... 197

Appendix C Education and Military Service of

NASA Apollo Era Engineers Interviewed ..................................... 207

Index ............................................................................ .................. .. ................... ......... 211

v

Preface

The twentieth anniversary of the landing of an American on the surface of the Moon
occasioned many bittersweet reflections. Sweet was the celebration of the historic
event itself, and sweet to space enthusiasts was President George Bush's call for a
new era of human space exploration - back to the Moon and on to Mars. Bitter, for
those same enthusiasts, was the knowledge that during the twenty intervening
years much of the national consensus that launched this country on its first lunar
adventure had evaporated, and foraging for funds to keep going seemed to have
become a major preoccupation of the old guard that had watched over that
adventure.
Less apparent was the fact that the final act in another human drama was taking
place: a generation of men and women who had defined their lives to a large extent
in terms of this nation's epochal departure from Earth's surface was taking its leave
of the program they had built. Would they, or their work, be remembered? Would
anyone care? As the historian for the National Aeronautics and Space Administra­
tion, I had the responsibility of attempting - attempting, because the task could
never be fully done - to capture the essence of their lives and careers. Those who
worked "on the front lines" of what I have called, after William James, a "moral
equivalent of war," have had their quirks and genius memorialized in the agency's
lore. Many have had their organizational and technical trials recorded in the
narrative histories produced by NASA. More recently, and with great success,
Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox, in Apollo: The Race to the Moon (Simon and
Schuster, 1989), have combined the human and technical sagas of the designers,
flight operators, and project managers who made Apollo happen to weave an
arresting tale of a unique moment in our history.
But history also gathers up in its sweep many ordinary people, not only those
who give orders and do combat at the front lines, but those who slug it out and
otherwise endure in the trenches. If our memory of the Apollo era neglected those
ordinary people, that memory would be incomplete, and we would have done an
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NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo
injustice to the true nature of life over time. Thus, the lives and careers laid out on
the pages that follow have been drawn from hours ofconversation with a variety of
people: they are my best approximation of the "average" NASA engineer of the
Apollo age; some did remarkable things, while others just filled in the pieces. Itsoon
became apparent, however, that even the most "average" of them were part of a
story that was larger than the Apollo story itself, much less NASA's story. What
happened to them over the course of their careers was part of the undertow of what
happened to this country during the post-World War II era and the 1960s.
This book would not have been possible without the willing and good-natured
participationoffifty-one NASA engineerswhogave freely and openlyofthemselves
during myextensive interviews. Itis to them thatthis bookowes its first and greatest
debt. Not all have had their stories fully retold here, simply because several had
similar stories to tell. Nathaniel B. Cohen, my supervisor at NASA when this project
was conceived, supported it enthusiastically. A veteran of one of NASA's original
aeronautical research laboratories, Nat Cohen has been a firm believer (to my
benefit) that to manage a scientific or scholarly program well, one must continue to
be an active researcher. Nat also patiently read the first draft of the manuscript,
trying to save me from embarrassing errors here, taking issue with me there, but
always in an encouraging way. A. Michal McMahon, who served as associate
historian in the NASA History Division for two years during the early phase of this
project, did half of the interviewing and contributed much through his insightful
and well-informed observations on the engineering profession, interview topics,
and how the interviews mightbestbe interpreted. Lee D. Saegesser, NASA archivist,
to whom virtually everyresearcherofspacehistoryowes a debt, tirelessly found and
delivered to my desk mountains of folders and publications without which I would
have been unable to fill in the details that are typically lost in interviews. Marion
Davis prepared many of the transcripts, edited them, and provided bibliographic
support. PatriciaShephard,administrativeassistant for the NASA History Division,
stood watch over my time in a way that would be the envy of any corporate
executive.
Gil Roth, Carl Praktish, David Williamson (all NASA veterans) and Richard P.
Hallion read the manuscript and returned detailed and stimulating comments and
criticisms, as did Howard E. McCurdy. Howard's own study of NASA's evolving
organizational culture led him into some of the same thickets through which I was
traveling; he has shared hours of conversations on the subject of NASA, federal
bureaucracies, American politics, and American society in the postwar world. Many
other colleagues responded cheerfully to questions over the telephone, or reviewed
portions of the manuscript. If, notwithstanding their help, errors remain, only I am
to blame.
Sylvia D. Fries
viii