posted 04-24-2009 12:03 PM               

As many of you know I am the Director of Service Engineering here at Gulfstream Aerospace (ref: Gulfstream II used as the STA). We had a happy retirement gathering yesterday for two of the Engineers in my group who are leaving us after 25+ years of service each. With that we invited some of the former Engineers (retired themselves) that had worked with these two fellows. I sat and had lunch with the fellows that hired these new retirees (well one had hired me as well, 25+ years ago).

One gentleman was a Saturn V designer. He had designed the umbilical trench (and all of its insides) that was on the outside of the first stage of the Saturn V, and also went on to do some work on Skylab at Huntsville as well (Huntspatch as he called it). He recalled stories of what it was like to work with German Engineers as well as the time he had to attend a meeting with von Braun. One of his designs did not do so well on the shaker table and von Braun wanted to know what the fix was going to be. He further explained that it all worked out and said von Braun stated "this is why we test".

As Gulfstream has its roots from Grumman and the Engineers from Bethpage, it should not be a surprise that the other fellow was the designer responsible for the tubing within the ascent stage of the Lunar Module. He told of how he had to design the tubing to route in such small spaces and that how while in one of the assent modules, which was being built for a moon landing, he had lost his I.D. badge and they never could get it out. It was determined they could leave it where it was and as he put it "he did not go to the moon, but his I.D. did (no he could not remember which mission). This fellow was also involved in the backroom design of the CO2 scrubber for Apollo 13 where "they had to get a square peg to fit a round hole." He then went on and talked about how designed the system that allow transfer of fluids between the CM and the LM (I'm going to have to do some more research on that one as I was not sure exactly what he meant).

posted 04-24-2009 02:01 PM               

I agree with you 100% that we wait far too long to ask people share their stories with us, assuming those folks will still be around when we eventually get around to talking to them. Having just lost my mother-in-law this past week, literally days before we were coming to visit with her for the first time in several months, I appreciate all the more that our links to history can be cut suddenly and irretrievably.

I have been reading the NASA Oral History Project interviews with some of the key people who helped put Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo into space. The interview project didn't get underway until nearly 30 years after the Moon landings. By this time, many of the people being interviewed had failing memories. The consensus among the interviewees was, "Why didn't someone talk to us just after Apollo ended and it was all fresh in our minds?"

posted 04-28-2009 11:35 AM               

Cheers,