posted 10-08-2003 04:57 AM               

I have a general question about what happened to Apollo CM heat shields after the return of the CM to North American in Los Angeles. All the restored command modules in various museums have complete heat shields, yet plugs (and at least one slice) of the heat shields were removed and passed out to various people. Does anyone know what typically happened to these heat shields after recovery, or what specifically happened with any of the missions?

I ask because I have a large slice of an Apollo heat shield (honeycomb + ablative resin) that is charred from re-entry but without any markings to indicate which mission it is from. It was passed down to me with little information other than the name of the employee to whom it was given and a very rough time frame.

If you or someone you know worked at North American (I think the plant was in Downey, CA) during the Apollo period, this would be invaluable. There is a lot of information out there on the Apollo missions, but very little about what happened after recovery.

posted 10-08-2003 05:53 PM               

you posted an interesting question. I have done some research in the past but haven't found out that much about the whereabouts of these "missing" parts of the heatshields.
It's widely known that after the flights technician and workers who got in contact with the flown capsule were officially allowed to keep fragments as mementoes which is probably the case with your piece as well.

However in those days nobody thought that these pieces may get a monetary value on day, so many of those folks kept the pieces without noting the mission it was on anywhere. I'm afraid but there is very little hope you will ever get to know which mission your piece is from unless you know the guy who got it then. It wasn't noted anywhere officially who kept what after any flight.

Lots of those heatshield fragments were also given to VIP's and other important people as gifts - those usually come with some sort of a engraved plate or other description detailing the background or giving at least the mission ! But again (and Robert may jump in here) this has never been done officially by NASA but rather by the contractor companies, so there is no written down information as well.

Florian

posted 10-08-2003 06:38 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by spaceflori:
But again (and Robert may jump in here) this has never been done officially by NASA but rather by the contractor companies, so there is no written down information as well.

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There is certainly no definitive information to point to NASA soliciting heatshield core samples for presentation to VIPs, however I do have anecdotal reports that just such a request was made to the engineers working on the spacecraft post flight.

These NASA-sanctioned presentations would most certainly be encased in acrylic and with presentation plaques.

As far as contractors being encouraged to keep a piece, well, it wasn't so much them coming up and just knocking a piece off, but there were many core samples taken of the heatshield for post flight analysis and it was generally these chunks that ended up in private collections as there was no way to reinstall them afterwards. In museums today, you can see where filler material was placed into where these cores were extracted (and in at least one case, the Skylab CM hanging in "Apollo To The Moon" at the National Air and Space Museum, you can clearly see the many holes cut as a result).