posted 03-11-2006 05:23 AM               

Answered a question long ago answered!

posted 03-11-2006 11:00 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Duke Of URL:
I've erased this post.

My Grandmother always told me "If you argue with an @$*~&^, people listening in can't tell which is which."(edited March 10, 2006).]

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I like your grandmother. Her advice is an excellent paraphrase of Prov. 26:4.

posted 03-11-2006 11:23 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by SCE to AUX:
Duke... at the risk of opening this up again, I am curious about this sequence of events. please note, By asking I am in no way taking sides on this quagmire

I was under the impression that Kraft was under pressure from "higher-ups" to leave the retro pack on during re-entry (against his better judgement) and that was the compelling factor in not informing Glenn of their intentions. I believe this non-communication upset Kraft as well and as a result the Flight Controller position was subsequently created as a "final word"?

[This message has been edited by SCE to AUX (edited March 10, 2006).]

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The best juxtaposition of views (Glenn's v. Kraft's), IMHO and IIRC, is gained by reading the primary sources, in this case the "Pilot's Flight Report," in Results of the First United States Manned Orbital Space Flight: February 20, 1962, and Kraft's report in the same publication. Kraft's report makes very interesting reading.

Kraft's take on this controversy forty years later, in his memoir, FLIGHT, is also illuminating.

The MA-6 audio, which I have recently heard, rounds out the picture. My June 2002 telephone interview with Glenn, and later discussion of the events with Carpenter, confirmed my basic understanding of the conflict. You can see my take on it on the matter on pp. 226-28 in FSS.

But the best place to start is the "Pilot's Flight Report," followed by Kraft's report and then the audio.

Perhaps a collector or researcher could help here with information about how to obtain these immensely useful primary documents. Debating the issue from memoirs strikes me as an exercise in futility.

posted 03-11-2006 01:01 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by KC Stoever:
I like your grandmother. Her advice is an excellent paraphrase of Prov. 26:4.

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If I was religious I might get it. But thanks.

You should have heard her remarks about penis envy. (Can you say "penis" here?)

posted 03-11-2006 02:31 PM               

quote:

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(Can you say "penis" here?)

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posted 03-11-2006 03:03 PM               

[snip]

SCE to AUX, a citation would help here. The statement seems hard to square with Kraft's subsequent claims, on book tour, that he, "Flight," was "God." No one could overrule him while he sat at his console, "not even President Kennedy." The remarks were reported in the spring of 2002 by a Boulder, Colo., newspaper my mother reads and clips. I'll try to find the cite for you.

Again, in the end, your best bet is to read the primary accounts, including the transcript, in the bluebook report. Hope someone can help you find a copy. The LIFE magazines, btw, can be had for pennies on eBay.

Back to MA-6. My sense of the consensus view, fwiw, is that it was Kraft's decision to keep the information from Glenn and that Kraft erred in so deciding.

posted 03-11-2006 03:05 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Colin Anderton:
Unfortunately, that press conference is not on the Mercury set.
The only film I've seen of this is a small piece featured in "Moonshot". It's pretty good quality.
Carpenter actually said, "I understand the report came from Hawaii that it was a tired and confused astronaut. If my opinion is worth anything to you, this is not true. I will admit to being preoccupied."

Colin.

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Thanks Colin. It has been identified as a press conference most likely from Florida, but possibly Grand Turk. I'm still looking for a completed video clip or transcript.

posted 03-11-2006 03:26 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Colin Anderton:
Unfortunately, that press conference is not on the Mercury set.
The only film I've seen of this is a small piece featured in "Moonshot". It's pretty good quality.
Carpenter actually said, "I understand the report came from Hawaii that it was a tired and confused astronaut. If my opinion is worth anything to you, this is not true. I will admit to being preoccupied."

Colin.

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I recently listened to an audio clip of this statement. Audio is interesting, especially if you know the person. Yes, he was preoccupied: with navigating, flying, the flight plan, voice reports. Focused is what I heard on the audio.

Anyay, the clip I heard was a forceful statement, artfully phrased. More interesting, Carpenter sounds royally p*ssed off. He's using his angry voice. You have to know him to hear this complicated and controlled emotion in the man. But boy is it there.

Of course, old audio being what it is, he did sound a little like an angry Alvin the Chipmunk. At the time, however, I can assure you that at the press conference, he probably sounded more like Bambi's dad.

One more detail. I am positive the "tired and confused" remark is traceable to an epic misunderstanding between Hawaii capcom and Carpenter on the second pass. On audio, the capcom can be heard prompting the pilot for an attitude check, while Carpenter continues his voice reports on what he can see out his window.

Capcom appears not to understand that Carpenter had responded right away to the request ("Roger, wait one . . .", because he continued to report on observables at sunrise while having to wait for the spacecraft to get "within scanner limits."

Conducting an attitude check involves a couple of steps, which in turn involve time. Carpenter made use of the time by reporting what he saw.

posted 03-11-2006 03:51 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by KC Stoever:
The statement seems hard to square with Kraft's subsequent claims, on book tour, that he, "Flight," was "God." No one could overrule him while he sat at his console, "not even President Kennedy."

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posted 03-11-2006 03:55 PM               

Why does your Old Man hate the name "Malcolm" so much?

It could have been worse. My Old Man was named Rudolph....middle name Valentino. Not only that, but he had hair the color of an orang-utang (my mother's description) and was a 14 year old in the Black Rock neighborhood of Buffalo when "Rudolph The Red-Nose Reindeer" had its 1937 debut.

posted 03-11-2006 06:22 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Duke Of URL:
Here's a question that's never been adequately answered:

Why does your Old Man hate the name "Malcolm" so much?

It could have been worse. My Old Man was named Rudolph....middle name Valentino. Not only that, but he had hair the color of an orang-utang (my mother's description) and was a 14 year old in the Black Rock neighborhood of Buffalo when "Rudolph The Red-Nose Reindeer" had its 1937 debut.

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Quite a cautionary tale, Duke, for parents everywhere struggling to name their children.

Re: "Malcolm," don't know that Carpenter exactly ~hates~ the name. It may have struck him as superfluous, since he was "Bud" or "Scott" as a kid and thereafter. His father was an "M. Scott" too and also called "Scott," as are two of his (Malcolm Scott) sons--one a Marc Scott, and called Scott, and the other a Matthew Scott, but called Matthew. Head hurt yet?

This honoring of a family naming convention suggests to me that at worst Carpenter is ambivalent.

Wally, in Gotcha mode, often called guys by alternate names: Glenn he called Herschel, Scott he called Malcolm, and Al often Bartlett. I do know that Carpenter did not particularly like the practice.

Off for a week of family vacation!

Happy St. Patrick's Day and all that.

posted 03-13-2006 05:09 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by KC Stoever:

Off for a week of family vacation!

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posted 03-20-2006 06:34 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by SCE to AUX:
I'm looking for a Carpenter post-flight press conference. It may be on the set. It was Scott alone in his post-recovery flight suit. The memorable quote from it was something like...
"Some are reporting that it was a tired and confused astronaut up there, if my opinion is worth anything, it is not true. I will admit to being distracted". I saw a clip and was hoping Mark included it. Stil looking!

[This message has been edited by SCE to AUX (edited March 09, 2006).]

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N.B.: John noted that "distracted" in the quoted text was in fact "preoccupied."

While on vacation, I was pondering SCE to AUX's post about the Carpenter press conference. Then I thought about its timing, and news coverage in general (particularly scientific and technical news coverage), and realized something anew.

Thought I'd post here hoping to get feedback. First off, events like a spaceflight have a news shelf life. Coverage of the flight of Aurora 7 ended pretty much by the first week of June, with the LIFE cover story on Rene's "55 minutes"--playing up the wife's harrowing ordeal.

But the "mission critical" PHS malfunction--the worst kind you can get, btw, an intermittent malfunction--was not diagnosed until well into June, well after the press conference on May 26 or 27, where Carpenter, as it happens, manfully took responsibility for all his decisions and actions in space. Took responsibility, as it happens, before he or anyone at NASA even knew what had caused the overshoot! They were all guessing, during the press conference, about the cause of the overshoot. They knew autopilot had failed at retrofire. But not why and how.

That's the puzzle piece. A mysterious overshoot, fundamental cause unknown on May 24, 25, 26, 27.

Fundamental cause for the overshoot was unknown until data were analysed in June--and even then they had only the data to inspect, and not the pitch horizon scanners themselves.

NASA writes that because the PHS units "were jettisoned during the normal landing sequence, postflight inspection and analysis of these [PHS] units were impossible; however, the failure is believed to have been in the scanner circuit and was apparently of a random nature . . . " ("1. Spacecraft and Launch-Vehicle Performance," Results of the United States Second Manned Orbital Space Flight, May 24, 1962, p. 5.)

In other words, in describing the "mission critical" PHS malfunction in FSS, I succeeded only halfway in explaining the controversy of the overshoot. Yes, the PHS malfunction was responsible both for the mysterious fuel loss (much of it at any rate) AND at retrofire for introducing the yaw error, which in turn produced the overshoot.

But the part I did not explain was that the analysis never really made it into the newspapers and magazines. It didn't even merit Wolfe's notice in THE RIGHT STUFF, IIRC. Only a NASA bluebook report published in June 1962 and THIS NEW OCEAN, published in 1963, and the NASA cognoscenti--technicians and engineers.

Technical mysteries like the PHS and the overshoots they produce--stories that unravel long after the journalists have moved on to the next great adventure in space--therefore become like a Rorschach test for us all. What do we see when we ponder the mystery cum controversy? A brave, lone astronaut, triumphing over broken autopilot systems and high cabin temps, and egotistical flight directors? Or a star-struck space tourist, overcome with wonder or idiocy or something you are afraid of (this is the Icarus narrative). You see what your imagination lets or compels you to see.

Until you hear the audio.

Thank you, Spacecraft Films, for the audio.

posted 03-20-2006 07:18 PM               

As a private pilot, that would be like me looking at the fuel gages and seeing near empty and knowingly chasing scenery on the ground while my destination is still miles off. It ain't happenin!

posted 03-20-2006 09:21 PM            

[This message has been edited by SCE to AUX (edited March 21, 2006).]

posted 03-21-2006 08:25 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by KC Stoever:
"And yes all seven did take a group photo in their silver spacesuits. But if carmelo can find a photo, look at the shoes--Deke's wearing brown dress shoes, with really cool socks, I think."

Yo! I think you're remembering the shot in front of the jet. They were wearing various kinds of foot drag, and Deke Slayton was wearing brown shoes in that picture.

And we all remember that famous Frank Zappa tune "Brown Shoes Don't Make It".

Allow me to point out that the passage of time is subjective. I'm sure Mrs. Carpenter felt those 55 minutes passed slowly.

I can sympathize. Those three weeks I was (accidentally) re-married to my second wife were an ETERNITY.

Didn't you step on some poisonous South American jungle creature that day and get savaged by it? I read some place you have a peg leg now. [This message has been edited by Duke Of URL (edited March 08, 2006).]

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Sorry, I missed this witticism about my foot injury, documented in LIFE magazine, and as a consequence didn't respond.

No. I do not have a pegleg.

I stepped not on a poisonous fish (that's a Sealab II deal with my dad) but on a sand burr (sp?).

And my copious tears, recorded mercilessly by LIFE photographer Ralph Morse, did not capture the true humiliation and pain I felt at the moment.

It was not physical pain that made me cry. Carpenters don't cry under those conditons.

It was that my older, stronger, faster brothers, with tougher and more calloused feet, had beaten me in a race from the house to the beach, from where we could witness our father's launch.

We were, incidentally, the first children to witness their father's launch live. That was Rene's decision and Rene's confidence that we would not witness an explosion.

[This message has been edited by KC Stoever (edited March 21, 2006).]

posted 03-25-2006 12:58 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by KC Stoever:
(snip)

Had a pretty good explanation of the pitch horizon scanner malfunction in FSS and the ill-designed control stick. But still feel I failed my expository duties. You can tell from the audio that the man is preternaturally focused on his duties.

The NASA bluebook report explains the PHS malfunction best, and the NASA history THIS NEW OCEAN relies basically on that.

What's interesting is that at the Carpenter press conference and therefore in the newspaper reporting that followed, NASA and its astronaut were then unable to adequately explain the fuel usage AND the mysterious overshoot.

The posflight inspection hadn't been conducted yet. And only postflight inspection would reveal the role played by an intermittently malfunctioning ASCS.

I quote from Paper 1. "Spacecraft and Launch-Vehicle performance." By John H. Boynton and E. M. Fields

The performance of the Mercury spacecraft and Atlas launch vehicle for the orbital flight of Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter was excellent in nearly every respect. All primary mission objectives were achieved. The single mission-critical malfunction which occurred involved a failure in the spacecraft pitch horizon scanner, a component of the automatic control system. This anomaly was adequately compensated for by the pilot in subsequent inflight operations so that the success of the mission was not compromised." (p. 1)

It's so clear, yet so technical that MEGO (my eyes glaze over) sets in for nearly everyone, even those really interested in spaceflight issues.

Kraft framing it as a "disoriented" astronaut, meanwhile, became a better and easier story to tell, one that benefited him politically.

Speaking of partisan political operatives, (e.g, Karl Rove), these clever guys have this simple fact of propaganda all figured out! You don't really need any facts to win a fight. All you need is a good story and trust that lazy journalists will repeat it, lovingly, forcing facts to fit the tale.

What the heck is a pitch horizon scanner anyway? I dunno, pal. But I do know how to spell "disoriented"!

'twas ever thus.

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Posts on cS are useful adjuncts to writing, rewriting, and publishing addenda to more formally published works. But like a lot of online composition, these posts are essentially a first draft--an unedited first draft at that. Almost like thinking outloud.

Sometimes, incoherence becomes a problem, and the text quoted above is, in places, a little incoherent. So I thought I'd annotate some of the above to explain what the, er, ambassador really meant.

First, I wrote "Had a pretty good explanation of the pitch horizon scanner malfunction in FSS and the ill-designed control stick. But still feel I failed my expository duties. You can tell from the audio that the man is preternaturally focused on his duties."

This is incoherent. Besides, the FSS treatment of the PHS malfunction was entirely adequate. What I missed during the research and writing--and what I was trying to explain, if incoherently--is that having a transcript is great. But the transcript together with the sound of a voice you have known since infancy are even better. I wish I'd had audio, is all.

Second, I also wrote, "It's so clear [the mission critical PHS malfunction, undiagnosed for weeks and never adequately reported in the press], yet so technical that MEGO (my eyes glaze over) sets in for nearly everyone, even those really interested in spaceflight issues.

This first-draft thinking was trying to describe the (1) deficiencies of science writing in 1962 (or 2006), (2) the resultant MEGO effect among even the very smart journalists, and also (3) the important element of timing. If journalists don't have all the facts, yet still have a deadline to meet, they STILL have to tell a story. They do the best they can at the time.

So as journalists faced deadlines, there were facts aglimmering about a malfunction, yet to be fully understood or explained even by the geeks, and then there was the allure of another kind of story, absent facts but filled with classical antecedents (the Icarus narrative) about the perils of the puerile flying too close to the sun.

This is kind of what the ambassador meant when she wrote: "Kraft framing [the overshoot] as a 'disoriented' astronaut, meanwhile, became a better and easier story to tell, one that benefited him politically."

See, too, one example of the MEGO effect (see if you can spot it), ca. 2006, afflicting a very smart journalist, Andrew Smith, who in MOONDUST writes about Aurora 7:

Later it would be claimed that he squandered fuel by swinging his . . . ship around to get a better view of the Earth, leaving too little to negotiate a safe re-entry . . . -- although a recent memoir penned by Carpenter and his daughter blames a hitherto unacknowledged guidance system malfunction for the pilot's liberality with the fuel.

Precisely my point: "hitherto acknowledged." Even a very smart and conscientious journalist does not have time to look at the primary sources which would have told him that NASA had long acknowledged the malfunction and in fact labeled it "mission critical."

But that dry and geeky narrative never seeped in to the more stirring story of the confused, even liberal (!), astronaut, with which space enthusiast Smith is more familiar.

That's why I wrote that send up of two guys, journalists, on deadline, to wit:
"'What the heck is a pitch horizon scanner anyway?' 'I dunno, pal. But I do know how to spell ~disoriented~!"

No one at NASA felt their eyes glaze over on hypertechnical issues like ASCS malfunctions. They were on the job. And NASA publications also succeeded in explaining MA-7 in the bluebook report. Carpenter understood it all, too, and in his honest way assumed that all parties would play their respective roles in manful fashion, telling the eye-glazing truth because it was, well, true.

But then we know what happens to those who assume.

I hope this is more coherent.