MRBD- The flight Shepard and Craft hated

The following is an excerpt from the book "Growing up with Spaceflight- PROJECT MERCURY" and is protected by Copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski, no part may reproduced without expressed permission or the author.

MR-BD- UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

When asked what kind of fuels it took to get the United States to the Moon, few average folks can give the correct answer. Those who are space-buffs or who actually are a part of the aerospace industry can usually name off the propellants such as LOX, RP1, LH2 and assorted hypergolic fuels. Although they are correct, they often leave out one critical fuel without which no human would ever have set foot on the lunar surface. The “fuel” that was required in the greatest quantity was... political fuel.

On March 24, 1961, an event took place that, through completely unintended consequences, would open wide the political fuel valves. It was the flight monikered as “MR-BD.” Completely unknown to those outside the program, yet destined to significantly affect the space history books, this single launch caused a good deal of animosity inside Project Mercury. Thus, it became an event that is often overlooked, and deliberately shunned by NASA itself because MR-BD caused the dominos of history to fall away from the favor of the United States and into the direction of the Soviet Union. People working on Project Mercury soon saw its effect as causing their immediate embarrassment in the press and in the eyes of the public. The result of the MR-BD colored the USA as being in "second place" in the “space race.”

Because the MR-BD mission was injected into the flight schedule, Alan Shepard’s flight was pushed back nearly two months. That allowed the Soviets to place Yuri Gagarin into orbit two weeks ahead of Shepard’s flight, and, in the eyes of the world, “win” the glory of having put the first man into space. To many at NASA, the MR-BD was seen as an unnecessary schedule slip that cost them the prize of being first. 

 With the hindsight of a historian, however, MR-BD can be viewed very differently.

MR-BD was an acronym that stood for “Mercury Redstone – Booster Development." It was an extra flight that famed German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and his team insisted must be placed into the schedule of the Mercury Redstone test flight series leading toward Alan Shepard’s suborbital mission. In the original schedule, Shepard’s MR-3 mission was supposed to launch during the third week of March. If the Soviets did not pull a red rabbit out of their hat Shepard would become the first man in space and thus “win” the space race for the United States. The problem was that all three of the previous unmanned Mercury Redstone launch attempts had run into a series of small problems with serious and, in two cases, embarrassing consequences.

When the first Mercury Redstone, MR-1, attempted to launch it had a mismatch in a two-pronged plug that pulled out of the base of the booster at the instant of liftoff. That plug was designed so that when it pulled out, as the booster began to lift from the launch ring, one prong, being one-half-inch shorter than the other, would disconnect first. On all previous Redstone's that had not been a problem because none of them had been wired the same as the manned version. In this case, the two prongs disconnected 20 milliseconds apart. Although that time span seems extremely brief to a human, in the area of electronics where electrons flow at the speed of light, 20 milliseconds is a very long time. The Mercury Redstone’s automatic system sensed the difference and shut the engine down. With that, the booster simply set back down onto the launch ring. But the electronic brain was still working and it saw this as a normal shutdown, as if the vehicle was in flight, so it automatically jettisoned the escape tower! With the escape tower gone and no acceleration being sensed, the capsule’s programming told it to go into recovery mode and it then deployed the main and reserve parachutes which popped out like corks. To say that this was embarrassing would be something of an understatement.

MR-1A was the next attempt and although it appeared to fly normally, later data analysis would show a critical problem. The carbon vanes that jutted into the exhaust flame to steer the Redstone showed an unexpected vibration. The frequency and the magnitude of that vibration grew very near to the predicted lifespan of the servo motors which moved the vanes. Loss of one of them could have easily resulted in the loss of vehicle control. It was determined that the vibration was caused simply by “…the lowered second bending frequency of the Mercury-Redstone booster-capsule configuration.”

MR-2 was next and would carry Ham the chimp. At first the flight looked normal, but for reasons that were unapparent at the time, the booster was ascending too steeply and depleting its fuel at a higher than normal rate. This was caused by the thrust controller’s servo control valve being stuck in the full open position. The result was that the propellant fully depleted at exactly 137 seconds into the burn. That was 5.5 seconds before schedule and .5 seconds prior to where the integrating accelerometer was set to arm. The Abort Sensing Implementation System (ASIS) sensed the anomaly and commanded an abort, firing the escape tower and pulling the Mercury spacecraft and Ham the chimp away from the booster. Instead of an expected maximum 12 G acceleration, Ham got hit with abort-level acceleration. He splashed down 137 miles farther downrange than planned and took about 17 G’s in the process.

Although NASA officials later displayed a healthy Ham as proof of a successful flight, the fact was that this had been an abort, pure and simple. The flight was actually aborted during boosted flight by the triggering of the ASIS. The fact that the chimp had survived was actually immaterial. Had Shepard or any other of the seven Mercury astronauts been onboard that flight, the Soviets, as well as American critics of the program (some of the most vocal of whom were actually advising President Kennedy), would have been quick to point out that all NASA had done was boost the capsule to the point where the mission was aborted by the automatic system designed to save the astronaut’s life.

In the wake of the growing laundry list of little failures, the von Braun team decided that another unmanned flight was required to test the fixes for the problems. Members of the Space Task Group, which if you will recall were the engineers charged with building the foundation of NASA’s manned space efforts, chose to ignore the von Braun team’s list of launch vehicle issues. The STG deemed the problems to be minor. Thus, the STG recommended to NASA headquarters that Shepard’s MR-3 mission should “go” according to its original schedule and launch in March. Even decades later, former members of the STG hold to their original position. In his autobiography "Flight" former Mercury flight director Chris Kraft states

“The Germans were embarrassed by the Redstone’s performance on MR-2, and by their failure to predict its fuel flow.”

Of course he ignores the fact that a stuck servo control valve nullified any fuel flow predictions made by “…the Germans…” or anyone else. One thing he does get right, however, is his statement that the STG gang was “furious” when von Braun insisted on another test.  Shepard himself recalled in his autobiography "Moon Shot" that the problem was a simple relay and nothing more, which is also far from being factual.

In fact, in their March 20, 1961, memorandum addressing the problems with the first three Mercury Redstone flights, the STG itself cited a total of nine different issues as presented by the von Braun team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama. They were: 1) Rudder and carbon vane vibration, 2) Instrument compartment vibration, 3) Thrust controller, 4) H202 tank pressure regulator, 5) Cutoff arming timer, 6) Roll abort sensor, 7) H202 system controller, 8) Man-hole LOX leak, and 9) Velocity integrator. It is easy to see that the issue was a chain of malfunctions that caused the flight of MR-BD to be placed into the schedule. NASA Headquarters agreed. MR-BD would fly in late March of 1961.

So put off was the STG over this decision that they refused to allow the von Braun team to designate the flight as MR-2A or MR-3 and, again according to Kraft’s book, they forced “the Germans” to use MR-BD as the moniker. They also refused to allocate an actual flight version of the Mercury capsule and denied the use of a live escape tower. Instead the MR-BD was topped with a used boiler-plate Mercury capsule from the Little Joe 1B mission and an inert escape tower. Nearly a half century later, Kraft still referrers to the MR-BD as being “…von Braun’s unnecessary Redstone test.”

In aviation, or aerospace, the way that you prevent an accident or a catastrophe is when you see a chain of circumstances or failures that may lead to the accident; you break the chain. You recognize the related issues as they add up and correct the problems. In the case of MR-BD that is what the folks at MSFC did. The flight of MR-BD went off smoothly as every one of the fixes made by the von Braun team worked. Now the stage was set for the first manned Mercury Redstone flight.

By delaying the schedule, the MR-BD inadvertently played directly into the hands of the Soviets. On April 12, 1961, they launched Gagarin’s Vostok spacecraft and claimed the title of having put the first man into space. They had the illusion that this milestone would be a morale-buster for the United States and those people in the West. The Soviets, however, were badly mistaken. 

There is nothing Americans hate more than losing, and coming in second is considered as just being the first one to lose. America’s new president, John F. Kennedy, had campaigned on the notion that the United States was falling behind the Soviets in many areas, especially spaceflight. It was an easy point to make considering the indifferent posture the Eisenhower administration took toward manned spaceflight. Yet, the shockwave that went through the American public due to the Vostok mission’s success now gave Kennedy the perfect opportunity to fulfill his campaign rhetoric.

Across the United States the idea that “the Russians are beating us” became entrenched among the public at large. In Congress, members heard from their home districts as the “What are you going to do about it?” questions came from every corner. Kennedy now had the political fuel needed, not only to set the course of the United States toward the Moon, but also to gain the public inertia required to actually accomplish that goal over time.

Had the STG, Chris Kraft, Alan Shepard, et.al, gotten their way and had Shepard flown before Gagarin, Americans would likely have thrown up their collective hands and said “We Won! The space race is over!” And it may very well have been the end as the political fuel to go beyond Project Mercury would have quickly evaporated.

  

Thus, MR-BD, just by happenstance, was a very key link in the chain of events that led to United States astronauts actually getting to the Moon. It served to open the valve that allowed the political fuel to flow, and Vostok provided the spark that ignited Kennedy and propelled a nation. Although often missed as an easily overlooked footnote, the unintended consequences of that single mission would ensure that toddlers like me, and perhaps you, would have a space program to grow up with. 

The Growing up with Spaceflight books can be found at Amazon

Or at www.authorwes.com, where you can get them autographed and personalized.

Even Astronauts Can Get Lost.

     As an instructor pilot I had some important lessons that I wanted to be carved in stone in every student's soul. Things such as "Never try and rescue a bad approach- just go around and start again." and "If that engine blows, this bird belongs to the insurance company- just save yer' ass." or "If the takeoff roll doesn't feel, it ain't right, ABORT and figure it out on the ramp." Basic stuff like that later saved the lives of two of former students. One thing that I carved into the souls of those future pilots was, "If you don't know exactly where you are, if your position is in doubt... YER' LOST! Just admit that and take positive steps to find your exact position. Stuff your ego in your pocket, contact ATC and tell them you are lost. Admitting you have a problem is the first step in fixing the problem." Any pilot can get lost, even astronauts. That is a lesson I learned on February 5th, 1971 as I sat in front of the family TV set bathed in the pre-dawn darkness and gazing at the the stagnated television image of  the rise of Cone crater as I listened to the distant voices of Shepard and Mitchell.

The following is an excerpt from my book "Apollo Part Two" and my six book series "Growing up with Spaceflight" it is copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski, all rights are reserved no part may be reproduced in any form.

There is a saying about the best laid plans of mice and men… and perhaps 13-year-old space-buffs. My alarm went off at 3:45 in the morning, exactly as planned and I sprung from my bed; wide awake as if it were noon. I had left my EVA-watchin’ equipment set up by the TV and had received orders from my Mom,

“Just don’t wake any of the rest of us up.”

Such was not a problem because I did not need any more background noise on my tapes anyhow. Turning on the television I discovered, to my shock, that the EVA was already underway! Looking around at all of the clocks, I could not figure out where I had made my mistake. I was up an hour and 45 minutes early, yet here were Shepard and Mitchell already heading toward Cone crater! Where had I gone wrong? I had planned it out so carefully! I sat there for the longest time puzzled and disappointed that somehow I had screwed this up. It was not until later into the EVA that I discovered that the crew had elected to start the event a remarkable two and one half hours early! There was no way that I could have planned for that.

Once Shepard had turned the TV camera to look at the crew’s path of travel toward Cone crater, the two astronauts vanished over the hill in about seven minutes. From then on all we had on our television sets was the image of what the crew thought was the rim of Cone in the background and the undulating terrain in the foreground with a series of glare splotches across the view from the upper right to the lower left. Most importantly for me, however, were the words “Live From The Moon,” on the bottom of the screen.

Trekking up toward Cone crater, Shepard and Mitchell were about to get a big lesson in the laws of lunar exploration. The human brain is hard-wired to judge distances largely based on how known objects appear within our atmosphere. Our depth-perception is based in large part by looking through the particulates suspended in the air. Even on a very clear day, there are still particulates in the air and thus we judge distance subconsciously by that standard. Additionally, a house, or a fire hydrant, or even a stop sign is a known object with a known dimension. Our sense of depth perception takes that known data and translates it into an approximation of distance. On the Moon, there is no atmosphere and there are no known objects, thus there is almost no depth perception. To make matters worse for the traversing crew, the photos and maps of their landing site that they carried with them and had studied until they were committed to memory, were all from a straight-down point of view. Almost none of their traverse training and been done with a surface point of view. If you want to see this difference, simply stand in your own living room and look down at your carpet. Then take a mirror and hold it edge-on at the surface and tilt it so you can see the same room from a surface level point of view. You will find yourself lost in a place with which you are very familiar. Next remove your depth perception and you have the situation in which the Apollo 14 crew found themselves. Now, you can make it worse by adding a boulder field with rocks the size of cars. Additionally, the crew found themselves walking in terrain that consisted of rolling hills some being 12 to 15 feet high. The result was that once they went over a hill they lost sight of anything beyond the next hill. Their landmarks were largely craters that were well defined in the over-head photographs of the area, but once actually down in the terrain those landmarks simply became lost in the undulations.

Furthering the problem was the fact that the approach to Cone crater was not a linear incline, rather its slope increased as the crew grew closer to the rim. Additionally, the crew had never pulled the MET for this distance up-hill while wearing inflated suits. The lunar soil was softer and deeper than anyone had figured and the MET had turned into a rolling pain in the butt. The two astronauts actually found they could make greater progress on occasion by picking the MET up and carrying it. Finally, ahead they saw a large rise and figuring that it was the rim of Cone crater they headed up it. What they actually topped was nothing more than another roll in the local terrain.

“We haven’t reached the rim yet,” Shepard reported dejectedly to mission control.

Mitchell, now also breathing heavily, added, “Oh boy… we got fooled on that one.” He later added that, “Our positions are all in doubt now…”

Running behind the time-line, they were nearly exhausted and now they were lost. Nothing looked familiar from their training. Instead of exploring a giant lunar crater, the Moon had handed them a funhouse of mirrors and confusion. The question was should they struggle on to that next ridge, the distance of which was anyone’s guess.

Sitting in my living room I knew that these two guys were in trouble and I was only a 7^th grader but even I could tell that this part of the EVA was clearly not going as planned, but all I could do was listen. In Houston, the grown-ups were in exactly the same state of affairs. The two moonwalkers sounded spent and you could hear their labored breathing over their microphones. These were guys in top physical condition and the lunar environment had rapidly sapped their strength.

“I'd say that the rim is at least 30 minutes away." Shepard estimated, "and what I'm proposing is perhaps we use that as the turnaround point. It seems to me that we spend a lot more time in traverse if we don't… and we don't get very many samples."

Mitchell disagreed saying that their objective was at the top of the next rise. Mitchell was in no mood for stopping, however,

"Oh, let's give it a whirl. Gee whiz. We can't stop looking into Cone crater. We've lost everything if you don't get there."

Although Shepard insisted after the EVA that at no time were they disorientated or lost, Mitchell’s real-time comment that, “Our positions are all in doubt now…” betrays their actual situation. If they were not disorientated, then they would have been properly orientated, in which case they would have simply turned in the correct direction and walked to the rim of Cone crater. Likewise, if they were not lost, they would have known that the next ridge straight ahead was a canard and not the rim of Cone crater as they decided it was at the time. The most difficult thing for pilots to do is admit that they are lost. It is far more palatable to just say that someone moved the crater on you.

It was at that moment that Alan Shepard put away his Right Stuff white scarf, put aside his ego and made the absolutely correct command decision. They had not come all this way just to look into a crater, rather their mission was to sample boulders ejected from that crater. It was time to say that they were surrounded with what they had come for, sample the local boulders and complete their mission. Later, Shepard and Mitchell would look at photos of the boulder field and conclude that they were within 150-300 feet of the rim of Cone crater. Four decades later, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter would take high resolution photos of the landing site showing Shepard and Mitchell’s footprints running parallel to the crater’s rim, stopping and turning back within about 300 feet of their objective.  Had they kept going in their established direction, they would have walked right past Cone crater without ever seeing it.

Mitchell really wanted to press on to the next ridge, but Shepard insisted,

"I think we’ll waste an awful lot of time traveling and not much documenting."

Mitchell asked Houston how far behind the timeline the crew was. CAPCOM replied that they were 25 minutes down.

"We’ll be an hour down by the time we get to the top of that thing," Shepard insisted, noting how little geology had been done for the amount of walking that had been done,

"You got six samples," he flatly stated.

Shepard decided that the boulders that now surrounded the crew were the same as those found on the rim of Cone crater and it would satisfy the mission’s objectives to sample them rather than struggle on ahead; he was absolutely right. The crew did their sampling and turned back toward ANTARES.

When the two moonwalkers turned around and looked down hill, they were quickly able to pick out landmarks. Yet, as they began walking down into the undulation once again, they quickly lost sight of nearly all those landmarks with the exception of a single huge boulder. Using that and their own footprints they were able to accomplish the return leg of their traverse taking rock samples along the way.

Apollo 14's second and final EVA ended with Shepard's really fun golf shots and that turned out to be what the media and most of the public focused upon. My focus was on the fact that even astronauts, whom I considered to be the best pilots in the world, could actually get lost on the lunar surface! It was a lesson that would be driven home again 14 months later when Young and Duke strolled off to sample a boulder that was "...just over there..." and it turned out to be a rock the size of a three story house! We watched on TV as they loped off toward it and their figures seemed to shrink. Duke exclaimed, "Look'et the size of that rock!... The closer I get to it the bigger it is!" Without depth perception it is easy for the Moon to fool us little humans. It is also a lesson it the fallacy of Shepard trying to land the LEM without radar. He would have had to take extra time to attempt to judge his altitude and run out of fuel in the dead zone. Most of all it should be a lesson for the future.

If we ever do get back to the lunar surface, the Moon is more then happy to fool us again, and again, and again. 

For more on what it was like during Apollo 14, check out my books at www.authorwes.com

Apollo 14... A Half Century Ago- Launch Day!

It's amazing to look back at Apollo 14 and consider that it took place a half century ago. I was a 7th grader in one of the worst junior high schools on the planet. I'd survived my first semester at that place and learned a few lessons. First off, making the honor role not only earned me a new portable TV set from my aunt Dolly, but I also earned getting thrown up against the lockers by three thugs and told quite clearly, "Dat ain't cool." Additionally, I was given a new Apollo 14 mission patch and learned that you don't take a needle and thread and tack that patch onto your jacket, because the thugs will rip it from your chest and steal it, telling you, you didn't have nothin' to do with that. Those are words that burn into your memory at age 13, and experiences you don't forget- ever. So, how does one survive? Simple, you find a place to go in your own mind, a blanket to pull over your soul. The Apollo Program worked nicely for that, and Apollo 14 was a good start... or course I had to keep it to myself.

I'd been looking forward to launch day for ten months. The following is an excerpt from my "Apollo Part Two" volume of my "Growing up with Spaceflight" book series, and takes us back to launch day and my family living room...

(the following is copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski all rights reserved) 

Launch day at KSC found a series of heavy rain showers moving through the area. Considering the self-generated lightning that had tossed Apollo 12’s launch into a tizzy and with the shadow of Apollo 13’s near-disaster hanging over NASA, Launch Director Walter Kapryan had some pressure on him. Adding to that was the feeling of many that if another major failure or accident should happen, President Nixon was poised to pull the plug on the entire program. Kapryan decided to call a hold in the count at T-8 minutes and two seconds and see what the weather was going to do. The hold lasted for 40 minutes and three seconds. All the while it appeared on our TV sets as if the weather over the shoulders of Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra was getting worse. As time went on it began to appear as if this may be Apollo’s very first scrub of a manned launch.

All of “us kids” were gathered in the family living room in front of the TV; my sister, brother and a few neighborhood kids were there. There was no point in changing the channel, all three networks had Apollo 14 coverage on. Together we waited out the hold while I held court and answered what questions were sent my way; illustrating my points by using my 1/200 AMT Saturn V model. Of course I had my trusty copy of “We Came In Peace” at my elbow too. Any questions that I didn’t know the answer to, I simply made up a response that sounded real technical. It was a skill that much later in life served me well as an airline pilot speaking to passengers.

At 3:39p.m. Eastern time NASA public affairs officer Jack King came on with one of more than a dozen announcements he had to make during the hold,

"This is Kennedy Launch Control remaining in the hold, T minus eight minutes and two seconds at this time on Apollo 14. Standing by for further advisories from the National Weather Service aircraft which is surveying the cloud conditions in the area. Just a matter of a minute or two ago, the director of flight crew operations Deke Slayton called in to Al Shepard in the spacecraft and mentioned to Al that at least it’s more comfortable up there than it was in the old days."

This was a reference to the protracted holds that took place prior to Shepard's Freedom 7 launch back in 1961, when his bladder forced Al to "wet his pants." From the Apollo 14 spacecraft Shepard replied to Slayton, "Oh, my yes."

Jack King then went on to state, "He also added to Deke that; we're in good shape up here. We're standing by for further reports… Holding eight minutes and two seconds. This Kennedy Launch Control."

Finally, at 3:55p.m. Jack King came on with some good news, announcing that the count would be picking up.

"This is Kennedy launch control. Mark. We have resumed our countdown at T minus eight minutes and counting on Apollo 14. We're still keeping a close eye on our weather conditions at this time but Launch Director Walter Kapryan has made the determination to resume the count. This should put us with a liftoff at three minutes past the hour if all continues to go well. We are now starting the chill-down of the engine chambers on the third and second stages of the Saturn V launch vehicle. This is one of the critical elements and has to do with hold time. The chill-down has to last a precise period. We feed in extremely cold helium into the engine chambers of both the second stage and third stage to condition them for the very cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen that will be flowing into the chambers when they’re due to ignite later during the powered portion of the flight. All is still going well as far as the launch vehicle, spacecraft and the three astronauts on board. Coming up to the seven minute mark, Mark! Seven minutes and counting. This is Kennedy Launch Control.”

As the count hit the two minute mark, CBS switched to NASA’s launch pad camera number 27 which was focused on the Q-ball cover at the tip of the launch escape tower.

    “What’s that? My Mom asked, “What’s that round thing there?”

I had no idea, but as she was asking me the question Cronkite said, “That’s the Q-ball, the shield, at the very top of the Apollo 14 spacecraft configuration that blows off 10 seconds before the launch…”

I turned knowingly and parroted, “That’s the Q-ball ma.” Seeing the line connected to the cover she asked,

“Well, does it just stay there?” Apparently she had not heard Cronkite.

“It comes off at T minus 10 seconds,” I replied as if I’d known that all along.

Then I made a mental note to later go and find out what that Q-ball thing was for. Later I discovered it was for measuring angle of attack as the Saturn V flew through the lower atmosphere. Of course it would be a few more years before I learned what angle of attack actually was, too.

As the count hit T minus eight point nine seconds the five huge F-1 engines came to life. Long range news cameras at the press site had their lenses blinded as the brilliance of the Saturn V erupted through the rainy gloom. Close-up NASA cameras showed clearly the release of the hold-downs and the retraction of the tail masts as the launch vehicle lifted off at 4:03 p.m. Eastern time. In the wide angle shot the Saturn V itself could hardly be seen as the blinding flame from the S-IC over-powered the TV images. In our living room everyone broke into applause.

“Looks just like 12!” I exclaimed in spite of myself, “Looks just like 12!”

Indeed, the TV images did look very much like those of Apollo 12. The cameras followed the rising Saturn V for exactly 36 seconds before it vanished into the dense cloud-cover. Thereafter, the cameras panned down to show Pad 39A smoldering in the gloom. As the shot switched to Schirra and Cronkite, the buffeting of the departing Saturn V was hitting the CBS press building and looking closely I could actually see the window glass moving. Schirra reached up twice and placed both of his hands on the glass to feel it move.

Walter Cronkite had warned the TV audience that once the Saturn V went into the clouds the long range cameras would lose it. However, he was happily surprised to be wrong as the picture from the Riviera Beach camera, located 133 miles south of the launch site, came in crystal clear. Oddly enough, that camera gave some of the best images of first stage separation, skirt separation and escape tower jettison ever seen on television. The S-IC first stage could be seen falling away for 22 seconds and later both the tower and the S-IC/S-II skirt could be seen tumbling away for 31 seconds. As I watched, entranced, Apollo 14 remained on the TV as a single bright spot right up until Mission Control announced that Apollo 14 had cleared the Atlantic weather and just as those words were spoken, the bright spot dropped behind some clouds.

Staging of the S-II and the S-IVB came on-time and Apollo 14 was inserted into orbit around the earth after 11 minutes and 43 seconds of powered flight. The crew read from their Command Module Computer an orbit of 99 by 102.9 nautical miles.

“Rogha- Go orbit, booster safe.” Shepard reported to Houston with a confident accent.

It did indeed appear as if everything was going exactly as planned. What Shepard did not know was that outer space and the Moon had plenty of surprises waiting for him and the crew of Apollo 14, and none of them were good. In fact Apollo 14 would end up dealing with more glitches than any other Apollo mission other than Apollo 13.

     Apollo 14 was the first mission that I recorded. I used these two 3M C-30 cassette tapes, which gave me a whole hour's worth of time to capture the entire mission... I decided I needed longer tapes for future missions. Just 15 minutes per side didn't really cut it. Believe it or not, these tapes still play.

Read all of Apollo 14 by getting Apollo Part Two

www.authorwes.com

Or look for it in e-book at Amazon.com

Coming soon!

Okay space buffs... announcing, shortly into the 2021 I will be opening my Growing up with Spaceflight Youtube page!

It'll be fun and it'll be informative and I'll be showing you all some cool stuff... along with plugging my books of course. 

Watch for the link here!

 

STS 2; I WAS THERE… Only this time I was closer.

The following is an excerpt from my "Growing up with Spaceflight- Space Shuttle" book. All content here is Copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski and may not be reproduced in any manner. 

 

Excitement concerning STS-2, the second launch America's space shuttle, was at a similar pitch in the second week of November, 1981. Yet that excitement came with a different tone. Now, although most of America- indeed most of the world- knew that there was a space shuttle but, most folks still didn't really know how it worked or what it was all about. Still its existence had permeated into the public mindset. Just over six months after the launch of the first space shuttle, when the roar of the SRBs and main engines on the Space Transportation System (STS) had awakened the nation, folks they still weren't quite sure what they were looking at. Seven months after that first launch, NASA was preparing to give the public another lesson.

 

Launch day, November 12th, found me on a bus headed from the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University's campus in Daytona Beach, Florida to KSC. Unlike STS-1, this time I actually managed to find a seat on the bus. So, instead of being 14 miles from the pad and camped out over night on the riverbank I would be standing on the causeway about 8 miles from complex 39A. Just the prospect of being that much closer to a shuttle launch was exciting enough on its own merit. As our bus exited I-95 in the predawn darkness there was an atmosphere of confusion surrounding the launch time. Earlier the previous day there had been a failure of a multiplexer aboard the orbiter and talk of a launch delay. The news media of the day had not quite evolved to the point of 24/7 coverage. Thus we were left with whatever reports had been on the 11 o'clock news the night before. Even those were highly sketchy, some saying that the unit had been repaired others saying the new unit was being flown in from California. Of course if you are like me you were not going to take a chance on missing a launch so, we all piled on the bus anyway.

 

This was the second time around for this whole trip to KSC to see the second shuttle launch exercise. Originally, STS-2 had been scheduled to launch some six days earlier. At that time the countdown had gotten as far as T-31 seconds and then cut off at auto sequence start. The cutoff was caused by a high temperature sensed by the sequencer. This event had been caused by clogged oil filters in an APU and the entire launch ended up being scrubbed. We had all spent in uncomfortably cold Florida morning walking around the causeway and listening closely to the loop on small loudspeakers strung along the waterfront. It'd been a case where a long night turned into a disappointing morning for most folks at KSC. For me, however, any chance to get onto KSC and get close to complex 39 was a plus.

 

As our bus inched its way toward KSC word came from a local radio station that the troubled component aboard the orbiter that had caused all of the doubt the night before had been replaced. The downside was that there would now be a delay of several hours in the launch. Considering that our bus was in traffic so thick that we had recently been passed by an armadillo on the roadside, we all saw the delay as a very good sign. At least it would give us time to get to the causeway and get off the bus before the launch.

 

As we turned onto the causeway the bus was stopped by a KSC official. Some brief conversation took place between the official and our bus driver, then the bus made of 180° turn and started heading back. Just as we were about to panic the bus driver came over the PA system. He explained that he had been told that there was no more room for buses of the causeway and instead we were being rerouted to view the launch from the VIP site. 

A cheer went up.

 

Doubling back about a quarter mile we came upon a two lane road that led north toward complex 39. Called "Static Test Road" this easily overlooked little roadway led to another small road off to our right. That golf club shaped drive looped around and allowed our bus plus another dozen or so other buses stop and unload. Although we were only about three quarters of a mile closer to the pad now than we were at the causeway, it seemed to us as if we were right on top of 39A. We were told that our location was called "bunker number 7." Actually it really wasn't much more than a cul-de-sac cleared of the Florida undergrowth that had once been used for tracking cameras. There was, however, a small set of bleachers constructed at the south end and that was already filled with the real "VIPs" who had arrived earlier. I guess the term "VIPs" was only being used in the general sense here because those of us on the buses who were the causeway overflow mixed quite easily with these folks. Most of them were friends of families or crews, contractors, or spaceflight workers.

 

As the crowd grew and our "VIP" area began to load up with spectators. Everyone went looking for a good place to sit on the ground yet still be able to stand up and take pictures of the launch. Scouting around quickly my buddy Jeff and I saw one large open area that seemed to have a perfect view. We both commented that we couldn't figure out why no one had staked out this area so we headed over there and planted our butts on the ground. It took about 15 seconds before we realized exactly why no one else had taken the spot. You see- it takes about 15 seconds before the first couple of fire ants from the nest you’re sitting on to start stinging you. Leaping to our feet we bounded out of there sweeping away fire ants as we went. We spent a good part of the rest of the morning watching that spot as other people made the exact same mistake.

 

Of course no VIP site is complete unless it has some extension of the KSC gift shop to take the money from the VIPs. Bunker number 7 was no exception to this rule. Indeed a small portable gift trailer had been set up and was doing a good business. They probably would have gotten every dime that I had if I had had a dime. Unfortunately all I had was my camera, my tape recorder, my thermos of hot tea and a fairly well-squished peanut butter sandwich with really cheap strawberry preserves on it. In my college days I formed a strange habit that I still retain to this day- that is traveling around without as much as a penny in my pocket. Later in the morning I was sitting for a short time in the bleachers when one of the real VIPs sat down beside me and showed me an STS-2 postal cover. She told me they were selling them at the gift trailer for $1.75 and then you could have them officially stamped and even mailed off at the postal trailer. I told her "That's really cool," and that it would be fun to mail one off to my folks. She told me I should do that and I replied that the only problem was that I didn't have $1.75. She looked at me a bit surprised, then I explained that I was working my way through college by way of Kmart. Sympathetic she asked "Well… didn’t you bring anything with you?" I said "Yeah," as I reached into my backpack and showed her my well-squished peanut butter sandwich with really cheap strawberry preserves on it. She laughed and handed me one of her postal covers with orders to take it and send it to my folks adding that she fully understood about working your way through college. She even pulled a couple of postage stamps from her purse and gave them to me. She said, “One day, that’ll be a collector’s item.” 

Joe Engle and Dick Truly were strapped aboard the Columbia at about that same time. To most of the public they were unknown rookies who had never flown before and space, but to us spaceflight buffs these two pilots were far from being rookies. Engle, in fact, was already an astronaut who had flown in space before he joined NASA. He had flown the X-15 a total of 50 times between 1963 and 1965 with three of those missions reaching altitudes above 50 miles. This qualified him to wear astronaut wings. Additionally Engle and Truly actually had a one up on the first shuttle crew, Young and Crippen. To date Young and Crippen had performed one landing of a shuttle orbiter, but the crew of Engle and Truly had already performed two landings of a shuttle order. In 1977 Engle and Truly were two of the four pilots who flew the space shuttle Approach and Landing Tests with the orbiter Enterprise.

 

Glued to assorted portable radios and at least one portable TV, we monitored the count as it was broadcast by various local news stations. When the count neared the planned time to come out of the scheduled T-9:00 hold, Launch Director George Page elected to take a moment before resuming the count. It was his intention to keep his controllers cool, take a deep breath and make sure they were doing everything right. That little bit of extra hold time, however, really annoyed some of the newsman- of course that meant nothing to the launch director. After just a few short minutes the count resumed and the Columbia had the undivided attention of several million of people around the world.

 

After the previous week’s scrub nearly everyone seemed to be hypersensitive to the T-31 second mark in the count. As that point came and went a cheer and applause echoed through the crowd. Apparently everyone seemed to have the perception that if you got past that moment in the count you were good to go. In fact, I noticed for many years that passing the T-31 seconds mark and the start of redundant sense sequencing tended to draw a smattering of applause. The cold hard truth was that it meant nothing more than detection of problems were turned over to the computer and thus, anything that would keep you from flying could not be detected several million times faster than when you are off the sequencer. So there was really nothing to cheer about.

 

In the final seconds prior to the launch I went and stood on the bleachers with the real VIPs. The guy standing next to me was armed with a Super 8 movie camera. At main engine start he raised the camera to his eye, pulled the trigger and began filming. I guess he didn't expect what those of us who had been there for the previous shuttle launch had already experienced. A few moments after SRB ignition the shuttle reached out and grabbed us compelling everyone scream "GO BABY, GO!" A moment later I glanced over to see the movie camera guy, mesmerized and standing there looking up at the departing shuttle, his mouth hanging open and his hand with the running movie camera down at his side- filming the bleachers. I nudged him with an elbow and got his attention then pointed down at the camera."OH!" He said as he returned to filming the launch. For some reason the shuttle did that kind of stuff to you.

 

A little more than 8 minutes later the United States had accomplished something never before done- they had reused a manned spaceflight vehicle. Columbia was safely in orbit and soon we were safely back aboard the bus- feeling that strange sense of pride, as if we had launched Columbia ourselves.

If you liked this real life adventure, and would like to read the rest just go to www.authorwes.com  and get an autographed and personalized copy of his books, or if you prefer e-book, visit Amazon and see the whole set. Of course it's much harder for the author to autograph e-books because they're... ya' know... just ones and zeros flowing across the internet.

The Wrong Stuff

 Watching Disney Plus and Nat. Geo.’s new “The Right Stuff” TV program I saw that the show has a propensity to present the wrong stuff and ignore some of the people who actually had the right stuff.

 

In the episode that was broadcast in the final week of October, 2020 the small bit of story line that actually involved spaceflight was centered around the Mercury Redstone (MR-1) chuff. For those of you who are not readily familiar with MR-1 it was actually two different Redstones and a single Mercury capsule. After the first attempt failed to fully launch the Redstone, that specific booster was replaced with a new one. You will probably remember the video images of the first MR-1 Redstone igniting, then immediately shutting down followed by the escape tower firing and leaving the capsule behind, followed by the spacecraft parachute popping out of the nose and deploying. The date was November 21^st, 1960. It was one of NASA’s more embarrassing moments.

 

I’ll set aside the fact that the TV show writers get the continuity totally screwed up as they go on to show John Glenn trying without luck to get the ear of “Senator John F. Kennedy” after the MR-1, as well as the New Year’s celebration welcoming in “1960” implying that MR-1 had taken place in 1959. In fact JFK had been elected President on November 8^th, 1960 and thus was the President Elect for 18 days before the MR-1 chuff. 

Hey, what difference does it make? Who’s gonna notice that sort of stuff?

 Where they really went into the wrong stuff is by, not only over dramatizing the question as to if or not a 30.06 rifle should be used to put a hole in the booster, which was on the pad and over pressurizing. Of course Flight Director Chris Kraft did not drive a jeep like a madman out to the pad and tackle technician who was headed toward the Redstone with the rifle. The decision not to do that was made over the intercom system between Mercury Control and the blockhouse. Kraft never left Mercury Control, it was too dangerous and he was actually more level headed than that. 

Thereafter is when some of the true Right Stuff, that the writes ignore, took place out at the pad.

 

The problem was that the Redstone booster was over pressurizing its LOX tank. That cryogenic fluid was trying to boil and nearly all of the vents were closed for the boost. One relief vent, however, was indeed dumping some GOX, but it not even close to being enough. To complicate the situation relays and switches inside the Mercury spacecraft were now set for the vehicle to be in space. When the escape tower jettisoned it activated a relay within the spacecraft that energized the bus which put the .05G switch as well as the Automatic Stabilization and Control System online. With that system on line and the RETRO ATT switch in "AUTO" the retro rockets could be fired, or with the .05G switch ready and waiting for a g-load so it could do its job, the whole retro package could be triggered to jettison. Any of that in the the resulting huge cloud of LOX would cause a monstrous explosion. The fact that the capsule’s parachute was hanging beside the booster also gave the concern that a stiff wind may come up, catch the chute and pull the vehicle over- also resulting in an explosion. What they had on hand at that moment was a fully fueled and armed rocket with no connection to the ground, so there was no ground control actions that could safe the systems. There was only one course of action; do nothing.

Albert Zeiler (2nd from the right)

 It was decided by Mercury control to simply wait until the batteries aboard the Mercury Redstone ran down. That alone would take nearly 24 hours, and no one was absolutely sure exactly if that was enough time. In the blockhouse at Launch Complex 5 it was also decided that the technicians there could leave in single carloads, each being a safe distance from one another. The following morning Group Chief Albert Zeiler, who was part of von Braun’s German rocket team, technicians Ed Fannin and Jay Campbell ventured out to Pad 5 and showed that they had the Right Stuff.

 Zeiler, using his launch vehicle savvy that dated all the way back to the V2 days, walked gingerly around the launch pedestal and made a visual inspection. The vehicle had settled down onto the launch ring but was not exactly centered upon it. 

Additionally there were some stress creases in the load bearing structure of the booster. Fannin joined him and they mulled over what to do next. Both the fuel tank and LOX tank were still quite full. Thankfully, one of the pad safety men had also arrived and began cutting the parachute shrouds one by one to ensure that the winds would not inflate the chute and topple the vehicle. Zeiler concluded that they must drain the LOX. It was the only way to turn this huge bomb into a relatively smaller bomb.

 

Now the most steely-eyed missile man of them all volunteered to do what only those with the actual right stuff would be willing to do. Jay Campbell ventured out and with a screw driver and a few assorted other tools on hand plus a nitrogen charged hose. He went to the base of the Redstone, and opened the service hatch to the engine compartment. Connecting the pneumatic hose to the LOX valve control port. He then smoothly backed away from the Redstone, and when he was clear enough he ran like the devil to the safety of the blockhouse. Nearby, Zeiler and Fannin were stationed at the auxiliary  pneumatic control panel. From there they commanded an slight flow of nitrogen down the pneumatic hose. That pressure was enough to push the valve aboard the Redstone open. As those two missile men dashed into the blockhouse a huge “wooosh” was heard as the LOX blew out through the vent. In short order the LOX problem had been neutralized as the tank was fully drained.

 

Now the Mercury spacecraft itself had to have its retro rocket package and posigrade rocket motors muted. The three retro rockets were solid fuel rocket motors wired to fire in salvo when triggered. Each of the three retro rockets weighed in at 66.4 pounds and had a five second burn that produced 1,148 pounds of thrust. The posigrades were three much smaller solid fuel rocket motors wired to fire simultaneously in order to separate the spacecraft from the spent booster in space. These rocket motors were basically Atlas retro motors with some upgrades to increase reliability, such as dual igniters. They each weighted 4.8 pounds and provided 420 pounds of thrust for about one second, which was enough to give the spacecraft a separation rate from the booster of 15 feet per second. They burned Arcite 377 propellant. The only way to disarm this system was to short out four electrical pins located behind the spacecraft’s umbilical door and then open the hatch and manually reach inside and throw the switch that would effectively disarm the system.

 

Three more steely-eyed missile men with the right stuff volunteered for the job. Two, Bob Graham and Bob Jones were allowed to volunteer because they were bachelors. The third man to volunteer was Pad Leader Guenter Wendt who, although married with a family, was not going to let anyone else touch that live switch.

 

The “A” frame gantry modified with its special two story white room, monkkered “Surf Side Five,” was carefully rolled into position along its rails with Wendt and one of the other two men riding aboard in the white room. Normally this process requires a lot of radio chatter as the self-propelled gantry is moved. Today, however it was radio silence as the third missile man operated the motor controls. They were taking no chances. Once stopped within inches of the spacecraft the men had to drill away the heads of the rivets holding the cover that surrounded the umbilical socket in place. It was like cracking a safe that could blow up in your face at any moment. Once the rivets were all compromised, they removed the plate and Wendt reached in and, as he later put it, worked as carefully as a brain surgeon to short out each of the pins. Next they gingerly opened the hatch and Wendt reached in and disabled the retro package. The MR-1 Redstone was no longer a threat.

 

If the writers of the TV series wanted drama, this should have been it. Instead we got Gordon Cooper’s wife confronting his ex-mistress in a motel room and von Braun dressing like Santa… even though Christmas was a full month away.

 I’ve seen it stated on social media, in defense of the writing, that “…this is a story about the people, not the rockets.” To that I reply, look at the names I’ve presented here- they were people too, and they certainly had The Right Stuff.

 By the way folks- the research to find the names of these individuals took me less than 45 minutes.

For more of the Real Stuff check out Wes' 6 book spaceflight series
at www.authorwes.com