8 10 83 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/9a9664524ddce4a4e56363eb20002af9.pdf af9a49564e24ebd9b8220e85b52cbd15 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000008_T Title A name given to the resource Coffman, Paul (Transcript) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/18c77901adc1d2f1281d2c96761a6005.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/50ffef74e3cef252485423f80a48517b.mp4 45bf5fd64ab4dc3db8341c5560e59f72 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000008_A Title A name given to the resource Coffman, Paul Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/914c65cf8f8627ed50932c2c47160ab3.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ad356e5fd61b9460b53257808016c3d1.mp4 b7a0ffca5dd430ef5cdb738e85fd9f28 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Christensen, David Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:47:50 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:16] Roger Bilstein: Was the kind of operation where—you used a term, I've forgotten what it was—but they're the vendor entrepreneurs—the guys that come around and really sell things. I wonder if you could start there and talk about that a little bit first. [00:00:26] David Christensen: Okay. Well, I guess this is fairly standard that you have a lot of peddlers pushing their wares, you know, big programs. It's kind of interesting to me on the Saturn program to see the techniques that we used in developing new components and hardware. These were done by the so-called vendors. That's the common term. This is also fairly common to aircraft development. It has been for years. For example, the Parker fittings were used on the Ryan Spirit of St. Louis and developed by a Mr. Parker of Cleveland, Ohio, I believe. This later became part of Parker Hannifin Corporation, which is one of the larger pneumatic and hydraulic component system manufacturers in the world. One of their divisions was developed in Los Angeles called Parker Aircraft, actually located next to the aircraft industry in California. That would be a typical example. Another one might be Pesco Products— which later became a division of Borg-Warner right there in Cleveland—supplying, for example, the hydraulic filters as hydraulic systems became applied to aircraft. Of course, Cleveland being another aircraft center. Thompson Products would be another one. [00:01:48] DC: These are typical vendors that have historically supplied parts and, in my opinion, done pioneering work in the component development for aircraft. This just naturally evolved into—of course—guided missiles, rockets in the post-war period, and eventually the Saturn program. There's nothing unique to Saturn about this particular approach. But it was to me quite interesting to see the efforts that were made by these vendors to get their wares into the Saturn vehicle. I was more involved in mechanical components. This included fittings, filters, hydraulic filters for your servo control systems, tubing, hydraulic pumps, for example. [00:02:41] DC: One of the problems you had, of course, in the Saturn is that you might go to someone like Rocketdyne Division of North America to develop the engine itself. You'd have certain vendors that were their favorites, you might say, working closely with them on the West Coast. Then you'd have others coming into Huntsville. They were interested in getting their wares on board. Really the only thing they had to sell is, of course, better quality, that being the order of the day. Price did not seem to be quite that much of a consideration in those days. It was quite a bit of concern of reliability and meeting very rigid specs, for example. One of the critical specification requirements was LOX compatibility, which was sort of the new term. In the aircraft industry, you really didn't have that particular problem, not using liquid oxygen. [00:03:34] DC: Anyway, these vendors might come in and say, “Well, we have a better valve than what Rocketdyne is proposing to use on the engine. How do we get it into the system?” Usually that was a very difficult task. More likely they would supply components for, say, the interconnection of the engines on the Saturn or the pre-valves or the flexible ducts that are above the engine pump inlets and this sort of thing. There were a number of, you might say, pet vendors then developed by the Huntsville team. In some cases these were the same, for example, as Rocketdyne might use. In other cases they might not be. [00:04:15] DC: But one thing that was very apparent is Huntsville did have, you know, influence over the reliability of the whole system. Naturally these people would try and get on board. For example, you would get a situation like on the S-II stage being built by North American with prime responsibility. But yet Huntsville writing the specifications for that stage and working closely with the North American people because it was a size of a liquid hydrogen and oxygen structure that had never been developed before. It had to be somewhat a team effort. Expanding on the vendor thing, you might have somebody like Parker Aircraft working closely with North American out there in California. By the same token, working closely with the Huntsville people here so that their hydraulic control package or accumulator or whatever it might be would be accepted by both parties. This is what it would probably take to become, you know, on board the Saturn vehicle. I'm referring now to Saturn V. [00:05:28] DC: I think we may have talked about some other aspects of this, but you did have a lot of vendors running in and out, pushing their wares, saying, “We've got a better product than this. Let's take a look at it.” You had a lot of test programs going on. You had a heck of a lot of component testing going on to evaluate one of these products against the other and come up with test criteria, so you could select the best component or hardware. [00:05:54] RB: Would there be a situation where some vendor got a hold of the specs or something and said, “Hey, we got something that will fit in here,” and they would come down, and maybe Marshall hadn't heard of them before or wasn't aware of their new product. So they would work hard to sell that. [00:06:06] DC: Yes. Then they might have to, on their own investment, develop a valve that would meet those same specifications, you know, and say, “Look, this is equal to your spec and is acceptable, and we've proven it. If you don't believe us, you test it.” In some cases, Marshall, NASA, or before that the Army would do that. On the spec sheet itself, then you would state you such and such a part are equivalent. Normally, they would always list one naturally, maybe two, if two are equal, you know, in quality, or then they would put the little word “are equivalent.” If you could qualify, then you could still compete. Then it became if you were technically acceptable, you could meet this all the specs and then demonstrated this. Then it became a matter of price, which I think was a healthy situation. You didn't have a stranglehold or a monopoly by one particular company, but free enterprise was still allowable. [00:07:04] DC: The big problem was in this big morass of documentation and people, this was always a problem of how did the vendor find out who to go see and what's the network and the sequence of events he's got to go through and how long does it take to implement this thing. In a lot of cases, they would hire consultants and representatives to help them in this regard. That was one of the things that I did here with several companies was to assist them. In some cases, not just to get on board or compete, but to more or less limit the competition. In other words, by doing such an outstanding job that sole source—that's always the ultimate ideal situation is to be sole source—so you're named in the RFQ or the spec or whatever it is as the supplier. That's always the objective, you might say. As an alternative, at least be either/or equipment supplying these things. [00:08:09] DC: It was quite an interesting relationship in that, like I say, you had first of all, management by Marshall, you had test teams here—component test teams—they were heavily involved in that. You even had designers right on the board working with some of these vendors, working closely with them, hand in hand almost. In some cases, the vendor was under contract. In a lot of cases—Flexonics on the flexible connectors—had actually R&D contracts to develop some of these systems because they had only one application, obviously. How many other ways can you use a flexible duct between your propellant tanks and the piggyback turbopump on an H-1 engine? I mean, that's it. In other cases, you had…I guess companies had many applications for their pressure switches, so they would try and bring their products on board also. [00:09:06] DC: But again, it boiled down to the problem of knowing the right person, knowing the sequence of events. In a lot of cases, you had commercial firms even that did not have that much government experience. In the main case, most of these vendors were former aircraft vendors that did know the ropes, and it was just a new market for them to tap, you might say, even though it was a limited market as far as production numbers as well. [00:09:31] RB: So in some cases, the guy would come in with the product, and he would say, “This is a good product, we tested it and so on.” Then part of the idea is to get when the RFQ or spec comes out to get that product named then? [00:09:44] DC: Yeah, that's your objective is to try and… [00:09:46] RB: The government could protect itself by saying X company or equivalent. [00:09:50] DC: Yeah, right. [00:09:52] RB: But you're still ahead of the game if you get your name in the spec first time? [00:09:55] DC: Right. Because then you're requested to bid on this thing. Usually, it would be difficult for another company to come along and in the short time frame between the time the purchase order went out and he had to turn his bid in to analyze really what's involved in that spec. In other words, you've got to look at that spec and look at all the parameters and see what's your closest sets of valve or a pressure switch in your catalog, which one is closest to that spec, then look at the differences between your closest model and the exact spec that's required. Then further, how much in-house effort you've got to perform: how many parts have you got to change, how long does that take, how many man hours have you got to pump into it. Normally the alternate vendor would just say, “Well, it's just not worth the trouble for half a dozen parts” or whatever it might be. As a result, you'd probably only get one bid. That would be more likely than not. [00:11:01] RB: Okay. Can you go into the end of the Pall Corporation, how the Rigi-Mesh got into the Pratt & Whitney engine, the J-2, and so on? And too, would you explain about the Pall Corporation doing their R&D in-house and selling that? [00:11:18] DC: Yeah, right, okay. Some of these vendor firms were more interested in—I can name a few like Park Aircraft, Flexonics, I'm sure there's a lot of others—that were interested in getting their research and development funded by the government. In other words, they would solicit contracts to advance the state of the art, which I think is a healthy situation for them and the government. The government can oversee these efforts, but it puts the company in a very good position then to be the supplier when the parts are developed. This was the case in certain development of low leakage fittings, for example, the mechanical connectors on the propellant systems, pneumatic systems. This was the case in a lot of the valves themselves that were, the pre-valves, for example. Particularly, you could say the large sophisticated types of components and hardware, the pre-valves that would stop the propellant flow prior to going into your engine operation. [00:12:20] RB: H-1 and F-1? [00:12:21] DC: Yeah. Historically, most rockets do have pre-valves, which allow you to shut these things down on a test stand. They're primarily needed for static testing. Not so much for main stage, but they still keep them in sometimes on the flight operation. [00:12:39] DC: Anyway, the Pall Corporation, which is the one I was familiar with, had a division called Aircraft Porous Media. The philosophy of the Pall Corporation as a whole was to do their own internal R&D and meet specs that were required primarily for hydraulic pneumatic filters. That was their main business. They were also an aircraft-oriented firm. That's how they got into the metal filter business because their philosophy was with the higher temperatures and vibrations and operational parameters of aircraft, particularly jet aircraft after World War II, that the normal types of filters and strainers and so forth that had been used up to that point were just not of high enough quality. [00:13:26] DC: They worked very close with the Air Force at Wright Field in developing a whole new family of filters for aircraft, and then expanded from that base into the commercial fields and then into missile and rocket fields. It was a very interesting company to watch. They originally got into that business through the efforts of Dr. David Pall, who founded the company. He originally worked with the Atomic Energy Commission in World War II in developing porous metal materials for gas diffusion processes for your development of the atomic energy program, atomic bombs, and so forth. All of your nuclear programs that are now used in nuclear reactors came out of this research. [00:14:15] RB: He was a research scientist? [00:14:17] DC: As far as I recall, he was either a consultant or a research scientist. He did materials research. That was his forte. As you may know, other ways of doing this are now becoming known using centrifugal diffusion. I think the Japanese have been doing this, which is less expensive way of separating your U-235. [00:14:41] DC: He felt there was a need then after experimenting with this material, and he thought there were other applications, so he started working with controlled porosity of metals. This is done by taking woven metal, similar to what you have a woven piece of cloth with certain twill patterns and weaving patterns. A lot of this has been done over the years in such countries as Germany for industrial applications. Metal screen mesh is not a new material. The fact that Dr. Pall worked with the sintering, making this a rigid material by almost reaching the melting point and then allowing it to cool before it completely melted, you actually become almost like an integral piece of material, little tiny holes in it. By layering this and rolling it, you can then get any thickness and practically any porosity you need for any given application. The first application that he proposed for this was aircraft filters, hydraulic filters. One of the advantages would be not only, let's say, apply with extreme operational parameters, but also you can re-clean it rather than throw it away. There you became like a reusable application for these filters. [00:16:10] RB: You know, these hydraulic actuators in flaps and landing gear and things like that? [00:16:16] DC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All your hydraulic control circuits needed these things. One of the problems you get into if you don't filter your hydraulic fluid is you have excessive wear on your hydraulic pumps, your piston pumps, and your gear driven pumps made by such companies as Pesco—one of the other old line vendors. This was really an advantage to the Air Force because it gave you longer operational life. The other vendors may not have liked it that much because they didn't sell as many parts. [laughs] [00:16:45] RB: But it also creates structural rigidity to the component then too, if you've got a metal filter in there. Was that part of it at the time? [00:16:52] DC: Well, yeah, actually it's sort of an independent floating part, if you're familiar with how filters are made. [00:16:57] RB: Okay, I was jumping ahead to the engine systems then. [00:17:00] DC: Yeah. These things are normally…Another thing you can do with these is you can pleat them into a series of corrugations. What this means, you get more exposed area, so you have more filtered area. Then you can take these things and put them in an ultrasonic cleaner with certain fluids and then clean them up and then use them over and over again. That was one of the big advantages. [00:17:21] RB: Getting back to our story in Huntsville…There had been some background with the Air Force and aircraft filters. When the Jupiter program started, which was around ‘55, say, ‘56, then it was decided to go to a gimbaled hydraulic system on the Jupiter. Before that, there had been some, I think, hydraulic packages on some of the other Army rockets too. Possibly the Nike, I'm not sure on that. And certainly the Hawk. At that time, the Army missile programs were getting involved with hydraulic control systems in a big way on the Jupiter because it obviously had to have two large actuators to gimbal the complete engine. I'm sorry, to gimbal the thrust chamber below the gimbal point in this case. Also these things were used for the roll control system, which I mentioned, meaning your turbine exhaust gas is overboard, had to require a servo mechanism. The people at Aircraft Porous Media started coming down to Huntsville and talking to engineers here, who for the first time, were getting heavily involved in hydraulic control systems because in the Redstone and V-2 before that, there were no hydraulic systems. It was a new area, you might say, for the von Braun team to get involved in. Therefore, a lot of in-house efforts started going into hydraulic system cleanliness specifications and standards. The people from Aircraft Porous Media started working closely with test people and engineering people here in Huntsville to help them develop the specs that were needed to purchase parts and components and so forth for these systems. [00:19:18] RB: Who would have been involved? Was Weidner in there and Hans Paul? [00:19:21] DC: Yes, those were the two main people involved. There were other people like, at that time, Jim Thornton. There was another fellow around that became involved named Vic Neiland, who's still around. He was heavily involved in this whole story. One of the key guys was a chemical engineer named Bill Riehl. He's still here. He was not only interested in hydraulic contamination problems, but also LOX impact sensitivity. That was another thing he worked heavily in. [00:19:48] RB: How do you spell that? [00:19:49] DC: R-H-I-E-L. R-I-E-H-L. One of them. It's Riehl. R-I-E-H-L. [00:19:54] RB: How do you spell Neiland? [00:19:55] DC: N-E-I-L-A-N-D. Or I-E. I’ve got to check. I’ve forgotten. [00:20:00] RB: What's his name again now? [00:20:01] DC: Victor. [00:20:02] RB: Vic Neiland? [00:20:03] DC: Yeah. [00:20:04] RB: Okay. [00:20:05] DC: So those are the two guys that could give you the background on early hydraulic system development. [00:20:09] RB: Yeah. [00:20:10] DC: This continued, and the people from APM—Aircraft Porous Media—continued to work closely and have developed these specs. It was a good case history of how a vendor, you might say, worked hand in hand with the people here in Huntsville to come up with good specs that supposedly would give you a good high reliability on your hydraulic system. [00:20:34] RB: Was this a case where they kind of wrote themselves into this? [00:20:37] DC: Yes, very definitely. [00:20:38] RB: Were you doing that for the... [00:20:39] DC: No, I was on the other side of the fence at that time working in the engine group. [00:20:43] RB: Okay, yeah. [00:20:44] DC: I was doing such things as designing these hydraulic systems and working from that side. Incidentally that was one system that was never touched by Rocketdyne. They tried many times to get into engine control systems. In this case it was done completely in house, which is kind of interesting. As well as such things as your missile propellant pressurization systems, all of your heat exchanger developments, all of your pre-valve systems, all of your electrical relay systems, all of this was developed by Huntsville. In other words, the interface was sort of “Rocketdyne, you build this engine, you test it and develop it. We'll run acceptance testing on it, and you deliver it to us or you deliver it to Chrysler”—whichever the case may be—”and we'll plug it in and take it over from there.” [00:21:40] RB: This is Jupiter? [00:21:41] DC: Yeah, and this is also applied to the H-1 and the Saturn type of relationship. [00:21:46] RB: Rocketdyne wasn't getting into the hydraulic actuators? [00:21:49] DC: No. [00:21:50] RB: But they were taking the government-furnished equipment? [00:21:52] DC: Yeah. [00:21:53] RB: Okay. [00:21:54] DC: That's right. All of the control aspects, all the mechanical control as well as guidance and electronic, and all these other control systems were developed out of Huntsville. Of course, they went to vendors for certain pieces, but the systems engineering was strictly done by the Huntsville teams. No question about it. From Jupiter then evolved the larger numbers of actuators and hydraulic packages and pumps, what have you. Incidentally, the pump received its power in both cases from the turbo machinery of the engine. A tight interface there, of course. This pump in turn had to have an accumulator so that it had a reservoir reserve. In other words, in designing a hydraulic system, you have a basic energy input, in this case from the pump. You also have to have a surplus storage device, which in this case is an accumulator, so that when you have extreme actuation, you don't starve the pump more or less. You have to have reserve. It's like a storage battery in an automobile type of thing. That'd be your electrical analog. This evolved into the Saturn program, and then the company continued to work closely with the people, and they were involved. When the Saturn V came along, there were a few difficulties, but in general they stayed all the way through the program. This is a good situation, or a good case of getting in early and riding the program all the way through. [00:23:32] RB: So APM was in on Jupiter and they got in on the H-1 then? And got in on the F-1. [00:23:37] DC: Mm-hmm. The Saturn I, and then on the F-1. Now the F-1 was a different kind of beast in that you used fuel for the actuators. I may be wrong. I know that we were looking at it. I think you had a big fuel pump using kerosene/RP. This applied through the actuators also, so you'd require a different type of filter. This was sort of a new ball game, and frankly I was kind of getting out of it at that time, so I'd have to refresh my memory and check a few things on that. [00:24:10] RB: When did you become the representative for APM? [00:24:13] DC: It must have been about ‘61. So I left in ‘60, about ‘61. Also with Parker Aircraft about that same time. [00:24:26] RB: So when you became the rep for APM, you were selling actuator filters? [00:24:32] DC: Well, I was not a rep. I'll have to take that back. They had what they call a manufacturing representative. I was in a little different league. They called me a government liaison representative. My function was more liaison and communication as opposed to sales. I never was involved in direct sales. It was more like a consulting type thing. [00:24:54] RB: I see. [00:24:55] DC: The same thing held true with Parker. It was more of a consulting and advice and liaison as opposed...In other words, they had their own salesmen. I didn't get directly into that loop at all of writing purchase orders and what have you. That was a separate marketing function. It was to advise those people who to go see and what was going on and who should they go see at North American to make sure their hydraulic systems or filters are applied to the second stage, who should they see a Douglas and this sort of thing. [00:25:26] DC: In a lot of cases they knew and already had worked with these people, so it was just tightening up, you might say, the communication loop. Which competitors are sniffing around, we better keep an eye on type of thing. [laughs] But there was a lot of that going on. Like I say, there were literally dozens and dozens of reps running around at that time. In fact, it got pretty bad at times where they'd almost have to close the doors and make it a strict appointment because at one time these guys were like fleas. I was on the other side of the fence, and I know how it is when they come marching in on you. [laughs] That was really, I think, an interesting sideline here. I think that was one reason for more of the security consciousness that developed more so than worried about classification of material. It was just for protection of the poor engineers so they could get some work done. I tried to make it my own policy not to bother people unless I really had something of interest to them or vice versa. I've tried to maintain that relationship over the years. When I felt I could contribute something or a company could, I thought it was worthwhile to pursue it, which I think is very important to maintain a long-term relationship. [00:26:47] RB: Well, looking at the Rigi-Mesh application and engines, by ‘61 Pratt & Whitney had already gotten into it. [00:26:53] DC: Yes, through the Lewis testing and the Rigi-Mesh being the trade name for this same porous material. I might mention there were a number of things looked at for this material. This particular application was for the injector face on the liquid hydrogen propelled rocket motors. The advantage being that you get a transpiration cooling effect through the porous material. It gives you sort of a boundary layer on the combustion wall similar to the old film cooling techniques used on the V-2. This was an early recognized problem that you can burn up an exposed material unless you have cooling on it. In the case of the injector, it's not like the outer wall where you have a heat exchange effect and you have a continuous flow of propellants that gives you a cooling effect. In this case, you're just oozing, you might say, right through the porous material to get that same effect. It's similar, but not the same. Also other things were looked at with this material. The Air Force, for example, has always been for a long time been interested in boundary layer control and actually, let's say, sucking off on the leading or upper edge. [Interruption, tape cuts out and restarts] [00:28:18] DC: We were talking about Rigi-Mesh, and I was mentioning the other applications for this material. Another application that, let's say, evolved out of this material was for noise suppression. For example, a lot of the big jet engines now have a outer layer of the same type of porous material cut down on the noise level. But anyway, you're right, Pratt & Whitney had been using this material and run their own tests down at...I'm not sure if they were in Florida at that time or not. I know they did run some testing down there later. I know they started, you know, buying this material, running tests. They determined it was very useful for this application. Another application I'll mention quickly, it has been considered for quite a few years for re-entry nose cone purposes, sweat cooling, where you actually have a material oozing through this during re-entry to give you a film cooling layer. It's efficient from that standpoint, except for the loss of the cooling fluid. This is one of the disadvantages. The trend has been more to your solid ablative type, you know, materials that liquefies every entry and get the film cooling from that. So the outgas are… [tape cuts out] [00:29:42] DC: In the meantime, the Pratt & Whitney engine was developed primarily under Air Force contract for the Atlas-Centaur application. That's where it's still being used. At that time also, I think Huntsville gave Douglas a contract for the S-IV stage as the second stage for Saturn I, which would be called Saturn I-B. I'll correct that. The six Pratt & Whitney engines were used on Saturn I as the second stage. The S-IVB actually used in the J-2 engine as well as the S-IVB stage, which was the third stage for Saturn V. [00:30:30] DC: In that period—I'd say ‘60-’61, I'll have to check—the specs were written for this larger LOX/hydrogen engine, and there was competition between primarily Pratt & Whitney and Rocketdyne for the engine. Rocketdyne was awarded the contract. I'd have to go back and check my...You're probably more familiar with now than I am, but I think this was even before the Apollo was announced that this was going on. I do recall working very hard on the specs for that engine. I left in June of 1960, so that means those specs were being worked on quite early as well as the upper stages, the S-IVB and the S-II stage, yeah. [00:31:15] DC: The specs are being prepared better today. In other words, there was enough knowledge to know that these are the kind of pieces of hardware, and this was going back to the C-2 program probably that you would need these. Very likely the specs didn't have the final configuration. They didn't have some of the basic dimensions and systems that were required, and we were at that time starting to write those specs, particularly the engine specs. [00:31:42] DC: I left about that time, and about that time Rocketdyne got the engine contract, J-2. In their original concept, I don't think they accepted the Pratt & Whitney injector design for obvious reasons. They had to be unique, you know? But yet they were still allowed to give them the contract. To make a long story short, I did continue to follow this program, more or less as its government liaison role. As a matter of fact, this came somewhat later, maybe a year later, before I actually got into that position. Even at that time, there was questions on... [interruption, tape cuts out and restarts] [00:32:31] DC: One of the questions that came up on using Rigi-Mesh for the J-2 engine was the availability of the material because it was sort of a sole source for proprietary material. It was manufactured in sintering furnaces there in Glen Cove, New York. That was the source. The question came up on availability. I don't recall all the details, but I do recall one story of Dr. von Braun visiting Rocketdyne, as he frequently did in these product improvement reviews and engine status program reviews and what have you. I was told—I wasn't there at the time—but I was told that he just asked them point blank, why don't they just go ahead and use what had been proven—namely the Pratt & Whitney injector system and material. And they did it. Then the whole thing was settled from there on out. It was just a matter of supplying the hardware then, I mean the material, to Rocketdyne. Let them shape it, you know, machine it. It can be handled just like a solid piece of material in the same thickness. [00:33:37] RB: Do you remember who was there and heard von Braun? [00:33:40] DC: I think Jerry Thomson mentioned this to me. He would be the best one just to ask for more details on that particular point. [00:33:48] RB: Well now, were you here at Huntsville, were you talking to somebody in the engine program office about Rigi-Mesh and trying to encourage them to use it? [00:33:57] DC: Yes, I think I continued to keep some contact with local engine people. I think I did propose this, you know. Would they consider this, and they were considering it. The people here were sort of in favor of it, but I think it was Rocketdyne that was dragging their heels. I don't know all the factors there, you know, what else they were looking at. Frankly, I know they were looking at some of their own unique injector designs, and probably they were, you know, trying to somewhat justify whatever they had proposed. There was a period there of almost a year when after I left the propulsion group, and then got more heavily involved in this consulting type activity that I'm not that familiar with everything that did happen. But by the time I was back in the loop, they still had not made a final decision, I don't think, on the Rigi-Mesh. [00:34:47] RB: Were you talking to Thomson here then? [00:34:51] DC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I was going back into that same old group that I had worked in and was talking to them about filters and Rigi-Mesh applications. I became also involved with Pesco Products, division of Borg-Warner, with their [more or less consulting?] rep in Huntsville. They were involved in the boost pumps for the Centaur engines, so they were in liquid hydrogen. Yes, I was in that direct propulsion and propellant system loop. We were also involved in the pre-conditioning pumps. I think they were electrically driven for the S-IV stage and eventually the S-IVB and S-II stage. You have to pre-chill or pre-condition the temperature of the lines before you go into main stage on a liquid hydrogen engine. These little pre-chilling pumps would perform that function. They would actually start up before you go in, you know, start engine operation to cool down so you don't get a gasification ram effect from cold propellants hitting hot lines. So that's another story. [00:36:09] RB: This is kind of off the subject a little bit, but I'm interested in it. I haven't run it down yet. Where were those Pesco pumps used in the Saturn and what for? [00:36:16] DC: They were used upstream of the liquid hydrogen propellant feed lines coming from your propellant tanks to your engines. They were used, as I say, to pre-condition those lines and chill them down. In other words, to get a dynamic flow going through there because under just a static condition with no flow, you don't get much of a chill down. You have to actually flow the stuff because it boils off so quickly, you see? [00:36:45] RB: Were they using the LOX lines too or just hydrogen? [00:36:48] DC: Primarily hydrogen. I think there were possibly some LOX chill down. I know there were hydrogen. It's not as critical on the LOX side. You know, temperature is not near as low, of course. Hydrogen, it is quite critical. With LOX, it's not that critical. [00:37:08] RB: Okay, so they're upstream of the propellant feed lines to pre-chill those lines. [00:37:12] DC: So what you have to do... [00:37:13] RB: Is that involved with the engine pre-chill too? [00:37:15] DC: Yeah, you go down as far downstream as you can, then what you do, you open up a valve during the pre-chill sequence and then circulate it back up again, you say, to your propellant tank. What it means, you have a closed loop circulation. But if you didn't have that, if you had just a static condition, you wouldn't have any place to go, you say. [00:37:37] RB: But they not only chilled the lines then, that Pesco pre-chilled the engine too? [00:37:41] DC: Yeah, as much of the engine as you could. [00:37:43] RB: Yeah, that's what I mean. [00:37:44] DC: This was the same function that the boost pumps had on the Centaur, still have. Pesco designed under contract with the Air Force and provided this same role for the Centaur vehicle. [00:37:58] RB: Okay, so when you're talking about engine pre-chill pumps, for example, a J-2 restart, they have to go through the pre-chill cycle? [00:38:04] DC: Yeah. [00:38:05] RB: That's a Pesco pump that's doing that? [00:38:06] RB: Not necessarily. I know it was on the S-IVB. I'll to have to go back and refresh my memory because I'm confusing in my own mind the S-IV, S-IVB, the S-II, and even the S-I, I think it did have some blocks chilled down pumps. I'll have to look at some schematics, so I'll beg off. [00:38:26] RB: I had some Pesco products, but they talk about it in such general terms, I just couldn't figure out exactly where they were used. [00:38:31] DC: Yeah, that was a function, and I could dig that out for you. [00:38:35] RB: Okay, do you remember anything more about the manufacturing process of Rigi-Mesh, a little bit how they went into that and how they did it? [00:38:44] DC: Yeah, first, in some cases they would weave their own material; in other cases they would just purchase it as an industrial wire cloth type of thing. In that form it's flexible in that there's no interconnection between the individual strands. This is used for strainers, and wire cloth is used in a lot of industrial applications. They even, I think, purchased a few of their own weaving companies like in Ireland and possibly Germany to supply the raw material to make sure you could always have an adequate supply, which when you're getting big demands you have to meet the demands, and then you have to prepare yourself. [00:39:25] DC: The next step then is to take this and go through a furnace at almost a melting point. So really it's just like a sintering furnace on a conveyor belt. You go through this thing, and the two critical items are the temperature and the time frame—how long it's in there. If you get these things tuned up, it's quite an art. One of the reasons more people aren't doing this is it takes a lot of experience. It's kind of like the old guy in the steel mill, he knows just when to pour it off. When you do this, out it comes, and it's just like a flat sheet of solid material except it has little holes in it. In that form you can use it for certain applications. Then say you want to go to the injector face, you need, of course, more thickness. You might have to require seven or eight layers of this wire cloth. They seem to favor what they call the Dutch twill weave, which is a specific weave that has a little more rigidity in an even, normal state. It gives you additional strength when it's sintered. [00:40:28] DC: The next step is then to take, say, X number of layers of this stuff after you individually process them, and then stack them up and run them through all together in a combined form, a combined composite, or matrix of layers. Then that again is quite a tricky process because of your heat transfer rate not being uniform from the outside of the thing to the interior. It's like cooking a potato. [00:40:58] DC: So all of these things had to be considered in the sintering process. Like I say it's somewhat proprietary. Other people do it. It's not…They're not…They don't have monopoly on this technique. For example, Bendix, [Purolator?] division got into it in a big way. They're still involved in this stuff. They call their material [poor alloy?], I believe. But as a matter of interest, [Purolator?] used to have all the aircraft filter business. [00:41:29] RB: Does APM have it now? [00:41:31] DC: Yes, and I think Dr. Pall went to [Purolator?]. That was one of the companies he approached to get their interest up. He went to a number of others and didn't get any response. So he just said, “Dammit, I'll do it myself!” And that's what he did. He went into the filter business. He ended up with the majority of the world market in aircraft filters, which they probably still have today. I haven't checked lately, but I know they did five years ago. [00:41:53] RB: So [he was applied?] to British corporations, and French corporations, and so on? [00:41:57] DC: Yeah, yeah, he was worldwide. He had worldwide representatives, fed him this stuff all over the world. Anyway, getting back to Rigi-Mesh…Then you take the stuff out of the furnace, and you test it to make sure it doesn't peel, and it's all centered together properly. Then you have to come up with a given porosity. You do this by taking it and rolling it through two steel rollers and decreasing the thickness, which increases the delta P—or pressure drop—across the plane. The more you squeeze it, the less porosity you have. That step means you can control the, you know, customize more or less whatever type of material you want to develop. Then if you want to further modify it, you can even then take a little tiny material—stainless steel, which in most cases it was—you can take little tiny stainless steel particles and deposit them on the top and even get a filtration action if you like. In some of their cases, they would combine powdered metallurgical type processes with woven wire processes, integrate this into the same material. It means you end up with a structurally strong material because of the weaving. You end up with in-depth filtration because of the tiny little balls that are stacked up and centered together and integrated with the woven material. We call this super mesh. [00:43:38] RB: Yeah. [laughs] [00:43:43] DC: So that's how the Rigi-Mesh started. [00:43:46] RB: Well, they supplied it then, what, just sheets of material? [00:43:48] DC: Yeah, yeah. And still do to people like Pratt & Whitney, GE…I can't think of any other big engine…Allison, I guess. I don't know if they're still in the act or not. But this same material then, it was and is being used for noise suppression because it is porous and absorbent and cuts down the dB level by dampening out the high frequency vibration from your compressors and turbine blades. It's somewhat self-cleaning in that you can, you know, purge it out and you can use it for…Well, one thing that I always thought was interesting was to use this material for cooling turbine blades to operate at higher temperatures. And this was considered in World War II by the German Junkers people and their jet engine development. Navy got interested and there has been... [00:44:48] RB: The US Navy? [00:44:49] DC: Yeah, US Navy. I think they captured that particular group of engineers and brought them over here. There's a lot of that going on, you know, right after World War II. Over the years, I think the Air Force, NASA-Lewis probably, I know NASA-Lewis, Navy, and other people have looked at this possibility of using porous turbine blades. To me, that would be one of the more outstanding applications if and when it evolves because then you can raise your combustion temperature and operate it at a much higher temperature. It’s giving you much more compact and efficient turbines, jet turbines. [00:45:32] RB: Off hand, do you know of any other rocket engines besides the RL-10 and the J-2 that it was used in? [00:45:36] DC: No, but I was quite heavily involved personally in a lot of experimental work that was going on here. Looking at the so-called toroidal thrust chamber, there was a lot of experimental work there. Rocketdyne eventually built, you know, some of these engines under contract. That was one of the materials being considered there for the injector on the inside of the engine. There were some others, small engine concepts that were played around with here. But as it turned out, these never were used. [00:46:10] RB: There's something else I was going to ask you too. In making the J-2 injector base, they used electrical discharge machining. So the Rigi-Mesh is the material they were working with. Is that right? And they would just go through…Then they would put in another... [00:46:24] DC: Mm-hmm. Orifice. [00:46:25] RB: Orifice, solid for the oxidizer to go in? [00:46:28] DC: Yeah. [00:46:29] RB: Okay, so that explains that. [00:46:31] DC: That's almost identical to the Pratt & Whitney system. Oh, the other big application was the M-1 engine. Aerojet bought quite a quantity of the same material into this under a NASA contract and developed a large million pound thrust liquid hydrogen engine. Originally, it was a Nova upper stage engine. That program eventually died out. I'm not sure on the NERVA engine, you know, which is the Aerojet Westinghouse nuclear engine whether Rigi-Mesh was used or not. I'm not sure, but I kind of doubt it because it's just a P engine. All you're doing is dumping liquid hydrogen into it and expanding it, you know, in the form of gas for your thrust. In that case, I don't think the injector face is that critical. I'm not sure. But the M-1 would have been on the big application. [00:47:26] RB: That's a really beautiful story, Dave. It's really a nice one. I like that. Cheers. [tape ends] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000007_A Title A name given to the resource Christensen, David ("Dave") Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. Description An account of the resource David Christensen describes how the Saturn program relied on a network of experienced aerospace vendors to develop and supply specialized components, emphasizing that this approach had long been standard in the aircraft industry. Rather than competing primarily on price, vendors sought to demonstrate superior reliability, technical performance, and compliance with stringent NASA specifications, particularly for liquid oxygen (LOX) compatibility. Marshall Space Flight Center engineers worked closely with contractors and suppliers to test competing products, develop specifications, and ensure the highest-quality components were selected. Christensen explains that successful vendors often invested their own resources to qualify products, collaborated directly with engineers during research and development, and sought to have their components named in procurement specifications, giving them a competitive advantage while still allowing equivalent products to compete. He uses Aircraft Porous Media (later part of Pall Corporation) as a case study, describing how the company developed advanced porous metal filters and Rigi-Mesh material through in-house research and close collaboration with the Air Force and Huntsville engineers. These technologies became critical for hydraulic systems and, later, rocket engine applications such as the J-2 engine injector, illustrating how government-industry partnerships, rigorous testing, and sustained technical collaboration drove innovation and reliability throughout the Jupiter and Saturn programs. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/b9bd47cee88ca65e5d90556cc3809ee3.pdf 709508c8dfa76f1cdc7f17ca68098557 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000006_T Title A name given to the resource Bucher, George (Transcript) Description An account of the resource Project Highwater Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-30 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/36ab70e8b426499776f0701ca253517d.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/55a663a87accd220d74f5577b9907d07.mp4 93a5d0da669c90f15cff15af89763a3c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000006_A Title A name given to the resource Bucher, George Description An account of the resource Project Highwater Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-30 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/de1f1337272e24d2ce017e426891c389.pdf 1018d2231737b8ab0324b71e988106eb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000005_T Title A name given to the resource Bostwick, Leonard C. and Burns, Mike (Transcript) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-07-31 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/72c8e1709fba8a131766c21f269d351a.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ad19190c91d496b1a116f1818e3f1035.mp4 379f13537305c483da1099c59bd016d6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000005_A Title A name given to the resource Bostwick, Leonard C. and Burns, Mike Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/be20e05042c0ac4e999efdda59788d90.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/3fa5243119c87dd9543fc60ea718b83b.mp4 faf3123ce1f9dcd8c0418926713121e6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Belew, Leland Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:58:31 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:00] Tom Lewis: Essentially you got another engine, and you get another propellant [batch?] or whatever it is. Anytime you launch a solid, you're essentially launching a new engine. This is my own personal evaluation of it. I'm sure solid people could give you a... [00:00:23] Toon Ferrell: I'm not arguing about no rotating machinery. No cryogenics. [00:00:31] TL: No purge. [00:00:35] TF: That’s right. It's strictly the people in command at the time, what they preferred. [00:00:40] Roger Bilstein: Von Braun was a liquid man. [00:00:42] TF: Everything at Peenemuende was liquid, right? [00:00:45] RB: Yeah. They’ve finally gotten into some solids finally on the shuttle, at least the boosters in some way. [00:00:54] TL: But that wasn’t von Braun down there. [00:00:56] RB: Uh-huh, yeah. Wasn't there a barrier to—I've got it [down?] here—about 260 ISP barrier on solids for a long time. That's about as good as they could get. You got into whether J-2, 425, something like that? [00:01:11] TF: Yeah, we get up to 426 nominal as much back then. We've gone up to 429. Yes, they can't compete ISP-wise. [00:01:23] RB: That'd be another reason. At least one of the design considerations. [00:01:28] TF: Well, you don't take advantage of ISP until you get out of the gravitational range. You can still boost it to pretty high altitude with a solid and then come in with a liquid. [00:01:40] RB: So liquid is much better at altitude? Okay, I've got a question on the H-1. Maybe you can help me, maybe not. Why was there a difference in the turbine exhaust disposal? Those outboard engines had a special thing around them. [00:02:08] TL: Actually, LH2 is a little more exotic. You've got a lot more combustion problems. You've got more handling problems. You've got more of a disposal problem. But it sure does make it easier to cool the chamber. Like when they fired the J-2—probably the J-2 too—when they fired the RL-10, the longer they fired it, the cooler the outside of the engine got. It just coated up with frost. You can imagine 5,500 degrees inside this thing and frost on the outside, you know, [that far away?] [00:02:44] TF: The ecologists like it. The exhaust products are pure water. [00:02:48] RB: So no problem theoretically. [00:02:50] TL: No problem. And you ran into interesting problems, of course. When I first started working on the RL-10, LH2 was a new state of the art as far as [inaudible]. A lot of funny things happened. A lot of interesting occurrences. When they first started out, everybody was super cautious. No matter how cautious you are, things still happen. You find out you know that, gee whiz, that this thing's not quite as dangerous as we thought. You tend to relax a little bit, and then you get into a bad problem. [00:03:28] TL: They had a guy on one of the portable dewars that they brought fuel in from New Jersey up to the start the test facility. He was up on the carrier, and lightning struck [the vent?], and set it on fire. Here he is straddling this 4,000 gallon LH2, and damn thing's on fire. It didn't take him long to get off of there. But nothing happened because the thing was venting. It was just a little plume of flame coming out. The burning rate wasn't such that it went on down in there, so they just closed the vent. No problem. [00:04:13] TL: But they did have a serious problem one time with Pratt & Whitney while I was there. See, whenever they ran a turbopump, all they did was run their fuel through a [inaudible]. They dumped it in the burn pit. They weren't really getting anything out because all they were doing was turning the pump and then burning it. They thought, “Well, it sure is awfully wasteful. Maybe we could collect some of that LH2 and save it.” They thought, “Well, we'll give it a try.” They put up a little test rig there and had a great big tub like sitting on a scale. They were going to see how much they were going to catch. It was a very humid, overcast, cloudy day. They’re dumping this liquid hydrogen into this tank. Usually what happens whenever you have any vapors from liquid hydrogen, it immediately disperses. It goes flying off into the sky, you know, because it’s very light. It really spreads out. Well, this day, it was a little humid and overcast and everything. Instead of doing that, all these fumes just kind of flowed over this tank and along the ground. It flowed under the door into a motor room, electrical motors. They got a spark, and that whole damn thing ignited. There was guys blowing down the parking area. The asphalt aprons were driving around like bowling balls. One guy got burned quite badly. He was in the hospital for two or three months. [00:05:37] RB: Was this on Centaur operations or was it on the S-IV operations? [00:05:42] TL: I don't remember. It was just the RL-10 development program. I don't know what application it was on. [00:05:48] RB: The thing about the RL-10 that as a layman really kind of amazes me is the fact that they can get enough gas pressure just out of recirculation through the chamber to run the pump. Because on the J-2, it took a gas generator starting that thing by pressure. Yet on the RL-10, they were able to get enough pressure just by running it through the regenerative tube. Why couldn't they use that for the J-2? [00:06:15] TF: I imagine the size of the turbine to turn is massive that you've got to move. [00:06:23] RB: And also you've got to restart problem in space. I suppose that would affect the recirculation. [00:06:27] TF: Well, you need a start tank for space. [00:06:34] RB: Okay, well actually that kind of takes care of my questions. [00:06:36] TF: You have a couple of H-1s that weren't answered. [00:06:40] RB: There's a guy I can still get a hold of to do those. I think there’s a guy named Dave Christensen. I don't know if you know him or not. He did a lot of early work on the S-3D and H-1. I’m sure he can… [00:06:49] TF: D.W. Westrope is the equivalent of Dick Rogers on this engine. [00:06:56] RB: On the H-1? [00:06:58] TF: Yeah. [00:07:03] RB: Yeah. I was going to call [Catalgo?] then about the… [00:07:06] TF: About the brazing? [00:07:08] RB: Yeah. [00:07:11] TF: I haven't answered your question on this. I think I have. I think it's [inaudible] problems. [00:07:16] RB: Oh look, I'll just read this over I think then for my own information. [tape stops and restarts] [00:07:20] RB: Interview with Mr. Belew. I had a couple of questions. I don't mean to put it straight on your memory, but there's a couple of things I can't find readily. Back in the beginning of the RL-10, or the liquid hydrogen engine program, Pratt & Whitney was fooling around with the LR-119, which is the second generation. They finally wound up going back into the first generation LR-115 before they finally settled on the RL-10. I was wondering if you could remember why they gave up on the LR-119 and went back to the LR-115. Some sort of development problem, but I can't find any note, anything much more specific than that. [00:08:14] John Stuart Beltz: Do you suppose, Roger, where they couldn't get it to run full duration, it was shutting down? [00:08:20] RB: Well, it could be. I really haven't found it out. [00:08:24] JSB: This is when they were going to use four of them on the S-IV? [00:08:31] Lee Belew: We used four. [00:08:32] JSB: And then they had to go back to the six? [00:08:34] RB: And then they went back to six, but that was with the RL-10, I think. [00:08:37] LB: I don't know that those definitions—115, 119, RL-10—are that significant. I don't recall that we sacrificed any, I would say, advancements in the development of an RL series engine when we dropped the 119 and went to the RL-10. As I recall, the RL-10 was taking all the knowledge from the 115 plus the engineering studies and work on the advanced nineteen. Pulling those out and putting them into an RL-10 that had an application. RL-10 was built for a specific application, the Saturn family of launch vehicles. I think when you have an application that can be defined and specified, you can get right to work and build a product and do a damn good job. As I recall it, we didn't have any concerns about the RL series, per se, and we didn't have a direct application for what they called the RL-19 at the time because what we had an application for was specific. That was just redefined as RL-10. Of course, when we started the RL-10, it didn't have a complete update as far as performance and all that, that we finally wound up with as we flew it, and then as we now see it on the Centaur vehicle. It did become improved even after we first began the development of the RL-10. I don't believe that you'll find any major significance in that nomenclature because when you asked me, it didn't ring a bell at all on why not the RL-19. [00:10:40] RB: Well, this is in one of Akens' chronologies. I really haven't found anything else. It was just a comment made on there. I can't find anything. Rod Stewart, we talked to him, he couldn't remember anything about it either. Another thing, and one of the reports that he wrote, I think it must have been Stewart or somebody, made the comment that there was no use for the F-1 in 1959, and that this was not unusual in developing engines. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on that, about the development of engines and that they are sometimes begun before stages actually come into being, etc. [00:11:22] JSB: [inaudible] the Air Force [inaudible] their original development. [00:11:26] LB: Well, the F-1 had its beginning as far as some work relative to the technology of large rocket engines. That was, I guess, in ‘59, early ‘59. And then, see, Sputnik went up…Let's see, when was that? [00:11:48] RB: Sputnik actually went up in ‘56. ‘57 [inaudible]. [00:11:51] LB: ‘56, ‘57. Then this whole business of space began to take hold as a new endeavor for this country and, of course, the Russians, and other interests. [00:12:05] JSB: You were the ABMA then, weren't you? [00:12:07] LB: Yes. There was a decision, I guess it was a final decision, at the presidential level, in the Congress, I guess it was a congressional decision, that we as a country should develop a very large rocket engine. That large rocket engine was defined as what became the F-1. It was that kind of decision that brought the F-1 into being. That program was transferred from whatever technology basic phase A, B, you know, study-type work, some very slight hardware work. It was transferred officially, I think that was in ‘60, to us. It was a Rocketdyne contracted for effort by, I guess that was the Air Force at the time. We picked it up a little, just a little before we became a part of the NASA organization. We picked it up as a rocket engine development program. That was complemented by…There were studies on launch vehicles, and those studies bracketed the size of this engine or complementary to the studies on large vehicles that were being made. [tape cuts out] [00:14:06] LB: It was a Saturn launch vehicle specified. The logic of doing that has a lot of history in that it's known that the rocket engine development cycle is the longest lead item in the development of a launch vehicle or in the development of an aircraft. Just take the engines that go into our airplanes. Those usually have some lead on the complete definition of an airplane. Usually you'll say, “Okay, I'll build an airplane based on having knowledge of an engine development that's going on.” That's often the case. But we didn't do this out of…We didn't start the Saturn engine development out of figuring as to what it took and the way of time and all. [00:15:01] LB: The other factor on, I would say, desensitizing engine development in the dark relative to the launch vehicle is the fact that it became evident that engines could be clustered and used in numbers rather than a single engine for a single stage. That sort of takes away from the sensitive sizing of an engine relative to a certain vehicle. Now there are certain limits on that. The facts are that the F-1 did become a clustered engine before we finally wound up with the Saturn V design and built it. We had several studies and had all kinds of numbers as far as clustering and certain lunar missions depending on how you conducted missions. [00:15:55] JSB: Was there some thought of using the F-1 on the Saturn I and IB [inaudible]? [00:16:01] LB: Well, those considerations, of course, were made in arriving at final decisions. You go through almost all of the possibilities. As you go through them, you begin to sort them out and come down to a final kind of configuration. When you do everything in series, like your flight as a single engine on a sort of an S-1B type stage, before you put it into a cluster, you can add enough time that you’ll never get your final product out. That ties back to having enough experience out of the ‘50s, you know, out of the development of large vehicles for the military, DOD and all, and then out of some of the uses of those kinds of components for space work. You begin to build the knowledge and confidence that says, “Okay, we take some bolder steps, like we go all up.” That was one of the contributions I would say that Dr. Miller had to the Apollo program: take a bold step and go all up. You launch it—a Saturn V—with everything on it. Instead of launching the first stage with nothing above it, except that means when you finally get to the first and second, there's nothing but damage above those and so on up. You shove the whole thing together, launch it all at one time, at least up to the point of the payload. [00:17:39.] RB: Do you think it would have been impossible to have made the manned lunar landing within a decade had you not gone all up, if you'd made it by going in the building block [inaudible]? [00:17:52] LB: We were within a year, weren't we? [00:17:55] RB: Yeah. [00:17:56] LB: Now that year isn't a lot of margin compared to when we began almost ten years earlier. [00:18:05] JSB: Would you say something about the initial opposition at MSFC to the all up concept, [inaudible]? [00:18:13] LB: Well, I think opposition is probably not the right word. I would say that we had to go through an inward process of, I'd say, which consisted primarily of systems engineering in our own minds of what that really meant. That does have a bearing on the kind of test program that is conducted on the ground, on your hardware. With all those factors thrown together where we did have a test program that then did give us the assurance that we were committed to that kind of a system now. For someone to come off, you know, to come into the system and say, “Okay, we're going to go all up,” that's one thing. But to say that and not allow a comprehensive test program to give you the kind of background you need, that would be one thing compared to structuring a test program that allows you to do more on the ground before you go all up. [00:19:28] LB: I think that we went through the logical sequence of engineering analyses before we said, “Okay, we will commit.” That's just the way you run a program. I think that, except those kinds of, I would say, rather dramatic changes in approach without thinking and engineering your way through it would be a rather dangerous thing to do. Now, compared to the beginning, early ‘50s on large launch vehicles for the DOD application, we accounted for a certain amount of our first launches as part of the development of the vehicle. We would expect that we would have some problems in the subsystems of the launch vehicle and maybe lose several flights in the series of developing that vehicle. Now, that completely changed in this Apollo thing, which really said we've got to do better on the use of our experience—which we did—and we have to put together a doggone well thought through program that’s systems engineered and then backed up with the right test to build that confidence. [00:20:49] RB: Is that because it was so expensive or because it was manned? [00:20:52] LB: Well, it's what you would want to do on anything, not exclusively tied to launch vehicles or space stuff. If you had to kind of back down the experience, it's just a logical thing to do with any kind of product. You want to do the most you can with the data. That’s engineering analysis, [inaudible] most useful tools that we have, and then the testing of the systems on the ground and where the biggest cost is, try to minimize that effort. The biggest cost in this would be building several of those just for proving the hardware by flight. We minimize that effort by doing a whole lot more with the knowledge we have. It requires a much higher level of engineering talent, especially oriented toward systems engineering talent, when you take those kinds of steps. It was the right kind of thing to do looking back even though we had some reservations in the beginning. [00:22:03] JSB: Were there technologies that came about in the ‘60s that made that possible, like automatic checkouts? [00:22:09] LB: Well, I think the technologies were basically there. I think the better use of that capability contributed an awful lot to that. Certainly the kind of check out gear that one has, that we had at that time, had a great deal to do with, yes. When you run a check out and everything is hard lined and everything has to do with man being completely, in every piece of data extracted, that begins to get rather undoable when you talk about Apollo type vehicle—the Saturn and Apollo spacecraft on top of it. You just have to exploit the automatic check out. At the beginning of the ‘60s, I think one would have to say that basic technology was all there. It just took a challenge like the Apollo-Saturn to put that to use. When you commit to Apollo-Saturn in a decade, you doggone well have to put that to use. There's no choice. You don't make it if you don't. So I guess the answer is yes to your question. [00:23:35] RB: What about the engine programs? Can you say that liquid hydrogen caused you more problems than the LOX/RP-1? Do you have to make a [inaudible] that there are two different kinds of engines and systems involved? [00:23:52] LB: Well, I would say that you can go all the way back on engine development. At one time, oxygen was called secret fuel. You can go that far probably because it was less understood than other propellants like kerosene or alcohol. It just has to do with one's understanding of what he's working with. Liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen is a combination which is the propellant in the RL-10 engine and also the J-2 engine. [00:24:35] LB: At the beginning, there were concerns, yes, because the combination is very combustible. When exposed to the normal atmosphere, it does evaporate. You don't see the run like you do the rest of the kerosene. To the average common guy that works these systems, the technicians and all, they're less known about that combination. I think that had a bit to do with it. The actual development of an engine has to consider lots of things like the flow and cooling characteristics, combustibility, and susceptibility of these various propellants as far as rough combustion, which is a very major part of the development on the engine on the side of the F-1. So all those were less known than the propellants we'd been dealing with. The propellants we were dealing with primarily at the time in our work were basically kerosene and oxygen. Of course, we'd use alcohol in the Redstone stuff. Then the acids, of course, were used in many of the other systems, but none up until the RL-10 had really used hydrogen and oxygen. So it was just a matter of dealing with something less known by the fact that we hadn't had the time and a number of different systems exposed to it. 00:26:21] LB: Looking at the way it came out, I would say that from my personal experience, hydrogen/oxygen is probably the best combination that we have in rocket engines today as far as ease of developing a system that performs well. The normal things one fears, that's rough combustion and cooling aspects of this type of hardware, does your high performance. It gives a bit of problem to containing it because of the relatively lightweight, pretty large tanks. That was certainly overcome very readily by the fact that something like the S-II stage developed a very large tank, which was very successful. Basically, hydrogen and oxygen engines have been very reliable in comparison to what we termed or categorized as conventional propellants up to that point. [00:27:31] RB: We were talking to Douglas engineers when we went out to Los Angeles about a year and a half ago. Of course, it was Douglas, but they kept emphasizing that the S-IV, for example, was just an awful lot different than the Centaur. One engineer commented that we had to fight to keep the S-IV from just being another Centaur. Do you see that there are that much differences in the systems, the Centaur and the S-IV? [00:28:01] LB: Well, the engines are essentially the same. In fact, we delivered engines to the two vehicles out of the same line at the time with some very slight modifications. The difference has to do with the system, the total system tankage and all. There are differences there. [00:28:21] RB: Internal insulation and so on? [00:28:23] LB: Well, I would say sensitivity to weight is more critical on a Centaur vehicle than on the S-IV. The S-IV was, in my own assessment, a more conservative approach, not so sensitive to weight as the Centaur. So from a vehicle point of view, yes, quite different. From the engine and what flows through it, basically no difference. [00:28:56] JSB: [inaudible] primarily the pressure stabilization in the Centaur as opposed to the fact that the S-IVB just stayed up there? [00:29:02] LB: Well, the booster on the Centaur is pressure stabilized. The Centaur stays pressure stabilized. I thought you were talking about the Centaur second stage, it had the RL-10 in it. It has less conservative design because of the sensitivity to weight than the S-IV. The S-IV, we just built it kind of conservatively. When you do that, you can come out with the test program that's more predictable, I would say more predictable. Hopefully… [tape cuts out] [00:29:47] LB: [repeated conversation about Centaur second stage] Hopefully, in the end, it will be cheaper than if you had pushed everything to the ultimate as far as sophistication. That's one thing we found in the area of our Skylab program. Where we can, we've been very conservative on design in order to minimize testing. You can test your test program down, that's the biggest part of your cost. [00:30:52] JSB: using the rule of thumb, the test program costs about a third of the overall program. [00:31:05] LB: Well, it depends on where you start if you build facilities and all as we've done in Apollo, that’s probably right. If you maximize the use of those that have been built, like we've done in Skylab, your test program will probably runs a little more than that. We don't have to build new facilities and all that. The test program is probably going to run a little more than that. That has passed as well as analysis and all that to go as a confident to the test program. [00:31:49] RB: Are there really big major differences between RL-10 and J-2? Is one essentially better or more efficient than the other? I realize that J-2 came out later so they were able to utilize the technology. [00:32:09] LB: Well, there are some different concepts that apply to the two as far as the basic principle of design. I think they're designed for applications that you can't compare too easily. I think the record's pretty comparable, one to the other. We really haven't had any major problems on either of these in flight. I'd say that they would compare pretty equal as far as a good, reliable piece of hardware. [00:33:04] RB: Did you develop any affections for a piece of hardware? You know, you like one better than the other. Does that ever happen? One engine seems to be a sweeter engine than the other? [00:33:15] LB: Well, I think that you probably develop more respect for some. The F-1, the early years of that development, certainly developed a healthy respect for its capability to act up in the area of rough combustion. We put a major effort into solving the rough combustion problem. As such, developed techniques that I feel have contributed greatly to that technology. We took steps in that development cycle that hadn't been done before and did it in such a way that we were able to develop models. Those models I feel have and will contribute to any similar kind of engine development in the future. [00:34:14] RB: As I recall there was some comment that when the F-1 combustion stability problem came up, there was a real problem because research on that area had stopped back in the ‘50s when it came up. It was never really solved. So when it came to the F-1, there was really a gap there. You almost had to really go into the basic R&D program. Do you recall that? [00:34:34] LB: Well, yes. Research on combustion has been something that's rather broadly studied by several universities like Purdue. There's one. Of course, that kind of effort is done basically on small-scale hardware. You get certain types of inputs that give you the basis to do basic engine or injector design. We found on going from the H-1 size to the F-1 size that scale factor doesn't always apply. There's a certain amount of the data from the research technology that just isn't available to you. You get into the scale that your hardware is built in, your actual scale. It just doesn't scale up. In the development of the F1, we did produce that kind of data. I think it's been done in a way that people now have the confidence to think about a new engine program that they can produce it. They can produce it to be a reliable system and not fear that you have random combustion phenomena that causes you to go rough in flight. If you look back at the history of engine development and see the results of flights, there was quite a bit of problem in flights, especially in the development of flights where rough combustion was a major factor. [00:36:29] RB: Prior to the Saturn? [00:36:30]] LB: That was in the ‘50s. This came about in the early 60s. It's the logical evolution of knowledge one accumulates. When you go through the kind of thing we went through in the ‘50s in the development of vehicles and engines as part of it. Much of that was done on a rather crash basis. You go about it in one way. You go about it in building [you cut and try?] a lot. When you get into an Apollo kind of vehicle, you don't allocate four, five, or six launches to just seeing that thing's going to run smooth. I get back to what I said initially: you're going to do the most you can on the ground. If you can't do that, you really don't progress to the point you can afford these kind of programs. [00:37:33] RB: Would you say that the F-1 combustion instability was really one of the key epochs in the development of the Apollo-Saturn launch vehicle? [00:37:46] LB: Well, it could have been one of the things that would have kept you from having a vehicle like this. It's not by chance that you get that kind of a system built by applying one heck of a lot of know-how that's been built up by having accumulated that through past experiences. It's your ability to bring that to bear on your present—present being the F-1 in this case—program. That really gets you down to what about the confidence that's been gained in that field if we continue to have such vehicles as Apollo. It's very, very difficult to come by. One thing that one has to always remember, we shouldn't lose that confidence. That confidence is vested in, I'd say, not a heck of a lot of people. It's documented, but sometimes there's more to it than just what's documented. [00:38:52] RB: Some guy out there that doesn't have to feel that way. [00:38:55] LB: Well, that's a part of it. There's less of that black magic stuff now than there was. There used to be a lot of it way back there. There's a heck of a lot less of it than before. I feel that most of us have been in that field. It's a fairly straightforward design development cycle now to build a high-performance system engine. [00:39:25] JSB: [Inaudible]. Would you say something about the E-1 program, which was originally thought up for the Saturn I, clustering four E-1s? [00:39:36] LB: That was another large hydrogen-oxygen engine development, or at least technology-sponsored program, that would have been an engine for a next series of launch vehicles if there had been a need for something larger than the Saturn series, or if we had found that it's better to use single engines instead of clustered engines. Of course, our success in clustering engines kind of took that one out as far as having to have to replace the clustered J-2 engine. However... [00:40:23] JSB: Are you talking about the M-1 now? [00:40:25] LB: Oh, I'm talking about the M-1. [00:40:27] JSB: Good, I wanted to hear about the M-1. [00:40:29] LB: The M-1 is the one I’m talking about. I'm sorry. So that thing began at the time before we launched the cluster of J-2s and before that cluster concept had been fully proven. Had large numbers of launch vehicles been in the national inventory of products, it may have been economical to substitute one engine in place of five. One doesn't know, it might have been. But that work took its place, you know, it went so far, and there are certain other factors that said, “Well, that one isn't one that's worthy of continuing,” so it was dropped. Again, you know the development cycle, you know the time it takes, and if you project that there may be in the decade some need, sometimes you have to put a certain investment into technology or into the very beginning of the development cycle if you ever want to exercise the option. [00:41:49] JSB: Well, can't you say the same thing as the reactor in flight programming and the NERVA engine? Many of the early studies, going back to about the ‘60s, you can see that the—well, the one to one—is designed for optimal nuclear upper stage. Then by about ‘62, the program is being continued, but not very much money has been put into it. It's obvious, it’s not going to be used on the Apollo program, and that probably drops out about [‘66?]. We do want to say something about it, that, you know... [00:42:22] LB: I'm not…I haven't been close really to the NERVA engine development. As you know that development has been conducted out of a different segment of NASA. I think anyone in this kind of business has followed it, they know that it's been carried on at a level that sort of says “Here's what can be done if there's ever a need.” There were a lot of people, associated studies that said “Okay, if there's ever a need, here's what can be done with Saturn type hardware, accommodating flight of that kind of system.” So yes, that's an investment in the case certain events that take place that says that's what we want to fly. I think NERVA was carried on probably—probably rightfully—because it is pushing the start of the art. It's something that's not so conventional as our liquid propulsion engines. It was carried on through a longer period of time to a certain point, what you could do if there was a need to do it. You also knew the things you had to design around and order for it. I really don't have any strong contribution to that I could make to the [inaudible] family of vehicles and its potential future. [00:44:15] RB: One of the things that John and I have been interested in is where some of the technology filters in. We've been talking to Dave Christensen a little bit about the origins and incorporation of Rigi-Mesh and RL-10 and the J-2 injectors. Do you remember from then how that came about, the sources of that technology? [00:44:38] LB: The sources are dictated by the problem that one finds when putting designs to hardware and testing hardware. In the design of an engine, one of the biggest problems we've had—have always had—is the burning of the face of an injector. It overheats, and you burn a hole, and you don't have an engine anymore. The skill and the design of injectors in that doggone of the injector is provided the kind of cooling that will disallow the heat of combustion from burning the face of it, which means burning holes in it, and then you have an explosion. Anyone knows you can do that if you brute force utilize your propellant for a film cooling, which also takes away from your performance. You know, you can cool the devil out of it by just brute force, but in all my experience, that always degraded or lowered your performance. You can't tolerate throwing your performance away, just to keep the injector cool. [00:46:02] JSB: Is this degrading in performance just called general cooling of the combustion chamber? [00:46:05] LB: Say if you have an injector plate, and you distribute your propellants through it and through orifices or there’s all kinds of systems used. If you're not careful, you'll have back flows, and you'll burn through it and have a problem, especially around the periphery. If you want, you can drill holes around the periphery to squirt right across that thing, throw a lot of liquid, so to speak, on it and cool it. Same in the middle. But that particular propellant—it would be probably your fuel instead of your oxidizer—would not burn efficiently. You don't get the performance, your [inaudible] specific out of it. It just lowers your performance. In turn, you’re washing through your nozzle unburned propellant. Really, that’s what happens. It's like the bid on ecology. Your automobile, as they say, put too many hydrocarbons out into the streets and the air. You want to burn it all. That’s the same thing. [00:47:18] LB: At any rate, through the development of the hydrogen-oxygen engine, they found that in order to get performance, they had to do something other than what we had conventionally been able to do on the oxygen-kerosene engine as far as cooling. The hydrogen and oxygen being as it flows much more readily through a mesh. You can't squirt kerosene through there very easily whereas you can put oxygen or hydrogen through it, hydrogen especially. It is cold. Temperature-wise it is favorable. Just by them getting into tests and trying things, they did come up with a Rigi-Mesh as a structural member and a flow passage for a certain percent of the propellant through it. It cooled it, and it distributed it in a way that they could work their design out where they had a satisfactory ratio of oxygen compared to the fuel. They were able to make a design that yielded a very high performance. They kept their performance. They got their cooling from it. They gained their structural strength also from that Rigi-Mesh. It's very…It’s metal, you know? It's a very good piece of structure for the injector if anchored right against posts and stuff like that. [00:49:06] RB: Was that a fairly significant breakthrough in terms of LOX/LH2 engines? [00:49:11] LB: Oh yeah. Yeah, that was [inaudible] J-2. [00:49:17] RB: Did you have a couple getting Rocketdyne to take Rigi-Mesh? Since it had been used on Pratt & Whitney engines? [00:49:24] LB: No. These companies tend to pretty well come in on similar things. It's not a closed environment. The producers and all that are there, they're pretty doggone dynamic environment that you find these companies in. There’s common denominator all across the face of this business: the government, the DODs, the NASA types and all that, and the suppliers and all. It doesn't serve anyone's purpose to let people find out everything in series. One year and five years later another might pick it up and at the same time you're having to throw money out the doggone window to let each guy do his complete thing. It's something that's extremely successful, who’s one to fight it? No, that really hasn't been a major factor in my experience in any of this engine development. The people, you know, transfer their own knowledge by moving around a little bit too. You find people that would work one place and then they’d work at another. [00:51:01] RB: When a lot of it was done under government contracts anyway, it becomes…It's not the proprietary thing, it’s a government [inaudible].... [00:51:07] LB: A lot of it is. [00:51:11] JSB: Presumably the supplier Rigi-Mesh, which is the Pall Company, would be visiting all these people anyway. [00:51:16] LB: They'll try to get their product in as much as they can. I guess I couldn’t sit here and say who thought about what first. Even with the research and the literature, you could have a hard time saying, “Now that's where it showed up first.” [00:51:33] JSB: That’s one of our biggest problems. [00:51:35] LB: I'd say that to do that would be…Well, you could do that and probably raise a lot of interest and debates. Things turn to a great extent if you write a history, say “This guy did that first and another guy did something else first.” That'd be hard to…Some guy, someone in the middle might say, “I thought about that too.” Who knows? [laughs] They wouldn't serve too much of a purpose in my mind. [00:52:12] RB: Well, John, do you have any more questions? [00:52:14] JSB: I’d like to ask one thing about the institution of the fifth engine between the C-4 and C-5 configurations. Is deciding to use the anchoring engine in the center to give the extra capability for whatever the [inaudible] or Houston might do for payload? [00:52:32] LB: On Saturn V? [00:52:35] JSB: Mm-hmm. Putting that one in the center. [00:52:37] LB: Your vehicle is sized by the payload, by the mission. Oftentimes you begin a development—a design for a development—based on what someone commits he can do on the top. He says, “I can do this kind of a design and come out with a certain weight and still conduct a certain mission.” You may start that way, but then a few months later you may come back and say, “Whoops, I got a little growth here.” If you want a weight reduction program that early in the cycle, you can pretty well say you can't make it with weight. My experience is there's no more expensive kind of development than a weight reduction program. That's about the most expensive thing you can get into because that just connotates [sic] that you're going to have to do a fairly sophisticated redesign, and one hell of a lot of proof testing, and then you're hanging on too marginal a safety factor. That's kind of not the way to go. If you can accommodate the problem by increasing performance of the booster, that's probably your best bet. Most conservative, most [inaudible] forward, cost effective thing you can do is increased performance of your boosters. [00:54:10] JSB: How much appears in the literature that Marshall anticipated the payload growth by the engineers? [00:54:16] LB: Yeah, well, of course, you don't get into a program blindly, build a vehicle without looking up what you're committed to do. When you look at what you're committed to do, you look at the other fellows' calculations and assumptions and all that, and you make your own assessment. You very well may build in a little more conservatism based on your own knowledge of what it takes. We didn't begin that in the dark. We've been through that payload growth thing since the early ‘50s. Always it's been a case of having increased performance. That wasn't unique to just Saturn. [00:55:09] JSB: The first S-IC, was it 7.5 million pounds, they uprated that somewhat now haven’t they, for wider missions to take care of the rover? [00:55:21] LB: I think that as you mature and as you understand by experience what you have, you can always commit more of what is reserved than you could to begin with as you don't understand the detail that you have for say ten or twelve months. You begin to know that thing doggone well, so you're able to commit a much, much more narrow margin between calculated and [rationals?]l. Anytime there's a need for additional payload and you have a mature vehicle, you can always go in there and see what you can increase in the way of additional capability. After you mature, you know whether it's there or not. A lot of the capability is based on safety factors of your system. By actual use and testing, you begin to know how good those safety factors are. They can be off one point, say, a tenth of a unit, and increase your payload significantly. The very first launch you probably can't commit to that. Maybe after ten or twelve, you say, “Well, that's an acceptable”—not risk but—”It's an acceptable situation based on all the facts.” No difference in performance of any vehicle, automobiles included. [00:57:12] JSB: What gave you your greatest thrill in the Saturn program as you look back on it? [00:57:23] LB: Well, I would say the fact that in the total Saturn-Apollo program, the fact that we were, in a period of about less than a decade, able to go from a certain approach to a rather complete, different approach on the whole development business cycle and operational cycle, and find that at the end we were able to uphold a national commitment. [tape ends] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000004_A Title A name given to the resource Belew, Leland Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. Description An account of the resource This interview also contains the end of the Ferrell/Lewis interview. Interview with Leland Belew begins at 00:07:20. The interview centers on the development of the Saturn rocket propulsion systems, with engineers and historians discussing the technical, managerial, and historical decisions that shaped the Apollo program. Early conversation compares liquid- and solid-fueled rockets, emphasizing the higher efficiency of liquid hydrogen engines despite their greater complexity and the safety challenges encountered during early RL-10 development. Lee Belew explains that the RL-10 evolved from earlier Pratt & Whitney engine concepts to meet specific Saturn requirements, while the F-1 engine was developed ahead of a finalized launch vehicle because engine development is the longest-lead element of any rocket program. He describes how clustering engines, adopting the "all-up" testing philosophy, extensive ground testing, and systems engineering enabled NASA to meet the lunar landing deadline. Belew also highlights breakthroughs in solving F-1 combustion instability, advances in hydrogen-oxygen propulsion, and innovations such as Rigi-Mesh injector cooling, arguing that these developments transformed rocket engine design from an uncertain art into a more predictable engineering discipline. The discussion concludes with reflections on payload growth, design conservatism, technology transfer among contractors, and Belew's pride that the Saturn-Apollo program successfully fulfilled the United States' commitment to land humans on the Moon within a decade. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/8c8c4a412bf8c27fac5d2debed99c7c4.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/2498f16247b345ad66ef3465d6a27fbd.mp4 d711d0f9b7f953c5ada0969a1dc44935 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bauer, Harold E. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:29:19 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:02] Roger Bilstein: Okay, yeah, is there here something special with this illustration? [00:00:07] Harold Bauer: Earlier we had talked about progression from Thor to the S-IV and S-IVB stages. I think in context it's well to point out the technical progression from the S-IV to the S-IVB. That's what this chart really shows. We really learned practically all of the key technological steps in the S-IV. The insulation, the common dome, the structural features were all basic to the S-IV. The S-IV was more complicated by having six RL-10 engines instead of the single J-2. That was a very fine engine, worked quite well for us. I would say that the experience that we gained on the S-IV program was very important to us in being able to carry off the S-IVB program with the efficiency that I believe we did. In a sense, the S-IVB is a more simple configuration although it has greater demands on it. One of the things we learned as we progressed from S-IV to S-IVB was to simplify things, make things more likely to work, more effective. We ended up with a very efficient stage. In fact, when we later on we were pressed to think in terms of how to reduce costs, make the stage for less money, it became very difficult to find really basic techniques of configuration adjustment that would lead to a lesser cost stage. I think that is a tribute to the efficiency of the design. [00:02:38] RB: We heard some place or somebody mentioned it, the S-IVB was really a much different flight article because of the engines maybe, or because of the feed lines, etc., because of its diameter. Do you really see it that way? They're trying to say that the Thor is to the S-IV as the S-IVB is to the S-IV. Just a different vehicle. [00:03:12] HB: I don't really feel that way about it. Although I can see why a person could take that position. The geometry is different on the S-IVB than the S-IV, but the basic design principles are essentially the same. By that, let me be specific. Common bulkhead, internal insulation, structural concepts, valve actuation devices, pressurization systems were essentially the same. I consider them to be quite similar in nature and that the S-IV was the technical precursor to the S-IVB and directly applicable. The packaging was different, but that's a minor thing. [00:04:33] RB: The RL-10 came out of this Centaur program didn't it? [00:04:36] HB: Yes, it's a fine little engine. [00:04:40] RB: The J-2 gave you a higher specific impulse. [00:04:43] HB: Well, yes, but mostly the large thrust that was involved and a much more efficient packaging, single engine versus six or more small engines. It was a much more efficient device. [00:05:02] RB: Was that J-2 on the S-IVB, is that a gimbaled or is that [stationary?]? [00:05:06] HB: Yes, it's a gimbaled. The roll control is handled by the auxiliary propulsion systems that are attached to the skirts. [00:05:22] RB: Did you have any particular difficulties in achieving interfaces with the S-II stage and the IU unit? [00:05:29] HB: No, no, that was very straightforward. As a matter of fact, that was one of the simplest jobs we had. This chart sort of goes back to the main theme we've been talking about, which compares Thor to S-IV and to S-IVB. It notes that we launched our first Thor in September 1957. The first launch on S-IVB was January 1964, which was a considerable time period. The first launch of S-IVB was February ‘66, only two years after the first launch of the S-IV. The first launch of the Saturn V version of the S-IVB was November 1967. The common theme that goes through all of these stages, of course, is the liquid oxygen technology. The type of engine, although changing from oxygen/kerosene to oxygen/hydrogen, the fundamentals are essentially the same. Liquid hydrogen being introduced in 1964 was the big step, which led to the insulation and some structural adjustments to accommodate the very cold liquid hydrogen, and the pressurization system, which we introduced with cold helium internal to the liquid hydrogen tank as a concept of improving the efficiency and packaging—if you will—of the helium, which is the pressure it will run in the valves and actuating the pneumatic systems. [00:07:29] RB: The fuel pressurization then was kind of a new thing? [00:07:33] HB: Yes, that's right. This enables you to put very, very cold helium gas in the liquid hydrogen tank and keep it cold. As you draw on that gas, you then permit it to expand by warming up to the ambient conditions that exist, which permits a very efficient packaging and storage capability of the helium. [00:08:13] RB: Was anything like that used on the Centaur? They used a pump for the propellant utilization, didn't they? [00:08:21] HB: I think that's correct. I do not know that Centaur uses cold helium as we do. But that was a very clever approach and a very logical one. This particular slide shows the types of joints, types of fittings, and stringers, and tank walls that we have developed. This is very fascinating to a structural engineer. I'm not sure how fascinating it is to others. It really presents a picture of a rather efficient design concept that has led to a good, rugged design that has not given us any problems. [00:09:37] RB: On the skirt sections here, the stringers are external? [00:09:46] HB: Yes, that's right. [00:09:48] RB: In the S-II, there are some external stringers too? [Inaudible] they finally included that insulation with the cork material on the outside of those to reduce the aerodynamic heating. Do you have any problems with this? [00:10:08] HB: There is some aerodynamic heating, and we do coat these stringers with heat protection devices such as korotherm, which is a thick paste type of paint which permits the heat that is generated during exit to be contained, so that we don't increase the temperature of the stringers to the point where they lose their strength. [00:10:48] RB: It's contained in the paint base? [00:10:50] HB: Yes, paint becomes a thermal barrier in the same fashion as the insulation inside of the liquid hydrogen tank although it's working in the other extreme. [00:11:04] RB: What's this stuff called? Korotherm? [00:11:09] HB: Korotherm. K-O-R-O and “therm” like in thermal. [00:11:16] RB: Korotherm. [00:11:18] HB: It's just a thick paint, almost paste-like in nature, which applies quite readily to these structural devices. [00:11:32] RB: Was it just simpler to build a skirt with these external stringers rather than put them on the inside? [00:11:38] HB: Yes. [00:11:40] RB: [Inaudible] thinking that flash riveting has been around for quite a while. [00:11:44] HB: We don't need that. These stringers are all pretty much within the very thick boundary layer so drag-wise we're not contributing much more drag. [00:11:56] RB: Oh, I see. [00:11:57] HB: The design parameter is not drag, it's simply structural strength with lightness and then efficiency and ease of construction. It became more economical to put the simple half-stringers on the outside. The only design criteria that had to be met then was to provide the thermal protection during the brief moments of high heating during exit. [00:12:34] RB: Well, it always kind of bothered me, I guess, because we heard so much about getting in the structure, getting out of the atmosphere pretty fast, these aerodynamic features and qualities. It kind of bothered me to see these stringers out there. [00:12:50] HB: [It wasn’t necessary?] to have a smooth surface as you would on the wing of a transport. Now the reason for that is fairly simple. The amount of time that we were within the high drag atmosphere was reasonably short. If we were flying for literally hours like a DC-8 or a DC-10, then that drag experienced over a long period of time would be quite meaningful, and, of course, is the reason why we have gone to laminar flow type of wings and very smooth skin surfaces on the rutted areas of transport airplanes because that has a tremendous payoff in fuel consumption. It is not that sort of a thing in the only short period of time that we're going through the atmosphere on something like a Saturn V. It just is not necessary to have one of those techniques. [00:13:57] RB: Looking at it from this picture, it reminded me again of the Skylab configuration and the Apollo applications program. When you were designing, [inaudible] the S-IVB, were you kind of thinking of the Skylab at the same time, or any inputs that you were designing because of the possible Skylab configuration? [00:14:22] HB: Oh yes, as early as 1964. In 1964, we began to think in terms of the use of the liquid hydrogen tank as a work area or experiment area or activity area for the astronauts when something like the Saturn IB was in Earth orbit. The point there was that the S-IVB does remain in orbit for a considerable period of time—weeks, months, a year—depending on what orbital altitude is selected. The device is up there, it is a huge thing: twenty-one feet in diameter, and the hydrogen tank is probably some thirty to forty feet in length, if you include the dome. We had a large opening at the top of the hydrogen dome for manufacturing reasons. There came an occasion in 1964—I guess actually the latter part in 1963—when we had occasion to increase the diameter of that opening at the top of the hydrogen tank for ease of manufacturing and better loading characteristics. It was sized to permit workmen to enter or exit. We got with Dr. von Braun and agreed on a diameter for that new opening that would match an astronaut and his gear going through. He said, “Now if at any time we want to use the spent S-IVB stage as an activity area, it would be easy for us to permit ready access of the astronauts to the liquid hydrogen tank.” The original concept was that extra-vehicular activities could be performed in the confines of this tank without anybody being worried about drifting off and being lost in outer space, such as would be the case of [inaudible] departed for any reason during some of these spacewalks. There were some experiments being contemplated of maneuvering units, maneuvering aids, little handles, implanting jet gases that would assist astronauts in moving around in extra-vehicular activity. These could all have been tested inside the liquid hydrogen tank. From that concept in 1963-64, gradually developed the concept of the Skylab as we know it now. [00:18:25] RB: I see now because I remember seeing some other things about using just this empty tank and I couldn't figure out really…It didn't come through to me what you would be doing in there, just to test these EVA things [inaudible]... [00:18:36] HB: [Inaudible] doing all sorts of EVA type of activity in pressurized suits in that tank and not be concerned with being injured or being left in space. Then it became pretty clear that we could also repressurize that tank and think in terms of living in a [short sleeve?] environment. The original concept of the global workshop was to use a spent liquid hydrogen tank. [00:19:16] RB: So the things from the start though originally designed purely as a rocket, and you got into design ways and realized you could do something? [00:19:30] HB: [Inaudible] opportunity for other uses since it was up there and represented a considerable resource moving around in orbit, the question was let's get smart and see how much use we can put to it. [00:19:53] RB: Before you get on to that, were there certain times too when you designed this thing, sheer logistical problems closed certain avenues until you realized you couldn't carry it down a highway or under a bridge or maybe carry it in a certain mode and so you had to redesign it somehow? [00:20:11] HB: No. [laughs] It helped us select the location of this facility. [laughs] Quite seriously. [00:20:19] RB: Well, some place I read—it was in the trade journal, however—-that the S-IV something they began to think of logistics as a parameter of its original design. [00:20:34] HB: Yes. [00:20:37] RB: There's nothing in the location of the plant that was… [00:20:40] HB: We were [inaudible], if you will, compared to the S-II and the S-IC, we thought we could solve our problems quite readily. It did, in thinking in terms of future programs, the logistics consideration did have an important influence on the location of this facility. We are close to Seal Beach as a port and close to the Naval Air Station as a means of getting air transportation. Those two things had to be considered in the location of this facility. They had some [inaudible] in the location of the Seal Beach facility for North American for the same reasons. [00:21:27] RB: Excuse me, go on with the… [00:21:30] HB: Well, I have some photographs here of the several tankage and membrane joints. We can look a little bit more at the common bulkhead and how it is, the simplicity of its attachment to the liquid oxygen tank, and the attachment to the liquid hydrogen tank. I think the important thing that this chart shows is that the structural simplicity that came out of the design concepts is impressive. These are not difficult welds. They lend themselves to easy inspection and good quality control. The most complex part of this thing is the fitting of the aluminum surfaces to the fiberglass common bulkhead. That is probably the most difficult job we have and perhaps the most demanding one as far as workmanship is concerned. That was considered at one time to be the big worrisome feature of the design. In fact, in practice, it has turned out to be most routine. After the first few articles were manufactured, that settled down to a very routine process and has been no trouble whatsoever. [00:23:17] RB: Well, you had some special processes, didn't you, to shape the common bulkhead for this? [00:23:26] HB: That is a very elaborate process, and I would prefer to get an expert on that to discuss that with you [when you’re ready?] to talk about that. That has reduced itself to a very clever methodology of fitting and sizing the fiberglass center section, so that it matches very precisely to the two aluminum domes and lends itself to good adhesive characteristics and excellent quality control. I am very pleased with the outcome of that. [00:24:11] RB: Some of these welds, were these fairly common as far as aircraft construction or they were kind of unique for the space program and less straightforward? [00:24:22] HB: However really unique due to the application, it had not been common to use weldments of this nature for major structural joints in aircraft. The joints were all riveted or bolted. Here we had a situation where we departed from that and were depending entirely upon the integrity of the welds for both structural attachment and for sealing. We could not have any leakers, if you will. Leakers being passed for molecules of hydrogen to pass through, not boiling leaks. We don’t have to have anything but a path of migration of molecules of hydrogen into the common bulkhead and mix with molecules of oxygen from the liquid oxygen tank to have a very distasteful situation [both laugh] in the common bulkhead. [00:25:32] RB: Was the inert gas welding technique used anywhere in the aircraft industry? That was fairly common? [00:25:41] HB: Yes. The main reason for that is that you just cannot stand to have just common atmospheric gases around the arc. The oxygen and hydrogen, or the hydrogen I guess is the worst offender, tends to embrittle the welds. [00:26:06] RB: Okay, [you have to move?] [00:26:11] HB: Yes. I think the most impressive part of the early portion of the program was the design of the welding fixtures. What I have here are some of the large welding devices that were used to do these precision welds. In this case, we are welding the liquid oxygen tank to where I take to be the liquid oxygen tank. This is the dome of the liquid oxygen tank, which is the cylindrical section of the liquid hydrogen tank. [00:27:02] RB: They are inside the tank here? [00:27:04] HB: That's right. [00:27:05] RB: This will be coming down through that top opening, I suppose? [00:27:09] HB: That's correct. [Inaudible] travels now automatically and is doing the circumferential weld of the cylinder to the liquid oxygen tank extension. [00:27:23] RB: This whole beam coming down here and the two supports coming in forms kind of a triangular…? [00:27:28] HB: That's right. [00:27:29] RB: It rotates all around the inside of the tank. This is the problem with the shop area, but of course nothing was going on with the solid fixtures, and sometimes they didn't have a better idea of how they operated. [00:27:43] HB: For two-man operation that's pretty good. [00:27:47] RB: Does this just work on a geared track here sometime, and [inaudible] observe it and guide it? [00:27:54] HB: They are controlling the feeds, and one of them is watching the welding process. This is our Sacramento test facility where we did the acceptance firings on these two stands, Beta stands we call them. This is a facility that we at NASA developed for the conduct of the S-IV and the S-IVB activities. This is now for all practical purposes closed down. [00:28:42] RB: Beta I and Beta II test stands? Three? [00:28:45] HB: Beta III. [00:28:46] RB: Beta I and Beta III? [00:28:50] HB: There were going to be Beta I, Beta II and Beta III, but we only made Beta I and Beta III. I think we skipped Beta II for some reason. I think I'm right on that. [00:29:04] RB: Now on the test program there were a couple of explosions, weren't there? [00:29:08] HB: No. There was one on the S-IV program and there was one on the S-IVB program. [00:29:13] RB: Excuse me here… [tape ends] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000003_A Title A name given to the resource Bauer, Harold E. Description An account of the resource This Bauer oral history interview focuses on the technological evolution of Douglas Aircraft’s S-IV and S-IVB rocket stages, emphasizing how experience from the earlier S-IV program directly informed the simpler, more efficient S-IVB design. Harold Bauer explains that the two stages shared fundamental technologies, including common bulkheads, internal insulation, structural concepts, valve systems, and pressurization methods, while the S-IV used six RL-10 engines and the S-IVB employed a single, more powerful gimbaled J-2 engine. A major technological advance was the introduction of liquid hydrogen, which required new approaches to insulation, structural design, and the storage of very cold helium for efficient tank pressurization. Bauer also describes the stage’s lightweight structural design, including externally mounted stringers protected from aerodynamic heating by a thermal coating called Korotherm, noting that aerodynamic drag was less important during the brief atmospheric portion of a Saturn V flight than structural strength, weight, and ease of manufacturing. The interview highlights how the S-IVB’s design eventually contributed to the Skylab concept: engineers recognized that the large, empty liquid-hydrogen tank could serve as a valuable orbital workspace, initially providing a safe environment for practicing extravehicular activities and eventually inspiring the concept of a pressurized orbital workshop. Logistics also influenced the location of Douglas facilities near Seal Beach and air and sea transportation routes. Bauer discusses the importance of precision welding, particularly because the S-IVB depended on welded joints for both structural strength and leak prevention, unlike conventional aircraft construction, which relied more heavily on riveting and bolting. Elaborate welding fixtures and carefully controlled inert-gas welding processes were developed to ensure consistent, high-quality joints, while the fiberglass-aluminum common bulkhead represented one of the most demanding aspects of the manufacturing process but ultimately became routine. The interview also covers the Sacramento test facilities, including the Beta I and Beta III stands, where S-IV and S-IVB stages underwent acceptance testing. Overall, Bauer portrays the S-IVB as the product of accumulated engineering experience, emphasizing that its success resulted not from radical departure from the S-IV but from refining proven technologies, simplifying the design, improving manufacturing efficiency, and recognizing opportunities to extend the usefulness of the stage beyond its original role as a launch vehicle. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/a1c093aa49fbafecbad1fd9844d5a450.pdf eacf41c1486693e27d78956419e50c95 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saturn V Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ohc_stnv_000002_T Title A name given to the resource Bauer, Harold E. (Transcript) Description An account of the resource Transcript up to 0:06:02 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.