2 10 83 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/08ba46ae7d98993bf1022031a4c08180.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ed7b9258971206614488068cff3f24ce.mp4 82f42e37e2014501d6f365c4f51d8194 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 Sweat, Sidney; McKay, Therman; Hayden, Joe; and Powell, Luther Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:46:16 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:00] RB: The story concerning the delivery, I'm not exactly sure, of the first instrument unit, flight unit, floating down to Tennessee and all that…would you care to recapitulate that for me? Which unit was it? Which IU was it? [00:00:23] Sidney Sweat: I've been trying to forget that ever since it happened, Roger. [00:00:25] RB: I get this chuckle over here. [laughs] [00:00:27] SS: Lou was very much a part of that too. Let me kind of set the stage for you. We were running behind on the delivery of that instrument unit. One of the reasons that we were behind on it was because we were having to make a significant number of changes in the instrumentation—the instrumentation also which fed into the flight control computer, the LVDA, and the LVDC. We were rapidly approaching the point that we could not accommodate the stack schedule—that's the schedule where they put the IU on the stack at the Cape. Center management called a bunch of us together and said, “How are we going to accommodate this?” The idea was presented to center management that, you know, it takes quite a bit of time in transit to go all the way down the Mississippi to New Orleans and around the Cape. Why don't we look at these modifications and do them in transit? We got quite a bit of reluctance on it. Luther and I and some of the people in the [inaudible] office sat down and developed the details with IBM and found out, yeah, it's feasible. But to make it work, we were going to have to continuously shuttle hardware along the Mississippi to meet the barge at various points as the hardware was literally built and as the drawings were finished. [00:01:55] RB: This is one of the enclosed barges then? [00:01:57] SS: Yes. To make a long story short, we pulled all the data together and worked out a detailed schedule on it. We assigned two people that would, in fact, we'd be in constant radio communication with them, “Hey, fellas, we need these bolts, we need these transistors, diodes, capacitors, and so on. We'll meet you at Biloxi, Mississippi tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock.” Well, we made one of our airplanes available and a bunch of guys in pickup trucks and so on. They kept replenishing our supply of parts, and as the mod kits were built from the drawings, they would deliver them to us. We worked on the barge and successfully completed that darn thing by the time we got to New Orleans. [00:02:43] RB: Okay, but now in all the stuff I read, there's a great detailed explanation about the IBM clean rooms and the global clean rooms and all this quality control. Now, did you guys rig up some special polyethylene rooms inside? How did you do that? [00:02:59] SS: Absolutely. On the enclosed barge, there is a built-in environmental system. [00:03:05] RB: That's right, I'd forgotten that. [00:03:07] SS: We'd built, fabricated, a polyethylene shroud that went around that we could have a positive pressure in the area for the technicians to work in. That way we were able to maintain the cleanliness level. Now, we did set a ground rule when we started out. We did not break into the ST-124 pneumatic system. That's the one that has the most stringent environmental control. But we did open up and go into the environmental—the ECS system as we called it—the environmental control system, the water-methanol. [00:03:44] RB: Right, right, right. [00:03:46] SS: So, in fact, we were anxiously waiting for KSC to run their first test specimen to see if we had maintained the cleanliness level, and we had maintained it right within spec. [00:03:59] RB: But you were also replacing, you say, diodes and capacitors, and everything else in the memory banks? [00:04:04] SS: No, no, no, no, no. These were just in the electrical distributors. [00:04:09] RB: Oh, okay. So, in other words, the flight computer and the launch vehicle digital adapter were never [inverted?]. Okay. That's the other thing that bothered me because the story was vague, and it's outlined. [00:04:22] SS: Yes, well, we had to be very selective on those components, which we could, in fact, open. Of course, we had a very limited capability on board the barge from our ability to put in transistors and diodes and then our ability to test them. [00:04:39] RB: There's one other thing you may not want to comment on. Somewhere, too, in the back of my mind, part of the equipment that was put on board was several cases of beer. Is that correct? [laughs] [00:04:51] SS: No. That's totally erroneous. No way. In fact, they didn't even have beer in the galley on the barge. [00:05:02] RB: Is that right? Dry barge? [laughs] [00:05:04] SS: Dry barge. But the food…I've got to tell you about this. You know, usually when you're working sixteen, eighteen hours a day, you lose a lot of weight, but the chef on board that barge was something else. I literally gained 12 pounds on that trip. [00:05:27] RB: One of the things that I've tried to do, and I've been working on a revised draft of, is go back and treat the development of the unit logic devices and triple modular redundancy and all this kind of stuff. But the one thing that really grabs me and trying to get a hold of the instrument unit story is how much input Marshall made on this thing up to 1964 when I think is when IBM took over the full contract and how much input IBM was making before and after that date. Can any of you help elucidate that problem? [00:06:02] Joe Hayden: I can, I guess, start on it. Marshall was responsible for the design of the IU in the early stages. I believe that IBM took over the maintainability of the design starting with 501 and 205 as I recall. The checkout of 201 to 204 was a Marshall responsibility, and the design was a Marshall responsibility. Marshall in effect turned over a design to IBM then IBM was responsible with continuing with that design and maintaining the design. [00:06:46] RB: Okay. Excuse me, before going further, could you identify yourself for the purposes of my microphone here? [00:06:53] JH: I am Joe Hayden. [00:06:53] RB: OK, thank you. Now, so my question is this, who really came up with the TMR and ULD concepts, stuff like that? [00:07:04] [inaudible due to overlapping speakers] [00:07:26] Luther Powell: ULDs is based on the technology that was used in the 360 line. That’s what it was an early application of what IBM called the SLTs: Standard Logic Technologies. Now, the ULDs [per se?] the circuits in the ULDs were Marshall designed. In other words, they did not take off the [shelf?] SLTs. They had to be designed specifically for the Saturn application. They required the defining a certain number of types. I don’t know how many types we had…fourteen, or something like that, types of ULDs, Unit Logic Devices. The mechanical aspects of it was completely different because the SLTs were pins. They had pins that plugged in sort of like. We went with a new design with what we called C-clips. They go around and clipped them on. [00:08:22] RB: This is interesting then. So in this instance could you say that there was a departure from some original constraints that you only use off the shelf hardware? [00:08:31] LP: Well, at that point in time, there wasn’t technology in off the shelf hardware. It was a question at that time whether you went with integrated circuits or whether you went with the so-called ULDs, the clip chip type of technology. [00:09:00] SS: Roger I don't understand your statement there—the departure from the ground rule to use off the shelf hardware. [00:09:07] RB: Okay, well, these are just kind of general things that on almost every stage including the IU, there were documents that came out, and they all said for a general term “One of the things we want to do is use the existing components, take off the shelf hardware. We don’t want to get involved in using new technology that’s not really tried and tested and get into a hassle.” This is what I was getting at. [00:09:34] JH: [Inaudible] find gold. There were very few components which were off the shelf. In fact, the only ones that come to mind are maybe some TM components. But the majority of the hardware was designed and built for Saturn. [00:09:43] SS: And some plumbing maybe. [00:09:49] RB: TM components? [00:09:50] JH: Telemetry. [00:09:52] RB: Telemetry, okay. [00:09:53] JH: Instrumentation. Like Motorola had some equipment that could be used, but very little off the shelf hardware for Saturn. [00:10:01] RB: Okay because that’s one of the things that struck me about using the magnesium-lithium for the chassis. Apparently that was a fairly unique thing to be doing for the application in the instrument unit. Now again who made the decision to go to that? Was that an IBM decision or was that Marshall decision? [00:10:17] JH: All of the decisions were made by Marshall. Again, there were contractors involved. You and I know when it came time or maybe there were recommendations proposed by the contractors, but the decisions were all Marshall before the final decision. Even when IBM had the responsibility for maintaining the design, Marshall still had the final authority. [00:10:42] LP: It was a bigger question in that mag-lith [inaudible] cooling [inaudible] [00:10:51] Therman McKay: One of the [inaudible] on mag-lith, [JB?] had mentioned to me earlier that Herman Gilmore and Marshall had done a lot of work in the area of mag-lith, and it had sort of become an accepted alloy to be used. Using mag-lith, [inaudible] they were able to shave some sixty-five pounds from the weight from the DA/DC. Plus it didn’t have toxicity problems. Beryllium, which was used by the way in the platform system, remained a part of its strength and its stability for use in gimbals. But I think… [00:11:33] LP: You said weight on the cold plate too. If you’re going to cool the thing, you gotta move weight from the cold plate. So all that… [00:11:41] JH: But again the thing you said that IBM has been the contractor that recommended that approach. I don’t know. I don’t go back that far. [00:11:50] RB: Let me ask, let me explain why I’m on this because as I said I started out on this covering somebody else’s tracks, and there is a lack of documentation. The only thing I had to go with was a bunch of stuff from Aviation Week and Space Technology, and they’re kind of vague. Of course, I got the impression that the reporter had gone to IBM, and the feedback that comes back was this was a great thing that IBM did. This is what I’m trying to find out: where did IBM make inputs, and where did the Marshall design input? [00:12:19] SS: To really answer that, Roger, you’re going to have an understanding about a change control system. As Joe pointed out, IBM assumed design responsibilities for the instrument unit for 501 and 205. All the instrument units prior to that time, Marshall had designed and developed and turned over to IBM under prime contractor’s award is what was referred to as a technical baseline. [00:12:48] RB: Okay. [00:12:49] JH: Excuse me, Sid, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I guess we need to make the point here though that even prior to that time, LVDA/DC were [GSE?] but still made by IBM at Owego under a contract that we had with Owego. IBM was a corporation still building the DA/DC for the government even prior to the contract. [00:13:14] SS: The change control system that I’m going to allude to was applicable even back during that period of time. The contractor is limited in the type of change he can make a decision on and implement. We had various classifications of changes. Now any change that involved a material change of this significance—we’re talking about the mag-lith—or any other change that would have affected some compatibility of a component’s ability to integrate with another one, all of those decisions were passed on to Marshall who made the ultimate decision. Some of them were recommended by the contractor. He’d come through with what we referred to as an ECP—Engineering Change Proposal—but that’s all it was. He proposed the change, but the government made the decision as to whether or not that change would be implemented. [00:14:13] JH: I think that what he’s getting at is even prior to that time, we had to have a unit. Who came up with all the original ideas of just how the unit could be built? [Inaudible] these fellas [inaudible] specific case was done, the government would propose to a contractor for a proposal to build a black box to the government’s requirements and specifications for that black box. The contractor would build that black box. Most of the details of how it be built would be left up to the contractor, again, with the government’s approval. I would expect IBM had a major role in recommending or determining just how the DA/DC would be built. [00:15:04] RB: Including the mag-lith. [00:15:05] JH: I don’t know about the details of that. [00:15:09] LP: I don’t know the details either, but as I recall there was a major input from [inaudible] materials. [00:15:18] RB: IBM? [00:15:21] TM: No, Marshall. [00:15:22] JH: I guess we’re all kind of guessing that far back. It’s really before our time. [Inaudible] I thought we were going to talk about the normal process that we go through. [00:15:36] LP: Talk about the technology, and we kinda drop back on some of the research IBM had done previously. As far as owning the ULDs, the government paid for setting up lines up in Fishkill to do those things. [00:15:55] TM: It’s a hybrid system. [00:15:58] JH: I think his thing though is “Who thought it up? Who decided this is the way we ought to go?” [Inaudible] with the government, but did IBM come up and say, “Hey, this is a good idea. This is the way to go”? I don’t know what kind of recommendations. [00:16:14] LP: We talked about this yesterday. One good example—I don’t know whether you were in the program or not—was the debate about how many memory modules we have. We had the monthly design—Luther, you might have been there—they designed the back panels with a maximum of six memory modules. This was on one of the engineering models. We sat there and told them, “We wanted eight memory modules in that machine.” They said, “Well, you don’t need eight.” [Inaudible] requirement, we told them we want eight. We went up there a month later, that back panel was laid out for six memory modules in there. It hit the fan, we had to get that. We accepted that machine because of schedule problems. Later on, we had to send that back and retrofit it. But the design changed, right there. So that’s the type of thing that you get into. [00:17:12] RB: You wanted the extra two on there for test purposes and testability and mission [inaudible]? [00:17:18] TM: It turned out that Saturn IB could use six memory modules, but the Saturn V had to have eight. [00:17:29] LP: Seven, seven and a half. Whatever it is. [00:17:30] TM: All boxes were designed to have eight, but only used six in the IB. [00:17:38] JH: [Inaudible] program information [inaudible] [00:17:46] RB: As long as we’re on that too, in the instrument unit for the IB and Saturn V were both identical? [00:17:53] JH: The IUs were identical with small differences, one being the number of memories. [00:18:05] [LP?]: Do you want to stick with the DC? [00:18:07] TM: I think that’s what he’s talking about at the computer data adapter interface [inaudible due to overlapping speakers] [00:18:14] RB: There were variations in terms of the overall IU for the 1B and the Saturn V, but not that much as I understand. Basically, a kind of similar thing. Maybe I’m going back too far, but the other thing that gets me, I’m very, very [on query?] as to when the change was made in the early Saturn Is from the kind of tubular cruciform guidance system they had to the [slice?]? [00:18:45] JH: Well, vehicle-wise 201 and 501 were the first ones of the present configuration. [00:18:53] RB: Yeah, but I thought there was also Saturn I instead of having that… [00:18:57] SS: SA-10 was the last crucible we had. SA…. [00:19:01] TM: SA-1, 2, 3, and 4 had an instrument compartment for the IU equipment. Then in SA-5 we flew the first tubular canister type, which had…The reason I remember because that was the ST-90S platform flying in control, then the ST-124-1 being a passenger, and that fed into a guidance signal processor at that time rather than a DA/DC. For the last five Saturn Is, you had that. They were at ninety degrees. It had its own…It was pressurized because at that time it was felt the environment was needed. [00:19:54] [LP?]: First flight was 201. [00:20:04] JH: First IU in the present configuration was 201. [00:20:10] RB: Another question, very simple. What does the ST stand for? [00:20:18] TM: Platform? Stable table. That’s the old terminology. That’s just uh… [00:20:25] SS: [Inaudible] very sophisticated. [00:20:30] [LP?]: They coined the name stable table, and they just tried to give [inaudible] started calling it ST-80. [00:20:36] RB: I ran across it, and all of a sudden, I was doing all this writing, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know what ST stood for. I made calls around Houston, and this guy said, “I’ve been working on it for twenty years and never gave it thought. I don't know what it stands for.” [00:20:50] TM: It’s a stable reference or a stable platform. The early term they used was table. It means a reference point. [00:21:01] RB: Now there’s another question here, somewhere apparently early in the definition of the instrument unit, there was a decision to go to digital as opposed to analog, and that’s about as much as I know about it. [00:21:14] JH: Again, that’s only with the guidance computer. The control computer is still analog. [00:21:20] RB: The guidance computer, okay. [00:21:22] JH: The guidance computer [inaudible]. [00:21:24] RB: Can you explain to me the logic and the trade offs involved? [00:21:38] [LP?]: As opposed to some of the earlier flights like Jupiter? Basically, because they went to a different guidance scheme. They went from a delta minimum to [inaudible]. The thing was [inaudible] polynomial expansion was about thirty terms in there somewhere. It was [inaudible]. [00:22:05] RB: So was that not really a big decision or was it a very large decision? [00:22:11] : [LP?]: I think to have adaptive mode was a big decision but then [inaudible] hardware in a number of areas. The computing system or the guidance [inaudible]. [00:22:23] TM: It was a necessary decision to do what they wanted to do. [00:22:27] [LP?]: The decision was a direct derivative the mission requirements. [00:22:31]: RB: Can you expand on that a little bit for me? [00:22:33]: [LP?]: Take the LOR concept. The big discussion with all of the agencies, “How will you get [inaudible]?” [Inaudible] or whether you go to...I think it was about three concepts that had been discussed. [00:22:47]: RB: [Inaudible] mode and so on. [00:22:48] LP: [Inaudible] LOR because of the size of the vehicle, the capacity, fuel, [inaudible] so forth, they [inaudible] have adaptive mode. [Inaudible] calculations and speed of that in order to economize on fuel [inaudible] primary [inaudible] fuel economy. [Inaudible] We’ve been looking at that thing for a year or two years until we really thought it was going to [inaudible]. We were looking at the time of developing the Pershing. [Inaudible] Pershing [inaudible]. [00:23:39] JH: There was the other thing though [inaudible]. [00:23:44] RB: Okay, another question now. After going through all this stuff of getting the computers and everything and so on, they weren’t even used in the boost phase. Can you explain to me why then? As I understand anyway, there was no active guidance system used in the first stage boost phase for either the Saturn IB or the Saturn V. [00:24:07] JH: Let me tell you what I recall. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong. The main concern, of course, you’re going to Max Q [inaudible] boost phase. I think they wanted to be sure they didn’t have any attitude [inaudible] Max Q. In other words, you’re trying to correct, pick the best path, and you may have an undesirable attitude as the way I recall it. I’m sure that’s one reason. [00:24:33] RB: An undesirable attitude would create sloshing problems or bending moments? [00:24:38] JH: If you have too large angle of attack going to Max Q, you’ll have vehicle break up. Does anybody else… [00:24:49] RB: So in other words, that thing was set just to bore straight up? [00:24:52] [LP?]: That’s right. [00:24:53] RB: Was there any gimbaling at all? [00:24:54] JH: It goes up straight and then it rolls to the proper attitude, then it pitches over and flies on a preset trajectory through the boost phase. [00:25:07]: RB: After the roll and tilt then there was no gimbaling of the engines? It just bored straight on up? [00:25:13]: JH: It was gimbaled to keep it on course. [00:25:17] TM: Keep attitude. [00:25:22] RB: As I understand it then, if there were any perturbations or deviations or something occurred that the computer sensed those and stored them up and the changes and corrections were made then during the S-2 and S-4B boost phase. [00:25:37] JH: The vehicle stored up the information to know what its position was and knowing its position and knowing after that its attitude and its velocity and acceleration because they [inaudible]. [00:25:51] TM: The guidance mode. It would enter the guidance mode, and it was shooting for one spot out there. [00:25:58] RB: This brings me to another…I don’t know, maybe you guys didn’t get a copy of this, but I’ve got a list of questions here. One of them, and I’ll be very humble about it, an explanation of inertial guidance that I can understand. [laughs] I really need that I’m afraid. I’ve tried to write some stuff. I’ve got some general ideas, but I’m really not sure. When I talk about inertial guidance… [00:26:19] SS: I think Luther has the book there that… [00:26:22] RB: Is it a star reference guidance system or an internal reference guidance system? Can somebody help me on this? [00:26:32] TM: Inertial guidance is not a star reference. It’s a reference that you establish on the ground prior to lift off where you have the platform oriented to the local vertical in two axes, yaw and pitch, and you have it aligned an azimuth to a theodolite reference, which is a first order geodetic survey, which is shot into the platform system to align in it in roll or azimuth. The other two axes are aligned to a plumb line through the center of the earth by pendulums mounted on the platform system, air bearing pendulum. Now that’s your reference. That’s where you’re starting from. You know exactly where you are when you start. Once you lift off, you drop the alignment system, and the platform goes inertial or space-fixed. It just maintains the reference. It has three stabilizing gyros that gives you this stable table or stable reference that you operate from. Throwing out any errors due to drift and what not, theoretically the platform system is always exactly in the same position from the time you start to the time you end the mission. Now that’s attitude. Those signals are fed from resolvers. You have resolvers on the gimbals of the platform that’s [keyed?] out through the computer and detects errors between the platform system and the vehicle. Then those signals are fed back to the control system to make corrections to keep the vehicle on the proper attitude. It’s an instantaneous thing though, and you’re constantly maintaining the vehicle and the attitude relative to the platform system with these pre-programmed tilt programs and everything factored in too. But the whole purpose of the stable reference there is it didn’t allow you a way to navigate, so then mounted on the platform, you have accelerometers, integrating accelerometers that produce the acceleration and velocity data that eventually becomes position data to tell you the point that you want to hit out there. [00:28:59] RB: But these are being constantly compared are they not with a program stored in the guidance computer? [00:29:06] TM: Yeah, you’re looking at where you are versus where you ought to be. So inertial when you limit your question to just “What is inertial guidance?” is your talking about platform. The platform is a pretty straight forward part of it. It’s just a reference you set up using gyros that you can operate from. Then you use accelerometers to [cinch?] your accelerations in all three axes. [00:29:36] JH: It helps you to navigate, but then your computer has to come up with guidance calculations and send signals to the control system now that has to send signals to the actuators on the stages to direct the thrust so that the vehicle is going in the right direction. By the way, I’ve just taken some pages out of one of our technical manuals that’s on navigation guidance and control system, and I think this will give you the information that you need. I do want to come back to your other question though that you had. It does say here that “During the first stage flight of either the S-1B or S-1C,” which of course is the first stage of either one of [inaudible], “the vehicle transverses the dense portion of the atmosphere where the high aerodynamic pressure occurs to avoid excessive structural loads caused by guidance maneuvers, no guidance constraints are applied during the flight phase. Open loop guidance in the form of a timed tilt program is used. Path adaptive guidance begins with ignition of the second stage, either the S-2 for the…” [tape cuts out] [00:30:46] RB: …Consider the instrument unit as a stage? What is the… [00:30:51] JH: A non-propulsive stage. [00:30:52] RB: A non-propulsive stage. [00:30:54] JH: That’s my own opinion of it. [00:30:55] [LP?]: Von Braun coined a good phrase [inaudible] it’s the brain inside. That’s the way he referred to it quite often. [00:31:07] JH: You can always get that debate. There’s a project office for the IU just like there’s a stage project office. You look at [inaudible] no propulsion system. [00:31:22] TM: We didn’t have any de-tanking problems that we had to scrub. [00:31:31] RB: [laughs] There’s another question I’ve got now. Again, I’m getting into the same murky waters as the origin of the mag-lith chassis, and this is the ST-124 itself. Was it a Marshall concept? Did Marshall give the plans to Bendix and say, “Here, build me an ST-124”? How did that come about? [00:31:48] TM: They didn’t give them the plans. Bendix people are packaging experts and platform design. They built the ST-120 that’s still flying in the Pershing. ST-124 evolved from that to some extent, but Marshall in the form of ABMA was involved in the development of the Pershing platform ST-120. I’d have to say that Marshall was very actively involved in the design of the 124. When I say design, I’m talking about basic concepts for what it will do, that it will have dual prism alignment to allow you to maintain a reference and drive your platform to any firing azimuth as opposed to the way ballistic missiles had to be aligned and shoot right over [the San Juan?]. Those were all things that were concepts that were worked together with Bendix but Marshall had a very heavy hand in designing the 124. When they went into production, and Bendix got the contract, then Bendix had the job of actually packaging that concept into the hardware, which is what they did. But if you look at the ST-124 platform and go down to the museum and look at an SG-66 platform that flew in the V-2, you will be amazed. The SG-66 wasn’t designed by Bendix, but some of the people that worked on the SG-66 also worked on the ST-124. I'd have to say that… [00:33:40] LP: [Inaudible] designed it. Look back at the old ST-80 and ST-90 and [LVDC?]. [All the way back?] [00:33:46] RB: I was going to say [inaudible]. [00:33:50] TM: The point I’m trying to make is when you talk design, I’m talking about basic concepts. When you get into packaging, Bendix may have come up with a good idea on how the servo end should operate. [00:34:03] JH: The packaging is very similar to the V-2. [00:34:08] TM: I’m saying if you go look at that old SG-66, then look at a ST-124, it really strikes you as strange to see the two sitting there, one of them 1930 something and one of 1960. [00:34:27] RB: What’s the difference between the ST-124 and the ST-124-M? [00:34:32] TM: Well, the ST-124-1 and -2 were the first 124 platforms built, and they flew in the Saturn I vehicle. It was a predecessor to the dash M, and the M only means modified. The platform that flew in Saturn I had a redundant pitch gimbal built in. The yaw and roll were 360 degrees of freedom, and pitch was limited to [twenty-three?], but it had a redundant gimbal that had its own servo loop that would then program as you had to pitch over. They changed this in the dash M to make yaw the axis that was limited to plus or minus forty-five degrees. The other two axes had 360. That gave you full freedom in pitch, which is helpful when you’re in orbit, you know, and you’re maintaining attitude of the vehicle, you just rotate around the platform. But with a platform like the dash 1 and dash 2, [inaudible] you’re constantly having to program [inaudible]. So there was a difference, it was just updated and modified to the present configuration. Those flew in 201, 501, and… [00:36:06] RB: Again, I’m thinking about the structure of the ST-124 and the computer chassis. They’re both integrally cooled, right? [00:36:19] TM: Yes, in a little different form. The DA/DC actually had drilled passages within the mag-lith to allow the coolant to flow through the body of the system. In the 124, the way they adapted it was to form the covers such that on the covers the ball had coolant passages through them. The actual frame in the platform has no coolant through it. The covers—see you can see the lines there—it was formed by taking two layers and putting graphite in, and you press these together and then blew it up—actually inflated it. That’s the way the coolant passages were made, one on each side. [00:36:41] RB: Oh okay, I never understood that. [00:37:10] TM: The frame of the platform system, which is beryllium, did not have coolant passages in it. It would have been real difficult to do that like it was done in the DA/DC because it’s not a symmetrical box. [00:37:27] RB: Beryllium is lighter than the mag-lith, correct? [00:37:31] TM: It’s strong too. It’s very stable. It has high strength. It has that toxicity problem, which was considered when they built the platform system, but they elected to go with it. I think… [00:37:49] RB: That’s why I’m trying to find out why they decided to go with beryllium in one case and not in the other one. [00:37:56] TM2: One reason is you had two different groups of people working. I don’t know how that fits, but I think that has a lot to do with it. [00:38:10] RB: The beryllium decision you think maybe came out of the Bendix shop as opposed to the Marshall shop? [00:38:15] TM: A lot of the beryllium on the platform was going to be buried into the platform where you made the casting of the DA/DC, both of them. You [wouldn’t?] have had all the beryllium showing. The covers on the platform are not beryllium. [00:38:32] RB: The whole thing is just a big ball as I recall seeing it… [00:38:34] TM: The covers—the main part of it that shows—is not beryllium. There’s a lot of beryllium inside the platform, see? All of your gimbals are beryllium. [00:38:47] RB: Is this necessity for the rigidity and accuracy then that made beryllium much more attractive for the ST-124 as opposed to mag-lith? [00:38:55] TM: It’s a very good material to use for gimbals. It’s very light weight. It’s very strong, and they wanted accuracy. They’re able to machine it and mount it and know that later it’s right where you put it. It worked out real good. I don’t believe the toxicity problem turned out to be as bad as... [00:39:20] RB: But it’s a fairly small thing. It didn’t weigh all that much. What was it, 196 pounds? That doesn’t sound right, but… [00:39:25] TM: The platform? 117. Well, that’s for the inertial assembly. [00:39:31] RB: Why not use steel? Does steel weigh that much more? [00:39:35] TM: Let me give you a good example of why. If everybody thought that way, the weight would go up in a way you wouldn’t have a payload. There was a statement that was made that if every solder joint in the Saturn V was over-soldered to the point that it had as much solder as you’d do in your shop at home—instead of dressing it down to the point where it’s a neat and lightweight joint—if every solder joint in the Saturn built up too big, it would take away the entire payload capability of Saturn V, which was 37,000 pounds. [00:40:20] RB: And the other thing too, in the upper stages, it’s a one-to-one trade-off, as I understand too. So you save thirty pounds, that’s exactly thirty pounds that you put on the payload. [00:40:28] TM: It's 117 pounds for the inertial assembly. If you asked the question, “Why go with 117 when you could’ve gone with 140 or 50?” Well, it’s just a… [00:40:39] JH: Also, back when all that was designed, I’m not so sure how good a handle Marshall had on the [capability?] of the vehicle and what the other parts were going to weigh too, see? Like the structure. We went all out on the honeycomb structure to make it lighter and all of this for [inaudible] necessary [inaudible] payload capability. [00:41:04] RB: Okay, well, I’ve kept some of you gentlemen beyond your time. I’ve also got to go off now myself, go back to an interview that was interrupted. Is there anything you could add to help the poor historian here, you think? Any comments you’d like drop in here before I turn this thing off? [00:41:23] LP: I got a document here. [Inaudible] I think it’s a pretty good document on the guidance, navigation, and control that goes in the platform. Got pictures in here. Computers… [00:41:35] JH: What’s the date on it? [00:41:36] LP: 1964. [00:41:38] SS: That’s also an antique. [00:41:40] JH: I was just thinking I had pulled some pages out of I think it’s a more current [inaudible] out of the astrionics handbook [inaudible]. [00:41:52] RB: Anything will help. [00:42:05] JH: Here’s some pages that came out [inaudible]. I don’t know your specific question. [00:42:09] RB: This was just kind of pulled out of a hat. I had a very limited group of documents to work with. This is just one of the things I came across. That particular event occurred while 501 was in the checkout, so there was a momentary flap about it, whether the flap was really large and created horrendous problems or just one of the many things that happens during checkout. I didn’t know, so I stuck it in there, maybe it would jog somebody’s memory. [00:42:42] JH: It was a pretty large flap that the problem was revealed during the checkout of 503 at IBM. There was a failure of the flight control computer, which was traced through a cracked solder joint in the FCC. Because of the nature of the problem, there was a concern about all of the critical hardware, not just the FCC. There was a requirement to recycle the FCC for 501. In fact, they disassembled it, inspected it for cracked solder joints, and reworked it by actually providing what’s called [inaudible] to strengthen the joints. There was also a requirement to inspect other critical hardware [inaudible] details on those. The problem, of course, there’s been a lot said about cracked solder joints before and after that. What happens is that because of the design—the way the components are mounted on the board, the [inaudible] fuse, and the differences in the thermal coefficients—you build up stresses on the joint. Because the joints are stressed, that causes the crack. Even though you’ve got a good solder joint, it cracks within the solder. That was a rather expensive exercise. In fact, I have just three documents associated with that activity. There was a lot of [scurrying?] around, a lot of rework activity that was necessary before 501 got off. You also mentioned questions about testing. I’m not sure what you’re after there. [00:44:25] RB: That was just a general question because I wasn’t able to find out a whole lot about testing. I wasn’t really sure what all was involved in that. I didn’t have any information about it. I know the propulsive stages went through all kinds of testing and checkout at MTF and everywhere else. [00:44:43] JH: That’s the thing that bothers me a little bit. If you look at that document, there’s just volumes and volumes of the other stages in there, and the IU is almost nothing. As far as the test program, well, of course, I didn’t bring the book…Here it is. Here is the test plan for the IU. This is a very high level, but there were many tests at the IU level, not to speak of all the qualification of the hardware etc. We have quite a bit of detail on that. This goes back to ‘65. Now what I’ve done—again not being sure just what you were looking for—I have taken some pages out of the general test plan that list the various IU level tests that were performed. I’ve also identified on a separate sheet some additional IUs that were scheduled and tested after this plan was written, and I’ve given you the reason why. I haven’t counted them up, but there must have been ten or twelve IU level tests. [00:45:50] RB: That sounds like it will give a base to start on some of this thing again.. [00:45:55] JH: I would like to see it if the history of Saturn comes out, I would like the IU to get some recognition, you know? Like [inaudible], it’s the brains of the vehicle, and without it, you’re not going to go very far. [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_000047_A Title A name given to the resource Sweat, Sidney; McKay, Therman; Hayden, Joe; and Powell, Luther 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 Instrumentation Unit: IBM as contractor, LVDA/DC, and ST-124-M https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/be4aac252087ea7122f9eda5240dfa17.pdf 0c454e265ad842e65ce9219f5f90570a 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_000046_T Title A name given to the resource Stuhlinger, Ernst (Transcript) Description An account of the resource General Saturn topics, Projects Highwater and Pegasus. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-23 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/41818bb74e5d75e7d9ea39309acec5ee.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/19688b42c65bf8ba9d283dcdef9ca7ff.mp4 e40d3d26a257735ba8ef55d604197bc6 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_000046_A Title A name given to the resource Stuhlinger, Ernst Description An account of the resource General Saturn topics, Projects Highwater and Pegasus. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-08-23 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/9817aff418bab19cd6b6e9ad577f5a54.pdf d52f9cf691f7294565f7add85d9e62cc 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_000045_T Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Rod (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/e52795f3bddb4b7494f96b28bdb029f4.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/28cf2deb5bb972fd09e63f005654293b.mp4 543c685002c998995d9c139cdf4df040 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_000045_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Rod 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/fbed9e289d367edaf67db2ea8d6494ad.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/ff3feab03b15a3a28709f814dddc8de0.mp4 66027062dc4d69ca561cb7ab5f241fc9 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 Stewart, Donald Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:57:07 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Part 2 [00:00:16] Donald Stewart: What they decided to do on that particular flight was to go ahead and dump the—since the CG location was out of kilter for this particular test—go ahead and dump the water overboard. Well, this sounded like a real good idea, so they hit the pump to dump the water overboard. Due to the pressure differential, the water didn't want to go, so they just filled up the deck—the main deck. It was running in, and Sandy Freizner was on the mic hollering, “You got water in the deck! Water in the deck!” Conroy [on the cruise?] thought they said, “Flutter.” They almost had a damn conniption. [Roger Bilstein laughs] They came in on an emergency landing, and one guy went back to look to see where the flutter was, and he saw this guy, Sandy Freizner [standing down?] he just [inaudible] down completely with water, just came flowing down that hatch. That was one of the hilarious points. [00:01:22] The other one was we had to…See, normally you have to do, the company has to do their preliminary tests, [turn it on to?] the FAA, and FAA verifies it, and finally FAA will put their people on board and flight test the airplane. Another occasion was that…You have to go through various maneuvers, roller coasters, and check the rudder throw, the [ailerons?]...What you do, you put a pulse in there, in your instrumentation, in your rudder, see? You pulse and you gonna do…You’ve heard people…You say you’re aeronautical, aren’t you? [00:02:08] Roger Bilstein: Theoretically, yeah. [00:02:10] DS: All right, well, you know the old dampening effect? You do roller coasters and see how long you dampen out? It’s quite different than the theoretical thing in the book. All you do is put a pulse and let everything dampen out. Well, they were doing this. What you do with the rudder after you do this dampening-type experiment and check for the instrumentation on to G-loads on things of this nature, FAA says, “You've got the Stratocruiser had the limits on the rudder. You've got to check this test.” [00:02:52] DS: Conroy sold…Any time FAA wanted something, Conroy, it’s just human nature for him to fight it. He says, “Hell no!” and they said, “Hell yes!” and finally they decided we'll do it through some encouragement for myself as a NASA rep. He says he'll get those damn FAA b*st*rds up there and teach them a lesson. They take off that afternoon, they’re doing some [slip?], and they receive rudder effect, and [it's a beautiful thing?] to watch. They’re on board the airplane, and the FAA guy says, “Okay, ready for this particular maneuver?” Side slip to the right, side slip to the left…So what you do is you go into sort of a fixing to fall over and you kick your rudder, and you can get reverse rudder [lock?] on this thing. FAA had never had a [inaudible] like this in the air, so when we kicked it up, started to side slip through the rudder end, and you could just feel the G-load build up. The FAA man started screaming, “Stop this thing! Stop this thing!” So they pulled her on, let her slip on out, get on out of the thing, and then had a rudder limitation of plus or minus seventeen degrees. You never did have to prove seventeen degrees, we only got up to about twelve. [00:04:34] RB: [Laughs] I hope you don't mind backtracking, but did they leave those two outboard engines in with full props? They never chopped the ends on those? [00:04:42] DS: No, they never did chop them. [00:04:45] RB: And I really don't know…How do you…Where do you place your strain gear just on a prop? Down near the hub? [00:04:53] DS: No, you're going to place it at different stations along your axes. Say your longitudinal axis of the prop is just an [airfoil?] just like a wing at certain stations along there. Then you place it at certain [co-ed?] locations. It's just a wing section. So you put it along the—-I can’t think of the terminology now—but along the center line of the [airfoil?] [00:05:33] RB: Of the propeller? [00:05:34] DS: Of the propeller section there, you place it at various stations, so you get a [bend?] increase just like in a helicopter. An airplane propeller tends to make the same actions—lag and lead actions—that a helicopter blade will. An airplane propeller tries to do the same thing, but its rigidity and reduced length, it can’t do that as much. You design an airplane propeller blade to resist all this lead and lag, which the helicopter people found out if you do that you get blades that you can't fly with. Probably you can. What you're doing is you're checking those, as you go through bending and [inaudible], you're checking the strength or stresses of the particular points that collided from the critical stresses limited by the design of the cross sectional area of the blade. All we had to do was one propeller. You gotta do some of this during the flight and a lot of it on the ground. [Inaudible] gets up to 120 in the shade. This can be rather tough on an old engine. [00:07:12] RB: Did you burn that engine out? [00:07:13] DS: No, we never did burn the engine out or anything. We had some other, I guess you’d call, anxious moments of different loadings when we were going through our first load test. We had designed here at Marshall a pallet to carry the S-IV-B basically, and it gave the design to Bob Prentice’s people out at Douglas. They built a pallet because they had to make basic responsibility for it. [00:07:58] RB: It came out of Heimberg’s shop, right? [00:07:59] DS: Yeah. The basic design… [00:08:00] RB: That’s for the S-IV you’re talking about? [00:08:04] DS: S-IV, yeah. So my boss and I—Julian Hamilton at the time—we had, let’s say, a difference of opinion about what you would put on the aluminum to the aluminum. See, the Super Guppy had two [angles?] that served as the rails, and the pallet was an I-beam that would slide directly on this aluminum to aluminum sliding [inaudible]. My boss and I had a discussion about what to use as a bearing, a lubricant bearing, some sort of frictionless bearing surfacing. I wanted to use teflon, and Jack Conroy, being the non-engineer, talked to my boss and says, “You've got to think of the freezing conditions you get with teflon. Teflon will freeze up.” He and my boss decided, well, they would go to nylon. I tried to tell them that due to [porosity?] of nylon, if you let the thing sit there very long, you're going to freeze. The cold flow that they were worried about in the teflon, you had to get something like 150,000 psi to start cold flowing the teflon. I couldn't talk them out of it, so I suggested we put banana peels on it. [Both laugh] [00:09:53] DS: So we put nylon on it, and so we were sitting out at Marshall here, designed what we call the cargo lift trailer, Karl Heimberg’s outfit did. This is a scissor on both ends, steering wheel on both ends, to raise the cargo up to the floor of the Guppies. Like I said, we went ahead and installed the nylon per my boss' direction—Julian Hamilton’s direction. We were sitting out at FAA hanger in Los Angeles going to go do a loading exercise with Dr. Von Braun. Somehow about maybe an hour, hour and a half, two hours before Dr. Von Braun was to arrive, [inaudible] some of the officials from NASA headquarters to show them what we had done, Julian Hamilton and the Douglas troops decide well, maybe we ought to go through just a little halfway practice run. They raised the cargo lift trailer up, get it, you know, proper orientation of the aircraft flow, start up the winch to move the S-IV in, start, and it won't go. Start, and it won't go. I told my boss, I said, “Well, remember that nylon you're going to use?” “Yeah.” I said, “Well, I think it's frozen.” I said, “Now, if you take two 4x4s, and put under the end of the pilot”—because it overhung the cargo lift trailer—- “and lower the cargo lift trailer, you'll break that suction you created with the nylon, which teflon wouldn't have done. Now, I'm going over to FAA to finish up some flight test information. I hope you all get done unstruck before Dr. Von Braun gets here.” When I left there was about twenty-five people running around in mad hysterics. [Both laugh] They finally got it unstuck. We were able to carry out because Dr. Von Braun normally is late, gave them an extra hour to accomplish it. [00:12:27] RB: Did they replace it with teflon then? [00:12:30] DS: Well, we…Not really. A couple of Douglas design engineers and myself had to hoodwink all his people, wanted to do what my boss wanted to do. My boss, after that, wasn’t as adamant for nylon. [00:12:51] RB: Is this Heimberg you’re talking about? [00:12:53] DS: No, Julian Hamilton wasn’t as adamant for nylon as he was before. I told the Douglas people that we wanted to put something on there based on the recommendations, which was oil [light?]. Told the Douglas people that's what we was going to put on there based on the recommendations of his design engineer...[tape cuts out and restarts at “I’m going over to FAA to finish up some flight test information…] [00:14:40] DS: I came back to Marshall and talked back to Marshall and said that’s what Douglas wants to do. Through a little diplomacy there, we got teflon [delivery?]. The airplane never had any other problems. [Roger Bilstein laughs] [00:14:58] DS: We hauled [I guess all the S-IV?] [inaudible]. We did another thing one day…Just getting into the operation of hauling S-IVs…So I was on a flight, we were late getting out of Los Angeles, supposed to have cleared various SAC bases, military bases, whatever it might be. On our route from Los Angeles, [USC?], we had to divert [inaudible] because of weather. We had to supposedly [inaudible] supposedly cleared us for all these different Air Force bases. We’re tooling along [inaudible] SAC base [inaudible]. [00:16:10] RB: Is this for emergency landing? [00:16:12] DS: No, we had to re-fuel. The weather [inaudible] landing there. We land on this particular SAC base—I forget the name of it now—tooling up to the hangar, all of a sudden, my God…People’s eyes [inaudible] didn’t know what had landed. [Roger Bilstein laughs] [From outer space?] [Inaudible] guards, slowly but surely and very fast, escorted us out to the boonies. They let us off the plane, guards around there with carbines and M1s [ready?] and 45s, “Where the hell did y’all come from? How did you get in here?” [We’re supposed to get in here?] Finally, this is about one or two o’clock in the morning. [Inaudible] A couple of hours, the crew sleeping on the deck out there, guards surrounding them [inaudible]. Airplane captain trying to locate the base commander. We finally had clearance to go on. [Roger Bilstein laughs] Fuel up and go on. [00:17:30] RB: When you flew from…Where did you usually leave from in California? Some Navy… [00:17:36] DS: No, that S-IV stage [inaudible] Sacramento. [00:17:41] RB: That’s right, directly out of the test area then, yeah. [00:17:44] DS: We’d fly out of [inaudible] airport [inaudible]. [00:18:05] RB: How many refueling stops did you have to make with the Pregnant Guppy? [00:18:07] DS: We did it on the [wind?]. [Inaudible] [...stop in Houston, Carswell?] [Inaudible] [00:18:33] RB: This is about an eighteen hour flight then? [00:18:36] DS: Yeah, depending on the crew or the crew ran out of time. [Inaudible] There was a number of things, I guess, [inaudible]. A lot of other happy experiences. There were [inaudible]. [00:19:18] RB: Did you know a guy at Douglas named [inaudible]? [00:19:22] DS: The name sounds familiar [inaudible]. [00:19:25] RB: Well, I talked to him, and as I recall, he said that they were in the Pregnant Guppy flying somewhere and heard kind of an ominous noise from the back. They said they put down in a real hurry, and a twelve inch gap had opened up. Do you remember anything like that happening? [00:19:41] DS: No…It’s quite a bit of [inaudible]. We had a lot of complaints about it [inaudible] tests to determine [inaudible]. It could’ve happened and [inaudible] reported. [Somebody?] had failed to cinch up the [bolts?]. Well, and there was different kinds…We had a number of rear [axis?] problems, flying different cargo because we had just started [inaudible] a new airline and air transportation of outsized cargo. We [inaudible] Boeing chief flight test engineer and from talking to some of the [Boeing?] people [inaudible] S-IVB visibility test [inaudible] Saturn contract. That’s where a lot of their…The Guppy—based on the information I’ve given to Douglas and Boeing people—the Pregnant Guppy proved that you could extend [inaudible] stretch DC-8. [00:21:22] RB: Is that right? Is that where that came from though? [00:21:25] DS: Whether the Douglas will admit it or not, yes, that’s where it came from because Douglas…Ted Smith, a few others, I’d say [inaudible] preliminary meetings [inaudible]. [00:21:39] RB: That’s really interesting. We talked to Ted Smith… [00:21:41] DS: Ted Smith and a few of his cohorts sat in there [inaudible]. Based on our knowledge of building airplanes since the beginning of time the Pregnant Guppy won’t fly. Afterwards, every time we’d go back to test, at the test we had a lot of film coverage. [Inaudible] real adamant [inaudible]. You know, that son of a b*tch is flying. [Roger Bilstein laughs] He would grin [sheepishly?] [00:22:19] RB: I like Ted Smith. That was one of the best interviews we had. We didn't get into the Pregnant Guppy. [00:22:25] DS: Ted and his people…[Bob Prentice?] worked with Ted, and [we were all done?] with the Saturn contract. Ted Smith's people had to be a little bit skeptical because they had presented a proposal to NASA to use the C-133 and [inaudible] piggyback [inaudible] carry the S-IV and had gotten a considerable amount of [inaudible]. Conroy never got his. [Inaudible] This was all turned down. We had a number of proposals back in those days carrying the S-IV by blimp, carrying it by [towed glider?]. [Inaudible] proposal [inaudible] glider [inaudible] not only used for the S-IV stage, but the S-II stage, [inaudible] all the stages. We had a number of proposals [inaudible] vehicles—you name it, and people had suggested it. It was a comical engineer at Douglas suggested firing the S-IVB [inaudible] to launch it [inaudible] the Cape, so… [00:24:14] RB: Was he serious? [laughs] [00:24:15] DS: Well, [inaudible] talking about the Guppies, he said, [inaudible]. Conroy, I feel [overcame?] insurmountable amount of negative pressure. [Inaudible] got his basic strength to go on when things were [inaudible] down in the dumps again. I think he derived a lot of his strength from Karl Heimberg and Dr. Von Braun. Conroy would come in, I’d meet him, and he didn’t have enough money to pay his motel bill or pay for his car. I’d pick him up and take him to his motel. Mr. Heimberg would come on and have a few drinks. Heimberg would reassure him he was going to this and do that [inaudible]. [Inaudible] pick him up the next morning and bring him out here. One time, he got so broke that he had to spend the night at different people’s houses working on the thing. I always felt that they...in the early stages, they did Conroy…They would give Douglas, North America, Boeing, Chrysler, half a million dollars just to do a study, and here was a guy that [had sold his soul?] and [they wouldn’t?] give him fifty dollars. But it all played out in the end [with the Pregnant Guppy?]. It was really ironic [the way they went about starting?] Saturn V, Conroy had already gotten the Pregnant Guppy running, and [inaudible] he says, “Well, I think I’ll talk to them myself.” [Inaudible] Sky Trails in Van Nuys, and he says, “I think I’ll build another airplane.” [Inaudible] “What kind of airplane?” [Inaudible] “...Carry the S-IVB.” “Sounds good, Jack. I’ll talk with Mr. Heimberg about it.” So I came back and talked with [Jack Balch?] and Karl Heimberg, made a couple of sketches on the back of used envelopes, made up some charts, and talked to Mr. Heimberg and Balch. [Inaudible] [00:27:32] DS: [Fritz?] Kramer could understand how they built this thing because he built the things in Germany [inaudible]. I think [Fritz?] Kramer was very encouraging I think…He went out once to evaluate the way they were going about building the Guppy. [Inaudible] says, “That’s the way we did it in the old country.” [Inaudible] cost a million dollars [inaudible]. [00:28:21] RB: How do you spell his name? [00:28:22] DS: Kramer? K-R-A-M-E-R. [Fritz?] Kramer. [00:28:26] RB: Do you know happen to know what aircraft firm he worked for in Germany? What he did? [00:28:29] DS: He worked for on of the [inaudible]. [00:28:47] RB: Is there any big difference between the Super Guppy and the Pregnant Guppy really? I mean outside of the... [00:28:54] DS: About seven and a half foot plus… [00:28:55] RB: Diameters, yeah. [00:28:57] DS: There's seventy inches added aft [inaudible], rear section [splice junction?], seventy inches there. In the forward section, there’s another fifty inches. Plus the twenty-five foot in diameter. Then there’s a seventeen and a half foot wing [inaudible] section that was added. [00:29:30] RB: So they didn’t have to chop the prop… [00:29:33] DS: There was twenty-five foot internal diameter. I forget how many square foot of area added to the verticals [inaudible] added to the base of the vertical stabilizer. There’s tips instead of rounded off [inaudible] structures. There’s more vertical stabilizers and also more horizontal stabilizers. There’s more area added there. Plus, the fact is…See, the original Stratocruiser was designed basically as a C-97 and a commercial version by Boeing. It was originally designed to carry, to be powered by turboprops. [Inaudible] same basic power as the [inaudible] 133. The airplane reached the final stage where it needed props and engines before the turboprop engine was [certificated?] and ready to go. They went to an alternate R-4360 engine instead of the turboprops [inaudible]. The Super Guppy was Conroy’s idea when he started thinking Super Guppy and the difference in weight and size and all this except he needed turboprops [inaudible] thrust per pound of weight [inaudible]. He knew General [Funk?] and General [Gherig?] had two of these Stratocruisers, turboprop versions that Boeing had developed for them and also knew [inaudible] FAA [inaudible] original design turboprop. That was his selling point there. Finally Conroy found out that these planes were going into salvage. All he wanted was the landing gear because of the 175,000 pound [inaudible]. Some basic structures to the airplane, some [inaudible] put these things in salvage in Tucson. He was able to con the Air Force into buying it at scrap for the national interest of hauling S-IVBs. He used the wings because they had the turboprop fixtures on there. The cowlings, the turboprops, and [inaudible] S-IVB. Super Guppy to work up a bargain with NASA, so we were able to get on the Air Force [inaudible] engines. [00:33:14] RB: Okay, because somewhere said they were on lease or something. [00:33:18] DS: They were on lease from the Air Force. Conroy got a lot smarter, [inaudible]. We got a lot smarter [tape cuts out] [Inaudible] scrap [inaudible]. We went out [inaudible] the airplanes he brought them back to Van Nuys. [On Mark Engineering?] did the modification [inaudible]. Conroy was able to get a better financial deal. [Inaudible] engineering did the design modification. During this time, Aerospace [Lines?] had had some sort of altercation with FAA, and FAA was going to fine the company. You have to know Conroy to appreciate his attitude: “If the FAA had been in existence when Orville and Wilbur Wright started, we still wouldn’t be flying!” He made it in his mind that he was going to take FAA to court, so sure enough he took them to court, and sure enough he won. [00:35:00] RB: [laughs] What was the hassle over? [00:35:08] DS: The court [inaudible]…Conroy used the thing of saying, the Pregnant Guppy is a certified airplane, so we’ve done that part of it, but it should be operated as a public airplane. Public airplane definition is any airplane used solely by municipalities—federal, state, or on a government lease—which the Pregnant Guppy was used solely for that. This is the way the FAA court ruled. The Guppies became public airplanes. When this happened the FAA wouldn’t touch the Super Guppy, so we had to use a different…We finally talked the FAA into advising us as consultants. Bill Gray and I’s job became doubly demanding in the Super Guppy effort because he and I had to do all the reviews the FAA had been doing. [00:36:30] RB: Was this to get away from that “Part 8” certificate kind of thing? [00:36:34] DS: Well, it was to get it into a public airplane operation, rather than…But FAA was wanting to stay away from the Super Guppy was right because to have certified the power plants, the wing structures, the landing gear, and the various structures used off of military airplanes which weren’t certified by FAA would’ve probably cost a million or more dollars. FAA off the cuff, unofficially, advised Bill Gray and I not to push that part of it because it would cost the government too much money. Finally, FAA agreed to serve as NASA consultants on the modifications of the Super Guppy. [00:37:29] RB: Is there one guy in the FAA or a couple fellows that stand out? A number that worked on this, the Guppy and the Super Guppy? [00:37:36] DS: Charlie [Hawks?] He’s retired. [00:37:44] RB: Does he live in Washington? [00:37:46] DS: No, he’s in Los Angeles [inaudible]. [Rocco?] [Inaudible]. L-U-P-P-I-S, you see the spelling in some of the FAA documents [inaudible]. [00:38:11] RB: Is he in Los Angeles too? [00:38:12] DS: All these guys are in Los Angeles. Rocco Luppis, [inaudible]. There’s numerous guys…George [Stevens?] is one. George [Stevens?] [inaudible] real dedicated. There’s numerous other people. After Conroy broke the ice on the Pregnant Guppy, which was very…They were behind him this time, helping him instead of pushing back, trying to hold him off. [00:39:09] RB: What happened to the Pregnant Guppy and the Super Guppy? The Super Guppy is still flying. [00:39:14] DS: Both airplanes are still flying. I guess they’re still under contract with NASA. [00:39:18] RB: Did Aerospace go ahead and build some other mini-Guppy kind of airplanes? [00:39:23] DS: They built a mini-Guppy, and they built the commercial version of Super Guppy. [00:39:28] RB: And they're all still flying? [00:39:30] DS: Yeah. I believe both airplanes are leased: one to France and one to England. [00:39:39] RB: So they're flying on the continent now? [00:39:43] DS: In Europe. Yeah. [00:39:45] RB: Yeah. What kind of cargo do they carry there? [00:39:48] DS: Oh, basic things. Outside cargo is the big thing, other cargo airplanes. [00:39:53] RB: Not necessarily space equipment. Whatever is… [00:39:55] DS: Whatever is needed. The Super Guppy version of Aerospace [things?] carried the SST [wings?]. [00:40:08] RB: In Europe? [00:40:10] DS: In Europe. The Super Guppy we have here carried the L-10. Super Guppy also carried some fighters from [inaudible] San Diego [inaudible] Navy fighters. Jack Conroy left Aerospace [inaudible] own company, and he developed [CL-44?] swing-tail, Canadian [inaudible]. [00:40:57] RB: Really? He was in on that? [00:40:58] DS: Yeah, that was his airplane. Jack [inaudible]. This airplane is being used [leased in England?] Conroy’s outfit was a new company when they made the design, and they took the DC-3s and C-47s and modified them, put turbo props on them to sell them to South American countries. [00:41:32] RB: What’s the name of this new company? Do you remember at all? [00:41:33] DS: Conroy…Conroy Enterprises, I believe. Conroy Aircraft [inaudible]. [00:41:43] RB: How come you sold out to [inaudible]? [00:41:45] DS: Well, they reached…They had some problems with the internal management structure. [Inaudible] bought into Aerospace [inaudible] manufacture [inaudible] type thing. They had no concept of operating airplanes. [00:42:12] RB: They’re just trying to diversify a little bit? [00:42:14] DS: They were attempting to diversify, and in my estimation, bleed the company dry, which they succeeded in doing. [00:42:22] RB: It seems like such an odd diversification direction for them to take. [00:42:28] DS: Well, they pulled a couple of shenanigans on Conroy, and Conroy just [inaudible] and sold out. They brought in the Boeing people—[Rex?] Johnson’s crowd—and Conroy was running the total operations of two airplanes with 150 people. At one time they had about 5000 people running the thing—designing new airplanes. Aerospace [inaudible] stock offer, [Publix?] Market, I believe. [00:43:18] RB: Still part of [inaudible] though? [00:43:19] DS: Still part of [inaudible]. [00:43:24] RB: I’d like to write to them to get more information. [00:43:27] DS: They probably won’t give you any. [00:43:30] RB: No, but I mean just to…for whatever they got. They got an address here. Is that the correct address? [00:43:41] DS: Yeah, that’s the correct… [00:43:43] RB: I’ll just write to them and see what information they might have. [00:43:47] DS: Probably want to write [Joe Andrews?] He’s a sales rep. [00:43:50] RB: Okay, good. Joe Andrews…Should I mention your name? Is that all right? What’s his title? [00:43:57] DS: Yeah. He’s Vice President in charge of sales. If he’s still with the company. They got more Vice Presidents out there than Conroy had total officials in the company. [00:44:22] DS: Another difference in the Pregnant Guppy and the Super Guppy is the swing nose for loading instead of the tail. [00:44:32] RB: Right. How come they made that configuration change? [00:44:38] DS: It was much easier than attaching all this dolly and different [inaudible] tail. Much less time consuming. [00:44:52] RB: Did they get design [info?] from that British [inaudible] cargo aircraft? [00:44:58]: DS: No, that was Jack Conroy’s. Jack Conroy gets credit for having fathered the [maybe?] C-47, C-97 Stratocruiser [inaudible]. He really didn’t do that. That was other people [inaudible]. He just pushed it through [and saw it through the end?]. Conroy did develop, was responsible for the S-IV-B airplane. One time we had the S-IV-B airplane so [inaudible] at headquarters [inaudible]. Conroy came in and started talking to Von Braun about an S-II airplane. [Inaudible] Dr. Von Braun was, he says, “That’s the way to go. Forget the S-IV-B airplane.” We would have run into probably twice as much reluctancy. Everybody [inaudible] did on the Pregnant Guppy. Conroy’s idea was to take the old [inaudible] and modify it for jets. [Inaudible] jetpacks and [inaudible] airplanes, carry the S-II was smaller in size [inaudible]. [Inaudible], a company called Fairchild Strato or Fairchild [inaudible] at that time thought it was such a good idea, they invested a half-million dollars in a study. [00:47:01] RB: For a B-36? Were there any left around that time? I personally thought they were all pretty well scrap. [00:47:10] DS: Yeah. Well, they were in various state of…The one that they were planning to get [inaudible] the basic structure for the airplane was in the desert again, so [inaudible] shape [inaudible] Air Force base. [Inaudible] piece at one of the air museums. Even the Air Force was…Assistant Secretary Charles was quite interested in [inaudible]. [00:47:54] RB: What about the pressurization on the Pregnant Guppy and Super Guppy? Were both of them or was one of them pressurized? How does that… [00:48:03]: DS: The Super Guppy never was, and the Pregnant Guppy was never planned to be pressurized. The Super Guppy was supposed to have been pressurized but due to the project logistics office—non-engineering people—trying to make too many engineering decisions, Karl Heimberg says, “That plane is operating and let them people have it and get it.” So we did. [00:48:41] RB: Was the cockpit pressurized at all? [00:48:43] DS:Yeah, the cockpit was pressurized. [00:48:47] RB: Could you overfly bad weather then with both airplanes? [00:48:51] DS: Only with the Super Guppy. We had some…It’s surprising how many experts come out of the wall when you do something like the Pregnant Guppy. We had all kinds of experts in Marshall. Then the Super Guppy, it was quite difficult to overcome some of the expertise at that time. We had experts at headquarters, Houston, Marshall, [Iola?], [inaudible]. When it came down to doing the work, none of them was…They were always gone. [00:49:39] RB: [laughs] Did you overfly the bad weather with the Super Guppy? [00:49:43] DS: Yeah, we did. I think it’s about 18 or 19,000, I don’t think you get over normal bad weather—[inaudible] thunderheads [inaudible]. West of the Mississippi, you got to go around [inaudible], twenty-three, twenty-five thousand feet [inaudible]. [00:50:16] RB: But the Pregnant Guppy then, was this cockpit also pressurized or you just didn’t know? Okay, so you just operated them both. [00:50:26] DS: I’m going to have to retract that [inaudible]. The last I remember, we were still using oxygen at certain altitudes and [inaudible] a mask. It may have finally gotten pressurized at certain altitudes. [Inaudible] oxygen, the same way some altitudes [inaudible]. Both airplanes had to have basic limitations being an airplane, and even the 707 had certain limitations. We had a good…Various people around here to understand that. That’s the reason we had to have real close engineering control, which finally fell apart. We…When Mr. Heimberg’s shop…Finally just washed our hands of the whole thing. When people run into trouble, [inaudible] would bail them out. I guess [inaudible]. The Pregnant Guppy, I would say, is still being carried on a contract, but they haven’t needed a Pregnant Guppy [inaudible] four or five years. The question in my mind now is the Super Guppy [inaudible]. I don’t make these kind of decisions. [00:52:43] DS: I think Conroy’s vision of having outside cargo aircraft would probably have materialized a lot sooner if he had stayed with Aerospace [inaudible]. I think [inaudible]. Of course, now they’ve got [problems?]...A two airplane operation is going to support three or four hundred people. [00:53:37] DS: The Super Guppy is a real good airplane, and it climbs about as fast as a F-86 depending on the load you carry. It was given a thorough flight test with the supervision of Bill Gray and myself. We also after we finished this flight test at Edwards, we had Herman [inaudible], chief engineer of flight tests,[inaudible] Aerospace Lines expert on the job. Once we finished the flight test program, we went over and had Joe Walker of Edwards, the old X-15 pilot. [00:54:33] RB: Joe Walker? [00:54:34] DS: He did the final NASA-type flight test acceptance in the air frame. [00:54:47] RB: Before I leave I wanted to ask again about the Pregnant Guppy, and there was an accident and a picture of it out at Ellington. Do you remember about what time that was? [00:55:00] DS: I believe it’s on the back of the picture. I’m not sure. I believe it was… [00:55:02] RB: Oh okay. I can check it [out?] the picture I suppose. What was it? The wind just caught inside the [inaudible] bay or caught the [inaudible]? What was the… [00:55:24] DS: I think it was a combination of both. It was…What do they call them? Dust devils? Ground twisters? It was quite a [terrific?] wind that came through at the Ellington airport. The airplane was tied down to a couple of [tugs?]. [Lifted the tugs?] right off damn ground. [00:56:11] RB: What was the airplane…It was separated. What was the separation for? [00:56:17] DS: To offload the cargo. [00:56:20] RB: It wasn’t the S-IV stage then? It was a different… [00:56:23] DS: No, we were either picking up or delivering command service modules to test—the ascend or descend stage. I’m not sure…It was back before…I’m looking at some old travel orders 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_000044_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Donald (Part 2) 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 Discussion about Jack Conroy and his Pregnant and Super Guppies https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/d953f7b1f7716f2ed2046beb0baa779e.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/0d040045c33de88955df07c14f3a498e.mp4 21ebc05be88f85e316d1e7ff6b03c047 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 Stewart, Donald Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:00:38 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Part 1 [00:00:07] Roger Bilstein: Let me begin…I'd like to verify a couple stories before we start. One of them is the story that Conroy was getting a little bit low on money and didn't have a NASA contract yet. He shored the inside of the pregnant guppy up with wooden timbers and flew it out here to Huntsville and landed out here at the Redstone Arsenal airstrip, and Von Braun got in and flew around with it. [00:00:35] Donald Stewart: I thought I might have some pictures of that. Well, it all goes back quite a bit further than that. There was a guy by the name of Lee Mansdorf that had bought all of Pan Am and I believe TWA's C-97 Stratocruisers. C-97 is the military designation of them, and Stratocruisers is the commercial designation. He stored all these in the Mojave Desert because he didn't have any real big problems with corrosion. He had a young guy that was working for him or with him or a friend who also worked with Hughes. I don't remember his name. But Jack Conroy came in and wanted to start a commercial airline with his Stratocruisers. So this young guy—this is in 1960—this young guy just off the top of his head says, “Well, a way to start something to get to the commercial airline end of it would be make a missile carrying stage out of these Stratocruisers. [00:02:13] RB: This is not Mansdorf, this is the other guy you’re thinking of... [00:02:16] Bill….I’ll think of his name…I want to say [Schuman?], but I don’t believe that’s right. Then Conroy thought about it and still hot to make this commercial airline, non-scheduled commercial airline arrangement. This kid, there was a guy name of Walters—a retired Boeing employee who worked with Mansdorf—that took this idea and said, “That’s a pretty good damned idea,” and made up some sketches and drawings, and I think I have most of those here…He and Mansdorf came to Marshall to talk with Marshall because we were responsible for all the stages. [00:03:20] RB: What year was this? Do you remember? [00:03:22] DS: 1960. [00:03:25] RB: That was really early on then that they were doing that. [00:03:28] DS: I said there's some history on this. A lot of people don't really know, and if you want to tell the whole story, you have to get this in. I was working at Boeing in 1960, and it was interesting—this is beside the point—interesting coming back [to the South?]—I had talked to some people, put in some applications. My application got to Chrysler here. At that time, I came down to interview Julian Hamilton who was in charge of transportation before the Cape split out and became a center of its own. Julian was working with the special transportation group who developed the transportation scheme for the land, sea and air and all this. He needed an aeronautical engineer that knew something about airplanes, so he offered me a job as a [cycling?] man to work for Chrysler and work for Jim. This was in November of 1961. [00:04:41] DS: So about December 13th or 14th of ‘61, I was sent out to Los Angeles and UCLA’s very rudimentary open wind tunnel to observe wind tunnel tests of Pregnant Guppy. These people had a model that I think they had built in Japan that mounted in the tunnel. Really, they didn't know how to run a tunnel test. Instead of observing, I wound up being responsible for running it. We ran—when we had a lunch break that day, they actually showed me what they were going to do—we went out and got about five dollars worth of modeling clay and a roll of thread, so we could make a configuration so it looked like its aerodynamic state. After we got it pretty much concocted so we had fairly good flow with all the controllable air surfaces, we ran the test, and everything looked real good for a tough study, just a preliminary study. I left then and said, “Well, you guys, what you need to do now is go into a surface flow, use chalk or whatever you want to, to get some surface flow so you can tell what kind of surface flow you got and how efficient your laminar flow streams are for your surfaces. They said, “Yeah, we'll do this.” [00:06:54] DS: Conroy had donated I think $200 or $300 to UCLA's aeronautical department, so that we could get the wind tunnel study run while the school was out. In that time Jack Conroy, Mike [Healy?], and Ben [Aziz?] and Kaplan—he was a structural engineer, design engineer—they said, “fine.” I left and came back to Huntsville and made my report. I guess I had [trip reports?]. The next thing I knew, they were calling in after Christmas holiday saying, “Come see what we've done.” Well, they had started the structural modification in January, and the Super Guppy was taking shape. [00:08:03] RB: The Pregnant Guppy? [00:08:05] DS: I mean the Pregnant Guppy was taking shape. Here's a picture of the way it looked around February or March. [00:08:21] RB: This is the original cabin [inaudible] [00:08:25] DS: What happened is they cut at this point here [inaudible] and here’s the original frames. When they brought it in, Conroy liked it so much, he said he was running out of money. He had begged, borrowed, stealed [sic], stoled [sic], done everything he could, just running out of money, so what he needed now is hopes of getting the contract for this thing. He ran—on the original body, on top of the original fuselage—he ran wood and steel frames or aluminum frames to stabilize this thing, so he got an experimental FAA clearance to fly the Pregnant Guppy into Huntsville. [00:09:27] RB: This was when, early ‘62 when he was doing this? [00:09:31] DS: This was...I would say in mid-’62. On the way in, it was a real fiasco headed into Huntsville, he had to fly a certain FAA designated route over an unpopulated area. This was sometime I guess June or July of ‘62. They came through Tulsa. They were so low on money, one of their friends knew a friend that was with [Phillip Oil?] called him, made some personal contacts, filled the airplane up with gas and left. Oklahoma people were hot after him to get their money back for gasoline because he didn't buy it. He didn't give them a credit card or nothing. So he then arrived in Huntsville. I met him at the airport. [00:11:28] RB: This is out here at the Redstone field? [00:11:29] DS: Redstone Airport. This was sometime September…say…sometime around October 1st. Last week of September, first week of October. [00:11:50] RB: How long was he down in Tulsa? A couple of months then? [00:11:50] DS: No, he was just in Tulsa...just over night. [00:11:57] RB: Oh, okay. This is when he flew out. He flew out then in the fall of 1962, okay. [00:12:06] DS: The next Saturday after arriving—he spent some time here during that week—I guess it was the next Saturday, Friday or Saturday, that Dr. Von Braun came back into town. He decided to do a demonstration unbeknowning [sic] to the Marshall NASA people. He had only a very limited amount of gas. He performed his demonstration in front of Kroeger, Kramer, Dr. Von Braun, Rees, Karl Heimberg, Julian Hamilton, and myself. The crew at that time was…Jack Conroy… [00:13:17] RB: He was a certified four engines? [00:13:20] DS: He was a pilot. Co-pilot was…[inaudible] the flight engineer was [D’agostino?]; the mechanic with him was Bill Cuff; and...I can’t think of [inaudible] I might have some cards in here… [00:14:25] RB: Was Goodrum out there that day? [00:14:26] DS: No. [00:14:29] RB: [laughs] In talking to him, I got the impression he was. [00:14:33] DS: Well, the story's been told a number of times. [00:14:39] RB: Were any of the people out there that day very skeptical about it going off? Marshall people? [00:14:43] DS: Oh, yeah, Marshall...I forget the co-pilot's name, but anyway...There’s one other member that was stuck [inaudible] gas in Oklahoma. There was a boy, there was seven man crew. Jack Podesky was the co-pilot. They were very skeptical—Dr. Von Braun, Dr. Rees—were all very skeptical of the airplane, so Conroy told them, "Well, I'll give you a demonstration.” Well, he took the airplane up, flew it around, came back and landed, and then he took Julian Hamilton and Hermann Kroeger aboard the airplane for the next ride. [00:15:42] DS: One way to demonstrate the capabilities of the airplane was if you could put— since the volume of the body was so great—one of his tricks to really demonstrate the people the controllability and stability of the airplane was to cut the number one and two engines on the port side and fly by in a straight line. He was out and Julian Hamilton was in the plane with Mr. Kroeger, so Julian Hamilton said, “Well, I'm going to show you, Mr. Kroeger, how stable this airplane is,” because Mr. Kroeger was an old test pilot from Germany, World War II. He chopped number one and number two engine. Hamilton was standing right behind Kroeger, so Conroy told Kroeger, “See, number one and number two is out.” It was still a straight flight. He showed Mr. Kroeger that he only took a thumb and a toe to hold the thing on a straight flight, which is contrary to most two engine airplanes as well as Boeing’s. Mr. Kroeger kind of wants to see the engines out there. Mr. Kroeger looked out and says, “Good God.” Then at that time, they were flying across the field according to Hamilton's account of the story. [00:17:31] DS: Dr. Von Braun's comment was, “That reminds me of the story of the bee that doesn't fly.” [Roger Bilstein laughs] Then his next comment was, “Aww, it should do that because the airplane is nothing but a [fly and rudder?]”. Conroy came in and landed, so this really stimulated Dr. Von Braun's interest in the airplane then. When Kroeger got off the airplane, he was so excited he reverted back to his native tongue. The only thing you could understand from his conversation was “The thumb and the toe,” “The thumb and the toe.” Dr. Von Braun shook his head and got in the airplane and took off, so then he flew around. [00:18:32] DS: Then Conroy landed and tied the airplane down and went out to get something to eat later that evening. He got together at Conroy’s motel and talked to him, possibility of NASA contracting Boeing. The next day Conroy was talking to Mr. Heimberg, and Conroy had told me and Julian Hamilton that he needed some gas, and we mentioned it to Mr. Heimberg. Heimberg asked him, says, “I understand you need gas.” Conroy said, “Yes, I could use a little bit.” He told myself to take care of it, so I talked to Ken Hill. Ken Hill had the commercial airport send a truck out. Conroy filled the airplane up—24,000 gallons. The last time GAO was here that I remember was still trying to explain how we used 24,000 gallons of aviation fuel in the test stands [Roger Bilstein laughs]. There never was a contract about… [00:20:06] DS: Brainerd Holmes, Dr. Siemens—Bob Siemens is now Secretary of the Air Force. All NASA headquarters was totally against air transportation. They figured out business was missiles and space exploration. Jack Conroy kept telling everybody, Dr. Von Braun and everybody concerned, “The second word in the N-A-S-A is National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and aeronautics comes before space.” So Holmes or Siemens—I believe Siemens—finally wrote a letter—that I've got a copy of—said if Conroy ever developed this airplane and got FAA certification, Holmes or Siemens…the biggest fallacy there was the fact that he didn’t spell out what kind of certification—it said certification so it could safely operate—that he would, that NASA would consider the use of the airplane. [00:21:38] DS: Conroy's idea then was, “Oh you know tell you what,” to develop the airplane and to get a “Part 8” certificate, which was a special certificate that crop dusters and general junk airplanes have. The certificate says that you cannot carry any cargo for hire. We went through quite a battle of six or eight months—maybe three or four months—of working all this out, fighting with Conroy. I was the project engineer on the thing, and I was fighting with Conroy and his people constantly to keep them from cutting corners and making sure that FAA considered the price of twenty-four or twenty-five million dollars, whatever the S-IV lease cost was, was the main consideration in their safety, [because?] we considered to be more valuable than men at this time. One thing that put the push on the Guppy was the fact that the S-IV test stand [blew?], and we had some problems which put the S-IV behind schedule for the Saturn I program. This added a lot of impetus to developing this special carrier. It would take eighteen hours to fly the stage to the Cape instead of eighteen days around through the canal—or twenty-one days. [00:23:28] RB: A couple stages could save you a month. [00:23:30] DS: We never could get the people at headquarters or KSC or any place to agree on what it costs one day of delay at the Cape. But once they started having S-IV problems, they never would say how much it cost but they sure got behind this at headquarters then. They went to FAA and requested that they allow an [inaudible] for this “Part 8” certification to allow Conroy to fly for hire because of national interest, and Conroy was allowed to charge us. I've got a copy here that you can use for his first proposal. In November, he made his first proposal in October of ‘69, Dr. Von Braun, and made his addendum to that proposal November 6th. Conroy was one thing: he was opportunist. He was the kind of guy that if you keep around he's going to keep you real honest because he wasn't an engineer, but he had a lot of common horse sense to some degree that most fighter pilots had. Conroy did hold the F-86 record from flying Los Angeles to New York; having breakfast in Los Angeles; flying to New York having lunch; and then flying back to Los Angeles and having dinner that evening at the [Skyeville?] Festival. He was quite an ego maniac to some degree. [00:25:39] DS: In those days, the Saturn program was not “How you can't do it” but “How can you do it and get it done fast?” We went through quite an uphill thing in Pregnant Guppy. Normally, an aircraft company takes an airplane to the desert to go through flight tests carries at least four spare engines. They take a hundred percent spares. When we went to Edwards Air, we took the airplane. Oh, at that time, Dr. Von Braun thought it would be wise since we were going to the Missile Center, to get Edwards Air Force Base involved. [00:26:38] DS: You've got to mention in this thing, there was a guy named Jackson M. Balch, down at MTF, who we had met with all kinds of difficulties selling headquarters and everybody on this program. Then Jackson Balch came to work for Karl Heimburg,Mr. [sic] Rees’ technical assistant, administrative assistant, who was assigned to test lab to learn the ropes of Marshall. One of the first things Karl Heimburg did was say, “Hey, we've got a real good problem here,” and gave him the Guppy problem. People resented his entering the program, but Balch had a lot of [learning?] and could convince people that—there's a lot of convincing you can’t mention in this thing because we’d all probably be behind bars—but anyway, we finally convinced the people from NASA activities… [00:27:53] RB: Did Balch go to headquarters then? [00:27:56] DS: Yeah, Balch went to headquarters, he had bought…Jack and I went to headquarters two or three times to give presentations. [00:28:04] RB: Who were you talking to? Low? Or Holmes? [00:28:07] DS: Talked to Holmes, once he was with Siemens…I guess…I believe Low at that time. But the thing was, Balch came on the same [inaudible] Conroy first went into this. Conroy started his construction at On Mark Engineering. He had no people of his own, so he let On Mark Engineering in Van Nuys do the structural modification. Then he let this guy he subcontracted with—Kaplan, the Strato engineer—do the engineering and the FAA coordination because he was an FAA designator. He was more or less at the mercy of these people as well as trying to get a contract with NASA. He—as some managers have been known to do in the Saturn program as well as any other program, the C-5A, the F-111—he was too optimistic in his selling and wound up in…Christmas of ’62, I was out helping in Conroy's office, and he got a call from—at this time he had lost all his help and doing work for free. He had his wife working as a secretary, so he got a call. The call was they were going to foreclose on his house. Things got real bad sometime around just prior to Christmas, I guess. [tape cuts out] [00:30:28] DS: This time Jack Balch, Julian Hamilton, William Morrow, and myself, we went to California to see how things were going on. I came back and reported, and we went out there to see how things were going on. I think I made a mistake in that date…It was ‘62… more like… June instead of Christmas. We went out there and talked with some of Conroy’s investors. There was a Jay [Humison?]...no…Jay [Overholtz?] and a guy by the name of Mr. [Humison?], who was a design engineer for the project system on the S-IV stage who…one of the few millionaire engineers you run into. Jay [Overholtz?], who had investments in one of the casinos, and Las Vegas was there. There was one other gentleman that I can’t remember, he was sort of the silent partner…well, I guess it’s Lee Mansdorf. One thing’s got to be said about Lee Mansdorf: he had everything so that if the airplane went, he'd make amends; if it folded, he'd still make amends. He believed in really hedging his bets. But those three more or less went on a [note?], and then Conroy could finish this endeavor. One of the first things to know of Mr. [Humison?] was really a gentleman. One of the first things he said he wanted to do was get Conroy’s debt…house out of hock, so he could stop having all these family problems and things going on. [00:33:09] RB: How do you spell this guy’s name now? [00:33:11] DS: [Humison?]…I don't know who was it. It was [Humison?], Howe, and [Overholtz?]. I may or may not [inaudible]. Howe is the Howe that has [Navajo Truckliners?]…I may can find the spellings of his name, write it down, look it up later. [00:33:47] RB: Okay. [00:33:48] DS: Like I said, this was sometime around, sometime between June and Christmas. Sometime around between Christmas of sixty…one...and June ‘62...because in September of ‘62...the Pregnant Guppy...Boeing 377 Stratocruiser took off from Van Nuys Airport and moved up to Mojave Desert…where we…But then the flight test came after the maiden flight. This is where we really had problems. [00:34:51] RB: Before we get to that, I heard one story that when Conroy had flown to Huntsville, Heimburg or somebody wanted to do some load tests, and so they really filled the airplane up with gas when Von Braun was on it. [00:35:09] DS: FAA requested a load test, test out the structures. That was load test may be referring to, but it wasn't. Nothing was put in the airplane by Dr. Von Braun. [00:35:32] RB: It still had the wooden timbers in it though. [laughs] [00:35:33] DS: Yeah. Well, the wooden timbers was just to load up the [support?] structures. This was prior to going to Edwards for the flight test. I started mentioning before that we went to Edwards and got Edwards involved, so I went in, and I was sent up as a measly NASA peon, and I talked to Jack Balch, Paul Bickle, the director of Edwards NASA flight research center. I went in and explained our problem at the [missle?] center. Dr. Von Braun, I guess, had already written him a letter and explained some of the problems we were running into. He called all of his people together and called in one guy by the name of Bill Gray, who had been a FAA chief of FAA flight tests prior to going to work for Douglas and doing little flight test work, freelance flight test work on his own. He did the Purdue flight test at the flying TV station, the relay station. He had since come back to work for NASA, and he was assigned to the project as knowing the ins and the outs of FAA, things of this nature. [00:37:16] DS: One of the things, to show you the way people felt about Dr. Von Braun, he's in the missile business, he gets all the money from the NASA budget, Mr. Bickle gets whatever crumbs is left over, but he...Bickle was quite an avid airplane fan and gave me a couple examples of him modifying his glider. He held the national record for time aloft and flying it for a long time. Anyway, he says, “Whatever Wernher wants, we'll give it to him, even if we have to certify the airplane, say to hell with FAA.” [Bilstein laughs] So that was a little interesting… [00:38:07] DS: Then Bill Gray came on the scene and started advising me. Let me know where Conroy was trying to undercut, take shortcuts, which I was going to the FAA and say, “Watch that [inaudible] Irishman,” “I don't believe this is right,” “Are you looking at this?” “Are you looking at that?” FAA was rather reluctant at that time because they're one agency that’s liable that I know of by law for any engineering decisions. The man that approves something—structures, systems, anything in FAA—if that's not right, and they have a crash and accident, he pays himself with time in prison. If he can't be proven that some change was made or something he didn't approve himself. He's held liable by law, and CAB and Congress gives CAB the power to put that guy on the spot, and I guess that's the reason FAA, they were reluctant to comment as of this time. They says, “Okay, anything has got to come through Conroy because Conroy is the applicant for the 'Part 8’ certificate.” I just kept saying, “Look…” and the people from headquarters kept telling FAA headquarters, “Stay on this, because this is a momentous thing, something that's never been done.” [00:39:51] DS: So we went through quite a hairy, I guess you'd call it, flight test program. The plane actually performed, it's kind of like the [inaudible] performed better than the original Stratocruiser…be more responsive by adding the seventy inches after the wing at the field splice, after the trailing edge of the wing, which it did. But there was still some concern of the wash off the bubble [inaudible] section. It was always contingent, it would wash out in certain angles of attack, certain roll angles, one of your horizontal stabilizers, which would get in trouble, but we went through all this testing. Conroy—was smarter than I guess a lot of people give him credit for—sold FAA, only checking those things that were critical, which at that time, Bill Gray and I, I guess, still had our doubts that the damn thing would fly and figured that if it does, great, if it don't, great. We really had no control over flight testing. Whatever he sold FAA would do, we had to buy it because that was [inaudible] at that time. I guess it was Siemen’s directive if he had it certified, we’d buy it, we’d use it, consider the use of it. [00:41:45] DS: But anyway, it was a rather hectic thing, trying for Bill Gray's advice, trying to force Conroy to do more than what he had contracted to do with FAA to get a certificate. Through a little coercion here, a little coercion there, we were able to achieve this. One of the big things that I guess that we had, is Conroy had a guy by the name of Sandy Friezner, who was…and I do know how to spell his name…Sandy was an instrumentation man, and he’d done a considerable amount of submarine instrumentation work, oil rigs…you name it, he's done it if it's been needed to be instrumented. Sandy was one of Conroy's close friends, and sort of, thought it was great to be a citizen and try to do some of the [stupid?] things that he was doing. He was the only one that would consider the instrumentation job on this thing, so...Friezner is Sandy F-R-I-E-Z-N-E-R… [00:43:10] RB: Yeah, excuse me, I just know it…I've got another, unfortunately, interview coming up on the hour, which is really unfortunate because I'm enjoying this, I… [00:43:22] DS: …We fed all…[McNamara?] started the C5-A, we fed him information on the guppy. He did his cost-effect analysis on the side, came up with an airplane that was less than the guppy because of some of the structure loads, and some of the other things. We actually fed him information on this airplane. We had two airplanes [inaudible] ‘61…‘69…seven years, seven and a half years, and I still get involved [inaudible] on occasion people call… [00:44:15] RB: Turned out to be pretty successful didn’t they? [00:44:18] DS: Oh, it has its limitations just like the Piper's assessment, 707 and anything else. I think that's where the people in the space business don't understand, don't know is the fact that they try and strive too much for perfection because they’re in an unforgiving environment. In the airplane business, you’re in a pretty forgiving environment. [tape cuts out and restarts] [00:44:54] DS: He could've been out there, and I didn't know him at that time. He could have been out there—I got to thinking about that yesterday—he could have been out there, and I didn't know him at that time. I was observing. What I was giving you was the people were working on it at that time, but he could have been out observing the flight or something. I don’t know. Just knew the people personally involved in it at that time. [00:45:37] RB: Did Karl Heimberg's test lab have a lot to do with the Guppy? [00:45:44] DS: Karl Heimberg? I would say Karl Heimberg probably was the man here at Marshall that pushed it through and more so Von Braun and upper management because everybody that worked on the Guppy from the beginning worked for Carl Heimberg, more or less. All of the development of the Guppies was handled out of Heimberg's shop because he had, what you call, the lab responsibility for special transportation. Heimberg's outfit handled all the barges and did all the design work modifying the barges to haul Saturn stages did all the design work, and design review of the contract for modifying the Guppies. [00:46:54] RB: This was up to ‘63 anyway? [00:46:56] DS: This was up to the Super Guppy. P.M.—John Goodrum’s outfit—P.M. was, more or less, we turned the Pregnant Guppy over to PM, which was formed in ‘63, ‘64—which was called Industrial Operations at that time—to John Goodrum’s outfit. Well, it wasn’t John Goodrum’s outfit then, I guess, it was…nobody had been designated at that time to turn it over, more or less, I.O. to handle operations of it. Heimberg’s outfit handled all the technical design, special equipment requirements for Marshall [inaudible] [00:48:03] RB: There's something I want to ask you a little bit more about too, that was that McNamara used Guppy information for C-5 work analysis. [00:48:12] DS: Yeah, what we did, there was a guy at NASA headquarters who was transportation. There was two of them—there was Earl Barr and…. [00:48:24] RB: Stan Smolensky? Is that who you’re thinking of? [00:48:28] DS: No, not Smolensky. I'm talking about the transportation people that we interfaced with at headquarters—Earl Barr and Jim McCullough—that we interfaced directly with. According to Earl Barr, DOD directly contacted him, and as we developed information and everything, we more or less fed it into headquarters who, in turn, gave it to DOD. [00:49:05] RB: What kind of information were they using? [00:49:09] DS: We fed him wind tunnel data, copies of all the reports, design reports and everything, and requirements for volumetric type airplanes to carry volume loads…a bit of wind tunnel data, flight test data, and quite a…just anything they wanted or were interested in, you know, some copies of this data to Earl Barr at headquarters who in turn gave it to DOD. [00:49:47] RB: You mentioned the Pregnant Guppy, there was some concern about the air flow and empennage, would that have been…Oh, C-5, has a fairly good... [00:49:57] DS: Well, C-5 has a very high tail, it was just…At that time, the C-5A, the information we got, they were trying to determine the actual diameter that the C-5A could sit in, the optimal diameter for C-5A. It fluctuated anywhere from the diameter of this Pregnant Guppy to the present diameter, which is about twelve…twelve…or thirteen foot high, and some ten, eleven foot…it's more or less figure-eight shape type thing. The Guppy, the C-5A, it's not a real drastic, upside down figure-eight shape like the Pregnant Guppy or the Stratocruisers. But anyway, all this information we were able to get. Everything was given back to headquarters who in turn passed it on to Department of Defense to assist them in running their cost-effect analysis, to determine the actual diameter of the C-5A—which in turn, they wound up with an airplanes just like the 141—is good for carrying steel rails, tanks, concrete blocks, and sacks of cement. If you want to really carry a volume such as the S-IVB or the S-IV stage or the Titan, it can get— because of their upper structure, the bubble comes up, and the crew compartment in C-5A—you begin to run into height problems. [00:52:06] RB: Do you remember any particular difficulties or any incidents that occurred during the operation of the first Pregnant Guppy? I'm thinking of that picture you showed me in a day, was it Ellsberg [sic] Air Force Base, you said that was? Where the tail took off or something like that? [00:52:21] DS: No, it was Ellington. Yeah, we had…the Pregnant Guppy has always had…very limited due to the 4360 engine. Engines were the limiting factors. Any time you lost an engine on takeoff, you had to start looking for a damn place to land real quick because the glide of it…opposed to something like jets [inaudible]. One thing I was going to talk about with flight tests, I brought up this guy Sandy Friezner. It's a kind of [inaudible] to make this damn airplane work, you had to go in and clip about six, eight inches off the end of the props. He predicted that—from his non-engineering, swinging a mass like you do a propeller from his knowledge of his basic fundamental flying airplanes, propellers, and helicopters—he'd swing in this mass of the propeller on some wing on the arm at some CG location, and if you started chopping it off, it reduces stresses in its blade, propeller blades. Some of the original history behind the C-97 was a hollowed [derow?] blade the Air Force had used for this thing. [00:54:22] RB: What kind of blade? [00:54:23] They called it [derow?]. It’s an aluminum, hollow-casted…Some of the big problems they had on the C-97 was that the blades would separate, caused considerable problems in the loss of airplanes like they had on the C-133. Conroy's idea was that he had to have eight inches to clear the fuselage, so he said, “We gonna cut the damn blades off and go because if any nut, I'm not even an engineer, I can figure it out, it's going to reduce the stresses of this blade.” The commercial version was a steel blade, which was much better than the Air Force blade that was prepared for him. They cut the tips off this blade and had this guy Sandy Friezner to instrument it. Sure enough, Sandy Friezner’s instrumentation says the stress is reduced by a certain level, a certain percentage. [00:55:30] DS: Well, FAA has a real funny way of operating, and I guess they have to operate this way, but they says, “This is fine and good, but before we’ll accept it and certify it, we have to have the original hand-standard people do the stress survey.” I think this cost Conroy some forty…thirty…forty thousand dollars and upset him to no end because you can set out on the end of a runway and what you do is set out and run that plane through numerous sequences of flying conditions on the ground to determine the stresses and the built up stresses in the blade. You leave them off and pull them up again. Commercial outfits built the airplane burnout three and four engines sitting out there to get all this data that you need, for the prop manufacturer needs, to justify the FAA making these changes because it was certified in a certain way. When you start making changes like Conroy's making to the airplane to the props, you got to justify all this to the FAA. It's up to the applicant to prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that it in no way endangers the crew, the cargo, the people on the ground. [00:57:00] DS: Like I was telling you, we took hardly…we took the airplane and very limited spare parts. [Nose?] we didn't carry oil up there because Conroy had checked in with some of his Air Force cronies at Edwards that the particular oil that is needed for the Guppy was a bunch of surplus up at Edwards, so we just used the Air Force oil as a giveaway type thing. We used Air Force gas about eight…seven…three cents a gallon or something like that. When we got up, and the FAA finally made their thing that “Okay, you gotta run this stress survey on this prop,” Conroy went through the [old bay head?], and he and I had some very rough altercations there. Finally, I told him, “Okay, fine, I'm going to pack up and go home, and I'll just tell Marshall that you're not going to do what is required by FAA.” Finally Conroy blew his stacks and said, “Okay, go ahead and do it! Burn up the damn airplane!” We ran the survey and sure enough Sandy Freizner’s previous instrumentation predicted [the strain gauges?], we did—they did—reduce the stresses in this blade. [00:58:28] DS: [Hamstander?] thought this was so great they suggested to Conroy, “Hey, go and cut off the tips of the outboard propellers,” because they cut it off from the rounded tips which squared it off. Conroy says, “Hell, I can't afford another prop survey. I ain't even got a NASA contract yet. To hell with you!” [00:58:50] DS: Then we had some different flight tests..I think where you were mentioning about water for [ballasting?] and I said, where you’re going through flight tests, you gotta do various CG locations. The way you do this is by ballasting water tanks. You go up and you go up, you ready to fly all morning, and at Edwards, we would take off at about five…four-thirty…five o'clock. You get up [tape cuts out, inaudible] high. What Aerospace did—kind of what people did—they came up with a water ballast system. It was the day, was going out and was checking for flutter, and so we had Sandy Freizner and [Bill Covers?] on the system worked out…I don't believe it was Jack Podesky…Bobby [D’agostino?], flight engineer [tape cuts out] below the main deck. They went up and did their various CG locations by [ballasting?] out the tanks and so finally they was ready to do zero. You have to do all these cal…You’re probably familiar, you have to do all this calibration room… [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_000043_A Title A name given to the resource Stewart, Donald (Part 1) 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 Discussion about Jack Conroy and his Pregnant and Super Guppies https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/12a260c93f56882444684c51b46203ca.pdf 7d02ecc5b50c9a5f3cdc96022f0df03e 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_000042_T Title A name given to the resource Sneed, Bill (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/0bd0a0517854aec2ebafcfae7a821be0.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/54cdd3c5587bb4e45de7eff6bb27747a.mp4 43f7405297e74f43314ab4afba80a0cc 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_000042_A Title A name given to the resource Sneed, Bill 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/ed1bb3c89bb63d941b811b4ebb814cb0.pdf cfd58e225dfdefc7a7773859c8cda894 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_000041_T Title A name given to the resource Sloop, John L. (Transcript) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-12-02 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.