16 10 544 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/2680e23d1b51a80b106bfac5544ee63f.png c3ebee50fc9b847fea850938e8c3f141 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/f9199d5295e7a6e06098be18e11865fb.mp4 113c4f2c184caca50ed9cb0a7e8bfb31 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 Thiokol Oral History Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lyon, Michael Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Webb, Glen Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:02:04 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 Dr. Michael Lyon Description An account of the resource Dr. Lyon grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. He majored in aerospace engineering at Auburn, graduating in 1971. He studied for his master's, then entered the workforce at Pratt and Whitney, working there from 1972-74. He first worked at Thiokol in the Engineering department, serving as a ballastician. He discusses the company's rising concern with combustion instability, and the experience of managing computer simulations to combat it. Dr. Lyon also spent 10 years assisting the ONS Navy office with ballistics sciences, where he had a variety of responsibilities, including community outreach. Eventually, he returned to Auburn and completed his master's in 1978. He would briefly teach a high school level course on rocket science, and continued to work in ballistic design for the Navy. He would return to Huntsville in 1987 and work for the Army's Propulsion Directorate at Redstone Arsenal, which enabled him to travel abroad frequently, and participate in international scientific events. He recieved a PhD from UAH after 2001, and enjoys playing and teaching the bagpipes. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-11-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Video 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/7c5efc01fdd805cfc7bd3d0ea3e6fb52.png f792bb1c3d47fd6483f85bb881512716 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/f98b09efdaa08c673c77153bda8feee9.mp4 20a9aa3c41dab5274eb80fa85bf896d0 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 Aerospace History Interviews: I Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Cook, Lee Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Boyer, DeRoyce Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:57:02 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 Dr. Royce Boyer Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-05-02 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Oral History Collection University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Language A language of the resource EN Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Video Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Boyer https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/16ac44212281bed72ab107a86e22bf17.png 8b0e09c0ebf8c5480bbee7154df69200 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/9fd74dd5a6e312ef76fe4a8aec57b4b7.mp4 8639540fab6cd48586a1e9d582316993 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 Aerospace History Interviews: I Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Wu, S. T. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lundquist, Charles Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:44:00 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 Dr. S.T. Wu (Space History Interviews).mp4 Title A name given to the resource Dr. S. T. Wu Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-02-02 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Video 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/eaa31d50069256504ddb24cea3ab12ad.png 266a3f885c1b5542fdf19221c5082d97 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/d3dd1e8ea78f6c291a18903bde2647c1.mp4 d7c3700f1f1802e50a6fdb5aa87a781b 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 Thiokol Oral History Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed McCain, Wayne Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stokes, Cecil Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:06:49 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 Dr. Wayne McCain Description An account of the resource Wayne started working at Thiokol in 1974 and worked for them for approximately 17 years. He earned a BS in Aerospace Engineering from Auburn. He has two masters degrees and a PhD in Engineering. While with Thiokol he worked in the Preliminary Design Group and the Ignition Systems Group. He worked on the Star Wars and Missile Defence Programs and with Solid Rocket Propulsion. He currently works as a professor at Athens State University. This was filmed at a restaurant. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-12 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Video 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/b3aafcc9a8c84d77a5bfed6989853294.png fdf31117754b39121b1ee7d5762b3a36 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/8da60bb5ed46d60ea856d9c6d249236c.mp4 ea8303dec5a6b1cec076c9cbc3e40045 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 Aerospace History Interviews: I Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lucas, William Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bethet, Woody Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:55:51 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 Dr. William Lucas (Space History Interviews).mp4 Title A name given to the resource Dr. William Lucas Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/9/20?? Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Video 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/6a8210c5d4da2a82345c749f75c36671.png 6eb4f56ea4c2e478812635544359e909 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/8e63cab37c54b56ea8a2cf8bde391f18.mp4 0c3d81832867f24e7fc800059f4c894c 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 Thiokol Oral History Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stevens, William Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lundquist, Charles; and Stokes, Cecil Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:59:21 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 Dr. William Stevens Description An account of the resource Dr. Stevens went to college at Bowling Green University and earned a bachelor's in chemistry, and received his PhD from Vanderbilt. He came to Thiokol in 1959, beginning as a lab chemist. He also spent several years working at Goodyear, but returned to Huntsville and Thiokol around 1966. He mentions the company's relatively advanced technology, and discusses his experience with the company's Georgia division. Generally, he worked on solid propellant projects. He left Thiokol in 1979 to work in Washington, DC, but would return to Huntsville to serve as the director of propulsion for the Army. He discusses the challenges of working with post-Soviet Russian scientists as part of the START program (as well as earlier experience regarding diplomacy with Soviet-era Russia). After his military tenure, he became the executive director for the North Alabama Science Center for some time, then retired, spending much of his time abroad. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-10 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .MP4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Interviews Video 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/ac5a7721c27eaa2af3d41e6852b3d8b6.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/22b77769efe7556eaa1742fd072518ab.mp4 5f7b070f3236e811f45270b936b0ad0a 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 Driscoll, D.H. ("Dan") Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. and Beltz, John Stuart Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:05:11 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:35] Roger Bilstein: Okay, go ahead. [00:00:39] DH Driscoll: I came here in the ‘50s. [At that time?] the group was responsible for developing a ramjet. We're not even in the rocket business per se. This was a carryover from the way it started out of Fort Bliss where I went to work in March of ‘47 with the GE company as a lab assistant working in the combustion and fuels development part out there. Then when they came down here this continued on. Then in ‘51, I guess it was, or ‘50, shortly not too long after they moved down here the GE company lost their contract with the Army. They spread people out all over the place, and some of them they fired, and some of them were picked up in civil service. I went that time then to the Malta test station of GE where there was another part of the Hermes program going, which was a missile that be about the equivalent of a corporal-sized missile. That's where I started working on hydrogen peroxide decomposition and this kind of thing. Then I came back here in ‘53 and went to work for the government. At that time the Redstone was beginning to pick up, so…But even at that time there were no rocket engine test stands even here. The first one was the interim stand that—so-called—where the Redstones were fired that was more or less a [mood?] light and built up out of the framework of that thing is old Navy high-pressure bottles that were cut and welded to make the beams and a lot of stuff like this. The bunker where the instrumentation was were a couple old tanks that were used to store phosphorus in the old days when the Arsenal was a chemical plant as well as a shell loading operation. They used phosphorus to fill some of the or to make some of the stuff that they were putting in the shells as well as for flares or this type of thing. Those tanks were cut apart and rewelded together to form the block house. It was an honest-to-God poor man's test stand. Then the Redstone was fired on that. That was the first truly rocket engine test stand out in the area out there. [00:03:52] John Stuart Beltz: You know when you drive by today you see that bunker which is three big round things, big round pieces of, it looks like tankage. What were they? [00:04:01] DD: Those were the tanks. Those were the phosphorus storage tanks that were cut and then plate welded in there to form a room. The things, if you look out at the stand, you'll see that the columns, a lot of them are round. Those were Navy gas bottles taken off of old nitrogen trailers or something like this that the Navy had certified were no longer suitable for use, and the bottles taken off of those trailers, and then used just as simply a structural steel. So what else? [00:04:48] RB: Were you around about the time that ARPA started talking about large boosters? Were you involved in that then? [00:04:55] DD: Yes. Well, that, of course, came a lot of years later, but at that time, the—as you’re well aware—the S-I was sold as a demonstration of clustered engines. The initial build-up of that thing was done by the group that I later became in charge of when the fellow that was in charge left to go to industry. I came into it at about the ninth or tenth firing—I forget which out on the stand out there. [00:05:42] RB: Of the S-I? [00:05:43] DD: Of the S-IT, the test vehicle. The first shot out of the bag we burned all the turf, and I remember that on the first test run that I had anything to do with, direct responsibility for. That was caused by simply having too cold an environment in the boattail, too cold LOX, and the combination causing a LOX rich lead in the gas generator, which burned the damn turbines through. But then I had charge of that all through the rest of the development. I mean the testing part of it through the rest of the development and through the acceptance firing of flight stages before they went to Kennedy. Then later on the S-IC. We went through pretty much the same kind of procedure although considerable less number of firings. [00:06:54] RB: Were you involved in upper stages as much at that time or [inaudible]? [00:06:58] DD: Indirectly with having the responsibility for the government for sort of monitoring and bird-dogging what the contractor was doing either in Sacramento or the S-IV and the S-IVB were fired or down Mississippi where the S-II and later in the S-IC were fired. We had guys and I myself spent a lot of time in both of those places doing, well, it was more monitoring, cajoling, kicking in the ass, whatever you want to call it, just sort of keeping the thing rolling and going on the government side. In that direction, yes, we were involved with the upper stages also. Then we, of course, had an S-IVB stand out here that was a geometrical similar to the flight stage we used for a J-2 engine primarily. [00:08:03] RB: But most your work done was done with the S-I and the S-IC? [00:08:08] DD: The development work. This came because of the nature of what Marshall wanted to do. They developed basically the S-I, and they developed the S-IC in spite of the fact that Boeing later took it over, and Chrysler took it over. Boeing claims to be its developer, but they aren't. The thing was designed at Marshall. Boeing also designed it but parallel. [laughs] [00:08:41] RB: Well, that's interesting. You really can't say that the S-IV or S-IVB had a parallel thing. As I understand it, you know, Marshall came up with, you know, basic specifications and a mission configuration. Douglas took it and then went ahead with the design configuration. [00:08:58] DD: Oh yeah, the S-I and the S-IC followed pretty much the same route as the Redstone and Jupiter. See, it was a carryover and a gradual dying of the arsenal system. You familiar with what the arsenal system was? Well, the S-IC was really the death throes of the arsenal approach at Marshall. Because of that—and I'll explain now the other part of it—Boeing was given a prime contract and considered that they had that responsibility, but they really were never let in in that respect nor were they really prepared when they got that contract to do the job. [00:09:54] JSB: Wasn't in the early phases of the contract negotiation, Marshall would put together the first three [inaudible]… [[00:10:02] DD: Boeing though, in fact, has never accepted this concept as demonstrated or as measured by the number of people they brought on board. They manned up day one as though they were going to do the whole bloody thing, and they didn’t. [00:10:21] JSB: Was that kind of wasteful of their manpower? [00:10:22] DD: Damn right it was! One day I remember—and I don't know whether you want this [laughs] on the record. I don't care, okay? It's a fact. You can go back in the newspaper and check it. One day after Boeing was announced as a contractor, I got a call to come up to Heimberg's office, that there was Boeing management there. I went up there, and here was Nelson from Boeing and Cully and Dunnigan and the guy who is now one of our aldermen, Mr. Joe…What's his name? One of the ones that was elected last year, writes newsletters to people…Joe, oh, heck…Well, at any rate, they proceeded—Stoner was with him too—and they proceeded in to talk about their manpower and how they would like to know how things were done and all these good things and how they were going to move in and do this job. At that time what we had in the S-1C area was a hole in the ground. We were in the process of blasting out foundation, so that it could be made larger because of the change from the two to the three to the five engine business. Finally, we ran out of capacity after we had gone down the road with the construction of the stand and had to blast out and start over to a certain degree to increase the capacity for the five engine size. They proceeded to say, “Well, we've got all these good guys. We're gonna come in, you know, we're gonna do all these test operators.” I didn't say anything in the meeting with Heimberg, but I said, “Fellas, do you like to have a little tour of the area?” They said, “Oh, yeah, sure!” We got out the back door of the place, and I turned around. I said, “Now looky here! Nobody has told me that you have a damn thing to do with the responsibility for testing that S-IC out in this area, and until somebody does tell me with authority, I'm going to presume that you don't have any. I don't know who the hell told you you did, but I'm telling you you don't.” That was I believe on a Thursday. Friday night's paper—Huntsville Times—had a big headline: “800 Boeing People Arrived Responsible For A Test Program Testing Of The S-IC And Statifying” and all this kind of stuff, and this is the manager the local manager Joe whatever the hell his name is came up from Eglin and all this blah blah blah about all the good jobs they were going to create here and this thing. That weekend the Boeing company in Seattle told 200 of their people that were in the test business in general terms to be down here Monday morning and ready, and all we had was a bloody hole in the ground out there. [00:14:21] JSB: What was the purpose of something like that? To get Marshall into giving them the test program? [00:14:24] DD: Sure. Sure. On Monday morning I cut this damn article out. In fact, I was packing my stuff; I just saw the damn thing at home. I took it in the Heimberg's office, and I said, “Hey, Karl, what the hell is this?” He called up Slattery and chewed him a new assh*le. [laughs] He says, “Well, who released this thing?” Slattery says, “Not me!” It was a powerplay by the Boeing company, but it succeeded in giving them about 200 times three or four about 800 extra man-years on their contract. They sat in the damn HIC building down there with those 200 jackasses until we got this damn program going out here. But at that time all was out there was a damn hole in the ground. We were still over firing S-Is. [00:15:31] JSB: How did they get 800 man-years out of it? [00:15:33] DD: Well, they were in four years too soon and 200 people. Those 200 people stayed here. [00:15:40] JSB: Did Marshall try to beat them back at all or was it because things were relatively good they could afford to carry that extra weight? [00:15:48] DD: That's right. It's just another one of those things. But they did, man. They upheavaled [sic] that whole 200 people and created all kinds of problems for them and their families and disposal of their houses and all this crap. [00:16:08] JSB: Did these people eventually go down to MTF when the test program got going down there? [00:16:13] DD: We eventually had about eighty of them out here in a training role like we did with Chrysler. But a lot of them then ended up down in MTF and at Michoud. [00:16:31] RB: As you started up with your own test program out here what kind of problems and difficulties did you run into? [00:16:39] DD: Well, the first problem we had was with the steel that was being used for the load platform. It was tremendously thick plates. It was a high strength alloy steel, and the damn stuff started cracking. We had a big ring tail doozy with the US Steel Company over that thing. They had consultants in, and we had consultants, and all this kind of stuff. I guess in the S-IC, it went remarkably smooth. A lot of the stuff we had rung out on the single F-1 stands before we got to the full cluster. They were pretty much a good representative geometric simulation of a segment of the cluster. A lot of the procedures and these kind of things, measuring programs, and that type of thing were pretty well worked out before we came to the cluster. As a comparison we had something like, my mind remembers about thirty-five, thirty-six firings on the S-I. We had seventeen on the S-IC. The S-I got to be…There's no other program so you just keep on going. That'll lengthen your testing program. [laughs] If something doesn't come in to replace something you don't shut it off, you just keep on going. [00:18:26] JSB: Did you learn anything about making those refinements and procedures that were later developed for the F-1? [00:18:32] DD: For the F-1, yeah, sure. [00:18:34] JSB: Measuring and things like that? [00:18:36] DD: Oh yeah, but one thing that did come out of the F-1 was an awful lot of rougher on instrumentation than the S-I was. We had some difficulties getting reliable transducers and this type of thing. I guess the main thing was the learning process was just the bigger, biggerness factor [laughs] of the whole thing. But basically we didn't really have that many difficulties. [00:19:09] JSB: Did any of the Boeing people come in for training on the S-I so they could extrapolate information to the S-IC? [00:19:15] DD: Well, that was another funny phenomena with the Boeing Company. About a year, and I guess this you ought to take off the record. [00:19:29] RB: Okay. [tape stops and restarts] [00:19:31] JSB: Was this parallel design, was a lot of design work done back in Seattle or did they actually wait until they got set up in Michoud? By this time the design was pretty well far along. [00:19:39] DD: The design was done here. [00:19:42] JSB: But they did some parallel designs like actuator arms and stuff like that. [00:19:48] DD: Actuators were GFE to Boeing. The Astrionics lab went out and contracted directly for the development of those actuators. In fact, there are pieces of the whole Saturn stack that its evolution changed. I mean it evolved into a different thing as of today, but there were pieces of that whole thing that either the design or the hardware itself or the design and the hardware were furnished to the contractors to put into that bird. The design of the IU for instance and the electrical boxes that went down through the stack from the IU on down were a GFE design to North American and to Douglas and to IBM. The actuators were different. In some cases they were GFE'd like the S-IC. In the case of the S-II and the S-IVB, they were furnished by the contractor themselves. Marshall was all woven in and out of that thing. As I say, it was a death throes of a group of people that were brought up in the arsenal approach. You don't just erode that kind of thing rapidly. [00:21:31] JSB: Now if Boeing did do some design, where did they do this? Did they do this back in [Seattle?]… [00:21:35] DD: They did it down in the HIC building. No, Seattle had very little. They had Wichita did, you know, the… [00:21:45] JSB: Wirings. [00:21:47] DD: Yeah, some of the structural parts and things like that. [00:21:52] JSB: Tooling? Wichita did mainly the tooling? [00:21:55] DD: No, Wichita furnished some parts. I think they made the [bores?] and some of these for the bulkheads even though they were welded together at Michoud. Pieces of the wiring were done up at Michoud. The billets were made in a shipyard down on the Mississippi coast some place. Then the welding together of them and the machining of the wiring itself was done at the Michoud. [00:22:22] JSB: Did they do a couple of wirings here? [00:22:25] DD: Oh yeah, a lot of these procedures and things were worked out over here in ME. What the hell is it called now? PE? [00:22:33] JSB: P&VE? [00:22:35] DD: No, the shops. Manufacturing engineering is what it used to be called. Now it's called propulsion [inaudible]…Product and manufacturing technology or some hell damn thing. It's a shops area, fabrication area. It used to be called Fab Lab back—and I still call it Fab Lab. See, a lot of those procedures were worked out over here: how to weld the bulkheads, how to attach the…And the first—as you pointed out—the first three birds were made here. It was the T bird, the D bird, and the first flight bird. Then the first and second flight bird I guess. I'd have to go back and refresh my memory. The first bird made at Michoud was the facilities bird and then flight bird three. When three came across the stand up here, Boeing—through the process of fighting with each other [laughs]—Boeing was responsible for the static firing—by contract—the static firing of that bird. They came in with their flag on the stand and all this, and I told them, “Get that g*ddamn flag off of that stand, you sons of b*tches!” I made them take it down. I had a running gun battle with the Boeing Company the whole time. [00:24:23] RB: Did you do some work on the pogo problems? On the S-IC? [00:24:31] DD: Yeah, the S-IC and also…Over in the components area, they did on the S-II. We also had the S-II structural test area, which was structural test stand, which was down by the S-IC stand there. Which was not set up for that purpose but later was used to find the contributing pieces of the structural compliance and these kind of things that went into the whole model, the structural model, the dynamics model of the Saturn. That data was gleaned out of that test stand there. [00:25:26] RB: Could you go in more to the pogo problems that you had and the studies and fixes that finally came out of it? [00:25:34] DD: Oh, okay. Well, I can remember back, one the first things that von Braun kept hitting people over the head with was pogo on the Saturn V. People had witnessed pogo before. One of the classic ones I guess was the Bomarc, which was a pressure fed system that literally tore itself to pieces. Are you familiar with what pogo basically is? In other words, a divergent coupling between the variation and thrust and the response of the damn structural systems. The thing starts to feed on itself, and finally something gives. Everybody said, “Well, hell, pogo, we've looked at it and all this, and we ain't got no pogo in Saturn V.” [00:26:35] RB: Marshall was saying this too? [00:26:37] DD: Oh, yeah! Yeah. [00:26:39] JSB: Was that because of the large structure, and I thought there was no damping in it to... [00:26:42] DD: It was because of the analytical assumptions they had made, which turned out to just not be right. Now, there are two kinds or there can be pogo within a pogo if I get myself straight. The S-IC was more like a true pogo. In other words, the total vehicle really got involved with the thing. The S-II was—I've heard it referred to as mini pogo or something like this—but it was within the bird, within that stage itself, the structural compliance of the thrust frame, of the thrust structure with the engines, and the natural frequency of the whole thing. That thing was a miss, well, two things wrong. Rocketdyne had by an order of magnitude underestimated the compliance of their engine in both cases: the F-1 and the J-2. They didn't know, in spite of running 850 million tests, they didn't know the true compliance of those engines. The data that was later gathered by us on the stands out there showed by pulsing the engine. In other words, you take and you feed a pulse in and see what—you know, is it attenuated, is it increased, and how does it feed through the engine—showed that they were off by an order of magnitude, no two ways about it. That was one thing that was wrong in the assumptions that were made in the analytical thing. But all this happened after the fact and not before the fact. [00:29:02] RB: All this came up then after the first Saturn V flight? [00:29:06] DD: That's right, yeah. Then there was a phenomena—and this is my own analysis, which was later proven but never really admitted—there's a phenomena with any centrifugal type pump that at a certain set of conditions, that thing and a certain design of inducer, as all of the Rocketdyne engines have. You can make it happen on any of them, but the Rocketdyne engines—they claim don't have it, but it does happen because it's a natural phenomenon. We had it back on the Jupiter, and it is a point when… Are you familiar at all with the... Are you guys engineers? [00:30:02] RB: No. [00:30:03] DD: No? [00:30:04] RB: We're historians. [00:30:05] DD: [laughs] Oh, okay. Well, maybe I'm not doing any good. [00:30:08] RB: No, you are, because this is what we're trying to get into, exactly what you're talking about. [00:30:13] JSB: We're trying to be historians of technology. [00:30:15] DD: [laughs] I see. There's a thing called an NPSH, that's positive suction head, head curve, okay? As you come along here with a pump, which means that you're dropping pump inlet conditions with a cryogenic, or with any liquid, it's either the temperature is going up so that you're coming closer to the vapor pressure or you're dropping the pressure, which says that you're coming closer to the vapor pressure. In any centrifugal pump, there's a point where you get a negative slope like this before the damn performance goes down to zero. What happens in this thing, if you dwell in here, is that if you are looking at your pump inlet pressure—now if I have pump here, and I'm coming in like so, and out like so, see—if I look at this pressure, pump inlet pressure here, I will see in this region right here, the nicest damn oscillator you ever saw. The trouble is that this point will be a function of a specific number like one empirical relationship that's used is called a T-H-O-M-A factor. Now I don’t remember all of what's in it now, but any pump of a given class in geometry, you can correlate the point at which this phenomena occurs to within a very small variance. For any given build, in terms of what you normally look at, the NPSH, it'll look like these things aren't really like that. Every pump will have this happen at a different set of operating conditions, but a common value of this thing. [tape cuts out] [00:32:54] DD: What they did on the F-1 and the J-2 is—especially the J-2, in my opinion—they ran into this thing again. The phenomena leads you to believe that you have some great big mystery because not every one of them will do it because not all of them have been calibrated to run through that spot. One of them will, or five of them will, and five of them won't. [00:33:22] JSB: Is there a way to calibrate them so they won't run through that spot, or you don't know? [00:33:25] DD: Yeah, you have to find out what it is. The trouble was we didn't find out. Rocketdyne and ourselves stuck our head in the sand and said, “Oh man, they can't do that!” But it's a phenomena that's in every damn centrifugal pump. Normally you just stay away from it. On the Jupiter, what happened was that they took the damn inducer—I don't know whether you know what an inducer looks like, just like a fan blade—and they drilled holes in the damn thing, which spoiled. See, this thing would appear to give you something for nothing. In effect, it is giving you something for nothing. If you look at the inducer as just a flow passage, if I have this flowing absolutely full of solid liquid, my delta P loss will be a value. If I now mix that with a gas, like either of the vapor of the liquid I'm in there or if I inject air, I will—at that same flow rate—I will get a lower delta P because of the reduction in friction losses along this wall. In effect, I am at this point getting a more efficient pump. The trouble with that is that the dang thing starts to feed on itself. This thing, if you were able to control your pump inlet, you could sit there and have that thing whistle all day long. It's a beautiful sine generator. When you put a pipe on here, this thing then takes the natural frequency of that pipe. What you get in here is not a pure sine wave. You get a typical water hammer. Hell, I can't remember now. Water hammer has a little jag in it like that, and it may come here. What that is is a reflection of this wave coming back down again. But you can do that with any centrifugal pump. [00:35:37] RB: Well, when you're talking about centrifugal pumps, on the J-2 you're only talking about the LOX pump because they had an axial flow. [00:35:45] DD: They had an axial flow pump on the F side. Yeah, it was the LOX pump. It was the LOX pump on the Jupiter, and it was the LOX pump on the F-1. [00:35:53] RB: What happened then when you get into the S-IVB with only one J-2 engine? It just so happened that all those were calibrated? [00:36:01] DD: They were operated different enough that they didn't get into this situation. There was a little bit on some of them too. It didn't get coupled with that damn thrust beam like you had on the S-II. It had a rubber thrust structure. That thing had a tremendous movement. [00:36:29] RB: Oh yeah. [00:36:30] DD: And the one that was giving them a fit was this center engine. When that center engine got to going hard enough, if you remember on…What flight was it that it shut itself down? [00:36:44] RB: 502 I think. [00:36:46] DD: Was it two? I don't remember. One of the later [inaudible]... [00:36:51] RB: There was a restart problem on 502, yeah. [00:36:54] DD: That damn thing, this thing got so bad in conjunction with this beam, that it fortuitously shut itself down. It went to the point where it caused this pump to cavitate so badly that the fire went out. It had a self-healing [laughs] type of phenomenon. [00:37:25] JSB: And the S-II stage, just the center engine is the one that put the accumulator on? [00:37:31] DD: The S-II stage started out with only the center engine accumulator, but I'm not sure whether they didn't put that on all five. I got off onto this g*ddamn shuttle and a lot of other stuff [inaudible]. [00:37:49] JSB: The expressions I've seen supporting the accumulators, they really don't know or can't predict mathematically the pogo effect yet. It still remains, most people talk to a bit of a mystery, but the accumulator works so they just put it on. [00:38:04] DD: The accumulator detunes this. It doesn't get rid of this phenomenon. The phenomena is there, but the accumulator detunes this fluid column away from the natural frequency of that beam. Now, the whole mechanism of how pogo and all those kinds of things is really not mathematically expressed too well. People can't explain it. I think one of the reasons they can't explain it and don't want to explain it is they're going to refuse to believe that this will happen at every pump. If you operate the damn thing within that region, it'll happen. The way I stumbled across this thing was a report from Oak Ridge that had been running back on the Jupiter. They'd been running up at Oak Ridge some pumps with water. [00:39:06] RB: You mean Tullahoma? [00:39:07] DD: No, I mean Oak Ridge. [00:39:08] RB: Oak Ridge? [00:39:09] DD: Yeah. It was an AEDC report. I mean an AEC report. These pumps were probably liquid metal pumps or something like this, but they were calibrating with water. They observed this phenomenon. I got a hold of the Rocketdyne pump guys and said, “Hey, fellas,”— this was back in the Jupiter days—I said, “Hey, fellas, what the hell is this kind of thing? Does that happen in a pump?” They went digging back through their stuff when they found out they had observed some of these things in their water tunnel, and sure as hell. All these companies are great. They know there's a problem, but they wait and play the odds on it, never bothering anything. So they, uh... [00:40:04] JSB: How can they do that with a manned rating of the engines? [00:40:07] DD: It doesn't tear anything up. It doesn't bother anything. Normally it doesn't do [a darn thing to it?]. [00:40:15] JSB: Since the reliability has to be so high, why wouldn't they try to redesign for that initially? [00:40:21] DD: Well, they don't know how to do it—to design out of it—necessarily. What it is is that you have to operate away from there. It's just like you don't intentionally ever operate down here because this is a loss in performance. [00:40:42] RB: What about some of the scale model testing that went on? I understand, Dave, to say you're involved in scale model testing? [00:40:49] Dave [Christensen?]: No. I asked him, he said no. I’m familiar with it. [00:40:53] RB: Yeah. [00:40:54] DD: You mean... [00:40:55] [DC?]: Fritz [inaudible] [00:40:58] DD: Fritz, uh…Well, what we used to do was, uh… For the Cape—it started out really, I guess, for the Cape—we'd set up a cluster of small motors. We did it for ourselves, too, to be able to check out what the flow pattern, water flow pattern, and quantity requirements were for flame deflectors and these types of things. Then it got over as things got bigger into the acoustics, like in the S-I, the near and far field acoustic levels that were generated from clustering that many, in essence, putting out that much thrust. In those two areas, there was a series—always a series—of models put together in order to help the people predict or get a handle on what they had to do to put in their specs—for the equipment at the Cape, for the launch deflector, for the heating on the members of our test stands and this kind of stuff—where we'd be likely to have to insulate for full duration firings, and those kinds of things. Fritz used to design, and the shop built these small scale models. They were used both in the, well, it started out in the S-I. He also had a rig that would allow the thing to rise, and there was a little scale model of the LUT, and gave them some indication of what kind of, you know, protection they would need for the lift-off times and this kind of thing. They made some significant changes to their initial designs at the Cape on the basis of the scale model tests. [00:43:01] RB: The acoustic problem got to be pretty severe, didn't it? Isn't that where a lot of the—I'm trying to remember where is the report I read somewhere—over fifty percent of the potential damage even to the vehicle can accumulate from acoustical stuff. Does that ring a bell? Is that right? [00:43:21] DD: Well, designers have a tendency at times to overdo things. If you take the, it isn't only just the dB level, it's also the frequency. If I have high dBs in the low frequency range, I can really tear things up because there's a lot of energy tied up in the low frequency thing. If I have a predominance of my total energy spectrum, which can look something like that, for instance, or even more sharp, this is dB. What those care…If I now plot, well, I didn't want to plot that anyway. Let me use this as time. When the missile takes off, the composite dB goes something like so as viewed at the tail end. What this is is a ground reflection of the acoustics feeding back and being reinforced with what's there. What they do is they take that thing and put a safety factor on top of it. But that thing only exists for, say, less than a half a second. Sure, things can break in a half a second, but then when they put them on their shake tables or in their acoustic tunnels or whatever, they take and flatten that out. It's a time safety factor and a level safety factor, and then the thing has to stand up for that length of time. No, the way we got into the acoustics business out there was the community. When we were firing the S-I on the east side of the S-I tower there, we had to make sure that our weather conditions, the atmospheric conditions, were not such as to create problems in the town, like the shopping center windows down there on the parkway, and all that kind of stuff. [00:45:52] RB: I heard one story once that when they first started this, they had a pretty low overcast one day, and they fired up an S-I, and the shock wave deflected up and came somewhere in Birmingham. [00:46:07] DD: You've got pieces of the story. One day when we were firing the S-IC, locally it was a beautiful atmosphere. Let me go back and say something else. Overcast is no criteria. It's a temperature inversion situation, which can happen to you on a clear day. What it is is your waves go up and they get bent as they're going through that thing, and then they start to come back down and are reflected basically just like a refraction of light. Locally, that day it was fine, and we fired out here. A little while later my wife called me and said, “Say, did you know there was an earthquake in Birmingham?” I said, “Hell, you're in Birmingham!” They got to checking into it, and sure as hell it was our firing had refocused and come down in Birmingham. Of course, nobody in Birmingham knew what the hell was going on with the S-IC in Huntsville. There were all kinds of calls and people all disturbed and all this kind of crap. This is mostly the low frequency stuff. That's what hurts you structurally. People feel it in their chest and this kind of thing. What we used to do was we had a horn, a big horn. We used to set out. First, there is a measuring net now throughout the city on this side and that side. In those days, what we did was we had mobile measuring of bits, and they'd go out some place the day of the firing, and they'd start running every hour. Sound condition, once it was calibrated with the real thing, which when our first go around was pretty crude. We stayed away rather than to take a chance, but as we got more information, more knowledge, it became pretty much a better routine. [00:48:38] RB: Did you use sounding balloons then to check out the temperature inversion factors? [00:48:41] DD: Yeah, we used to get all this good data. We used to start releasing balloons around there on the weather station on the arsenal. [00:48:55] RB: What's your favorite story from the Saturn days? Or stories? . [00:49:10] DD: I don't know. [00:49:15] RB: Do you have any things that you really stand out that you really make sure to tell your family and so on as time goes on? [00:49:27] DD: Well, there's something that we know we won't learn, if there's ever anything like that again, not to build up to such a big operation, and then pay the penalty as we are now trying to shrink that thing. It's horrendous to try and shrink after something has been inflated to the degree of the whole Apollo operation was. [00:49:57] JSB: Do you think they could have gotten by doing it within the Kennedy time frame without those extra people during that decade? [00:50:03] DD: Yes. I do. Sincerely believe that. [00:50:10] JSB: Don't you think it was built up during this period because they did expect more follow-on work in the beginning? [00:50:17] DD: Yeah, I don't think it was done. Of course, those things are kind of hard to separate after they happen. Did it happen because of this or did it happen the other way around? I think that basically one of the things that, and it's I guess a matter of record even, that it really had two purposes. One was to pump the economy, and the other was to accomplish the technical feat. These two don't have to be related. You can pump the economy using a technical job as the rationale for it, but you can multiply the number of people that you get onto the thing way out of proportion to what the job really is. No, I think it could have been done considerably less people, and in the same time. [00:51:27] RB: Within Heimberg's lab, did you get into problems concerning logistics? I think especially of the Guppy aircraft and the logistics of the S-IV as well. [00:51:40] DD: Well, Heimberg is the guy that I guess is primarily responsible for that Guppy aircraft being in existence. He was the one that came and pushed it when this guy Conroy came with the idea and this type of thing. At one time, Heimberg also had the barge business and these kind of things, and they were later split off. He was merely filling a gap that he saw existed and filled it up. That was then of course taken by somebody else after that. The transportation handling and the transportation part was in his lab. He inherited part of that from launching and handling. Launching and handling was disbanded at the time that the launch crew went down there permanently as a center. There was still part of it left here, the handling equipment and some of those kind of things, the group of people like Hamilton and Spivey and some of these guys that then continued to have the handling equipment responsibility. [00:53:11] RB: What about some of the personalities in terms of their managerial roles? Could you characterize Heimberg for us? Is there any relationship to von Braun and maybe Lee James and Oswald Lange and some of these people? [00:53:25] JSB: Von Braun himself. [00:53:30] DD: Well, let me start with von Braun. Von Braun ran an open shop. Any cat who thought he had a good idea had a pretty good chance to get in and tell von Braun about it. That's the kind of shop he ran. Consistent with that, he hardly ever said no. To anything. That's the part that Rees played. [00:54:07] JSB: He was the man that went... [00:54:10] DD: He was the one that had to say no because when von Braun was enthusiastic about everything. [laughs] Of course, there's bounds to that when you're trying to accomplish something on a schedule. You just can't go [inaudible]. He played a different role in that respect. He was also the chief designer. He could say no in that sense, but not in the sense of new and different things and what's the matter with this and that kind of thing. The two guys, in my opinion, together were an extremely competent pair. Separately, they maybe had grown a little too much lopsided or something or whatever you want to call it. [00:55:16] JSB: They operated consciously as a team during this period? [00:55:19] DD: Oh, yeah. All these years. [00:55:23] JSB: I know they do on the organization chart with this idea of “I'll be the great placater and get people too enthused about the program, and you go around and make the managerial decisions.” But did von Braun make those maybe privately with Rees and then tell Rees that this had to go or was that Rees's decision himself? [00:55:44] DD: Rees would be more like an operations manager type of thing. A lot of times, von Braun had promised people the moon. [laughs] Then it would be up to Rees to say, “Well, he didn't really mean that you're going to have a moon, fella.” [laughs] That type of thing. I think that von Braun grew to expect that over the years. [Inaudible] that they sat down and consciously said, “Hey, this is the way we're going to divide the thing.” I don't know. [00:56:27] JSB: Did that cause any bitterness in people who were disappointed when their pet schemes got canceled? [00:56:33] DD: Oh, hell yes! [laughs] [00:56:35] JSB: I'm thinking of [Willy Reichert?] and the concept of parallel staging. I talked to him once when he was back in Germany. [00:56:42] DD: He was back just not too long ago. [00:56:45] JSB: He said that he was led to believe that if parallel staging didn't work on the Saturn I, that they might try it on the Saturn V. There wasn’t a provision for even after the first seven clustered stages to try parallel with the tanks that fall off, the tanks and engines that fall off in the center segment. [00:57:07] DD: I don't know. [00:57:10] JSB: He claimed that von Braun was very enthusiastic about that, but nothing ever happened. Maybe because [Koelle?] didn't like it very well. [00:57:17] DD: Rudy had something going there, and I'm not sure what it was. Obviously it was enough to make him mad. He left the country. I think Rudy is a good man back in those days too. [00:57:41] RB: Do you think that the size of the space program and the size of the program that Marshall managed generated any particular new managerial techniques and systems? Or were they just old tried and true methods that were polished up a little to work? [00:58:00] DD: Well, a lot of them were drug in from military, large military programs. In other words, the Minuteman and Stoner and company and a lot of these management procedures that grew out of that kind of paper control systems fed right into the damn Apollo. It was really locked in once the fire happened, and it became an uncertainty. It also got locked in for another reason, and that is control of money. Or rather control of a program with a, let's say, an abundance of money. With an abundance of money, you can kill your time scale because people will have the freedom to just rinky dink with any damn thing they want to. You turn around and you find out, well hell, I thought that damn thing was designed. You find out, oh yeah it was. That was three weeks ago. But hell, we put a thousand guys on it, and now we got [inaudible], but it won't be here for a year. It grew out of that kind of thing too I believe. [00:59:25] DD: Paper systems are not necessarily a government by themselves invention. The aircraft industry, I think it's a carryover from World War II of every job no matter how big it is is production oriented. Even if they’re gonna go for five of the damn things, they get into this god-darned cookbook type of paper control. A lot of it is they have to do because of their fluctuations in employment. The government will come along and they'll say, “Okay fellas, here's your damn contract. It's Friday afternoon. Oh dammit, we're going to come out there on Monday morning, and all we want to see is assh*les and elbows, fellas.” The only way that you can do that is with a cookbook. They have big reams of procedures and all this that are independent basically of what the job is. [01:00:44] DD: I mean it's a job to develop a flying machine of some kind. They go out on the street, and they get Joe Blow and so on and they look at his credentials, “Yes sir, sit right down there. There's your damn book. Now go to work. By Tuesday afternoon we expect you to be hitting it, fella.” I think this kind of a thing is a carryover from the days when we got caught with our pants down in World War II. People said, “We ain't never going to have that happen to us again.” The way you do that is that you build a continuity. When the money isn't there, you build it in paper and store it until the next pump up the wagon comes along. People that say it's all the government's fault on paper, it is indirectly, but it's out of circumstances. [01:01:35] DD: I think that the money doesn't flow, that the distribution of programs to companies is not even because of the procuring and selling and programming problems that you have with Congress and all these good things. Companies will have that paper no matter. It's one of the defenses they use when you tell them, “Hey, how the hell it takes you this much money to do this job. It's only a little old job.” Ah, it's your damn paper. You, government, your requirements, but those companies have it up the gazoo within their own operation. It's because of this business of complete flexibility and hiring. Not complete flexibility, but lack of longevity in the relationship between the individual and the company. He's bound by the Ten Commandments that go with that company. He doesn't have to ask, and nobody has to tell him this is what it is or he doesn't have to invent anything new, he just “That's what you do, fella.” Then they get a policeman to watch him: QC. [01:02:56] RB: What about Lee James? What's your recollection of his method of operation? [01:03:03] DD: Lee James was a guy who recognized that he was not strong technically. In my opinion, he was a good manager. I think that he operated, in my experience, a relatively open shop. O'Connor was a good manager, too. The Apollo program had fortune, well, maybe it was more than fortune, but with guys like Phillips and O'Connor, these were unusual human beings. It wasn't because they were generals or anything like that. To have found civilians of that caliber would have been difficult. We're just fortunate to have those two characters. James was a good manager. Rudolph had James' predecessor in the Saturn V. He was an extremely finicky old man. He used to really worry his troops, but he was very meticulous. I'd say a good manager and really was the one within that whole thing that picked up and implemented or adapted the various management schemes that were later used in the Apollo. Lange is a… [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_000012_A Title A name given to the resource Driscoll, D.H. ("Dan") 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 D. H. Driscoll recounts his career from joining General Electric at Fort Bliss in 1947 through his work at Redstone Arsenal and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, describing the transition from ramjet research to the development and testing of the Redstone and Saturn launch vehicles. He recalls the improvised early Redstone test facilities, built from repurposed military equipment, and later his leadership of Saturn I (S-I) and Saturn V first-stage (S-IC) testing, including engine development, acceptance testing, and oversight of contractor work. Driscoll argues that Marshall engineers—not contractors such as Boeing—were the primary designers of the S-I and S-IC, and he describes frequent conflicts with Boeing over authority, staffing, and testing responsibilities. He also discusses major technical challenges, including F-1 engine development, instrumentation, structural testing, and the investigation of pogo oscillations, offering his own explanation that pump dynamics and engine compliance were underestimated in the original analyses. Beyond technical issues, he reflects on acoustic testing, launch infrastructure, and the evolution of Marshall's engineering practices, while praising Wernher von Braun's open, idea-driven leadership and contrasting it with Rees's role as the practical decision-maker. Driscoll concludes that Apollo succeeded with exceptional managers and engineers but believes the program employed far more people than necessary, arguing that political and economic considerations contributed to its rapid expansion beyond purely technical requirements. https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/681065bba73d17cd493d98bac6771c89.jpg cc0c4f909af1a8ef79e706ad5968148a https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/b65499578d964030cb03129118fc5062.mp4 cdda3c29535d3b921a09e4e407876df6 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 Christensen, David 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_crst_000006_A Title A name given to the resource Driscoll, Dan Description An account of the resource Role of GE in early US missile programs. Early developments in missiles and rockets in Texas and Huntsville Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 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/c6f3379dff750c9b694167738ef215a3.jpg 4598197eb9b09fa4ae86fb6882190ee7 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/8899a0554621955e074b548bf66ccba2.mp4 ed5d3c977cbbda94837b3a576cc40487 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 Drummond, Floyd M. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bilstein, Roger E. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:45:36 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [00:00:07] John Stuart Beltz: Interview with Drummond on J-2 engines. I wonder if we could begin by having you make some comments on your personal experience in the J-2 engine program when you came into it, some of the things you remember most, and maybe we get into more specific questions. [00:00:31] Floyd Drummond: Well, okay, I'll tell you when we started and how long I was with it. In November of 1959, it became public knowledge that a lot of we civilians here at Huntsville were going to transfer from the Army to NASA. Actually in December of 1959, while we were still on the Army payroll, we started working with NASA people out of Washington. We started on the technical requirements for a liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine. Had a heavy input into the request for proposal that went out in early February of 1960, and had a heavy part in the evaluation of those proposals. The decision as to what contractor got the job was made on May 31st, 1960 by the administrator. We actually started negotiating the contract in June, spent July that way and August. Went under contract to the Rocketdyne Division of North American on September 1st, 1960. Of course, some 4,500 of us had been on the NASA payroll since July 1st, 1960. I was with the J-2 project from December of ‘59 until August of ‘67. It was quite a forward step I think in the state of the art on liquid hydrogen engines. The previous work on this type engine had been done by Lewis Research Center in Cleveland in conjunction with the Pratt & Whitney Company in West Palm Beach, Florida. They had built the RL-10 which is on your list there. [00:02:38] Roger Bilstein: We talk to Stewart this afternoon I think. [00:02:40] FD: You talk to Rod Stewart this afternoon? [00:02:41] RB: We will talk to him. [00:02:43] FD: That was a much smaller engine around—I think—fifteen, maybe up to 20K thrust, before they were through. The J-2 was started at 200,000 pounds thrust, and it was uprated during the development of it where it could go up to 230, 235 with adjustment of the orifices [they use?] to drive the pumps faster. We took the conventional approach in the development of a rocket engine with a regeneratively cooled bell nozzle, which we had some ten to twelve years experience with alcohol and kerosene engines. We tried to stick to conventional approaches as much as possible. We tried to minimize the development time. We ran into the normal problems you do in any engine development program. You don't know your real problems until you put the thing together. It's an entire engine. You can component test the thing to death. You don't know your problems until you put it all together and try to make it work as a system. The development time took longer than many of us had originally hoped it would. I guess we spent some sixty months before we actually had an engine that we felt was worthy of first flight. Spent longer than that getting it developed to the state where we wanted it. [00:04:29] RB: What kind of development problems did you run into that lengthened your development time? Can you pick out some specific things and give us some examples of your fix on them, how you solved them finally? [00:04:45] FD: Well, I think our big problem was in the turbo machinery area. We again took an approach which had some development behind it. We took an actual flow turbopump or pump rather for the hydrogen where all of our experience in the kerosene and liquid oxygen area had been in a centrifugal pump. Hydrogen incidentally being so light. Rocketdyne had been doing some work on what was called the Rover project, a forerunner of the nuclear engine project. They had a ground test pump with the actual flow concept and had been in use in that program. We took many design concepts from that and put it into the J-2 flight pump. The gas generator, which drives the turbines, we had the normal amount of development problems there. Getting the distribution of the propellants and that proper so we didn't have hot spots in the gas generator. We ran into problems there. Had to redesign the combination valving and spray nozzle, sprayed the fuel into the combustion chamber of the gas generator. We had injector problems. We made full use of the knowledge and experience that Lewis and Pratt & Whitney had gained in their injectors. Our only problem was that we had to make that much bigger. We ran into some manufacturing problems there. [00:06:38] JSB: Did you use the same kind of injector that they [inaudible]? [00:06:40] FD: Yes, we certainly did. [00:06:42] RB: Could you describe that a little bit for us here? [00:06:44] FD: Oh gosh, my boss has a nice picture of the model. A chunk out of the injector. [00:06:51] JSB: Is this Rigi-Mesh? [00:06:53] FD: We used the Rigi-Mesh, and a certain percent of the hydrogen was flowed through the Rigi-Mesh to maintain cooling on the injector face. The LOX was flowed through so many posts—it seemed like around 250 posts—came down through there. You'll have to live with my memory problems here a little bit. I've been away from them for four years now. I guess that's about all I can say about the injector. Getting the cooling near the edge of the injector—the outer circumference of the injector—of course was a problem. We went through quite an extensive development program there. We also were concerned about and conducted quite a few tests for stability. When hydrogen gets extra cold, there was a probability of having combustion instability. We ran a program on that and frankly found that that wasn't near as much of a problem in the hydrogen injectors as it had been in the F-1 engine, for instance. They had quite a combustion stability program on that engine. [00:08:18] JSB: Is that the function of science primarily? [00:08:21] FD: No, I don't think so. It's more a function of the...Well, in the case of the kerosene engine, of course, it was always a liquid. In the case of the hydrogen engine, by the time the stuff got to the injector—the combustion zone—it was a gas. As we approached the colder temperatures to where we were going to have a phase change from gas to liquid, we were concerned, but this just never happened. We never had a problem there. Our big concern was getting liquid oxygen to the engine and letting it change to a gas there. We were concerned about having gas back up in the inlets to the engine, proper amount of insulation. We had double wall bellows going to both the...These are the double wall bellows going through the hydrogen and the oxygen pumps. By the proper amount of insulation, even external to some of these bellows, and the ducting up into the tanks of the two stages, we did a lot of work with the injection of the S-II battleship stage. This ended up not being a problem. I guess another new concept that we tried on this engine was where we fed the hot gases to drive the turbines in series from hydrogen to oxygen and into this exhaust duct. That was a fairly new thing and that worked out real well. It was a matter of the proper amount of development testing to get the orifices proper so we had the right gas temperature in the hydrogen turbine and still had enough left over to drive the LOX turbine. [00:10:23] JSB: How do you model that when you want to get the right orifices? Do you put it on a computer? Do you have enough data from other engine programs that you can do that or is it just [inaudible]? [00:10:32] FD: You [kind of?], well, in this particular case, we had some data from the RL-10. Of course, it's not a simple matter to scale up from a 15,000 pound engine to a 200,000 pound engine. You take that to start, and you run some very short duration development tests to get some additional data. You keep running this through the computer as you gather additional data. This is a big help, of course, in the final analysis. You're working your way up by steps to a combustion system. The back pressure from the size of your orifices in this exhaust duct, that you try by computer, and you get the final answer when you put the thing together. I can't recall how many hundred development tests we did over the years. Have you talked to anybody in the engine program office on J-2? [00:11:34] JSB: Not here. No, we have been out to Rocketdyne and talked to Paul Fuller. [00:11:40] FD: Are you going to talk to anybody in the engine office here? [00:11:43] JSB: Yeah, we talked to Belew and Brown especially. [00:11:48] RB: We have interviews scheduled with Thomson sometime. [00:11:50] FD: Jerry? [00:11:51] RB: Yeah, and with Bob Pease. We talked to Dick Rogers already. [00:11:53] FD: Okay. And you're going to talk to Bob Pease? [00:11:55] RB: Yeah. [00:11:56] FD: Okay. He can probably tell you a lot more than I can because he's still with the engines. He lived with the J-2 on site of Rocketdyne up until a little over a year ago, I guess, when he moved back here. [00:12:11] RB: One thing that still is unclear to me is how the engine really evolved in terms of the relationships between Marshall and say Rocketdyne. Did you more or less design the engine in Marshall and then say to Rocketdyne, “Here it is,” or did they design and say, “Here's the engine, now what do you think of it?” [00:12:32] FD: No, we came up with the requirements of what we wanted the engine to provide. [00:12:39] JSB: Just like you're doing on the shuttle, including specific impulse and thrust? Was that specific? [00:12:45] FD: Yes, it was that specific. It was quite thorough document. It was more than RFP, I think. [00:12:52] JSB: Flow rates and all that? [00:12:54] FD: No, I don't think we went to…I don't think we could be that specific. We specified the thrust we wanted and a range of ISP that we desired, which we thought was attainable from what data was available on the hydrogen-oxygen combination. We did specify that we wanted a conventional bell chamber. Anything else would have been too big a step, we thought at one time. [00:13:27] JSB: Were anybody during this time trying to sell ideas like aerospike or things like that maybe? More Aerojet concept [in mind?]? [00:13:31] FD: No, no. Well, things were a little [austere?] in 1959 and ‘60. [00:13:46] JSB: I have one question along with that. As you know, the Silverstein committee suggested the use of LOX-hydrogen for the upper stages, and that was December 15th, ‘59. It seems that you were engaged in this in November of ‘59... [00:14:00] FD: No, no, you misunderstood me. In November of ‘59, it became public knowledge that a bunch of us Army civilians were going to work for NASA. In December of ‘59, in fact, on December the 28th—which happened to be my birthday—was the day we started working on this thing here in Huntsville. That's the reason I remember the specific date. [00:14:21] JSB: Okay, so what I was trying to isolate is obviously the Silverstein committee had to have inputs to decide to go to LOX-hydrogen. Maybe these came from Lewis from his long period as director of Lewis? [00:14:37] FD: I'm sure it did. [00:14:39] JSB: And not from a Marshall [sponsor?] then because Marshall or ABMA had never been into hydrogen before. [00:14:46] FD: The requirements for the engine came from a lot of studies. I'm sure that was one of them. We were specific enough in our RFP, we specified that this engine should be capable of being used by itself—a single engine—or in clusters. We didn't say how many. The requirement was there for a larger payload capability if we were going to do any more in space. I can't say that the requirement to go to the moon was there at that time because it wasn't. You always have to start your engine development program earlier than your vehicle development program because it takes longer time. You need an engine before you can do any kind of qualification flights on a vehicle. So we were specifying…We allowed, let's say, the contractors to propose a 165K engine or a 200K engine. The reason we did that is because we had 165K engines at the time. We had the H-1, which was already 165. The three major contractors that proposed—Aerojet, Pratt & Whitney, and Rocketdyne—all proposed at the 200K level. They were allowed the option to go in steps, you know, do a pre-flight rating program on 165, a qualification program on 200. They all chose to go to the 200 originally, which—well, Monday morning quarterbacking—is the way to go. If you want a 200 K engine, you start out building one. That wasn't too big a step from 165 to 200. [00:16:38] JSB: But isn't this engine itself capable of just by changing fuel mixture about a 239, 237? [00:16:47] FD: Well, I've been away four years. When I left, I think 235. We could orifice, get the right mixture ratio, and get up to 235. That came later. [That was not?] a requirement originally. [00:17:00] JSB: Is this an expensive program to uprate the engine? [00:17:06] FD: No. Once you get your basic engine developed to uprate it isn't real expensive. We have a lot of good history to support that on the H-1. It's been uprated four or five times, I guess. I don't even know what it is. I think it was 205K last I heard. Now that's a relatively inexpensive thing to do. You don't make a big jump, you know, from 150 to 200 in one step. You take it in increments. Kind of by fine-tuning your pump system usually and your injectors, what gets you there. But the uprating from 200 to 235 wasn't expensive in the J-2. [00:17:57] JSB: Nevertheless this is a change in the contract when you uprate. Does the contractor stand to make money that he perhaps lost on the original development program by uprating? Is there a chance to catch up a little bit on that? [00:18:15] FD: I'll have to say this. Anytime you put in a change to a contract, you have to say, well, there's an opportunity for the contractor to recoup a little bit [if he’s lost?]. The only way I know out of that is to go to a fixed price contract and don't change the requirements. I don't know of any program in the history of NASA that's done that. [00:18:44] RB: I was going to ask you about the other bidders. There were only…I thought there were four bidders on it. [00:18:51] FD: There were five. [00:18:53] RB: Remember who they were? [00:18:55] FD: The other two was…Now wait a minute, I better…GE bid. GE submitted a bid. Reaction Motors did not bid. They came to the bidder's conference. Bell, I believe, submitted a bid. I won't be 100 percent sure about that. I know GE submitted a bid. [00:19:17] RB: Aerojet, Pratt & Whitney, Rocketdyne, GE, and Bell. [00:19:23] JSB: How was this source selection made? Do you have any insight into that? The announcement was by the NASA administrator. [00:19:29] FD: Yes, the source selection, we had a technical evaluation team and a business evaluation team. These fellows lived in Washington for about six weeks, I guess. [00:19:42] JSB: TDY from here? [00:19:43] FD: Some were from here, some were from Lewis. Mr. Pease was on one of those teams. Jerry Thomson was on one of those teams. I personally was not on the team. I stayed home here in Huntsville and fed some information to Jerry and Bob Pease. Then the source, or rather the technical evaluation team, made presentations to the source evaluation board. Mr. Herman Widener, our director of S&E, I believe was the chairman of the SEB. The SEB in turn made presentations to the administrator. There was a fellow who went back to Case Institute. [00:20:26] JSB: Glennon. [00:20:27] FD: Glennon, Dr. Glennon. He made the announcement the last day of May in 1960. [00:20:35] JSB: Do you have any idea where that selection was made? Is it just made out of the findings of the committee? Glennon announces it, but it's really basically a Marshall decision? [00:20:47] FD: Oh no, I wouldn't say this is basically a Marshall decision at all. [00:20:51] JSB: You say it was more an overall NASA decision? [00:20:55] FD: Oh yeah. This thing was really conducted out of NASA headquarters. A gentleman by the name of Del Tischler was kind of, I don't recall his exact title, but he was kind of chief of the propulsion group at NASA headquarters. We supplied him people from here. Lewis had people on the evaluation teams. He was kind of, I guess, chief coordinator of the evaluation. I'm quite sure he was on the source evaluation board. This was handled the way we're still handling them today. You have evaluation teams, and they in turn report to a source selection board or source evaluation board. They in turn make presentations on a big procurement that usually ends up [going to?] the administrator. The administrator makes the selection. I know that's the way it was done on the J-2. [00:22:13] RB: Do you remember the kinds of technology that were transferred from Lewis engine experience, say, to the RL-10 that went to the J-2? Could you make some comments about the interplay and the interflow of information that leads from one engine program into the next one? [00:22:35] FD: Yes, I can comment on that fairly detailed, I think. I personally went with Jerry Thomson and a couple of injector experts from Rocketdyne to Lewis. We spent a couple of days up there going over data they had collected, drawings that they had on this type injector. We went through manufacturing processes on the injector. Lewis had a little manufacturing shop up there where they had made some prototype engines. We went through the manufacturing process on the regeneratively cooled tube thrust chamber. We did the same type thing on their turbo machinery, particularly on the RL-10. Mr. Tischler's—well, let’s say—it was policy at that time, we had a program review about each three months at Rocketdyne usually. We had a team that went for the first couple of years anyway. We had Lewis people on our J-2 team. [00:24:03] RB: Excuse me, let me ask you something. You went to Lewis went to look at the injector stuff and the turbo machinery. Was this basically RL-10 material? [00:24:13] FD: And thrust chamber. Yes, RL-10 covers a lot of sins. I guess that covers from the time that Lewis started in the hydrogen engine field. I believe that was around 1956 they first started playing with this—’56 or ‘58. Rod Stewart can fill you in on that. I guess to put it bluntly, we took Rocketdyne and went to Lewis to pick Lewis' brains to get all knowledge that they had into Rocketdyne's hands to see if they could make use of it. They did make use of it wherever possible—the Rigi-Mesh injector, for instance. The regeneratively cooled tubes—Rocketdyne had to go to a different manufacturing process mainly because of the physical size of these tubes. [00:25:13] JSB: Lewis wasn't annealing them and doing them out of that…What kind of nickel alloy [inaudible]? [00:25:21] FD: We used that metal also, but the actual process of forming the tubes and putting them together had to be changed because the RL-10 is a little big rascal. I forget the height of this offhand, but that's a pretty tall tube. [00:25:35] RB: Eleven or twelve feet I think. [00:25:38] JSB: Well, Rocketdyne just bought those tubes from a manufacturer. They would just get them in a big thing, and then they’d buy them bent. [00:25:44] FD: They were forming their own tubes years ago, and they are buying them today I think. They were formed [inaudible]. Putting them together and furnace brazing [techniques?] them were a little different. They used the same basic metals. [00:25:58] RB: About what time were you up at Lewis then with the J-2 people going through Lewis' files? [00:26:03] FD: My first trip was September 1960, right after the contract was initiated. We worked closely with the Lewis people, real close for at least three years. During that time they took on an engine development program of their own. However, we kept in touch with them and kept them…Let's say we kept utilizing their knowledge any time a problem came up. [00:26:34] RB: Okay, let me make a statement here. You tell me if it's right or wrong. I was wondering where Pratt & Whitney's experience filtered into the J-2 program. The point of filtering would seem to me was Lewis because Pratt & Whitney would have their reports of Lewis and you had access to all Lewis' stuff, so that's how the transfers made. [00:26:55] FD: Well, if there was any direct contact between Rocketdyne and Pratt & Whitney, I wasn't personally aware of it. We took the data that was available to the government at Lewis and made it available to Rocketdyne. There was no infringement of proprietary rights, of course. [00:27:15] JSB: Going back a little earlier, there was some work in hydrogen technology at Caltech and Aerojet. Did any of that technology get into the loop? [00:27:30] FD: I guess I can't answer that. I wasn't personally aware of it. Who had the contracts with…? [00:27:36] JSB: These were just individual laboratory operations. [00:27:40] FD: Was the government involved? [00:27:42] JSB: I think the Navy sponsored a little bit of the research. [00:27:45] FD: Maybe. I wasn’t aware of that. [00:27:48] RB: Okay, can you go on from there a little bit and tell us a little bit more about the development of the J-2 after you got the materials from Lewis? [00:28:03] FD: Well, Rocketdyne just started by doing an injector test with an old, heavy, short thrust chamber, which is again normal. They started doing turbopump development tests. We were going to get this job done in forty-five months originally. As I said before, it took about sixty months. We got into our PFRT program—pre-flight rating test program—a little behind schedule. We came through it in pretty fair shape. Went into a qualification program. When I left, we were under contract to deliver or to buy from Rocketdyne about 155 engines. I don't know where we are today—if we bought that many or if we're under contract to buy more. [00:29:04] FD: We had to satisfy two different situations. We had to satisfy the S-IVB application, single engine. We had to satisfy the S-II, which was a five-engine cluster. During the development of the vehicle along with the engine, after President Kennedy and Congress decided we were going to go to the moon, requirements on the J-2 increased. We started out with the requirement that it only had to run for 250 seconds. That had to be changed to 500 seconds, and we qualified for 500 seconds. It had to have a restart capability. That was not an original requirement. Once you started, let it run and quit. [00:29:54] JSB: I asked you a question along here. Did you have to establish separate production facilities out at Rocketdyne for the engines going on the cluster and those that were going on the…? [00:30:05] FD: No, we did not. That was a requirement from the start. [00:30:08] JSB: They were to be the same? [00:30:10] FD: They were to be the same. [00:30:12] JSB: In other words, with some slight modification, you could use the S-II engines on the S-IVB? [00:30:17] FD: Oh, yes. Actually, as far as the acceptance testing of the engine went, we could take one and send it anywhere. As I recall, it was simple to put in the restart capability. It was just simple to have it in all the engines, all of the S-IVBs that were going to use it. Before we delivered the engine, we had to know where it was. I can't remember what the engine was. It seems to me like it was in the LOX line to the gas generator. We had to do something. Mr. Pease can tell you that. There was a… [tape cuts out] [00:31:13] RB: I think you were going to say something about the LOX line in the gas generator? [00:31:17] FD: It seems to me like it was the LOX line to the gas generator, but I won't say for sure. Ask Bob Pease that question. There was a slight difference in the kits that had to go to the S-II engines rather than the S-IVB. As far as acceptance testing the engine, we acceptance tested them, and we didn't care where they were going. They all got the same. [00:31:39] JSB: Was there anything additional that had to be done in the program to manned-rate the engine or was it just the normal testing and quality program? [00:31:47] FD: Qualification program manned-rate the engine. Manned rating was kind of a new word for us. It came up. I wouldn't say it added much to the qualification program, but qualification and manned rating became synonymous after a while. As far as qualifying an engine, we had that in the program from the start. We had experience in doing this in the past. We had a pre-flight, what we called a PFRT engine, pre-flight rating, and then a qualification engine. The manned flight aspect came in, and that qualification kind of became synonymous after a while. Offhand, that's about all I can remember. You have some questions that might generate some other thoughts, but... [00:32:48] RB: What about the gimbaling system? Rocketdyne at one time was experiencing what's kind of a screw system. Do you remember that? Was that ever adopted? [00:32:56] FD: They proposed a screw jack, yes. [00:32:59] RB: But it was never adopted really. Another question too about the turbine machinery. The bearings were cooled by the propellants going in. Was that new with the J-2 or had that been done on other engines, do you recall that? [00:33:25] FD: It had been done on other engines. [00:33:28] RB: So that wasn't necessarily a big breakthrough by Rocketdyne? [00:33:32] FD: Oh, not a big breakthrough. We had used lubricant in the H-1 engines and the Jupiter engines. It had always been a problem because of the cold temperatures surrounding the [inaudible]. Rocketdyne, I believe, had used this on their rover—the actual float pump—was experience they had. There were problems associated with it, I don't want to tell you it was simple, but I don't think that was one of our major problems at all. [00:34:05] RB: Since Rocketdyne already had a big Santa Susana field laboratory testing engines there, why was it deemed necessary to build test stands for the J-2 out here, which occurred kind of late in the program, didn't it? ‘65 or something? What was the reason, your argument, for having a kind of engine? [00:34:29] FD: What we built here wasn't a J-2 engine test stand. It was an S-IVB battleship type test stand. [00:34:38] RB: Oh, okay. So it was an entirely different thing. What kind of problems did you run into when you got to the point of finally mating the engines to the stage? [00:34:50] FD: We got into all kinds of problems. Our first experience was at Sacramento with the S-IVB stage: liquid temperatures, LOX and hydrogen going in the pump. Gimbaling, it's always a problem after you get the stage. We ran into these kinds of problems. You develop the engine on a hard test stand, then you put it on a battleship stage test stand, which again is rather inflexible, then you finally put it on a flight stage. Going through this sequence is worthwhile. You get rid of your major problems. When you finally get to the flight stage, about all that's left—the problems that show up that you've tried to compensate for and prepare for—is the structural interface between the engine and the lightweight flight stage. [00:35:54] FD: The other problems are with getting your propellant out of the tanks and into the engine. This normally has been worked out on the battleship stage. Insulation on the flight stage—you try and use the same on your battleship stage, but the wall thicknesses usually are greater. In the case of cryogenic engines—especially J-2—where both fuel and oxygen are liquid, you have to keep your stage walls thin and your insulation as thin as possible because of the weight involved. That's a problem that usually gets worked out are the fine details of it once you get in the flight stage. [00:36:42] FD: The structural interface when you gimbal this thing over a [full seven degree square?], you sometimes find some problems there. We found one of our early engines went to Sacramento, and we found a gas generator problem. We just happened to find it there. It showed up. We found a hot spot in the gas generator. We redesigned the orificing a little bit, spraying the propellants into the gas generator. The S-IVB, or rather the S-II, where you get the cluster, your biggest problem there, in my estimation, is a thermal problem. You've got a single engine all by itself. You get more natural cooling to it, I guess is the way I can say it. When you've got five in a cluster, you've got the heat from one engine being transmitted to heat the other. Your thermal balance between the five engines is a problem that, again, you attempt to work out on the computer long before you get there. You usually find some fine tuning that has to be done after you put it in a cluster. In the case of the S-II, I believe I mentioned before, our thermal people were quite concerned on assuring that you had liquid at the pump inlets. [00:38:15] JSB: What was the commonality between the F-1 and the J-2? Was Rocketdyne able to use the experience developed on the F-1 at all on the J-2 since the F-1 program was a little bit older? Or the H-1 program, [since they did that one?]. [00:38:32] FD: They certainly used their H-1 and Jupiter and Thor engine experience. They had, I guess, as much knowledge and experience, or probably more so than any other engine development in the country. Their F-1 experience was helpful on the liquid oxygen side of this thing in the turbo machinery area. They had their experience in hydrogen. It was kind of limited to this rover pump, which was a ground test pump for a nuclear project. Because they had not had hydrogen, the F-1 pump and kerosene, they did not have a lot of hydrogen experience that could be readily utilized in the injector area or the cooling area, for instance. Other than the general type experience you pick up in doing a LOX-kerosene engine. There was nothing specific from the F-1, I don't think. The F-1 and H-1 development program gave Rocketdyne and us, I think, the areas that we should be concerned about and look into real deep. Combustion instability being one of them. I guess it always will be a problem with liquid rocket engines. Fortunately, in the hydrogen engine, it's not as big a problem as the kerosene. [00:40:16] JSB: Could you say a few words about the M-1 development program? [00:40:21] FD: Very few. [laughs] We had a part in its starting here in Huntsville. It became a requirement for a vehicle called the Nova, which had never evolved into anything concrete. We had management of that here for a rather short time. It was transferred to Lewis. [00:40:50] JSB: Was that at the same time that the Centaur was transferred up there? It was kind of going through reorganizations. Centaur program, the M-1 was transferred up there. [00:40:58] FD: No, I think the M-1 was transferred earlier than that. I'm pretty sure it was. Rod Stewart can help me on that. He had the M-1 engine here for them at the time we had it, I believe. It was around one million pounds, up to a million and a half hydrogen. [Our jet?] to my knowledge, never got to an engine systems test there. They did some component testing, injector, turbopumps. The requirement kind of went away for the engine. That's about all I know about it. I had personally nothing to do with the M-1. I know Rod did. [00:41:51] RB: When you began work on the J-2 design, were there things that you wanted to do that were impossible at the time because of the limits of the state of the art of metallurgy? Were there things that you decided you had to do and kind of had to push the state of the art of metallurgy to a point where you could really accomplish it? [00:42:15] FD: No. One of our guidelines or ground rules in our requirements spec was to stay away from the requirement for exotic metals. I recall that specifically. I don't recall having to develop any new state of the art business from a metallurgical standpoint. [00:42:41] RB: Well, just about to run our time out. One of the things we would like to get from people, if you remember them well or tell me about, any funny stories? [00:42:49] FD: Any funny stories? [laughs] [00:42:53] RB: Sometimes we get comments from people, “Gee, NASA engineers just out there working with their nuts and bolts, don't they ever have any fun? Doesn't anything humorous ever happen?” [00:43:04] FD: We had a lot of fun in the J-2, I think. We had a lot of headaches, a lot of head-knocking sessions internally and with Rocketdyne, but we managed to have some fun on it too. Being a little prejudiced, I guess, I think the J-2 engine program was a damn good development program. [00:43:23] RB: I think Rocketdyne quoted you to that effect in one of their sequences. I remember reading it somewhere. Maybe they didn't quote you exactly “Damn good.” I remember that after the qualification test, you did make that comment. It was a very good development. Excuse me, I interrupted you here. Go ahead. [00:43:43] FD: Well, I don't have any specific funny stories connected with the J-2 itself, but on a trip to Rocketdyne, Dr. von Braun—he made about two a year where he would tour most of our prime contractors—of course, he was always interested in what's new, you know, what are you doing that's really new. They came out the first time, they showed him some of their toroidal engine work, which is another name for aerospike. They had this semi-circular thing cut in half, and they kind of ended up saying you can buy propulsion by the yard. He turned to Willie Mrazek—Dr. Mrazek—and he said, “I want you remember that Willie. Now we're going to order it by the yard instead of by the pound.” He was quite enthused about that program. I guess it's kind of fallen by the wayside now—the toroidal engine in favor of the high pressure belt. But yeah, there's always time for some funny stories along those sixty hour weeks and head-knocking sessions. I imagine that we're in for some more of this shuttle engine that's just going under contractors. [00:44:59] JSB: Has this recent…You want to turn that off, Roger? [00:45:03] RB: Okay. [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_000013_A Title A name given to the resource Drummond, Floyd M. Description An account of the resource Floyd Drummond recounts his work on the development of NASA's J-2 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engine from its inception in late 1959 through 1967. He describes the early planning, contractor selection, and close collaboration among NASA Marshall, NASA Headquarters, Lewis Research Center, and Rocketdyne, emphasizing how experience from the RL-10 engine informed J-2 development. Drummond discusses the major technical challenges—including turbopumps, injectors, combustion stability, cryogenic propellant handling, and engine qualification—and explains how extensive testing and iterative design ultimately produced a reliable engine for the Apollo program. He also reflects on how evolving lunar mission requirements led to increased performance, longer burn times, and restart capability, while highlighting NASA's systems engineering, procurement, and contractor management practices. Concluding that the J-2 was a highly successful development program, he underscores the importance of building on proven technology, rigorous testing, and cooperation between government and industry. 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/5cbb5fb19f83ea053ec1487318678e3d.jpg ed48955f90bbf92640c11dc0ce957e83 https://oralhistory.uah.edu/files/original/79b0b463d30f116b6dfb443c5a7e1b01.mp4 2d77a84e1afebfaa842b607abad19ae0 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 Anthony Young Collection Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Duke, Charlie Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Young, Anthony Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:46:03 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 spc_youn_000025 Title A name given to the resource Duke, Charlie Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-03-01 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.