Bauer, Harold E. and O'Neal, Adrian P.

Bauer, Harold E. and O'Neal, Adrian P.

Interview with Harold Bauer and Adrian O'Neal begins at 00:00:26. Interview with Adrian O'Neal alone begins at 00:10:10. Interview with Harold Bauer alone begins at 00:31:28.

The interview with Harold Bauer and Adrian O’Neal explores the engineering, manufacturing, quality-control, and management practices behind Douglas Aircraft’s work on the S-IV and S-IVB stages of the Apollo program. Bauer explains the rigorous process for approving vendors, emphasizing technical capability, quality control, and repeatable production, while O’Neal discusses the transition from MIG to TIG welding, the advantages of 2014-T6 aluminum, and how experience from the Thor program informed Apollo development. They describe technical disagreements and gradually developing trust between Douglas and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, noting that differences often stemmed from contrasting engineering experiences rather than fundamental technical disagreements. The interview also covers major S-IV/S-IVB failures, including an overpressurization incident and a helium-bottle rupture caused by improper welding rod, as well as challenges with cryogenic hydrogen handling and computer-controlled countdowns. Bauer discusses the innovative use of the Guppy aircraft to transport large rocket stages, the precision of S-IVB lunar-impact trajectories, and the stage’s eventual disposal through lunar gravity-assist trajectories. Finally, Bauer compares Air Force and NASA management approaches, praising the Air Force’s structured systems-management methodology and NASA’s exhaustive technical review and flexibility, and concludes that combining the strengths of both approaches could provide an effective model for managing large, complex technical enterprises.

University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama

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Interviews

Audio

ohc_stnv_000002_A

Bilstein, Roger E.

Bauer, Harold E.

[00:00:08] Roger Bilstein: There is an approved list of Douglas vendors, and some of the questions I had here: “What was the criteria for selection?”, “How was it revised?”, and “Was there a list of blacklisted vendors?”

[00:00:26] Harold Bauer: Well, let me get to the last one first. There really wasn't a list of blacklisted vendors in the context of these people are not good suppliers. They may have been perfectly adequate suppliers, but they may not have been quite capable of meeting the very high standards for the Apollo program. Now let me go back to the first question. Yes, indeed, there was a list of approved suppliers. That approval was based on source selection, site surveys, and examination of the management, and technical capabilities of the vendor involved, and—quite importantly—the quality control capabilities of the vendor involved. For hardware components that were critical in several categories of criticality, it became very important that we issue our purchase orders to a vendor who was quite capable of demonstrating his ability to turn out the hardware we wanted to the standards that the program wanted, and that they would be repeatable. By that, I mean that the first few articles wouldn't be great, and the following articles would be perhaps less than great. The methodology of approving a source is very strict, very rigid, and goes through essentially technical management quality control type of evaluation.

[00:02:24] RB: Did you have seminars out here in California? You would bring those people out and tell them about your quality control restrictions?

[00:02:30] HB: Oh, yes. We would not only do that, we would tell them of our quality control requirements. We would have them present their quality control plan, and we would audit those plans. We even did other things. For example, we brought some 100-odd, 100-plus suppliers out here and told them exactly what their individual piece of hardware did for the stage, where it was located, how it operated, and what the consequences of a failure would be. We got them together in groups of twenty or thirty at a time. We gave them a complete rundown on the performance of the stage, the environment it had to go through. As a result of those meetings, there were at least two vendors who said, “I think you better take my piece of hardware
and take another look at it and see if we're doing it right for you.” In one case, we did make some changes. That was worth the whole operation: exposed to one situation where all of the formal checks and balances hadn't quite gotten a message through. There was really nothing that badly wrong with the piece of hardware involved, but we did take an opportunity to make an examination. We did help him improve his day-by-day operating characteristics, and we did get a better piece of hardware out of it.

[00:04:02] RB: You remember who that was?

[00:04:03] HB: No, I don't. I could find out if it's important.

[00:04:08] RB: No, not necessarily if we just had to.

[00:04:10] HB: Do you happen to remember? I thought it was a potentiometer.

[00:04:18] Adrian O’Neal: I don't remember.

[00:04:22] RB: Yeah, those things sound like they were very helpful then.

[00:04:26] HB: Well, the important thing was that the chief engineer or the chief executive of the company involved had a very clear understanding of what his piece of hardware was doing in the stage. He also knew where he would stand in the eyes of the world if his piece of hardware didn't function. He was quite knowledgeable of the consequences of the penalties of failure.

[00:04:57] RB: We were talking about MIG welding and TIG welding. Did they go ahead with the MIG process?

[00:05:07] AO: Yeah, I think when we first started the S-IV program, I guess, we were using MIG because we had developed that with the Thor. I don't remember whether it was the S-IV or the S-IVB program.

[00:05:24] HB: We finally switched over to TIG.

[00:05:26] RB: Oh, you did go to a TIG?

[00:05:27] AO: Oh, yeah. We finally went TIG. I know we were TIG…I'm pretty sure we changed to TIG on the S-IVB program. We probably were MIG on the S-IV.

[00:05:48] RB: Why would you go ahead with the change on that?

[00:05:52] AO: The TIG offers some advantages that MIG doesn't if my memory serves me right. The main thing that the TIG did was give you a cleaner looking weld. By that, I mean one that when you take x-rays of, they don't look like they have inclusions and stuff in them. If I'm not mistaken, also a little bit better strength. But the main thing was that it was a more automatic control weld so that over like 100 feet of weld—like when you weld up tanks—you were more sure of getting the same quality weld at the end of the 100 foot run as you had when you started. The automaticness [sic] of it kept the setting so that you got good quality weld the whole way.

[00:07:00] HB: Just one other feature [that TIG lends?] itself to recording of the data a bit easier doesn’t it?

[00:07:08] AO: Yeah, that's part of the automatic control of the weld. The other thing too, going way back, but it seems to me the TIG also lent itself to repairs. You could go back and re-go over a weld, clean out the old weld, and re-weld without destroying as much of the parent metal property for the TIG as you did with the MIG weld.

[00:07:44] RB: Okay, that's fine. And you were still using the same materials—2014-T6—on both stages—S-IV and S-IVB? And North American used the same materials—2014 or…?

[00:07:56] AO: Yeah, it's my understanding North American S-II used the 2014 material.

[00:08:02] RB: And you don't happen to remember what Boeing used, do you? We haven't gotten that.

[00:08:06] AO: Yeah, Boeing on the S-IC went to 2219.

[00:08:14] RB: But they're dealing with RP-1, which is not a cryogenic stuff? Is that their criteria there?

[00:08:21] AO: I'm not sure. I think it's more in the line that 2219 aluminum was developed after 2014.

[00:08:30] RB: I see.

[00:08:31] AO: It was developed specifically by one of the aluminum companies to be a weldable aluminum. It exhibits an easier capability of being welded than, say, 2014. By easier, I mean, it doesn't have to have as tightly controlled parameters like wire feed and inert atmospheres and currents and all that stuff. It's not as strong. Strength-wise, it's not as good as 2014. But I think really what happened when Boeing came along, they had a first stage, which was payload trade-off care parameters are not as stringent as, say, a second or third stage. The weight wasn't quite as big a problem to them as, say, it was on our stage, which is third. They just chose to go through a material that was easier welded than to go to one to gain some weight and have the difficulties that they may have experienced. Of course, I don't think they had really been trying to weld 2014 before either. North American, some of my conversations were right at…They started trying to weld 2014-T6 before they got the S-II contract.

[00:10:10] RB: I see. Okay, maybe we can…[tape cuts out and restarts] I think we’re off and running there…One of the things we're interested in is the origins of technology of this stuff. Did you work on the Thor program or anything like that? Do you have any reflections on what the Thor program did for the S-IV, S-IVB, if anything?

[00:10:36] AO: Yeah, I think most of us that started out on the S-IV program had previously worked on the Thor. Some of the things that I remember are things like, well, the development of the 2014-T6 aluminum weldability came about on Thor, and we just applied that to the S-IV. Such things as the handling and use of liquid oxygen started with Thor and carried over into the S-IV and then the S-IVB.

[00:11:20] RB: Did you use the MIG process then on the Thor welding?

[00:11:24] AO: Yes. We started with MIG on the Thor.

[00:11:29] RB: Was MIG used in aircraft manufacturing?

[00:11:32] AO: No, no.

[00:11:33] RB: It's kind of an aerospace thing?

[00:11:35] AO: The welding of the 2014 began on Thor. It was not used in any of the aircraft programs. They do very little welding. They do mostly riveting and bolting.

[00:11:57] RB: Was there kind of a difference of opinion between Douglas and Marshall over the use of the MIG process at the beginning? Did they prefer the Tungsten approach? You remember anything about that?

[00:12:12] AO: I remember that we had a fair amount of conversation when we started on the S-IV program concerning the use of 2014. There were several guys at Marshall that felt like you really ought to be using something that's more readily welded. We had more than one meeting, and I can remember. Finally, mutually agreed that we'd stay with 2014. It wasn't a unilateral thing. It was just that after we got all our cards spread out on the table, we decided that we'd stay with the 2014. As I remember, one of the biggest trade-offs on that had to do with weight. Because the S-IV was like the IVB, a second stage, and the trade-off with weight to payload gets almost one to one.

[00:13:16] RB: The 2014 is a lighter material?

[00:13:18] AO: It's a stronger material.

[00:13:20] RB: Stronger?

[00:13:20] AO: Yeah. Its weight per unit volume is the same as, well, all aluminum is the same. But 2014, as I remember, room temperature is about a 60,000 psi allowable. Some of the other aluminums that are more easily welded have strengths like 40,000 and 50,000. Weight turns out to be almost a direct trade-off, the ratio or the strengths of the two materials. If you had a material that was, say, two-thirds as strong as 2014, you just turn that ratio around, it'd be about fifty percent more heavy for the same application. But on the MIG/TIG, I don't think we…I think on the S-IV program, there wasn't any conversation at all about whether we used MIG or TIG. That all came about as the IVB program was started. I think we talked down in Hal's office, as I remember, what the differences were. I don't think there's any question that the TIG welding will give you a more uniform quality joint than the MIG.

[00:14:53] RB: Now, that's essentially a process, too, that has major use in aerospace engineering. Is that true to say?

[00:14:59] AO: I think that's true.

[00:15:03] RB: Were there any special problems that you saw? Were there any special problems that you had in introducing this thing?

[00:15:10] AO: TIG?

[00:15:10] RB: Yeah. At the beginning that later on you [learned off?]?

[00:15:15] AO: I don't think we had any special problems. I think we went through the normal learning curve that you go through when you start changing the process. We found out some things just by putting your head in it and looking at it that you don't know until you actually try to do it. I don't remember any big problems. A series of…When you start to build something, once you start going into manufacturing, especially on the first few articles, you usually find out that engineering was late to the way you had intended to do it when you started out. For a multitude of reasons, but generally on almost every program, the engineering that finally gets released to the manufacturing people is late to the schedule that they said they could do it to. They start out behind schedule. Then, of course, any problem they have, even if it's a small problem in itself, it's magnified because they're behind schedule. Even if it holds them up for one day in solving it, then it's a big problem. So you say, “Did you have a big problem with TIG?” I'd say we did not have. If you talk with guys that were involved in putting it into operation and making the first few units, they'd probably tell you it was hard.

[00:16:57] RB: Yeah. Well, a minute ago you were talking about relationship with Marshall people. Now, this is one of the things that I think maybe is more to do with this program, the fact that you're a technical people here, dealing with other people, as I understand, who have a very good technical background themselves.

[00:17:17] AO: Yes.

[00:17:18] RB: Did you have some real terrible hassles with them? Just what went on in some of these meetings? Again, see, we read the reports, but we don't…See, this is the official version.
We'd like to know what really went on in some of those things.

[00:17:31] AO: Well, I think that we had all the problems that any two groups of people would have that have essentially the same technical capability, but with different experience balance, if you understand what I mean.

[00:17:57] RB: Yeah.

[00:17:59] AO: See, we went into the S-IV program with…Our experience bank was stuffed with things like airplanes and Thors and Nikes and Sparrows and all the programs that we had been working on for the past ten or fifteen years. As we started first dealing with Marshall, their experience was naturally back to Redstone and Jupiter and V-2 before that, because quite a few of the top individuals in Marshall had worked with Dr. von Braun in Germany. Our experience banks were different. I think that's probably the biggest—not the biggest—but those were the places where we usually ended up in at least discussions, if not arguments sometimes. Just the fact that one guy had done it one way and had been successful, and the other guy had done it a different way and also been successful. It took a while for us to get to where we mutually trusted each other.

[00:19:22] RB: It took a while…Does this mean over a period of months or it takes several years to really work out this relationship.

[00:19:30] AO: I'd say it probably took years. It's like we've often said around here that if you start to design any product that if you really don't have a closely-knit design team on all the different technologies and so forth until those people have worked together probably three to five years. Until they've worked together long enough to find out the strengths and weaknesses of all the other members and also the boundaries of what's my part of it, you really don't have a real good team. You can get the job done, but you don't really have what I'd say is a finely oiled machine. It probably took us several years to get to where we worked that way with Marshall.

[00:20:33] RB: Can you, as an example, can you recall a particular issue or problem where your technical people were saying one thing and Marshall was saying, you know, we ought to do it a different way?

[00:20:52] AO: Well, I can remember a couple examples that probably say more I was right. [laughs]

[00:21:03] RB: [laughs] Okay, that's fine.

[00:21:12] AO: Just one, probably quite a few. In fact, I probably didn't even hear of all of them.
One that I remember was that we spent a fair amount of time talking about had to do with on the S-IV, whether we used a common bulkhead to separate the LOX on the liquid hydrogen tank or whether we made two tanks out of it. We had mesmerized ourselves in the believing that a common bulkhead was the way to go. Some of their people had of course done the opposite. We spent a fair amount of time discussing it and talking back and forth. Finally, set up a test program to verify that what we were saying was really true. Of course, it did work out that time. There's probably hundreds of instances where that would come up. Just differences in opinions really. Hardly ever really differences in pure technical results because generally you get any two sets of engineers together, and once they've agreed on all the ground rules and the assumptions that go into any kind of a solution, they'll carry it from that point to the end the same way. They'll both get the same answer. The differences get into the assumptions and the ground rules and the experience banks.

[00:23:12] RB: In these meetings then there was a thing you handled you hammered out a mutual agreement? It didn't come, say, to von Braun's desk, and it was up to him to say, “Well we'll do it either Douglas’ way or Marshall’s way.”

[00:23:27] AO: No, I don't remember very many…That particular one I know as far as I know never got to Dr. von Braun. Maybe his people talked with him about it. I don't remember any like that that we ever ended up hammering tongs to where you had to make somebody make an arbitrary decision.

[00:23:57] RB: What was your feeling about von Braun, you know, as the head of the space program?

[00:24:07] AO: Well, I think the man is very intelligent. He has a real good engineering feel for what a solution should be. One of the best—I want to say conversationalists—but talker if you will that I've ever met. He almost mesmerizes you with the way, just his enthusiasm for his work.

[00:24:58] RB: He used to make kind of I guess semi-annual inspection tours around. He used to come up to Douglas and North American [and Boeing?]. Did you find these to be an interruption in your work or were these kind of valuable chances to get together and talk things over?

[00:25:18] AO: Usually they were pretty valuable because generally you know they've had people working here. They have a NASA office downstairs.

[00:25:29] RB: Right. Steve Tyson, we’ve talked to him already.

[00:25:32] AO: Of course, they are passing information or were passing—still are—information back to Huntsville all the time about things that are going on here that probably some of us didn't even know about. Usually when Wernher was coming out he had that to look for when he got here, and he usually brought a fair number of guys—half a dozen so people—with him and usually they were the lab chiefs at Huntsville. When they came in they had pretty high…The word escapes me…They had the top people from Huntsville with them when they came in so that when we sat down in meetings usually we gave them a status of the program and then just had an informal exchange, and some pretty important decisions could get made there.

[00:26:37] RB: Again can you give an example off hand? I realize we’re covering ten years' time or something like that.

[00:26:47] AO: I think probably in the Apollo program that the one point in time that were some some decisions and assessments were made that in my mind had the biggest impact toward toward making sure that the Apollo program did come off and that it meet the 1960 decade commitment and all was probably about the time that Sam Phillips came onto the program and went around to all the contractors and came here. I forget about when it was now but it must have been 1964-65 somewhere along in that period.

[00:27:46] RB: We can verify.

[00:27:49] AO: I remember when he came here he sent ahead a list of questions that he wanted answered, and we answered them. Of course, the fact that he was coming with all his people made us spend some extra time assessing really where we were on the S-IVB program. Out of that visit here and his visits to all the other contractors came a declared position that all of us were behind schedule and made us anyway reassess where we were schedule wise and get everything back on track. In fact if I remember right after we had gone through that exercise, and we stuck to the schedule it was laid out.

[00:28:50] RB: I'm sure that some of the readers may ask, we talk about 2014-T6 aluminum and all this stuff. Where does your aluminum come from? Specialty plants or can you just call up an aluminum warehouse and say we want some 2014?

[00:29:05] AO: It comes from just the aluminum suppliers in the country. I'm not sure who we buy it from, but it can be bought from either Alcoa or Reynolds or Kaiser aluminum companies.

[00:29:24] RB: When you were you were working on the S-II dealing with J-2 or S-IVB dealing with J-2 engines and North American was doing work on the S-II with similar engines, was there much contact with North America did you exchange information about maybe mounting problems or gimbaling problems? Were there any mutual points of interest that you could scratch each other's back?

[00:29:50] AO: Well, of course, probably the real meeting place was through the Huntsville Marshall Organization where back in those days we had what was called working groups. The working groups generally were between, say, us on the S-IVB and Marshall and also then between North American on the S-II and Marshall. There was that point that you should say formally you could exchange information. It turns out that a lot of the engineers working here were personal friends of engineers at Rocketdyne and on the S-II, so there's probably a more important informal exchange going on that route just by telephone calls and personal friendships. Toward the real frenzied part of the development of both the S-II and the S-IVB, Marshall did start kind of combining their working groups, so that they'd have say a mechanical working group. They'd have people not only from McDonnell Douglas but also North American, Boeing, and Marshall all in the same room. This way once the people sat around a table a few times and looked at each other they began to discuss more freely what some…

[tape cuts out]

[00:31:28] RB: Could you say you had an explosion on the S-IV and one on the S-IVB?

[00:31:35] Harold Bauer: On the S-IV, we got ourselves into an irreversible process of freezing one of our valves, and we're unable to stop the pressurization of the tank in time to keep it from bursting. This was associated with blowing of super cold helium through a vent valve, and before we realized what was happening to us, the valve had frozen shut, and over-pressurization occurred. On the S-IVB program, we got into a very strange situation where the series of human errors had led to the use of an improper welding rod in the manufacture of helium bottles, which had the characteristic of being very, very strong and then suddenly weakening. This was called hydrogen embrittlement. In a sense that it's a much more complicated problem than I have noted here, and it's all well documented. The situation that we ran into was that a series of full helium or ambient helium spheres had been welded with the wrong weld rod. They would satisfy all burst test criteria, but after being pressurized for a large number of times their strength characteristics deteriorated, and one of the bottles did in fact burst on the Beta I stand. During a countdown, burst just prior to engine start and destroyed the stage.

[00:34:11] RB: Did that rupture the LOX and hydrogen tanks then? You got a big detonation out of it or what? Well, just a helium detonation that destroyed it?

[00:34:18] HB: Well, the helium tank is about thirty inches in diameter and was pressurized to 3000 tons per square inch. When it let go, it drove the two halves of the sphere apart at very high velocities. One half went down through the engine and down the bottom of the test stand. The other half went up through the liquid oxygen tank and into the liquid hydrogen tank permitting a mix of oxygen and hydrogen in combination of the high energy involved in the the passing of this large piece of the helium sphere, which provided the heat for initiating the fire and that led to an explosion.

[00:35:28] RB: This was a thirty inch tank at 3000 psi? That's a fairly good size segment to go through.

[00:35:35] HB: King sized bomb

[00:35:37] RB: [Laughs] A king sized bomb, yeah.

[00:35:40] HB: The stage was destroyed. The stand was pretty badly damaged although it was repaired.

[00:35:54] RB: Which one of these are we talking about here?

[00:35:56] HB: This one down...

[00:35:57] RB: This one on the far end. But you were able to continue testing?

[00:36:06] HB: We were operating on the other stand. It was not too difficult to repair the damaged stand.

[00:36:14] RB: Did you have a lot of difficulty at the beginning in developing expertise in
tanking a large amounts of cryogenic?

[00:36:23] HB: The early days we found it very difficult to get any hydrogen out of a tank transported to the test stand. After a couple of days I guess we were looking at the outflow into the hose, and there was nothing coming out. It was all boiling off to hydrogen gas. What, of course, was the problem was getting to the point of being a little bit smarter on problems of insulation and chill down and that soon became solved. It's sort of fun to talk about it now, but at the time we wondered if we were going to be able to solve that problem. It turned out to be very simple. One of the other problems we had that is always kind of interesting to think about now, and that is the discipline that the computer introduced through our way of thinking. All of our countdowns are run by the computer. All the vital decisions on sequencing were established by inserting time gates into the computer, which of course thinks in terms of milliseconds and operates at the speed of electricity, which I guess is around microseconds. But let's not worry about the microseconds [laughs, inaudible]. The milliseconds were the things that caused us some difficulties. We wanted an event to take place between one and a half seconds, and we put in 1.500 seconds, and the event did not occur in 1.500 seconds, the computer shut us down. We were shut down quite often because we didn't really think too far ahead on the precision of the tolerances on any time gates we wanted. It turned out if you wanted 1.525 and anything after 1.525 was not proper, then that was all right. But if 1.526 was perfectly satisfactory for the running of the countdown, you'd better let the computer know. [both laugh] It was completely unforgiving of sloppiness in thinking.

[00:39:06] RB: Some unnecessarily terminated tests then?

[00:39:10] HB: Yes, we got over that one in a very short period of time. We only had to learn that
lesson a couple of times to realize its importance. Now we have a picture here of inserting the stage in the Guppy. I guess that's only interesting in the sense of where it's at that I guess you can make almost anything fly. Although this is talking of spin-offs, we are transporting wing sections of the DC-10 by this type of transportation system. Commercial transportation and large things other than space. By that I mean commercial aircraft parts being done by this method of transportation.

[00:40:05] RB: Well, now on the origin of the Guppy and Super Guppy, did you go out and say to some contractor, “We need a big airplane,” or how did this thing start?

[00:40:15] HB: This chap decided that we in this business needed an air transport system and to my knowledge he conceived the idea and carried it out essentially by himself until he had proven the principle. Then it was used quite extensively by ourselves and others in the transport of large devices. We transported most of our hardware, our stages, by the Guppy.

[00:40:57] RB: Did NASA come in and make some fairly strong inputs on the Guppy program or they just let you go ahead with it?

[00:41:10] HB: Well, actually it was a combination. I think the way to look at it is here was an opportunity for the American ingenuity to go to work, and that is evidenced by the initiative that was taken by the operators of the Guppy. In our own case because we were familiar with air transport requirements and the aerodynamics of the situation, we were able to see that it was a practical situation, and one that could be handled very effectively by air transport techniques. NASA also became interested in that it would save two weeks out of this transportation loop. From Huntington Beach to Sacramento was three or four days by barge, and from Sacramento to the Cape going through the canal, it was about a two-week trip. So it became in the early days of the program it was very important to us to be able to gain that time.

[00:42:29] RB: Was the Guppy…Were they completely pressurized? Were there problems with carrying a stage at high atmospheres like that?

[00:42:43] HB: No, you had to vent the stage. You did not pressurize the cabin of the Guppy, and you had to make sure that there were ways of accommodating the change in pressure on the S-IVB stage for example to avoid collapsing one of the domes. But there was never a problem solving that part of it.

[00:43:09] RB: Did you make flights into Huntsville here at all?

[00:43:14] HB: No…I guess we made a couple of flights in come to think of it. I guess it was the dynamics vehicle, and the rest of them went from Sacramento to the Cape.

[00:43:33] RB: Is this a one or non-stop flight or did you have to make a stop?


[00:43:37] HB: They were refueled once or twice. It’s not non-stop. One of the things that we'd like to talk about is the ability that we have to impact the S-IVB on the moon.

[00:44:20] RB: As a spent stage?

[00:44:25] HB: Yes. This I find particularly interesting in that the ability to precisely navigate and guide the S-IVB in the early part of the translunar injection is sufficiently accurate enough to have had 100 percent so far on every intended impact. That we are able to put it into a circle of about 350 kilometers in diameter with good success I find is technically intriguing.

[00:45:05] RB: Well, now in these other impact areas if something happens this is what you can do with your auxiliary propulsion systems. Is that what I read these things here?

[00:45:17] HB: For example the most precise area is using auxiliary propulsion system burn air burn, which gets us down into a very tight ellipse. Then the size of the footprint grows if we are not able to get a burn air burn or we just get a single burn out of the auxiliary propulsion system. This is what I find is interesting is that even with no APS system: the precision of the translunar injection trajectory is such that you have a pretty good chance of impacting the moon even though it's off of the initial target position. You can still have some degree of success of hitting the moon whether it be on this side or the far side.

[00:46:15] RB: Were some of those things sent into the sun originally?

[00:46:23] HB: Yes, we used a maneuver called a slingshot maneuver which finally put it in a disposal trajectory if you will, which…

[00:46:29] RB: That's nice. A slingshot orbit for disposal trajectory, yeah [laughs]?

[00:46:35] HB: Take advantage of the gravitational field of the moon and orient the S-IVB in such a fashion that as it swings by the moon, the moon's gravity force will accelerate it and sling it into a very large orbit, which eventually will end up being captured by the sun.

[00:47:06] RB: Do you remember which…507? Or must have been previous to that then? Which ones you went into the moon and which ones were lunar impact or solar impact?

[00:47:21] HB: 508 and subs—508 and 509. We've only had two impacts. The rest of them
have gone into the solar type of trajectory.

[00:47:38] RB: Do you have any more pictures there?

[00:47:41] HB: Well, I think that just about does it for my overview here.

[00:47:55] RB: As I was doing research on this thing, I jotted down a lot of questions, and we covered a lot of them already I think. I wondered—here's one here we haven't gone into—I was wondering about as a contractor, if you could compare the Douglas experience with Marshall as opposed to Air Force. We've heard some things you know about the arsenal approach, which was characteristic of Marshall because of the Redstone Arsenal thing and the United States Air Force. Were there any differences or advantages or disadvantages that you experienced in that thing?

[00:48:39] HB: Management techniques. The simplest way of characterizing two different approaches. Let me start by saying that I would characterize the recent Air Force management philosophy as one which started with the systems command techniques of system management that were perhaps best described in the 375 documentation. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this type of documentation, but it was essentially a method of breaking a major program or weapon system down into I think it was about six elements: system engineering, configuration management, accounting and control, program control vis-à-vis fiscal management, schedule management type of disciplines. There were two or three others, which I will probably remember surely. In a sense, a set of handbooks explaining the process of the Air Force, philosophies, ground rules, and in some detail the methodology of establishing a system approach, managing the system approach and accounting for the configuration adjustments was a major product of the Air Force systems command techniques. A fairly rigid character evolved, well documented, excellent concept that came out of the Air Force.

[00:51:21] HB: Now these system management methodologies were implemented by a weapon system program office, which, in fact, was a collection of the key technical and business management directors of a program whether they be industry or Air Force, and organized them under a single decision-making body called the system program office wherein the system program director was the single individual who was charged with the ultimate responsibility of the successful conduct of the program. Now if you can boil that philosophy down into a few essential ingredients, it was that the personnel, the operating methods were well disciplined, well thought of, and were characterized by a decision-making process capability as documented. Now NASA in a sense did about the same thing, but without the rigors if you will of the formal documentation that was evidenced by the 375 documentation, which provided the organized protocol, near protocol, and operating methodologies that were described by the Air Force. But both parties fell into an operating mode that was essentially the same thing.

[00:53:34] HB: Now the main difference with the NASA community was that the decision-making process in a formal sense was not quite as rigid as the Air Force operating methodology. In fact, many people think that some of the strengths that came out of the NASA approach was the ability for anyone to challenge a technical approach or request and get further validation or however you wish to put the terms, concurrence, justification of the technical approaches involved. The NASA approach literally put in several engineering communities examining same problems: contractor, Center A, Center B, Center D, C. The great strength I would say of the NASA approach was the exhaustive technical analysis of all aspects of the program, which led to the successful conduct of their program from a technical point of view. I think that is pretty hard to challenge. Now whether it is safe to say that a more efficient, less costly approach could emerge is a matter of pure debate in my mind because there is no other example of such a huge program being conducted within the time scale and within the declared limits that were going to be spent and with the success that was realized.

[00:56:16] HB: You look to many of the Air Force programs, and you see them started out with this other methodology, and you find them characterized by termination. If you want to call a B-70 program one that was characterized by termination, Sky Wolf by termination, Dinosaur by termination, Mole by termination. But I may be emphasizing the wrong repeating characteristic. That may have nothing to do with the 375 type of methodology. That may be associated with a completely independent set of parameters, which should be examined separately, and thus you should not really contaminate the thinking process of those programs of the Air Force that were terminated for whatever the reasons may be with the management methodology. All I can say is that in response to your question, the two communities in fact in detail operated quite similarly. One with less rigid documentation but certainly more, I would have to say, more rigid technical, repetitive exposure of approach and procedures and techniques. I want to point out that the characterization of Air Force program terminations as it might affect the feelings of confidence in their system management methodology in my mind are two separate things. They should not be connected.

[00:58:27] HB: I felt very strongly that the 375 methodologies offered excellent guidance and an organized thinking process for doing a good technical management job. When not carried to the extreme of emphasizing details rather than principles, the guidelines were excellent. I would also point out that in my experience the operating procedures in detail that occurred in NASA were similar in nature to what I found going on with the Air Force although much less rigid methodology, certainly much more freedom for technical challenge. I was very much impressed with both methods. Somewhere between the two systems, my guess is that it is an opportunity to take the best of each and use them and try to avoid the opportunities of spending an exorbitant amount of time on unessential details. It was so easy for both methods to get into unessential details and concentrate on details rather than the essential principles. If there was a weakness in either system, it was in that direction. Both systems produced excellent articles. It's pretty hard to challenge the success record of the Apollo program. Thus the operating methodology behind it should be very seriously considered for any other operation. My own judgment—again to summarize—there is a blending of the two technical management operating methods—Air Force and NASA—that could be well used for any large technical enterprise.

[01:00:42] You didn't have much to do with Houston, I suppose. The question is...

[tape ends]

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