O'Neal, Adrian P.
Dublin Core
Title
O'Neal, Adrian P.
Source
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama
Rights
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Format
.MP4
Language
en
Type
Interviews
Audio
Identifier
ohc_stnv_000030_A
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Interviewer
Bilstein, Roger E.
Interviewee
O'Neal, Adrian P.
Transcription
[00:00:00] Adrian O’Neal: One thing that evolved—at least that I recognize evolving—when I started the S-IVB program to time now—which ten or eleven years—has been the breaking down if you will—or whatever term you want to use for it—of the barriers from company to company to company. I noticed it significantly from the time we started on the S-IV contract when at that time back in the middle ‘50s if someone from North American, Boeing, or Grumman, or any other aircraft company wanted to come in and talk with us, he was discouraged first. Usually we didn't tell him everything we knew anyway when we sat down and vice versa. I think probably if you talk to some engineers that have gained most of their experience during the Apollo program, you'd find that they're pretty free with themselves, with other companies, and their experiences.
[00:01:20] Roger Bilstein: Was there something too that began to generate about the middle part of the ‘60s, ‘64-‘65, as things really began to pick up?
[00:01:31] AO: Yeah, I’d say a point in time, I'm not sure, but I don't know if it was the middle ‘60s. Probably so. Probably the time the Apollo program really sprung out. See, because we worked on the S-IV from ‘60 to…I guess we lost the first one in ‘64. At the time we launched it, it was essentially going out of business, and everyone knew it, so it was probably ‘64-‘65.
[00:02:11] RB: Could you make some comments about the evolution and difference of materials used in the S-IVB? You used a different kind of aluminum in the skirts, right, than you did in the tanks? I was wondering if you could make some comments about the design parameters that dictate these kinds of decisions.
[00:02:35] AO: Well, to be honest with you, I've forgotten. I imagine that we used 75—what's now called 7075-T6 aluminum—in the skirts and inter-stages. If that's correct, I could find out before you leave. That's a carry on of the aircraft days because the 7075-T6 aluminum was really developed for commercial airplanes. I know they use it on military airplanes also. It
has even better strength properties than 2014, but it's not weldable at all. Anytime you have use for aluminum where you don't need to weld it, you're going to rivet it or bolt it, that type of thing, we generally have gone to 7075-T6 for its better strength properties and hence lighter weight.
[00:03:56] RB: What happens when you…Does 2014 become a better material under cryogenic temperatures? Do I remember that correctly from some [point?]?
[00:04:08] AO: Well, in fact, almost all materials become stronger as you lower the temperature, the physical properties rise. Some materials exhibit an increase in brittleness as you decrease the temperature. In fact, I guess almost all of them do—some worse than others. Twenty fourteen does lose some of its elongation. Some people try to say that makes it more not sensitive [sic] and all this type of thing. To be just factual, it gets stronger at lower temperatures, and it also loses elongation. We used it. There's only one place on the S-IVB where the 2014 aluminum ever gets to hydrogen temperatures. That's in the forward face of the common bulkhead. See, we used internal insulation in the hydrogen tank, and hence the aluminum never gets lower than minus 100, minus 150 degrees. The LOX tank, of course, gets to minus 300 degrees, but we felt like we had a lot of experience with that on the Thor. In fact, I guess some of those Thors were built—if I remember my numbers right—a Delta was not too long ago. It had a first stage—a Thor—which was built back in about the late 50s, which kind of tells you the material doesn't degrade with time anyway.
[00:06:08] RB: Well, what happens when you start adding the effective engine thrust on some of these materials? Did you, you know, when you fire off the J-2s and so on, did you have any difficulties working out some of these relationships with people at Rocketdyne or again, is that a fairly straightforward engineering approach?
[00:06:31] AO: No, it's fairly straightforward because we'd worked with Rocketdyne before on the Thor program. They built the engine for Thor. It was so straightforward, and the interfaces were established that both of us knew where the interface was and who was to supply the designs and hardware on either side and how they had to make together. Of course, when we started using the J-2—first our battleship program in Sacramento and then on the stages of Sacramento—Rocketdyne had a contingent of field engineers there working with us. In fact, we had a man stationed at Rocketdyne, like several, during the development part of the S-IVB, just to make the exchange of information better.
[00:07:36] RB: Did Rocketdyne supply the thrust structure? Was that part of their…?
[00:07:39] AO: No, we supplied the thrust structure, but the interface is established
essentially at the gimbal block because the J-2 engine had the gimbal mechanism—at least the load carrying part of the gimbal on the engine—then the electrical interfaces and the two fluid interfaces—LOX and hydrogen. We supplied the actuators. The actuators were used to really actually gimbal—move the engine and the thrust structure to our tank.
[00:08:29] RB: Somewhere too now—I’m just remembering it—it seems to me I read that Von Braun at one time just wasn't happy about liquid hydrogen. I forgot if this was the time Centaur began running into trouble. Do you remember anything about that? Did you run into any problems along those lines?
[00:08:49] AO: Well, I remember that there was a fair amount of consternation about the time Centaur tried to fly the first couple of times. That's about the point in time we had the S-IV coming along. We learned some things with that. We learned how to put hydrogen into a big tank. It was about the first time we tried, we almost collapsed all the pressure inside it so that…We didn't ruin the tank, but we buckled it a little bit and made us all stop and sit back and think. We learned to do that. I don't remember Dr. Von Braun ever being afraid to use it. I'm sure he was worried about it after the Centaur.
[00:09:43] RB: The impression, and I forgot [inaudible], somebody was talking to me that the…There was a feeling maybe that liquid hydrogen was maybe too far advanced, would be better stick with some sort of uprated H-1 or RL-10…Not RL-10, but H-1 or F-1 engine, something like that.
[00:10:04] AO: Personally, I never heard him express that kind of sentiment.
[00:10:17] RB: I had a question in the back of my mind now, and I've forgotten what I was going to ask you. You mentioned you had some problems with early tanking, did this create a real difficulty at the very beginning? Because as you said you hadn't handled this quantity of stuff before.
[00:10:35] AO: No, it didn't. The actual incident occurred when we built what we called an all systems S-IV stage—which essentially was flight weight tanks, real RL-10 engines but with not all flight electronics and so forth on the stage to control it—and took it to Sacramento and one of the first…Well, we married it also there with the GSE or the loading equipment that was going to be used at the Cape when it came time to fly. The first time we tried to flow liquid hydrogen into the tank, we theorized later that we came into the tank with a big slug of liquid hydrogen, and it went up into the tank and of course cooled all the gas inside the tank down very rapidly, causing the pressure inside the tank to go below ambient pressure, which then collapsed the part of the tank. As soon as we figured that out, then we changed the loading procedure so that we made sure that we had good phase, good change between flowing gas into the tank and liquid. As I remember, it just slowed down and increased the length of time that we flowed liquid hydrogen gas through the lines into the tank and out and out the vent, so that we cooled everything down before we actually got liquid coming into it.
[00:12:30] RB: Can you remember any particularly humorous things that happened that stand out in your mind?
[00:12:42] AO: [laughs] There must be hundreds. [tape cuts out and restarts] I think once we started flying men in Apollo—at least as far as the S-IVB crews went, and I think this last launch is the first one I haven't been either to Cape with or in Houston—the S-IVB anyway performed so long that the guys were just completely whipped by the time the IVB part of the mission was over, and they just didn't feel up to having any big parties. If you go way back in time after things like Thor when the Thor philosophy kind of was build them fast and shoot them and find out your problems, so we had a few failures intermingled with some success. When you have a success, the people really did kind of let go. One difference with the guys that I've been associated with on the IVB is that they just physically couldn't stand it because the counts almost always picked up ten or eleven hours before liftoff. By the time they went through a normal count liftoff and then six or seven hours of S-IVB performance, they had stretched their waking time out to eighteen or twenty hours, and they were in really not much shape to go out and do too many things.
[00:14:34] RB: That's interesting about the Thor program—build them and shoot them off and accept the failures.
[00:14:41] AO: There is a school of thought…In fact, you can probably still find some people today that as long as you don't have a man involved where you're really risking life that would argue with you that you can develop a program quicker and cheaper by just building and flying rather than going through all the extensive testing that we went through in the Apollo program. I'm not sure who's right. There are two camps to it. The Thor camp really was kind of that. We ran very little development testing before we actually tried to fly the first one.
[00:15:30] Beginning of Morata (Part 1) recording
[Tape ends]
[00:01:20] Roger Bilstein: Was there something too that began to generate about the middle part of the ‘60s, ‘64-‘65, as things really began to pick up?
[00:01:31] AO: Yeah, I’d say a point in time, I'm not sure, but I don't know if it was the middle ‘60s. Probably so. Probably the time the Apollo program really sprung out. See, because we worked on the S-IV from ‘60 to…I guess we lost the first one in ‘64. At the time we launched it, it was essentially going out of business, and everyone knew it, so it was probably ‘64-‘65.
[00:02:11] RB: Could you make some comments about the evolution and difference of materials used in the S-IVB? You used a different kind of aluminum in the skirts, right, than you did in the tanks? I was wondering if you could make some comments about the design parameters that dictate these kinds of decisions.
[00:02:35] AO: Well, to be honest with you, I've forgotten. I imagine that we used 75—what's now called 7075-T6 aluminum—in the skirts and inter-stages. If that's correct, I could find out before you leave. That's a carry on of the aircraft days because the 7075-T6 aluminum was really developed for commercial airplanes. I know they use it on military airplanes also. It
has even better strength properties than 2014, but it's not weldable at all. Anytime you have use for aluminum where you don't need to weld it, you're going to rivet it or bolt it, that type of thing, we generally have gone to 7075-T6 for its better strength properties and hence lighter weight.
[00:03:56] RB: What happens when you…Does 2014 become a better material under cryogenic temperatures? Do I remember that correctly from some [point?]?
[00:04:08] AO: Well, in fact, almost all materials become stronger as you lower the temperature, the physical properties rise. Some materials exhibit an increase in brittleness as you decrease the temperature. In fact, I guess almost all of them do—some worse than others. Twenty fourteen does lose some of its elongation. Some people try to say that makes it more not sensitive [sic] and all this type of thing. To be just factual, it gets stronger at lower temperatures, and it also loses elongation. We used it. There's only one place on the S-IVB where the 2014 aluminum ever gets to hydrogen temperatures. That's in the forward face of the common bulkhead. See, we used internal insulation in the hydrogen tank, and hence the aluminum never gets lower than minus 100, minus 150 degrees. The LOX tank, of course, gets to minus 300 degrees, but we felt like we had a lot of experience with that on the Thor. In fact, I guess some of those Thors were built—if I remember my numbers right—a Delta was not too long ago. It had a first stage—a Thor—which was built back in about the late 50s, which kind of tells you the material doesn't degrade with time anyway.
[00:06:08] RB: Well, what happens when you start adding the effective engine thrust on some of these materials? Did you, you know, when you fire off the J-2s and so on, did you have any difficulties working out some of these relationships with people at Rocketdyne or again, is that a fairly straightforward engineering approach?
[00:06:31] AO: No, it's fairly straightforward because we'd worked with Rocketdyne before on the Thor program. They built the engine for Thor. It was so straightforward, and the interfaces were established that both of us knew where the interface was and who was to supply the designs and hardware on either side and how they had to make together. Of course, when we started using the J-2—first our battleship program in Sacramento and then on the stages of Sacramento—Rocketdyne had a contingent of field engineers there working with us. In fact, we had a man stationed at Rocketdyne, like several, during the development part of the S-IVB, just to make the exchange of information better.
[00:07:36] RB: Did Rocketdyne supply the thrust structure? Was that part of their…?
[00:07:39] AO: No, we supplied the thrust structure, but the interface is established
essentially at the gimbal block because the J-2 engine had the gimbal mechanism—at least the load carrying part of the gimbal on the engine—then the electrical interfaces and the two fluid interfaces—LOX and hydrogen. We supplied the actuators. The actuators were used to really actually gimbal—move the engine and the thrust structure to our tank.
[00:08:29] RB: Somewhere too now—I’m just remembering it—it seems to me I read that Von Braun at one time just wasn't happy about liquid hydrogen. I forgot if this was the time Centaur began running into trouble. Do you remember anything about that? Did you run into any problems along those lines?
[00:08:49] AO: Well, I remember that there was a fair amount of consternation about the time Centaur tried to fly the first couple of times. That's about the point in time we had the S-IV coming along. We learned some things with that. We learned how to put hydrogen into a big tank. It was about the first time we tried, we almost collapsed all the pressure inside it so that…We didn't ruin the tank, but we buckled it a little bit and made us all stop and sit back and think. We learned to do that. I don't remember Dr. Von Braun ever being afraid to use it. I'm sure he was worried about it after the Centaur.
[00:09:43] RB: The impression, and I forgot [inaudible], somebody was talking to me that the…There was a feeling maybe that liquid hydrogen was maybe too far advanced, would be better stick with some sort of uprated H-1 or RL-10…Not RL-10, but H-1 or F-1 engine, something like that.
[00:10:04] AO: Personally, I never heard him express that kind of sentiment.
[00:10:17] RB: I had a question in the back of my mind now, and I've forgotten what I was going to ask you. You mentioned you had some problems with early tanking, did this create a real difficulty at the very beginning? Because as you said you hadn't handled this quantity of stuff before.
[00:10:35] AO: No, it didn't. The actual incident occurred when we built what we called an all systems S-IV stage—which essentially was flight weight tanks, real RL-10 engines but with not all flight electronics and so forth on the stage to control it—and took it to Sacramento and one of the first…Well, we married it also there with the GSE or the loading equipment that was going to be used at the Cape when it came time to fly. The first time we tried to flow liquid hydrogen into the tank, we theorized later that we came into the tank with a big slug of liquid hydrogen, and it went up into the tank and of course cooled all the gas inside the tank down very rapidly, causing the pressure inside the tank to go below ambient pressure, which then collapsed the part of the tank. As soon as we figured that out, then we changed the loading procedure so that we made sure that we had good phase, good change between flowing gas into the tank and liquid. As I remember, it just slowed down and increased the length of time that we flowed liquid hydrogen gas through the lines into the tank and out and out the vent, so that we cooled everything down before we actually got liquid coming into it.
[00:12:30] RB: Can you remember any particularly humorous things that happened that stand out in your mind?
[00:12:42] AO: [laughs] There must be hundreds. [tape cuts out and restarts] I think once we started flying men in Apollo—at least as far as the S-IVB crews went, and I think this last launch is the first one I haven't been either to Cape with or in Houston—the S-IVB anyway performed so long that the guys were just completely whipped by the time the IVB part of the mission was over, and they just didn't feel up to having any big parties. If you go way back in time after things like Thor when the Thor philosophy kind of was build them fast and shoot them and find out your problems, so we had a few failures intermingled with some success. When you have a success, the people really did kind of let go. One difference with the guys that I've been associated with on the IVB is that they just physically couldn't stand it because the counts almost always picked up ten or eleven hours before liftoff. By the time they went through a normal count liftoff and then six or seven hours of S-IVB performance, they had stretched their waking time out to eighteen or twenty hours, and they were in really not much shape to go out and do too many things.
[00:14:34] RB: That's interesting about the Thor program—build them and shoot them off and accept the failures.
[00:14:41] AO: There is a school of thought…In fact, you can probably still find some people today that as long as you don't have a man involved where you're really risking life that would argue with you that you can develop a program quicker and cheaper by just building and flying rather than going through all the extensive testing that we went through in the Apollo program. I'm not sure who's right. There are two camps to it. The Thor camp really was kind of that. We ran very little development testing before we actually tried to fly the first one.
[00:15:30] Beginning of Morata (Part 1) recording
[Tape ends]
Duration
0:15:44
Files
Collection
Citation
“O'Neal, Adrian P.,” The UAH Archives and Special Collections, accessed July 9, 2026, https://oralhistory.uah.edu/items/show/625.