Rees, Eberhard

Rees, Eberhard

General Saturn development & problems, benefits of earlier programs, special approach of von Braun team to development of Saturn program, kinds of executive meetings and frequency, relations with major contractors.

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

1971-08-30

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Interviews

Audio

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Bilstein, Roger E.; Beltz, John Stuart; and Christensen, David

Rees, Eberhard

[00:00:07] Eberhard Rees: …I think we have to do it in the right way, as newspaper people like to do: who is guilty that this was done and who is not guilty that this was done and this kind of things. I do not believe we should write a controversial story only just for sensation. We ought to leave that to the newspaper people.

[00:00:28] John Stuart Beltz: We certainly do not have that as the intent. Roger and I are interested in the history of technology and that is what we would like to concentrate on is the research and development in the phase and then the manufacturing phase. We want to go into management. Quite frankly, we are interested in the controversial stories but we just do not have time to go into that right at this point. We are doing a program history of the Saturn I, IB and the V. As you know, this will be extensively reviewed both by yourself and headquarters before it comes out. It is in a very rough state now. You might have seen some of the working papers that Roger and I have done. We still have to part of the story. We just learned from Hans Wuenscher this morning on relative strengths of tankage on the Saturn I which throws out a couple of paragraphs that I wrote on that already that I have to go back and correct. There will be a lot of that kind of revision as we learn more and more about that.

[00:01:31] ER: I hope Wuenscher is right because the strengths business and this kind of things were done in some other department in astronautics. I hope he has given you the right thing. This is troublesome.

[00:01:47] JSB: That is why we are going to need to do a lot of checking.

[00:01:50] Roger Bilstein: That is the value of the review too. We only wish you had time to write the history actually.

[00:01:56.] ER: You know, these things are very, very often hard to remember them even.

[00:02:07] RB: John, do you want to do some questions or do you want me to?

[00:02:13] JSB: We have several areas that we would like to talk about. We probably won't just finish in an hour today. Maybe we might like to come back later and talk to you. Maybe we could start by talking in the area of contracts and some of the major reasons why the prime contractors were selected both for technical reasons that Marshall thought that they had the ability to do the job best and were most cost effective, but also any other reasons like plant location, economic reasons for employment in various sections of the country, the ability to spread the word around.

[00:02:50] ER: A very controversial subject. A very controversial subject. We might wind up in court.

[00:03:00] JSB: You or me?

[00:03:02] ER: No, no, no, no. We, NASA. And some contractors sticking out and said, “No, this wasn't so.” We would have really to go with a lawyer through the papers. Is it necessary to bring out the whys? Then we have to have long, long, long story adventures. We have then to get all the proposals in of all the contractors, and I even can't remember who all was bidding on the S-II, on the S-IC, on the IU, on all the others.

[00:03:51] David Christensen: I agree with Dr. Rees on that, really taking the other side. I'm not so sure it's necessary either, you know, to bring in the whys.

[00:03:59] ER: Can't we just say we have selected this contractors after a contest, after a competition? If you go into the why of that whole thing, then you, and make one little legal mistake, then, then...

[00:04:25] DC: It opens up a can of worms.

[00:04:27] ER: Some of the bidders again said, "No, this was not so. We had a better proposal.”
This is very, very, very controversial.

[00:04:38] JSB: There's a lot of times when a bidder will propose on something, get the contract, and then adopt the technology of his competitor to build it.

[00:04:50] ER: Yeah, this has happened, and contracts don't want to hear that. Even don't want to read it in a history book.

[00:05:01] DC: Could we do this maybe? Glance at the questions that we have, and right now, and see the ones that you might want to...

[00:05:09] JSB: We'll get back to contracting, maybe by a backdoor way, but maybe we can talk about management right now. That’s also kind of controversial, but internally. Can you go back in your experience even to the, maybe, some of the carryover activities from Peenemuende under Dornberger; as your role as technical assistant to von Braun in managing this large enterprise; when you were in the development operations division and then into formation of NASA or Marshall Space Flight Center; and your particular role in going out and seeing that the contractors were doing their job, enforcing schedules, making sure that the necessary quality was being built in for manned rating? Can you talk in that area?

[00:06:12] ER: Yeah, we could talk about that. We'll talk about that a little bit. [long pause] When we talk about the management of the Saturn, we should in the history book just describe how the management was and maybe less about the whys. See, I could now give you a long, long, long story how we have asked the manager of the So-and-So Company. We had to change managers almost everywhere, and I don't want to go into that. This is all gone. There were controversial points during the…When the 204 fire was and those three astronauts were killed, and then Mr. Webb was put in front of Congressional committees, and then the famous Phillips report came out. Those kind of things, and they are very, very controversial. This goes also into the spacecraft more than into the launch week.

[00:07:56] JSB: When you were out there troubleshooting that, did you also get in touch with people at Seal Beach and work with them at all or was your prime responsibility with investigating the fire?

[00:08:10] ER: I was never in the investigation of the fire. I only was then assigned to help that we could get out of it, the whole operation. The design was all done, and I had some designers from Houston with me at that time, but all what we want to do is we want to see that we get out of it rather than pointing fingers. Now, newspaper people want to have, of course, the finger pointing. They like that. They like that I have trouble with [skill rules?] or that I have trouble with this and this. There's a controversy and just this kind of things. I do not believe a history should now be written that way, always bringing out these controversial things, but rather the facts how it has turned out.

[00:09:09] DC: Actually, we haven't really been hitting this controversial area with any of the others. Since you're the director, this is really the first time that we've been hitting, because you would have the answers, but again, I agree with you on that. I think that we should not write in a newspaper account, maybe something more technically oriented, really, and less controversial.

[00:09:33] ER: You could write that thing, that whole history book, that in summary, one reader would say, “Well, for heaven's sake, well, this is a stinking mess.” You could write it that way. You could slant it that way.

[00:09:46] DC: Maybe sell more copies.

[00:09:48] ER: Even going sentence by sentence through, we could not prove that you were wrong. Just things which came up at that time out of context and so on. We had our trouble. We had blow up of test stands and so on and so on, and the questions all the time. You know, it's still going around now again since everybody's now disenchanted all of a sudden with space flight, which is, after my opinion, a dumb thing to do. First to be enthusiastic about something, and after we have accomplished it, now say, “The hell this was. We threw that money away because there are some poor people whom we had all the time.” The question is all the time, should we make everybody equally rich, no matter how dumb he is and no matter whether he wants to work or not, and not make any progress anymore? You know, the issue is even there's anti-research and science and technology now being brought up by the newspaper people. Say there's an anti-wave going through the country against science, which is just by some loudmouth in the hippie area. That's all that there is to it. There's no wave in the country, anti-science. But newspaper people want to bring this out. They constantly, I was asked that.

[00:11:17] DC: It sells papers.

[00:11:18] ER: It sells papers. But it's not even a fact that there's always some loudmouth hippie type guy who is too lazy to work, and he says, “Well, scientists argue that our air is contaminated,” and this kind of thing. At the same time, he drives to this assembly place where he opens his big mouth with an unadjusted car, which really is contaminated because he hasn't gotten the money, because he's too lazy to work, to adjust that, to tune his motor and this kind of thing. If we wouldn't have cars, we would have probably eliminated more than half the percent of our air pollution, because it's the automobile, mainly, not the big plant. That can be resolved. What we cannot solve is that everyone runs around with a car and makes an equal distribution. We have in the United States about 70 million automobiles, and in average per day, we burn about two to three or four gallons. If we take three gallons and 70 million cars, we have about 210 million gallons of gasoline burned every day into the air.

[00:12:47] DC: That's why I'm really putting this [inaudible].

[00:12:50] ER: We have the best distribution all over the country. If we have some smokestacks there, there something can be done. It's just very local. But the cars distribute this thing evenly all over the country. What we ought to do is tell the guys, “You walk again.”

[00:13:11] DC: Or ride a bicycle, whichever you’ve got.

[00:13:13] ER: But they like to make science responsible for this, which is awfully dumb.

[00:13:21] JSB: Within the development of the Saturn program, though, there were changes in the management structure here at Marshall Space Flight Center. I wonder if you would be willing to comment on…Historians, go and ask why. This is what we're trying to find out. If we can't ask you why, then we're not writing a history. What we wanted to ask you is why you changed some of the management structure. You went to project managers or program managers. Why did you bring Lee James in? Why did you put someone in head of a lab? We're trying to tell a story of how the Saturn developed. We can't not tell that story unless you tell us some whys.

[00:13:58] ER: Well, shall we say now because So-and-So was an S.O.B?

[00:14:02] JSB: No, I'm not asking you that. Let me say this. No, I'm not asking you to say that. But you changed the structure. Maybe as you put one lab under one industrial organization at one point, perhaps you put it under science and technology at another point. What happened in the Saturn program that caused you to do that? I'm not asking you to call anybody a son of a b*tch or anything else. I'm just trying to get a part of the story.

[00:14:26] ER: Yeah. Well, the question is really should we put in too much whys? Or could we just factually say, “In 19-so-and-so, the management structure was changed?”

[00:14:40] JSB: Okay, we can just say that.

[00:14:41] ER: Could be writed [sic] that way, just as the facts. Because as soon as you go deeper into the whys, then you go immediately into controversial things. We certainly had the [post?] of some leading people because we haven't felt they were as good as others.

[00:15:01] DC: Okay. Now, what about maybe let's...

[00:15:09] JSB: What constraints in the Saturn…We're asking all why questions, I'm afraid.

[00:15:18] ER: What were the major reasons for the selection of the prime contractors, Chrysler, Boeing, North American, Douglas, and IBM?

[00:15:27] JSB: This is a supplementary question.

[00:15:29] DC: [Flipping through papers] Oh, these are the supplementary. Let's come over here. Let’s try these here, Dr. Rees. Somewhere in here…Yes. These, we…

[00:15:40] ER: In general, how would the EOR method have changed the Saturn design in comparison with the LOR mode?

[00:16:02] DC: Or perhaps some other question in there.

[00:16:06] ER: I have now ready to go into the EOR mode again.

[00:16:13] JSB: Can you tell us where there are some people here at Marshall that supported EOR over LOR in the earlier discussion?

[00:16:19] ER: Yeah. One of the most...

[00:16:31] DC: Like it's been a real controversial issue, not so much...

[00:16:34] ER: One of the strong promoters was Dr. Geissler for the EOR mode method, have changed the Saturn design. I think it was this way that we at that time have said, “Let's go up to an Earth orbit, and then in a smaller launch vehicle and then refuel it with oxygen, and then come up with another vehicle and refuel that with oxygen again, and then go from there to the moon. We would have rather than one big launch vehicle have to have smaller ones. What I would suggest in order to answer this question number one, that we give you a write-up on that. This might be better on two or three pages. It was this way that we said, “Let us go with two small launch vehicles into an Earth orbit and then refuel the one with another one.” The one was rather an oxygen carrier and the other one had only so much oxygen that it could just reach Earth orbit. Then there was the refueling mode, and this was considered quite a problem in orbit under weightless conditions. This was one of the big problems, and it was considered quite a problem to do that. Then we would have gone with the first vehicle from there to the moon. It would have also taken a somewhat bigger lunar lander. It goes about this way so that you may understand it. We would, and here's the Earth orbit. Here's the Earth. We would have gone with two vehicles up to an Earth orbit. First with one and then with an oxygen or two carrier. Then do refueling if you link. Then we would have gone from here and land directly on the moon without going into lunar orbit. This would have meant a bigger lunar lander because that lunar lander would have had then to have directly from the surface of the moon the fuel to go back here. It was a matter of propellant management and therefore a matter of the size of the vehicle.

[00:20:10] DC: It would have meant a smaller Saturn though, wouldn’t it?

[00:20:12] ER: It would have meant a smaller Saturn, but it would have meant a bigger lander.
We shied away from such a bigger lander as never anybody had landed on the moon. I'm glad that we have such a small lander. The landing is still a difficult thing. We have weighed this mode against each other and this refueling problem under weightless conditions versus…And then we would have also had the landing problem. You know when we compare these methods, there was number one, the Nova, with a real big rocket going directly from Earth to the moon and land there. Then the second one was the EOR, the smaller things, but then with a bigger lander, which also looks easier. Then the third thing was going first in Earth orbit and then going into lunar orbit and then land again and then go up to the lunar orbit and then go down to Earth. Everybody had said at that time and still now not anymore, but before we have to head down, it isn't that the most complicated way, the lunar orbit way, which of course would also have meant an Earth orbit. We would have also in this fashion had to go to an Earth orbit, namely for doing that refueling. Anyhow, but I would prefer to give you a little write up. You might also want to talk about this with Dr. Geissler.

[00:21:55] JSB: Dr. Rees, could you speculate if there were no constraints imposed by schedule? In other words, if President Kennedy just said get to the moon when you're ready and didn't say by the end of the decade, would you have maybe gone a different way or done the program differently?

[00:22:12] ER: No, I don't think so. But we might have not pressed the program so strongly. It might have then gone into the 70s, and it would have probably cost us more money. Then second, there's another thing. If you do any work in this world without a schedule, you don't get anywhere. The first thing what you have to do for program management—and for yourself, even personally—to have a schedule. As soon as you work anymore without a schedule, for instance, when I'm retiring, I want to be on a schedule also, to do something on a schedule. If you don't do that anymore, then you are dragging along, and you are dying earlier. If you want to run an operation as Marshall Space Flight Center or any factory or any place whatsoever, you'd better set a schedule so that you can tell your people you do this by that time, you do this by that time, you do this by that time. This is the principle of management, after my opinion. If we just would tell our people, “Well, you do this and this and this sometime, don't worry when that's supposed to be done,” then the people get lazy. We can also now not say, “We need so and so much money” because somebody can always say, “Well, you need 100 million for this and this. If you do it longer with less people, then you might not need now 100 million. You might need them later.” You know, there's always two constraints. The one is the total amount a program costs, and the money we need for fiscal year. As soon as we say, “We need for fiscal year sounds so much, then we say we need it because we want to do this and this and this at that time.” So a program without a time schedule is no program. I want to go that far to say that.

[00:24:17] DC: That was one of the biggest advantages of the Kennedy deadline.

[00:24:21] ER: Yeah, it was the biggest. “I want you to go on the moon with men, land them safely there, and bring them back safely in this decade.” This is the important thing, and this ought to be [stressed?] very much in the whole thing.

[00:24:38] DC: This is a little bit…

[00:24:40] ER: And then in this decade, so we said then that the decade ends 1970. So we want to do it at least in 1969 at the latest.

[00:24:51] DC: Along that line—and this is the leading question, you might not want to answer it, I don't know that I would—if Congress or NASA should authorize you all the money that you wanted for the Saturn program, generally, how much more would you ask for, if any? Or what in general would you use it? Or…The reason I'm asking that is, is the Saturn program…Have we gotten out of it about what we need to get out of it?

[00:25:16] ER: Yeah, it's about what we needed. You know, when the program was set up by Kennedy, Kennedy incidentally said, “How much would that thing then cost?” Mr. Webb and Dr. Seamans said, “Well, 20 to 40 billions.” This was all right at that time.

[00:25:36] DC: So we have pretty well gotten what we want out of the Saturn program.

[00:25:41] ER: Yeah, we have pretty well gotten what we want out of the Saturn program. We did not need more money.

[00:25:53] DC: Very good. Now we need it for the other two major programs, or at least the space shuttle, which is something else, of course, from Skylab...

[00:26:02] ER: Unfortunately for the space shuttle, it is now first asked, “How much does that cost?” Whenever you bring up the total cost, then set off [inaudible] and say, “Let's not do that.”

[00:26:20] DC: It'd be nice if we could have a deadline for the space shuttle, wouldn’t it?

[00:26:23] ER: Yeah, well, we made one, but people always say, “Well, why, why, why, why, it doesn't have to be done.” The first thing that we made was before we even ask how much money we'll get and so on, when would such a thing possibly be ready? So we put right a deadline on that. Nobody…The President has not done this. We would very much like to have a commitment by the President of the United States for the shuttle. This is the difference between the Apollo program and this program, and then really go down the road. So you cannot do any work without a schedule.

[00:27:04] JSB: Were there any special techniques of forecasting and scheduling developed to move the program along, like configuration management, things of this nature, that you were involved in?

[00:27:16] ER: Yeah, we had to be at quite some…We have, of course, quite some techniques to do this, but the major technique in management of a program I found out is establishing the means for good visibility. This is after my opinion, the major point in all program management, and in everything also what you are doing. This is basic that you have visibility. What is going on at the present time? Now, for instance, budget visibility we get only after several weeks or so because the accounting process takes so long. When a contractor then is overrunning, we very often learn that only too late. We were pressing in our management business to have visibility all the time in the three major fields: how we stand on the schedule, how we send out the money, and how we are doing into technical performance. These are the three major points all the time.

[00:28:32] JSB: How did you go about making the contractors aware of the need to make these things more visible? Roger and I went out and talked to the people out of North American, Bill Parker and Paul Wickham, and they said they had some troubles in knowing where they were.

[00:28:49] ER: This was our major difficulty with all the contractors since ever I have been in this business that the contractor first establishes for himself visibility. Otherwise he can't manage either. Why the contractors hadn't seen this or don't want to see it, it's beyond my understanding. Because the first thing what you have to do is that you get visibility. This goes again for your everyday work.

[00:29:21] JSB: Where did you develop these concepts of visibility here at Marshall? Were they developed here and then you took them out to the contractors and some of these [inaudible] establish these schedule boards and these control rooms and those types of things?

[00:29:35] ER: Yeah, into schedule boards and this…You make a kind of a schedule. [Tears paper] Let's do it that way, that we say, “All right, you know the problem is all the time, that before you do any planning…” [interview interrupted] I think I should have with you some time, some longer time on this whole business.

[tape restarts]

[00:30:04] ER: …To try to put out [rather effects?] that this and this and this and this had happened, and put...I know you cannot await quite the why question. It also shouldn't be a dull story, but put down the skeleton effects first and then see whether we could put the whys in there. As to this EOR mode, you might want to talk to Dr. Geissler. He was strongest in this whole business. Then there's of course a man who has at that time done these things for us, and this is Mr. Williams who is now with Dr. von Braun. Frank Williams.

[00:30:52] JSB: I've been trying to get a hold of him sometimes when he's down in Houston.

[00:30:54] ER: Yeah, yeah. Now I do not know how this would work out, there is a man in Washington who writes the Apollo history, including the launch rate, and this is Bob Sherrod. He's been sitting on this thing now for a long time. I have the feeling without a time schedule. [All laugh]

[00:31:17] DC: Yes, he had it when he slipped it. The publisher feels the same way.

[00:31:19] ER: Nice guy, eh?

[00:31:23] DC: Advanced [him $100,000?].

[00:31:24] ER: I do not know how professional [this dude is?] now. He might not want to have a discussion even with you because he might have the feeling that you copy his story. On the other hand, I would hate a little bit that three, four, five books come out. The one with that story, the other one with that story, and the third one with that story.

[00:31:45] JSB: The work being published by the government printing office with NASA's…

[00:31:48] DC: His is a commercial...

[00:31:52] ER: Yeah, under a NASA contract.

[00:31:54] JSB: Yeah, and his is going to be done, what? MacMillan?

[00:31:56] DC: MacMillan and a commercial [inaudible].

[00:31:58] ER: Who is the man in Washington? I forgot the name again. When we had the contract with you, there was some man in Washington.

[00:32:06] DC: General Smart, Gene Emme, Dr. Emme or…?

[00:32:06] ER: Yeah, Emme.

[00:32:08] DC: Yes, Gene Emme.

[00:32:10] ER: Maybe his views, how you want to work together with Sherrod might be important.

[00:32:16] DC: We've been working on this. Matter of fact, I’ve taken him out for dinner.

[00:32:20] ER: The big trouble…I want to develop this program with you by making a lot of drawings eventually on a pad or on a blackboard. The problem with all these programs is…

[tape ends]

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