Deflection

Yesterday, I went to Space Center Houston, and it was a trip down memory lane for sure. It did not take long to recognize a photo of Alan Shepard. By growing during the first space adventures on TV, we could recognize all of the original save astronauts. With the Gemini program, there were other astronauts for us to become familiar with at the time, and that is not to forget their missions. We then heard about three Apollo astronauts burning a live. Everyone held their breath, as Neal Armstrong set the Lunar Module down on the moon. Then there was John Young that stopped on the shuttle on the imaginary X in the pavement that NASA was shooting at Edward Air Force Base, a perfect end to a prefect trip.

They say you remember when big events happened in everyone’s life. Like I was in the second grade classroom when President John F. Kennedy was assonated. With the first few trips to space, like Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, we were glued to a flat screen on black and white TV screen that did not show anything, but the newscasters talking about what they were hearing from NASA. Before the end of the Gemini program, there was events being televised. When the three astronauts burned alive, we were traveling I believe to my dad’s brother’s home for a visit. When Neal Armstrong spent on the noon, we were traveling out west and saw video of his accomplishment on a TV set up in a store for us to see. When the Challenge Spaceship exploded, I was in an Iowa DOT conference in the Scheman Hall on the Iowa State University.

My first tour yesterday was in the control room for the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. The control room is now a National Historical Landmark, and the room was set up of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Complete with a pack of cigarettes and ashtrays on the counters. Since they had recorded the landing on the moon, the panels in front of the room and all of the monitors on the individual work stations were lighted up like the landing was actually happening. It was a great simulation. The equipment is so primitive that it is hard to understand how they succeeded with all of the missions. A person has to wonder if the space race was worth this type of a huge risk.

Obviously, there was no one in the control room, but I could visualize Gene Kranz in that room, especially during the Apollo 13. The sequence started with an introduction by Gene. During Apollo 13, Gene took all of the employees, with all of the equipment that was available to the astronauts, and told them that they had to find away to bring the astronauts home. Regarding his book, Failure is not an Option, they had to find a solution. Without the desperate situation of the having astronauts stranded in space, failure is not an option for structural engineers, or bridges will come falling down. I just took a look, and Gene is still alive at the age of 91. Jim Lovell is still alive at the age of 96. The second man to walk own the noon, Buzz Aldrin, is 90. I did pick up Gene’s book to read, since it seems like a good book for an engineer to read.

I went to the training facility where they had a full scale mock set up of the current space station where the astronauts train before going into space. Although this is a straight forward set up, I can still remember video of Neal Armstrong trying to land a mock lunar lander on earth and being ejected out of the lander because he had lost control of the lander. Try, try, again until it is correct. I did not see anything as complicated as trying to accomplish something as complicated as a lunar lander, but there is a a huge swimming pool some where that they train to do space walk, but we did not see that on this trip.

The last trip I made was to the Saturn V rocket. With the cancelation of the last couple of missions to the noon, there are at least two rockets still around, with one being here and one at the Kennedy Space Center. The rocket is 363 feet long, with the emergency crew evacuation rocket on top, and that is a longways up, with the assembly building being 500 feet tall. To think about the distance, the Iowa DOT set out station markers every 500 feet along all of the highways, and the 500 feet is a considerable distance. Over the years with the rocket setting out in the elements, it stated to deteriorate badly. There was a major rehabilitation of the rocket and it is now in a building. To get up next to the rocket is an experience. Stages 1 and 2 are 33 feet in diameter to give a feeling that this is big. There was a path way between Stage 3 and where the lunar landing was located. I touched the thickness of the outer shell and it felt like it was a half of an inch thick. After some research today, I found that the shell is aluminum. But, even with the rocket being made out of aluminum at a density of 0.0975 pound per cubic inch or 168.5 pounds per cubic foot, the weight of the shell is tons of aluminum. Being made out of aluminum instead of steel, does give these stages a chance to burn up in the atmosphere. They were concern that the astronauts would bring too much personal stuff because it weighed too much? At this rate, a few extra hundred pounds would not make a difference (my point of view).

As shown in the photos, they brought the Boing 747, with a shuttle, to the outside of the center with some difficulty, even with the plane disassemble in to sections. This is not the first time that I saw the plane, with shuttle. Somewhere around 1984, my grandfather and I went to Offutt Air Force Base just south of Omaha Nebraska to see the plane come in for refueling, although this was not the usual location for the plane to refuel on its flight from Edward Air Force Base to the Cape Canaveral. It was interesting to see seven trucks come out to fill one 747. It was also interesting getting in a 747 without any seats on the main deck. The cables that the pilot uses to control all of the flaps in the plane are exposed, and the air conditioning ducks used when the plane carried passengers are exposed and bigger that one might expect, since the engines do power the A/C in the plane. Taking photos from the hight of the shuttle did show the size of the plane.

It sure was a trip down memory lane. It is strange that probably no one knows the names of the astronauts today, but there is not focus on space like we grew up in the 1960s. But, to see the space center in person, it was awesome.

Roger