[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right, why would this material fail all of a sudden?

[Assistant] Did things change over time, in terms of testing, from Mercury through Apollo? Were you using different ablative materials?

[User] Sure. You’d have to say things changed because we learned from each test, and we learned more how to build the test articles, design the test article, design of all of the instrumentation that we put in a test article, actual shapes. We changed from just basically flat-faced specimens to what we call iso-Qs. An iso-Q specimen gives you a uniform heating flux across the surface, so that was an innovation that we had. Different tests could require different types of test articles itself, going all the way from stagnation point testing to parallel flow tests. As we moved into the 10-megawatt facility, that allowed us to do flat-plate testing, which we couldn’t do in the old facility, the old 1-megawatt facility. Now, with the new facility at 10 megawatts, higher power, more flow, more gas flow, we could test flat plates, we could test plates at an angle of attack, and we could test larger test articles.

[Assistant] That’s a pretty significant change.

[User] Absolutely, yes.

[Assistant] Would you talk about how you prepared for these tests for Apollo? What sort of requirements were set by the facility for you?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, people don’t understand that, that’s true.

[Assistant] Tell me, why were you testing wood? What other sort of everyday materials were you testing in the facilities?

[User] At the time, we were interested just in understanding how different materials perform. Wood is a good material to test and determine its performance; actually, cork, which is wood, is used on missile systems. Cork is a material that’s used to protect the missile during its ascent phase of the trajectory. Of course, for the entry phase of the trajectory, they use another material, a higher density material. Cork is very lightweight and pretty weak, but also it has good properties for the environment that you want to test at.\n\n That’s the other thing: the materials are selected based on the environment in which they’re going to be used. One of the parameters that’s very important is temperature because each material has a temperature limit. You want a design to be as efficient as possible. So for example, that’s why the Shuttle system had carbon, which is a very high-temperature material, and had the tiles, which were a little bit lower-temperature material, and then it had the blankets, which were even lower-temperature materials. In combination, all three of them gave you a very efficient thermal protection system, in terms of weight and performance. The Arc Jet does all that for you, lets you test all those different materials, so you can determine their performance.

[Assistant] When you would run a test during Apollo, were you also there watching the test being done?

[User] Absolutely. Actually, during Apollo, we could be standing in what I call not the control room, but they had another little room out by the actual Arc Jet chamber. For many years, we could stand out in that little room and actually watch the test, looking through the windows into the main chamber of the Arc facility. That changed when safety got involved, and they decided it was too much of a hazard for a human to be out there, in case of a major accident, I guess, or incident.

[Assistant] When the test was over, then what did you do? You went out, and you looked at it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Absolutely. Actually, during Apollo, we could be standing in what I call not the control room, but they had another little room out by the actual Arc Jet chamber. For many years, we could stand out in that little room and actually watch the test, looking through the windows into the main chamber of the Arc facility. That changed when safety got involved, and they decided it was too much of a hazard for a human to be out there, in case of a major accident, I guess, or incident.

[Assistant] When the test was over, then what did you do? You went out, and you looked at it?

[User] First of all, we would watch the test, and when we actually moved into what I call the control room that we had, we could watch it on the cameras. If we saw something happening that was bad, we could terminate the test sooner than we had planned. Each test had a specific test time, but after the test, absolutely, we could go out. Once the chamber had cooled down and we had re-pressurized back up to atmospheric conditions, we could go out and look at the articles in the chamber. After hours, when they took the articles out, of course, we could look at them close-up. During the actual test, we could watch the temperature rise. We could look at the surface temperature, we could look at the internal temperatures from the thermocouples. There was a lot of things that you could do and were doing during the test.

[Assistant] If at some point during the test you thought, “This isn’t what I’m looking for,” you said you could stop?

[User] We did what we’d call an abort. Absolutely, we could say, “Terminate the test.”

[Assistant] Then you started preparing for another test because you wanted a different temperature or you weren’t seeing what you liked?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] First of all, we would watch the test, and when we actually moved into what I call the control room that we had, we could watch it on the cameras. If we saw something happening that was bad, we could terminate the test sooner than we had planned. Each test had a specific test time, but after the test, absolutely, we could go out. Once the chamber had cooled down and we had re-pressurized back up to atmospheric conditions, we could go out and look at the articles in the chamber. After hours, when they took the articles out, of course, we could look at them close-up. During the actual test, we could watch the temperature rise. We could look at the surface temperature, we could look at the internal temperatures from the thermocouples. There was a lot of things that you could do and were doing during the test.

[Assistant] If at some point during the test you thought, “This isn’t what I’m looking for,” you said you could stop?

[User] We did what we’d call an abort. Absolutely, we could say, “Terminate the test.”

[Assistant] Then you started preparing for another test because you wanted a different temperature or you weren’t seeing what you liked?

[User] Correct, or we could wait, and wait until after we looked at the test article to make sure that’s what we wanted to do. Generally speaking, you’re correct, we would just prepare another test article, maybe change the test conditions. We’d actually do that many times when we were trying to establish what we called failing temperatures. If you wanted to do a failing temperature test, then you’d take it up in temperature, in increments, until you get to the failing point. Then, as soon as it starts to fail, you terminate the test.

[Assistant] Who would make these test articles? Was that something the contractor provided?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We did what we’d call an abort. Absolutely, we could say, “Terminate the test.”

[Assistant] Then you started preparing for another test because you wanted a different temperature or you weren’t seeing what you liked?

[User] Correct, or we could wait, and wait until after we looked at the test article to make sure that’s what we wanted to do. Generally speaking, you’re correct, we would just prepare another test article, maybe change the test conditions. We’d actually do that many times when we were trying to establish what we called failing temperatures. If you wanted to do a failing temperature test, then you’d take it up in temperature, in increments, until you get to the failing point. Then, as soon as it starts to fail, you terminate the test.

[Assistant] Who would make these test articles? Was that something the contractor provided?

[User] Generally speaking, the company that made the material or fabricated the material did supply the test articles, yes.

[Assistant] You would just tell them what dimensions you needed and the shape you wanted?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Correct, or we could wait, and wait until after we looked at the test article to make sure that’s what we wanted to do. Generally speaking, you’re correct, we would just prepare another test article, maybe change the test conditions. We’d actually do that many times when we were trying to establish what we called failing temperatures. If you wanted to do a failing temperature test, then you’d take it up in temperature, in increments, until you get to the failing point. Then, as soon as it starts to fail, you terminate the test.

[Assistant] Who would make these test articles? Was that something the contractor provided?

[User] Generally speaking, the company that made the material or fabricated the material did supply the test articles, yes.

[Assistant] You would just tell them what dimensions you needed and the shape you wanted?

[User] Right, you would buy the test articles from a corporation like Avco Corporation, at the time, and we would buy them already instrumented, per our design, our requirements.

[Assistant] At some point, did you no longer need to test the ablators, since you had all of this wealth of knowledge from Mercury and Gemini, and once Apollo had flown 7 and 8? Was that enough, or did you still need to keep testing?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Generally speaking, the company that made the material or fabricated the material did supply the test articles, yes.

[Assistant] You would just tell them what dimensions you needed and the shape you wanted?

[User] Right, you would buy the test articles from a corporation like Avco Corporation, at the time, and we would buy them already instrumented, per our design, our requirements.

[Assistant] At some point, did you no longer need to test the ablators, since you had all of this wealth of knowledge from Mercury and Gemini, and once Apollo had flown 7 and 8? Was that enough, or did you still need to keep testing?

[User] With respect to Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, as soon as we had test flights, then we didn’t need to do additional Arc Jet testing, unless we had some kind of anomaly during the flight. Then, we’d do anomaly flight test data. With Apollo, we had four separate unmanned test flights. Two test flights that entered at what’s called Earth-orbital speed, and two flights that were lunar return speeds. We had test data from those four test flights, and we had the Arc Jet test data so we could compare the flight data with the Arc Jet data. We could also conduct post-test examination of the different flight materials actually taken from the flight cores with the Arc Jet cores. We had a way to compare actual ground testing with flight testing.

[Assistant] Were they very similar?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right, you would buy the test articles from a corporation like Avco Corporation, at the time, and we would buy them already instrumented, per our design, our requirements.

[Assistant] At some point, did you no longer need to test the ablators, since you had all of this wealth of knowledge from Mercury and Gemini, and once Apollo had flown 7 and 8? Was that enough, or did you still need to keep testing?

[User] With respect to Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, as soon as we had test flights, then we didn’t need to do additional Arc Jet testing, unless we had some kind of anomaly during the flight. Then, we’d do anomaly flight test data. With Apollo, we had four separate unmanned test flights. Two test flights that entered at what’s called Earth-orbital speed, and two flights that were lunar return speeds. We had test data from those four test flights, and we had the Arc Jet test data so we could compare the flight data with the Arc Jet data. We could also conduct post-test examination of the different flight materials actually taken from the flight cores with the Arc Jet cores. We had a way to compare actual ground testing with flight testing.

[Assistant] Were they very similar?

[User] Generally, the Arc Jet is a little more severe than the flight test, for certain types of materials, because the Arc Jet, we always had what we called a disassociated flow. The gas was not oxygen O2, and it wasn’t nitrogen N2. It had been broken down into atomic oxygen and atomic nitrogen. Even at certain conditions for Apollo, we had some ionization. We tested at high enough temperature to ionize the gas. Generally flight conditions were pretty much the same but there’s a difference between the flight and the Arc Jet, so they’re not exactly 1:1. You would like them to be, but they’re not.

[Assistant] I assumed that it was.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] With respect to Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, as soon as we had test flights, then we didn’t need to do additional Arc Jet testing, unless we had some kind of anomaly during the flight. Then, we’d do anomaly flight test data. With Apollo, we had four separate unmanned test flights. Two test flights that entered at what’s called Earth-orbital speed, and two flights that were lunar return speeds. We had test data from those four test flights, and we had the Arc Jet test data so we could compare the flight data with the Arc Jet data. We could also conduct post-test examination of the different flight materials actually taken from the flight cores with the Arc Jet cores. We had a way to compare actual ground testing with flight testing.

[Assistant] Were they very similar?

[User] Generally, the Arc Jet is a little more severe than the flight test, for certain types of materials, because the Arc Jet, we always had what we called a disassociated flow. The gas was not oxygen O2, and it wasn’t nitrogen N2. It had been broken down into atomic oxygen and atomic nitrogen. Even at certain conditions for Apollo, we had some ionization. We tested at high enough temperature to ionize the gas. Generally flight conditions were pretty much the same but there’s a difference between the flight and the Arc Jet, so they’re not exactly 1:1. You would like them to be, but they’re not.

[Assistant] I assumed that it was.

[User] No, they’re not. Generally Arc Jet testing is more severe than flight, unless you cannot test at the flight conditions. There are conditions that you can’t test at.

[Assistant] Can you give some examples?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Generally, the Arc Jet is a little more severe than the flight test, for certain types of materials, because the Arc Jet, we always had what we called a disassociated flow. The gas was not oxygen O2, and it wasn’t nitrogen N2. It had been broken down into atomic oxygen and atomic nitrogen. Even at certain conditions for Apollo, we had some ionization. We tested at high enough temperature to ionize the gas. Generally flight conditions were pretty much the same but there’s a difference between the flight and the Arc Jet, so they’re not exactly 1:1. You would like them to be, but they’re not.

[Assistant] I assumed that it was.

[User] No, they’re not. Generally Arc Jet testing is more severe than flight, unless you cannot test at the flight conditions. There are conditions that you can’t test at.

[Assistant] Can you give some examples?

[User] When the pressure’s really high and the heat flux is fairly high, some Arc Jets can’t reach both conditions at the same time. The high heating rate plus the high pressure, or you might even have a low heating rate condition and a high pressure. Sometimes you can’t match it up exactly, so you do the best you can. Then you use your analysis to extrapolate the data you like, to go ahead with the design.

[Assistant] During the Apollo program, lots of guys have talked about how they were working nonstop, seven days a week, they were constantly on travel. Was that the same for you?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Absolutely.

[Assistant] Where were you?

[User] Apollo 11, I think I was probably at home. Like I said, I wasn’t part of the project management, so I wasn’t really involved in Apollo 11 that much.

[Assistant] When did you start working on Shuttle?

[User] Nineteen-seventy, I became the subsystem manager on the Space Shuttle Orbiter leading edge structural subsystem, which is the nose cap, wing leading edge panels, arrowhead plate, and eventually, what we call the RCC [Reinforced Carbon-Carbon] chin panel.

[Assistant] What lessons did you learn from Apollo that you could transfer to Shuttle? It’s two very different vehicles, of course.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Nineteen-seventy, I became the subsystem manager on the Space Shuttle Orbiter leading edge structural subsystem, which is the nose cap, wing leading edge panels, arrowhead plate, and eventually, what we call the RCC [Reinforced Carbon-Carbon] chin panel.

[Assistant] What lessons did you learn from Apollo that you could transfer to Shuttle? It’s two very different vehicles, of course.

[User] That’s true, except for one thing. I think the reason I got selected to be the Shuttle leading edge manager for the carbon system was because the carbon system was an ablator.

[Assistant] It is?

[User] Yes, carbon ablates. I had experience in ablation and in the chemistry aspects of that. We had to develop computer programs to predict the carbon response, thermally. I think because of that experience I had on Apollo, it just moved me into the carbon system. I guess again, another way to say it is your fireplace log—when it forms that carbon layer, it continues to burn. That carbon layer goes away because it oxidizes away from the oxygen in the atmosphere. That’s an ablation problem. I think that’s probably why I got selected to be the initial subsystem manager on the leading edge structural subsystem.

[Assistant] In the beginning, they were probably looking at a whole host of ideas. What were some of the ideas that were thrown out for the system itself?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That’s true, except for one thing. I think the reason I got selected to be the Shuttle leading edge manager for the carbon system was because the carbon system was an ablator.

[Assistant] It is?

[User] Yes, carbon ablates. I had experience in ablation and in the chemistry aspects of that. We had to develop computer programs to predict the carbon response, thermally. I think because of that experience I had on Apollo, it just moved me into the carbon system. I guess again, another way to say it is your fireplace log—when it forms that carbon layer, it continues to burn. That carbon layer goes away because it oxidizes away from the oxygen in the atmosphere. That’s an ablation problem. I think that’s probably why I got selected to be the initial subsystem manager on the leading edge structural subsystem.

[Assistant] In the beginning, they were probably looking at a whole host of ideas. What were some of the ideas that were thrown out for the system itself?

[User] For the Shuttle? Actually, we studied an ablative leading edge. That was one system. There were a couple of different contractors on carbon. One was McDonnell Douglas, and the other one was actually Chance Vought, at the time. From the competition, the Chance Vought people won the contract. Of course, they were a subcontractor to Rockwell at the time. Ablators would have worked fine, except that they were one-use only. You had to replace the ablator every time, and that was costly. It easily would have worked.

[Assistant] When did NASA settle on the RCC system?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, carbon ablates. I had experience in ablation and in the chemistry aspects of that. We had to develop computer programs to predict the carbon response, thermally. I think because of that experience I had on Apollo, it just moved me into the carbon system. I guess again, another way to say it is your fireplace log—when it forms that carbon layer, it continues to burn. That carbon layer goes away because it oxidizes away from the oxygen in the atmosphere. That’s an ablation problem. I think that’s probably why I got selected to be the initial subsystem manager on the leading edge structural subsystem.

[Assistant] In the beginning, they were probably looking at a whole host of ideas. What were some of the ideas that were thrown out for the system itself?

[User] For the Shuttle? Actually, we studied an ablative leading edge. That was one system. There were a couple of different contractors on carbon. One was McDonnell Douglas, and the other one was actually Chance Vought, at the time. From the competition, the Chance Vought people won the contract. Of course, they were a subcontractor to Rockwell at the time. Ablators would have worked fine, except that they were one-use only. You had to replace the ablator every time, and that was costly. It easily would have worked.

[Assistant] When did NASA settle on the RCC system?

[User] You had these phase II contracts, I’m not exactly sure, but maybe mid-1970s. I guess we had already decided because when I became subsystem manager in 1970, we’d already picked the system, basically, and already pretty much picked the Vought Corporation, with Rockwell.

[Assistant] You guys were testing those materials out at the Arc Jet, as well?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] For the Shuttle? Actually, we studied an ablative leading edge. That was one system. There were a couple of different contractors on carbon. One was McDonnell Douglas, and the other one was actually Chance Vought, at the time. From the competition, the Chance Vought people won the contract. Of course, they were a subcontractor to Rockwell at the time. Ablators would have worked fine, except that they were one-use only. You had to replace the ablator every time, and that was costly. It easily would have worked.

[Assistant] When did NASA settle on the RCC system?

[User] You had these phase II contracts, I’m not exactly sure, but maybe mid-1970s. I guess we had already decided because when I became subsystem manager in 1970, we’d already picked the system, basically, and already pretty much picked the Vought Corporation, with Rockwell.

[Assistant] You guys were testing those materials out at the Arc Jet, as well?

[User] Absolutely. I probably had more test hours at that Arc Jet on carbon testing than any other person that’s ever used the Arc Jet, yes.

[Assistant] How many tests do you think that you’ve done out there.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You had these phase II contracts, I’m not exactly sure, but maybe mid-1970s. I guess we had already decided because when I became subsystem manager in 1970, we’d already picked the system, basically, and already pretty much picked the Vought Corporation, with Rockwell.

[Assistant] You guys were testing those materials out at the Arc Jet, as well?

[User] Absolutely. I probably had more test hours at that Arc Jet on carbon testing than any other person that’s ever used the Arc Jet, yes.

[Assistant] How many tests do you think that you’ve done out there.

[User] Three or four thousand, easily.

[Assistant] That’s quite a few.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] First of all, we had to get an astronaut out there to do it, that’s the first thing. That’s a safety problem, I realize that, but we have on board all kinds of materials—blankets in the payload bay, rubber shoes that they wear, and things of this sort—that they could have filled up that hole to ablate those materials first. Because of that hole, we actually ingested gas temperatures probably on the order of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe higher. No wonder it burned right through the aluminum front spar. It wasn’t going to last long at those temperatures. Now, whether we could have done that or not, we’ll never know.

[Assistant] I was going to ask if you had studied that because I came across an article that talked about how you and some other folks had studied, like in ’99, 2000 sometime, the impact of a micrometeoroid or orbital debris on the reinforced carbon-carbon. I was curious about that.

[User] We had some damage levels on that, but they were small particles. We really never did do any real test of really large particles hitting the carbon system.

[Assistant] That’s interesting.

[User] Yes, it’s very interesting.

[Assistant] You were involved in the accident investigation?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We had some damage levels on that, but they were small particles. We really never did do any real test of really large particles hitting the carbon system.

[Assistant] That’s interesting.

[User] Yes, it’s very interesting.

[Assistant] You were involved in the accident investigation?

[User] Absolutely, yes.

[Assistant] Will you talk about that, and how the Arc Jet played a role as well?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was a big effort, yes.

[Assistant] What was the size that was small enough that you could enter?

[User] I’d have to go back to look at it. I’m thinking it was like, eighth of an inch? About an eighth of an inch damage in the coating.

[Assistant] Not much.

[User] No, not much, and of course, it was panel-dependent. Each panel had a little bit separate requirement, because the heating was different and environment was different.

[Assistant] You had tested each individual panel?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I’d have to go back to look at it. I’m thinking it was like, eighth of an inch? About an eighth of an inch damage in the coating.

[Assistant] Not much.

[User] No, not much, and of course, it was panel-dependent. Each panel had a little bit separate requirement, because the heating was different and environment was different.

[Assistant] You had tested each individual panel?

[User] We did a lot of testing at different damages in the coating to see how fast we could burn through, or if it would burn through the coating, to the substrate. We analyzed a lot of different test data. When that flight changes or something happened during the flight, we worked on additional calculations.

[Assistant] Were you ever doing any in-flight testing ever at the Arc Jet?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, not much, and of course, it was panel-dependent. Each panel had a little bit separate requirement, because the heating was different and environment was different.

[Assistant] You had tested each individual panel?

[User] We did a lot of testing at different damages in the coating to see how fast we could burn through, or if it would burn through the coating, to the substrate. We analyzed a lot of different test data. When that flight changes or something happened during the flight, we worked on additional calculations.

[Assistant] Were you ever doing any in-flight testing ever at the Arc Jet?

[User] We didn’t have to actually do, as I recall, any real in-flight testing. The tile people had to do a lot of in-flight testing at the Arc Jet, but I can’t remember us doing any really Arc Jet testing over there.

[Assistant] When you were doing all these, I guess, life cycle or impact tests, were you doing them all here at JSC, or were you also doing some at Ames?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We did a lot of testing at different damages in the coating to see how fast we could burn through, or if it would burn through the coating, to the substrate. We analyzed a lot of different test data. When that flight changes or something happened during the flight, we worked on additional calculations.

[Assistant] Were you ever doing any in-flight testing ever at the Arc Jet?

[User] We didn’t have to actually do, as I recall, any real in-flight testing. The tile people had to do a lot of in-flight testing at the Arc Jet, but I can’t remember us doing any really Arc Jet testing over there.

[Assistant] When you were doing all these, I guess, life cycle or impact tests, were you doing them all here at JSC, or were you also doing some at Ames?

[User] Everything was done at JSC. During the Shuttle program, we had Ames do some tests. Their test data did not agree with ours. In fact, their test data indicated we would have had failures. We would have a failure in a normal flight. Just for a normal entry, we would have exceeded some of our temperatures, had we used their test data. The only time we ever used any Ames data was when they helped find the subsurface oxidation, way back in the early ’70s. For Shuttle, almost all of the carbon testing was done at JSC. I can’t remember really going out to use Ames, because we just didn’t get the same results. Our data seemed to match flight data because we had on-board measurements of temperatures, and so forth.

[Assistant] That says a lot about the JSC facility itself.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We didn’t have to actually do, as I recall, any real in-flight testing. The tile people had to do a lot of in-flight testing at the Arc Jet, but I can’t remember us doing any really Arc Jet testing over there.

[Assistant] When you were doing all these, I guess, life cycle or impact tests, were you doing them all here at JSC, or were you also doing some at Ames?

[User] Everything was done at JSC. During the Shuttle program, we had Ames do some tests. Their test data did not agree with ours. In fact, their test data indicated we would have had failures. We would have a failure in a normal flight. Just for a normal entry, we would have exceeded some of our temperatures, had we used their test data. The only time we ever used any Ames data was when they helped find the subsurface oxidation, way back in the early ’70s. For Shuttle, almost all of the carbon testing was done at JSC. I can’t remember really going out to use Ames, because we just didn’t get the same results. Our data seemed to match flight data because we had on-board measurements of temperatures, and so forth.

[Assistant] That says a lot about the JSC facility itself.

[User] Yes, it does. We’ve now closed it. Now we have one facility. I was on an NESC [NASA Engineering and Safety Center] board that studied the two facilities, and we found there’s differences between them, and we couldn’t resolve the differences. From the NESC report, which is restricted, we recommended a test program to be done between JSC and Ames to try to understand this problem. It was not approved. We’ve now closed the JSC facility, and we don’t have the answer.

[Assistant] Tell me about that assignment. I wasn’t aware of that study that was done. How did you get assigned to the board?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, it does. We’ve now closed it. Now we have one facility. I was on an NESC [NASA Engineering and Safety Center] board that studied the two facilities, and we found there’s differences between them, and we couldn’t resolve the differences. From the NESC report, which is restricted, we recommended a test program to be done between JSC and Ames to try to understand this problem. It was not approved. We’ve now closed the JSC facility, and we don’t have the answer.

[Assistant] Tell me about that assignment. I wasn’t aware of that study that was done. How did you get assigned to the board?

[User] I got assigned as a subject matter expert on ablative thermal protection systems and Arc Jet testing. I was what they call a national expert on ablatives, and the NESC hired me. I had retired, by the way, from NASA by then. I retired in 2007. I was a NASA expert, or an advisory expert, with that system. I think that came about because at that time, they were still trying to close the JSC facility, so the NESC did this study. We made these recommendations to the management of the NESC, we signed the report with them, they signed it, but the recommended Arc Jet testing was never implemented. Along with a lot of other people, like Don Tillian, we both have the same opinion about testing at Ames. We don’t know what the data means—totally. It’s good data, but what does it mean? Whether it is not correct, or is it correct? I don’t know.

[Assistant] Yes, that’s a shame.

[User] It is; it’s a shame. The government destroyed a valuable resource. I spent two years writing letters to Congress on this, but to no avail.

[Assistant] I’m sorry to hear that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I got assigned as a subject matter expert on ablative thermal protection systems and Arc Jet testing. I was what they call a national expert on ablatives, and the NESC hired me. I had retired, by the way, from NASA by then. I retired in 2007. I was a NASA expert, or an advisory expert, with that system. I think that came about because at that time, they were still trying to close the JSC facility, so the NESC did this study. We made these recommendations to the management of the NESC, we signed the report with them, they signed it, but the recommended Arc Jet testing was never implemented. Along with a lot of other people, like Don Tillian, we both have the same opinion about testing at Ames. We don’t know what the data means—totally. It’s good data, but what does it mean? Whether it is not correct, or is it correct? I don’t know.

[Assistant] Yes, that’s a shame.

[User] It is; it’s a shame. The government destroyed a valuable resource. I spent two years writing letters to Congress on this, but to no avail.

[Assistant] I’m sorry to hear that.

[User] I am, too. The worst part about it is, for your information, the people at NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC] did not provide answers to some of the questions to the congressional people.

[Assistant] That’s too bad.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It is; it’s a shame. The government destroyed a valuable resource. I spent two years writing letters to Congress on this, but to no avail.

[Assistant] I’m sorry to hear that.

[User] I am, too. The worst part about it is, for your information, the people at NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC] did not provide answers to some of the questions to the congressional people.

[Assistant] That’s too bad.

[User] Yes, it is. It is too bad because my early years with NASA, I used to spend a lot of time at Ames on Arc Jet testing and ablation analysis. I spent weeks at Ames and at the Langley Research Center, both of them were really training grounds for me at the time. Those early scientists were really very smart.

[Assistant] Tell me a little bit about some of the advanced technology that you studied out at the Arc Jet. I saw you worked some on the X-38 and the Aeroassist Flight Experiment?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I was the manager for the Aeroassist Flight Experiment. That was another really good project. The Aeroassist Flight Experiment was going to be taken up in the Shuttle Orbiter payload bay, and then we would re-enter the aerobraking experiment at a little over geosynchronous orbit speed. At geosynchronous orbit speed, we could get the temperatures up and the heat flux up, so that we had both the convective heating and radiative heating on the forward portion of the heat shield. That was mainly a tile system because we wanted it to be re-usable, and we didn’t want any ablation products, because we wanted to have a pure re-entry environment. Ablation products will mess up the boundary layer and change the chemistry, so we didn’t want to do that.\n\n I was a manager on that, here at JSC. We actually built the aerobrake, and we were in the process of installing a tile system on it, which, at the time, was basically the Shuttle tile and blanket system, to deliver the aerobrake to Marshall Space Flight Center [Huntsville, Alabama]. They were the project management of it. It got canceled because of cost. The project management costs killed it, but we actually had built it here at JSC—in house. We bought the tiles from Lockheed, and we could install them ourselves. Our own technicians built the structure out in Building 9. It was wonderful. We had a great time on that.

[Assistant] But it never flew?

[User] It never flew. It would have provided data, aerothermodynamic data, for Mars entry that we were trying to get. It was the perfect experiment.

[Assistant] This was the precursor to what the Arc Jet had developed in terms of that CO2 landing that Chris [Christopher B. Madden] and Steve [Steven V.] Del Papa talked a little bit about?

[User] CO2, yes, that was for Mars entry. You need to have a CO2 environment, so JSC developed the ability to test materials in a CO2 environment.

[Assistant] What about the X-38? How different was its thermal protection system from Shuttle?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It never flew. It would have provided data, aerothermodynamic data, for Mars entry that we were trying to get. It was the perfect experiment.

[Assistant] This was the precursor to what the Arc Jet had developed in terms of that CO2 landing that Chris [Christopher B. Madden] and Steve [Steven V.] Del Papa talked a little bit about?

[User] CO2, yes, that was for Mars entry. You need to have a CO2 environment, so JSC developed the ability to test materials in a CO2 environment.

[Assistant] What about the X-38? How different was its thermal protection system from Shuttle?

[User] Mainly the Germans provided the carbon system on X-38, the nose cap and the wing leading edge. Basically, all I did on X-38 was just monitor their work. I did some work on their seal system; we developed a seal system for the body flap area and did some work on that.

[Assistant] Were you are the Arc Jet for the final test that happened?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] CO2, yes, that was for Mars entry. You need to have a CO2 environment, so JSC developed the ability to test materials in a CO2 environment.

[Assistant] What about the X-38? How different was its thermal protection system from Shuttle?

[User] Mainly the Germans provided the carbon system on X-38, the nose cap and the wing leading edge. Basically, all I did on X-38 was just monitor their work. I did some work on their seal system; we developed a seal system for the body flap area and did some work on that.

[Assistant] Were you are the Arc Jet for the final test that happened?

[User] Yes, I was.

[Assistant] Would you tell me about that moment and your memories about what happened?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Mainly the Germans provided the carbon system on X-38, the nose cap and the wing leading edge. Basically, all I did on X-38 was just monitor their work. I did some work on their seal system; we developed a seal system for the body flap area and did some work on that.

[Assistant] Were you are the Arc Jet for the final test that happened?

[User] Yes, I was.

[Assistant] Would you tell me about that moment and your memories about what happened?

[User] The final test that I was at was for Boeing. I work part-time for Boeing. Boeing is developing an ablator for their CCDev [Commercial Crew Development] capsule, which is their capsule to take men to the Space Station. We were doing the final set of ablation tests on the Boeing material; we’ve been testing that material at different conditions of temperature and pressure to determine its performance. The last test was one of those tests. I can’t really tell you much about the test, other than it was a Boeing material. It was sad to see. We got the test done fine, no problems, and got the data.\n\n We’re actually analyzing the data now, but to know we’re sitting in that facility for the last time, that that’ll be not there anymore is kind of sad, I guess. In some ways, angry. Like my wife said, “Well, Don, everything ends.” That’s true, it does, so let’s end it. I feel sorry for the guys here at JSC.

[Assistant] Yes, they’ve lost a good resource.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, I was.

[Assistant] Would you tell me about that moment and your memories about what happened?

[User] The final test that I was at was for Boeing. I work part-time for Boeing. Boeing is developing an ablator for their CCDev [Commercial Crew Development] capsule, which is their capsule to take men to the Space Station. We were doing the final set of ablation tests on the Boeing material; we’ve been testing that material at different conditions of temperature and pressure to determine its performance. The last test was one of those tests. I can’t really tell you much about the test, other than it was a Boeing material. It was sad to see. We got the test done fine, no problems, and got the data.\n\n We’re actually analyzing the data now, but to know we’re sitting in that facility for the last time, that that’ll be not there anymore is kind of sad, I guess. In some ways, angry. Like my wife said, “Well, Don, everything ends.” That’s true, it does, so let’s end it. I feel sorry for the guys here at JSC.

[Assistant] Yes, they’ve lost a good resource.

[User] Yes, they have. Now, they’ve got to go to another place. One thing about our facility is that when the contractors came in to do the tests, we’ve always allowed them free access to the facility, been willing to make changes to the facility, arc test conditions, whatever. Plus, our costs have been about a factor of three less than Ames was. There’s a big difference in our approach to testing and Ames’s approach to testing.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask you, you mentioned that the test you were doing for Boeing, it’s a Boeing material, but it’s an ablator. I know it’s probably proprietary, but is it similar to AVCO, or is it completely different from what was used during Apollo?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, they have. Now, they’ve got to go to another place. One thing about our facility is that when the contractors came in to do the tests, we’ve always allowed them free access to the facility, been willing to make changes to the facility, arc test conditions, whatever. Plus, our costs have been about a factor of three less than Ames was. There’s a big difference in our approach to testing and Ames’s approach to testing.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask you, you mentioned that the test you were doing for Boeing, it’s a Boeing material, but it’s an ablator. I know it’s probably proprietary, but is it similar to AVCO, or is it completely different from what was used during Apollo?

[User] It is different than Apollo material. It’s hard for me to say it’s similar to Apollo because it’s a different material, it’s a different-based material, but it has to operate at non-lunar conditions. It only has to operate at Earth-orbital conditions, which are significantly different than lunar conditions.

[Assistant] Have you run into any challenges, or were they similar challenges to the one you faced for testing of Apollo ablators?

[User] I don’t think they’re much different. We have to go through the same process, we have to get the data, we have to analyze the data, and determine if the material’s going to work or not. We’re in that process. It can meet all the design requirements, that’s what I was trying to say.

[Assistant] Do you think, having worked on the Arc Jet for all these years, that testing has changed or anything changed over the years, since you started?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It is different than Apollo material. It’s hard for me to say it’s similar to Apollo because it’s a different material, it’s a different-based material, but it has to operate at non-lunar conditions. It only has to operate at Earth-orbital conditions, which are significantly different than lunar conditions.

[Assistant] Have you run into any challenges, or were they similar challenges to the one you faced for testing of Apollo ablators?

[User] I don’t think they’re much different. We have to go through the same process, we have to get the data, we have to analyze the data, and determine if the material’s going to work or not. We’re in that process. It can meet all the design requirements, that’s what I was trying to say.

[Assistant] Do you think, having worked on the Arc Jet for all these years, that testing has changed or anything changed over the years, since you started?

[User] Yes, we’ve become more efficient. We’ve been able to develop test article designs to meet certain requirements that we couldn’t do before, initially. We understand a lot more now about the actual Arc Jet itself and its flow characteristics. Sure, we learned a lot. Remember, when we first started, back in ’63, this was one of the first Arc Jets every built. From nothing to where we are, yes, sure, been a lot of our work done.

[Assistant] That was another question I wanted to ask. I know that there are other Arc Jets around the country. Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] has that small Arc Jet, and there’s Ames, and I think Boeing has one. How was JSC’s Arc Jet facility unique, when compared to all of these other facilities?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We did.

[Assistant] Can you share that?

[User] No. I can’t share it because I don’t have any of the data. We did the test—and Tillian knows more about this than I do—there was a test report written on the response of their material. It was secret, and it went to our division office, who kept it locked up for a while. Then, they transferred it to NASA Headquarters.

[Assistant] This was a test for Soyuz? Or you’re not sure what it was?

[User] It was the ablation material for Soyuz. I don’t think they’ve changed. That was a long time ago, and people ask for those results. They may exist, but I don’t know where they are.

[Assistant] Was this before ISS [International Space Station] or after?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. I can’t share it because I don’t have any of the data. We did the test—and Tillian knows more about this than I do—there was a test report written on the response of their material. It was secret, and it went to our division office, who kept it locked up for a while. Then, they transferred it to NASA Headquarters.

[Assistant] This was a test for Soyuz? Or you’re not sure what it was?

[User] It was the ablation material for Soyuz. I don’t think they’ve changed. That was a long time ago, and people ask for those results. They may exist, but I don’t know where they are.

[Assistant] Was this before ISS [International Space Station] or after?

[User] No, way before. We tested this during the Apollo program.

[Assistant] Now I see why it was locked up. I wondered if you could talk about the camaraderie out at the Arc Jet over the years, since you worked it for so long.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was the ablation material for Soyuz. I don’t think they’ve changed. That was a long time ago, and people ask for those results. They may exist, but I don’t know where they are.

[Assistant] Was this before ISS [International Space Station] or after?

[User] No, way before. We tested this during the Apollo program.

[Assistant] Now I see why it was locked up. I wondered if you could talk about the camaraderie out at the Arc Jet over the years, since you worked it for so long.

[User] It was wonderful. Everybody was dedicated to that facility, first of all, and when you asked them to do something or wanted to be out there, they were very open to helping you design the test articles. A man by the name of Jim [James] Milhoan, who works out there, designed several test articles that helped us tremendously on the carbon system, particularly on our damage assessment analysis of the carbon. Developed a whole other system that allowed us to actually simulate a cavity behind the carbon system, so that once we actually burned through the carbon, we could exhaust that gas out and let the carbon continue to burn. That’s how we’re able to form these so-called knife edges. They’ve been extremely cooperative. There was a great respect between the engineering group, where I worked, and the Arc Jet group. We were the same group, as far as I was concerned. There was no difference, we all worked together. I can’t remember us every having any problems at all, of any kind.

[Assistant] What significance do you think the Arc Jet has had, in terms of human spaceflight?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It is. If you reduce the Arc Jet facilities down to one, you don’t have a crosscheck. There is no way to understand any potential errors in the tests, test results, or the test analysis. Now, let’s say Orion launches. They eventually go to the Moon or they go to Mars, then have to analyze some conditions that they hadn’t anticipated. Now, they’ve got to go back to the same facility that gave them the data that said the design was adequate. Where’s the crosscheck? There isn’t. That’s a bad situation.

[Assistant] What has the Arc Jet Facility meant to you, over the years?

[User] I guess it’s my career because I’ve used it during Apollo, started using it actually with Gemini, a little bit, Apollo, and all of Shuttle. I’ve done a lot of advanced technology work with the Arc Jet, developing new ablator materials. I used to have SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research] contracts. Had one with another company, and we developed a whole series of ablative materials beyond Apollo, which I thought were really good materials that could be used for other programs. I think some of them actually are being used. But it was an SBIR, so as you know, SBIRs are proprietary to the company, so that’s where it stayed.

[Assistant] One thing I noticed when I was out doing research, you have a Ph.D. in engineering. Was the Arc Jet in any way related to your doctoral studies?

[User] No, not really, because my Ph.D. was related to my analytical work I did in ablation. I just extended it a little bit in a dimensional way, to study some effects of multi-dimensional mass flux and flow in a porous media. It extended some of the equations that I had done in ablation. It just worked out that way, but I actually didn’t do any tests at the Arc Jet.

[Assistant] Were you working on that during Apollo?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, not really, because my Ph.D. was related to my analytical work I did in ablation. I just extended it a little bit in a dimensional way, to study some effects of multi-dimensional mass flux and flow in a porous media. It extended some of the equations that I had done in ablation. It just worked out that way, but I actually didn’t do any tests at the Arc Jet.

[Assistant] Were you working on that during Apollo?

[User] I actually got my Ph.D. degree in ’70, so yes, I guess I was.

[Assistant] That’s impressive.

[User] I’m sorry, end of Apollo, the start of Shuttle, in that interim period between the two. I got a full year’s leave of absence to do my dissertation.

[Assistant] That’s a nice perk.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I actually got my Ph.D. degree in ’70, so yes, I guess I was.

[Assistant] That’s impressive.

[User] I’m sorry, end of Apollo, the start of Shuttle, in that interim period between the two. I got a full year’s leave of absence to do my dissertation.

[Assistant] That’s a nice perk.

[User] Yes, it was, it sure was, to go to school for free and get paid.

[Assistant] Yes, that doesn’t happen every day, does it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I’m sorry, end of Apollo, the start of Shuttle, in that interim period between the two. I got a full year’s leave of absence to do my dissertation.

[Assistant] That’s a nice perk.

[User] Yes, it was, it sure was, to go to school for free and get paid.

[Assistant] Yes, that doesn’t happen every day, does it?

[User] It doesn’t. We did that a long time here at JSC. We’d still be doing that. In fact, we used to offer University of Houston graduate courses in Building 13.

[Assistant] I’ve seen the memos; I guess now you go over to UHCL [University of Houston-Clear Lake].


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, it was, it sure was, to go to school for free and get paid.

[Assistant] Yes, that doesn’t happen every day, does it?

[User] It doesn’t. We did that a long time here at JSC. We’d still be doing that. In fact, we used to offer University of Houston graduate courses in Building 13.

[Assistant] I’ve seen the memos; I guess now you go over to UHCL [University of Houston-Clear Lake].

[User] No I finished my courses at the University of Houston main campus and then applied for the year’s leave of absence to do my dissertation, and I got it.

[Assistant] I know you brought some notes.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It doesn’t. We did that a long time here at JSC. We’d still be doing that. In fact, we used to offer University of Houston graduate courses in Building 13.

[Assistant] I’ve seen the memos; I guess now you go over to UHCL [University of Houston-Clear Lake].

[User] No I finished my courses at the University of Houston main campus and then applied for the year’s leave of absence to do my dissertation, and I got it.

[Assistant] I know you brought some notes.

[User] No, they are not notes. These were Tillian’s in case you wanted to ask.

[Assistant] I think that we have hit on the questions I had. I’m just taking a look. Is there anything else you think that we might want to talk about, in terms of the Arc Jet Facility, Shuttle, Apollo, advanced programs?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I’m happy to be here.

[Assistant] We are too. We’re excited. I wanted to ask you, because my son is a big fan of Trolls. I know this is a weird question, but I thought it might be fun because I read an article about your name. You go by Poppy, but your name is actually Frances.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How did you get that nickname and how did it stick?

[User] I have an older brother, he’s six years older than me, and when my mom was pregnant he had a favorite Little Golden Book fairy tale. The name of the book was Poppy, the Four-Inch Fairy. It had two leading characters, Poppy, who was the girl fairy, and Pogo, who was the boy fairy. He decided that if he had a baby sister he was going to call her Poppy; if he had a baby brother he was going to call him Pogo. My parents named me Frances Marian Northcutt and that’s what appears on my birth certificate, but there is nothing more persistent than a six-year-old boy. So I’ve always been called Poppy.

[Assistant] Even your parents, do they call you Poppy?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How did you get that nickname and how did it stick?

[User] I have an older brother, he’s six years older than me, and when my mom was pregnant he had a favorite Little Golden Book fairy tale. The name of the book was Poppy, the Four-Inch Fairy. It had two leading characters, Poppy, who was the girl fairy, and Pogo, who was the boy fairy. He decided that if he had a baby sister he was going to call her Poppy; if he had a baby brother he was going to call him Pogo. My parents named me Frances Marian Northcutt and that’s what appears on my birth certificate, but there is nothing more persistent than a six-year-old boy. So I’ve always been called Poppy.

[Assistant] Even your parents, do they call you Poppy?

[User] Oh yes, always. I sign my name, checks, “Frances M.” But everyone calls me Poppy. If you were to say, “Hey, Frances,” I wouldn’t even know who you were talking to.

[Assistant] How did you find out about the opportunity to work for TRW [Thompson Ramo Wooldridge] in Houston?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I have an older brother, he’s six years older than me, and when my mom was pregnant he had a favorite Little Golden Book fairy tale. The name of the book was Poppy, the Four-Inch Fairy. It had two leading characters, Poppy, who was the girl fairy, and Pogo, who was the boy fairy. He decided that if he had a baby sister he was going to call her Poppy; if he had a baby brother he was going to call him Pogo. My parents named me Frances Marian Northcutt and that’s what appears on my birth certificate, but there is nothing more persistent than a six-year-old boy. So I’ve always been called Poppy.

[Assistant] Even your parents, do they call you Poppy?

[User] Oh yes, always. I sign my name, checks, “Frances M.” But everyone calls me Poppy. If you were to say, “Hey, Frances,” I wouldn’t even know who you were talking to.

[Assistant] How did you find out about the opportunity to work for TRW [Thompson Ramo Wooldridge] in Houston?

[User] I was looking for a job. I went to an employment agency, and they sent me out for an interview. I had really no idea what I wanted to do. At that time, women weren’t expected to be thinking about careers at all. I came out. It at least would use my math degree, and I thought it was sort of interesting, so I just went to work there.

[Assistant] What was your understanding of what you would be doing once you were hired?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh yes, always. I sign my name, checks, “Frances M.” But everyone calls me Poppy. If you were to say, “Hey, Frances,” I wouldn’t even know who you were talking to.

[Assistant] How did you find out about the opportunity to work for TRW [Thompson Ramo Wooldridge] in Houston?

[User] I was looking for a job. I went to an employment agency, and they sent me out for an interview. I had really no idea what I wanted to do. At that time, women weren’t expected to be thinking about careers at all. I came out. It at least would use my math degree, and I thought it was sort of interesting, so I just went to work there.

[Assistant] What was your understanding of what you would be doing once you were hired?

[User] I was a tech aide. The job title was “computress,” which I thought was curious at the time. I had no idea that that actually matched up with what I would later see in that movie, Hidden Figures. Those women were also called computresses. When I saw that movie I went, “Oh my goodness, now I know.” That’s what they called all of us. We were female calculators, I guess.

[Assistant] What did you think of that term computress?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I was looking for a job. I went to an employment agency, and they sent me out for an interview. I had really no idea what I wanted to do. At that time, women weren’t expected to be thinking about careers at all. I came out. It at least would use my math degree, and I thought it was sort of interesting, so I just went to work there.

[Assistant] What was your understanding of what you would be doing once you were hired?

[User] I was a tech aide. The job title was “computress,” which I thought was curious at the time. I had no idea that that actually matched up with what I would later see in that movie, Hidden Figures. Those women were also called computresses. When I saw that movie I went, “Oh my goodness, now I know.” That’s what they called all of us. We were female calculators, I guess.

[Assistant] What did you think of that term computress?

[User] At the time I just thought it was weird. I had done some work with computers in college. I’d taken a course in FORTRAN. I just thought it was weird. They’re calling me a female computer? How weird is that? Beyond that I didn’t think much about it. I had no idea about the history of it, that they were using that in other places as well.

[Assistant] What were your first days like out here at the Manned Spacecraft Center?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I was a tech aide. The job title was “computress,” which I thought was curious at the time. I had no idea that that actually matched up with what I would later see in that movie, Hidden Figures. Those women were also called computresses. When I saw that movie I went, “Oh my goodness, now I know.” That’s what they called all of us. We were female calculators, I guess.

[Assistant] What did you think of that term computress?

[User] At the time I just thought it was weird. I had done some work with computers in college. I’d taken a course in FORTRAN. I just thought it was weird. They’re calling me a female computer? How weird is that? Beyond that I didn’t think much about it. I had no idea about the history of it, that they were using that in other places as well.

[Assistant] What were your first days like out here at the Manned Spacecraft Center?

[User] I worked for a contractor. I worked for TRW Systems. It was a pretty small operation initially. I was basically running data, graphing data, doing calculations. We had a big computer in house. Using the big computer was not interactive at that time, not the way it is now, so you had to do punch cards. It was a process to get something done. You didn’t just sit down and pop something out.\n\n That’s basically what I was doing. I was taking a lot of data and graphing it up for engineers.

[Assistant] You were working for MPAD [Mission Planning and Analysis Division], is that correct, at that time?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] At the time I just thought it was weird. I had done some work with computers in college. I’d taken a course in FORTRAN. I just thought it was weird. They’re calling me a female computer? How weird is that? Beyond that I didn’t think much about it. I had no idea about the history of it, that they were using that in other places as well.

[Assistant] What were your first days like out here at the Manned Spacecraft Center?

[User] I worked for a contractor. I worked for TRW Systems. It was a pretty small operation initially. I was basically running data, graphing data, doing calculations. We had a big computer in house. Using the big computer was not interactive at that time, not the way it is now, so you had to do punch cards. It was a process to get something done. You didn’t just sit down and pop something out.\n\n That’s basically what I was doing. I was taking a lot of data and graphing it up for engineers.

[Assistant] You were working for MPAD [Mission Planning and Analysis Division], is that correct, at that time?

[User] The contract was with MPAD, yes.

[Assistant] Were there other women who were working in MPAD besides administrative folks and secretaries? Other computresses?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I worked for a contractor. I worked for TRW Systems. It was a pretty small operation initially. I was basically running data, graphing data, doing calculations. We had a big computer in house. Using the big computer was not interactive at that time, not the way it is now, so you had to do punch cards. It was a process to get something done. You didn’t just sit down and pop something out.\n\n That’s basically what I was doing. I was taking a lot of data and graphing it up for engineers.

[Assistant] You were working for MPAD [Mission Planning and Analysis Division], is that correct, at that time?

[User] The contract was with MPAD, yes.

[Assistant] Were there other women who were working in MPAD besides administrative folks and secretaries? Other computresses?

[User] I never saw any. There may have been, but I never saw any. At that point, when I first went to work, I didn’t really see MPAD at all. I was just seeing the guys I was working with at TRW. I guess I got captured by the grand experiment that this was, that we were going to go to the Moon.\n\n At that time they were flying Gemini, I guess, and there was some work going on where I was working on Gemini. I may have done a few things with Gemini, but basically I was working at the very very early stages of the return to Earth program, which was fortunate for me because it was the early stages. That was the time to get in. I was just fascinated by the craziness of this thing that we were going to go to the Moon.

[Assistant] Had you been following the space program at all before you were hired?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The contract was with MPAD, yes.

[Assistant] Were there other women who were working in MPAD besides administrative folks and secretaries? Other computresses?

[User] I never saw any. There may have been, but I never saw any. At that point, when I first went to work, I didn’t really see MPAD at all. I was just seeing the guys I was working with at TRW. I guess I got captured by the grand experiment that this was, that we were going to go to the Moon.\n\n At that time they were flying Gemini, I guess, and there was some work going on where I was working on Gemini. I may have done a few things with Gemini, but basically I was working at the very very early stages of the return to Earth program, which was fortunate for me because it was the early stages. That was the time to get in. I was just fascinated by the craziness of this thing that we were going to go to the Moon.

[Assistant] Had you been following the space program at all before you were hired?

[User] Not really. Not really. I got intrigued by it. At first I was sort of overawed by all of the people around me and all these MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] PhDs and Caltech [California Institute of Technology]. I had a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and quite frankly I majored in beer drinking and campus politics really. I had a math degree, but if you want to talk about the truth it was beer drinking and campus politics.\n\n So I was a little overawed by all of this technical prowess around me. Then about two or three months in, it occurred to me that these people were not really any smarter than I was. They had better degrees than I did and paid more attention in class, but they weren’t actually any smarter than I was. So I thought, “I think I could learn how to do a lot of this stuff.”

[Assistant] Did you start taking work home? Were you taking classes at U of H [University of Houston]?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not really. Not really. I got intrigued by it. At first I was sort of overawed by all of the people around me and all these MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] PhDs and Caltech [California Institute of Technology]. I had a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and quite frankly I majored in beer drinking and campus politics really. I had a math degree, but if you want to talk about the truth it was beer drinking and campus politics.\n\n So I was a little overawed by all of this technical prowess around me. Then about two or three months in, it occurred to me that these people were not really any smarter than I was. They had better degrees than I did and paid more attention in class, but they weren’t actually any smarter than I was. So I thought, “I think I could learn how to do a lot of this stuff.”

[Assistant] Did you start taking work home? Were you taking classes at U of H [University of Houston]?

[User] I took a couple of correspondence classes. Primarily what I started doing was reverse-engineering the program that we were working on. I would take hunks of it home at night to try to figure out exactly what we were doing. Every day I’d come back in and I’d ask a few questions here, a few questions here.\n\n Before long, I knew a whole lot about what we were doing, because nobody else really was reverse-engineering it. You do learn a lot if you do it that way.

[Assistant] You were working on the return trajectories coming back from the Moon. Can you talk about what that is for the readers?

[User] Some of what I was working on was aborts from Earth orbit, but fairly early on I started working on the return to Earth part of it, coming back to the Earth from the Moon. What do you want to know about coming back to the Earth from the Moon?

[Assistant] What did that involve? For someone who would pick up this transcript, how was that idea developed? What sort of things were you looking at?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It’s not that you’re coming up with a single trajectory. You’re coming up with the way you’re going to find the trajectory. Because what we were tasked with doing was coming up with a program that could get you home, whatever your situation was. We were called an abort program initially, but we ended up being just the return to Earth, whether it was an abort or not.\n\n There was another parallel program going, and I think the intent was you have these two parallel programs going out of MPAD. I think the intent was that they would then pick the one that was better at the end. But the parallel program, my understanding is they never got far enough along to even be competitive. That was shut down fairly early on, and we were it.

[Assistant] How many people were working on your team from TRW? Do you recall?

[User] On my team. Some of us worked on Earth orbital stuff, some of us worked on midcourse correction stuff, and then some of us on return to Earth stuff. We sort of moved between, so it’s a little hard to say at any given time the return to Earth team from the Moon was this number of people. We probably had maybe at one point maybe eight people. It would vary. Three to eight on a particular function.

[Assistant] Did you ever go over to MSC and brief MPAD on these ideas that you were coming up with and how things were moving along?

[User] We had regular meetings with folks from MPAD. It wasn’t so much briefings. That sounds sort of formal. We had pretty informal meetings with people at MPAD fairly regularly. We would be delivering these intermediate programs and getting calls fairly often about questions about this or the other thing.

[Assistant] Did you ever go to any of Bill [Howard W.] Tindall’s meetings on flight techniques?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] On my team. Some of us worked on Earth orbital stuff, some of us worked on midcourse correction stuff, and then some of us on return to Earth stuff. We sort of moved between, so it’s a little hard to say at any given time the return to Earth team from the Moon was this number of people. We probably had maybe at one point maybe eight people. It would vary. Three to eight on a particular function.

[Assistant] Did you ever go over to MSC and brief MPAD on these ideas that you were coming up with and how things were moving along?

[User] We had regular meetings with folks from MPAD. It wasn’t so much briefings. That sounds sort of formal. We had pretty informal meetings with people at MPAD fairly regularly. We would be delivering these intermediate programs and getting calls fairly often about questions about this or the other thing.

[Assistant] Did you ever go to any of Bill [Howard W.] Tindall’s meetings on flight techniques?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Where was your office? Were you off-site, or were you located on-site?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We had regular meetings with folks from MPAD. It wasn’t so much briefings. That sounds sort of formal. We had pretty informal meetings with people at MPAD fairly regularly. We would be delivering these intermediate programs and getting calls fairly often about questions about this or the other thing.

[Assistant] Did you ever go to any of Bill [Howard W.] Tindall’s meetings on flight techniques?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Where was your office? Were you off-site, or were you located on-site?

[User] We were off-site. We were across the street.

[Assistant] Probably one of the buildings that Nassau Bay has now torn down?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No.

[Assistant] Where was your office? Were you off-site, or were you located on-site?

[User] We were off-site. We were across the street.

[Assistant] Probably one of the buildings that Nassau Bay has now torn down?

[User] Probably. I don’t recognize much of anything out here these days.

[Assistant] I know, things have changed. Were you living out here when you worked for MSC?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We were off-site. We were across the street.

[Assistant] Probably one of the buildings that Nassau Bay has now torn down?

[User] Probably. I don’t recognize much of anything out here these days.

[Assistant] I know, things have changed. Were you living out here when you worked for MSC?

[User] Most of the time, yes. I started out, I had a little apartment, I think it was the Portofino Apartments. I had this little efficiency when I first took the job. I hated the fact that I was so far away from the city. After maybe three, four months of living at that little efficiency apartment here, I got an apartment in the Montrose area in Houston.\n\n I hated the drive. I loved being in the city, but I hated the drive so I kept moving further out. Then I had an apartment on Old Galveston Highway. I hated that because it was like the worst of both sides. I wasn’t really in the city, and I still had a long drive. So I eventually moved back down in here. I can’t remember the address that I was at, but I had a pretty cool apartment, very close to TRW, just a couple blocks.

[Assistant] Did you walk to work?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Probably. I don’t recognize much of anything out here these days.

[Assistant] I know, things have changed. Were you living out here when you worked for MSC?

[User] Most of the time, yes. I started out, I had a little apartment, I think it was the Portofino Apartments. I had this little efficiency when I first took the job. I hated the fact that I was so far away from the city. After maybe three, four months of living at that little efficiency apartment here, I got an apartment in the Montrose area in Houston.\n\n I hated the drive. I loved being in the city, but I hated the drive so I kept moving further out. Then I had an apartment on Old Galveston Highway. I hated that because it was like the worst of both sides. I wasn’t really in the city, and I still had a long drive. So I eventually moved back down in here. I can’t remember the address that I was at, but I had a pretty cool apartment, very close to TRW, just a couple blocks.

[Assistant] Did you walk to work?

[User] No, nobody walked anywhere at that time. What are you talking about? There was no such thing as walking to work. Nobody talked about exercise, or nobody I knew talked about exercise at that time.

[Assistant] Was there a dress code where you worked? If so, was there a specific dress code for women?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Most of the time, yes. I started out, I had a little apartment, I think it was the Portofino Apartments. I had this little efficiency when I first took the job. I hated the fact that I was so far away from the city. After maybe three, four months of living at that little efficiency apartment here, I got an apartment in the Montrose area in Houston.\n\n I hated the drive. I loved being in the city, but I hated the drive so I kept moving further out. Then I had an apartment on Old Galveston Highway. I hated that because it was like the worst of both sides. I wasn’t really in the city, and I still had a long drive. So I eventually moved back down in here. I can’t remember the address that I was at, but I had a pretty cool apartment, very close to TRW, just a couple blocks.

[Assistant] Did you walk to work?

[User] No, nobody walked anywhere at that time. What are you talking about? There was no such thing as walking to work. Nobody talked about exercise, or nobody I knew talked about exercise at that time.

[Assistant] Was there a dress code where you worked? If so, was there a specific dress code for women?

[User] Not that I know of.

[Assistant] You primarily wore skirts I think I’ve seen in all the photos.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, nobody walked anywhere at that time. What are you talking about? There was no such thing as walking to work. Nobody talked about exercise, or nobody I knew talked about exercise at that time.

[Assistant] Was there a dress code where you worked? If so, was there a specific dress code for women?

[User] Not that I know of.

[Assistant] You primarily wore skirts I think I’ve seen in all the photos.

[User] Sometimes I wore a skirt, sometimes I wore slacks.

[Assistant] Was that pretty common for women over at JSC to wear slacks when you were over there? Did you notice that? I know you said there weren’t many women that you worked with. But maybe the admins. I’m just curious if they wore [pants].


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not that I know of.

[Assistant] You primarily wore skirts I think I’ve seen in all the photos.

[User] Sometimes I wore a skirt, sometimes I wore slacks.

[Assistant] Was that pretty common for women over at JSC to wear slacks when you were over there? Did you notice that? I know you said there weren’t many women that you worked with. But maybe the admins. I’m just curious if they wore [pants].

[User] I didn’t really see many women, so I don’t know what they wore.

[Assistant] I’m curious what your daily work life was like when you started working out here. A lot of people talk about working seventy-, eighty-hour workweeks. Were you working those kind of crazy hours as well?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. That consciousness of how the state was protecting me, that’s what they thought they were doing. They were protecting me out of making money. They were protecting me out of getting promoted. They were protecting me out of being part of the team. It really grated on me.

[Assistant] And you were able to do that because you weren’t married, and you didn’t have any kids.

[User] Right. Right.

[Assistant] No other obligations.

[User] It’s not like anybody was forced to work all those hours, but it just irritated me a lot because it was just grossly unfair. I felt like it was hurting opportunities for other women.

[Assistant] Did you ever bring that up to TRW or anyone at MSC?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It’s not like anybody was forced to work all those hours, but it just irritated me a lot because it was just grossly unfair. I felt like it was hurting opportunities for other women.

[Assistant] Did you ever bring that up to TRW or anyone at MSC?

[User] No, because there wasn’t anything they could do about it, this was a state law. What were they going to do about it?

[Assistant] That’s true.

[User] That kind of state law was prevalent all across the country at the time, different forms, but that was a very common thing. Once I was promoted and made a member of the technical staff with a different title, I was no longer an hourly worker. I could work eighty hours a week. Does that make any sense? No, that doesn’t make any sense. If they genuinely had to protect my ovaries, which is what I think they thought they were doing, that was their big excuse is we’re somehow or another protecting you so that you can have babies. Why would it make any difference whether I was salaried or not salaried if my ovaries needed protection? It was just so irrational.

[Assistant] We can get into a whole debate about that, yes.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, because there wasn’t anything they could do about it, this was a state law. What were they going to do about it?

[Assistant] That’s true.

[User] That kind of state law was prevalent all across the country at the time, different forms, but that was a very common thing. Once I was promoted and made a member of the technical staff with a different title, I was no longer an hourly worker. I could work eighty hours a week. Does that make any sense? No, that doesn’t make any sense. If they genuinely had to protect my ovaries, which is what I think they thought they were doing, that was their big excuse is we’re somehow or another protecting you so that you can have babies. Why would it make any difference whether I was salaried or not salaried if my ovaries needed protection? It was just so irrational.

[Assistant] We can get into a whole debate about that, yes.

[User] Just so irrational. Also then these women were going home from work and doing the laundry and cooking and all that stuff too. All of it was just irrational.

[Assistant] Protecting men more than your ovaries.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That kind of state law was prevalent all across the country at the time, different forms, but that was a very common thing. Once I was promoted and made a member of the technical staff with a different title, I was no longer an hourly worker. I could work eighty hours a week. Does that make any sense? No, that doesn’t make any sense. If they genuinely had to protect my ovaries, which is what I think they thought they were doing, that was their big excuse is we’re somehow or another protecting you so that you can have babies. Why would it make any difference whether I was salaried or not salaried if my ovaries needed protection? It was just so irrational.

[Assistant] We can get into a whole debate about that, yes.

[User] Just so irrational. Also then these women were going home from work and doing the laundry and cooking and all that stuff too. All of it was just irrational.

[Assistant] Protecting men more than your ovaries.

[User] That’s what my feeling was. That was just the excuse for doing that. It was protecting me out of competing in the workplace. I hardwired around it. That didn’t mean other women had the opportunity to do that, or the audacity, which is also present.

[Assistant] Yes, I can see that spark. When did you get promoted? You mentioned you got promoted.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Just so irrational. Also then these women were going home from work and doing the laundry and cooking and all that stuff too. All of it was just irrational.

[Assistant] Protecting men more than your ovaries.

[User] That’s what my feeling was. That was just the excuse for doing that. It was protecting me out of competing in the workplace. I hardwired around it. That didn’t mean other women had the opportunity to do that, or the audacity, which is also present.

[Assistant] Yes, I can see that spark. When did you get promoted? You mentioned you got promoted.

[User] When I was there six months I had the first review. The guy who was the head of Houston operations told me that he was going to work on getting me promoted at the end of my first year. It’s really more like a year and three months before it happened. What he told me at the time—and I thought that was very interesting too—is he said, “It would have been easier to have fired you and rehired you.”

[Assistant] Why is that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That’s what my feeling was. That was just the excuse for doing that. It was protecting me out of competing in the workplace. I hardwired around it. That didn’t mean other women had the opportunity to do that, or the audacity, which is also present.

[Assistant] Yes, I can see that spark. When did you get promoted? You mentioned you got promoted.

[User] When I was there six months I had the first review. The guy who was the head of Houston operations told me that he was going to work on getting me promoted at the end of my first year. It’s really more like a year and three months before it happened. What he told me at the time—and I thought that was very interesting too—is he said, “It would have been easier to have fired you and rehired you.”

[Assistant] Why is that?

[User] Because the pay increase to take me from being a computress to being at the bottom member of the technical staff was so great that everybody in Los Angeles at corporate headquarters was—it didn’t meet the parameters for promotion. It was just too much. He said that he had to keep going and fighting about this, to try to get me paid what I should be paid. They had no mechanism for dealing with the fact that they had hired somebody at a lower level than they should have hired them in the first place.\n\n He said, “I could have fired you and rehired you and had no questions. Nothing would have come up.” To do that kind of a promotion with that kind of a pay raise broke all these little rules. He was having to justify it here and justify it there. He said, “And still you were being underpaid, but this was the best I could do.”

[Assistant] It’s nice to have an advocate at least.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] When I was there six months I had the first review. The guy who was the head of Houston operations told me that he was going to work on getting me promoted at the end of my first year. It’s really more like a year and three months before it happened. What he told me at the time—and I thought that was very interesting too—is he said, “It would have been easier to have fired you and rehired you.”

[Assistant] Why is that?

[User] Because the pay increase to take me from being a computress to being at the bottom member of the technical staff was so great that everybody in Los Angeles at corporate headquarters was—it didn’t meet the parameters for promotion. It was just too much. He said that he had to keep going and fighting about this, to try to get me paid what I should be paid. They had no mechanism for dealing with the fact that they had hired somebody at a lower level than they should have hired them in the first place.\n\n He said, “I could have fired you and rehired you and had no questions. Nothing would have come up.” To do that kind of a promotion with that kind of a pay raise broke all these little rules. He was having to justify it here and justify it there. He said, “And still you were being underpaid, but this was the best I could do.”

[Assistant] It’s nice to have an advocate at least.

[User] I thought it was fantastic that I had an advocate. He said, “I’m going to give you as many promotions as I can give you, as fast as I can give them to you, to try to get you up to what you should be earning. I really hate that I have to do it this way.” That was the situation.\n\n I think that to some extent that still exists. If women come in and they’re underpaid at the beginning, it’s really hard for them to ever catch up. I had a lot of reasons early on to figure out that there’s gender discrimination in the workforce. I learned it quickly.

[Assistant] Right, it was quite apparent to you.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Because the pay increase to take me from being a computress to being at the bottom member of the technical staff was so great that everybody in Los Angeles at corporate headquarters was—it didn’t meet the parameters for promotion. It was just too much. He said that he had to keep going and fighting about this, to try to get me paid what I should be paid. They had no mechanism for dealing with the fact that they had hired somebody at a lower level than they should have hired them in the first place.\n\n He said, “I could have fired you and rehired you and had no questions. Nothing would have come up.” To do that kind of a promotion with that kind of a pay raise broke all these little rules. He was having to justify it here and justify it there. He said, “And still you were being underpaid, but this was the best I could do.”

[Assistant] It’s nice to have an advocate at least.

[User] I thought it was fantastic that I had an advocate. He said, “I’m going to give you as many promotions as I can give you, as fast as I can give them to you, to try to get you up to what you should be earning. I really hate that I have to do it this way.” That was the situation.\n\n I think that to some extent that still exists. If women come in and they’re underpaid at the beginning, it’s really hard for them to ever catch up. I had a lot of reasons early on to figure out that there’s gender discrimination in the workforce. I learned it quickly.

[Assistant] Right, it was quite apparent to you.

[User] I learned it quickly, and it definitely made an impression on me.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. How did your position change once you became a member of the technical staff?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I thought it was fantastic that I had an advocate. He said, “I’m going to give you as many promotions as I can give you, as fast as I can give them to you, to try to get you up to what you should be earning. I really hate that I have to do it this way.” That was the situation.\n\n I think that to some extent that still exists. If women come in and they’re underpaid at the beginning, it’s really hard for them to ever catch up. I had a lot of reasons early on to figure out that there’s gender discrimination in the workforce. I learned it quickly.

[Assistant] Right, it was quite apparent to you.

[User] I learned it quickly, and it definitely made an impression on me.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. How did your position change once you became a member of the technical staff?

[User] It didn’t really, other than I was taking home a lot more money.

[Assistant] You were still doing the [exact] same work?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I learned it quickly, and it definitely made an impression on me.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. How did your position change once you became a member of the technical staff?

[User] It didn’t really, other than I was taking home a lot more money.

[Assistant] You were still doing the [exact] same work?

[User] Yes. To a large extent yes. I was doing the same thing. Because as the group I was in could see that I could do more than what most computresses did, I started doing more. It didn’t really change that much.

[Assistant] At what point were you brought over and told that you would be part of the flight control teams working in the back rooms?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, to provide backup, to be able to explain why. “Just wait five minutes to do this maneuver.” Things like that.\n\n “Is this number actually good?”\n\n “Unfortunately yes. It’s a bad number, but it’s accurate. You don’t want to fly that trajectory.” That’s why we were there.

[Assistant] Did you start doing integrated sims with the flight control teams?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Would you talk about some of those simulations that you might recall?

[User] All I remember—first of all, I was tired all the time, because we were still having bugs that we were finding in the program that we were correcting. We were still testing between us and IBM, trying to get stuff finalized in the Real-Time Computer Complex.\n\n The main thing I remember about simulations is that the simulations were so much more difficult than the flight, because during the flight actually most things go right. During simulations everything goes wrong. That’s the whole purpose of them. You’re just sitting the whole time going, “Oh my goodness, what are they going to come up with to go wrong?”

[Assistant] Was there anything that was a gotcha for your team? A big malfunction?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Would you talk about some of those simulations that you might recall?

[User] All I remember—first of all, I was tired all the time, because we were still having bugs that we were finding in the program that we were correcting. We were still testing between us and IBM, trying to get stuff finalized in the Real-Time Computer Complex.\n\n The main thing I remember about simulations is that the simulations were so much more difficult than the flight, because during the flight actually most things go right. During simulations everything goes wrong. That’s the whole purpose of them. You’re just sitting the whole time going, “Oh my goodness, what are they going to come up with to go wrong?”

[Assistant] Was there anything that was a gotcha for your team? A big malfunction?

[User] No, not really. They’re just always coming up with things to go wrong. Most of the time it wasn’t really dealing that much or stressing that much what we were working on. You’re also doing things out of order. One day you’re over there, and it’s at so-and-so hours. Then you go over there, and you’re the day before. Everything is out of order, not a lot of continuity. It’s just a strange kind of thing to go into simulations, but it really prepares you well to deal with the mission. As I said, by the time the mission comes you’ve been stress-tested, that’s for sure. Mainly you feel relief. “Oh gosh, nothing went wrong here. We got through the whole last hour with no dramatic events.”

[Assistant] What are your memories of Apollo 8? When were you in the back rooms? Did you get a chance to go sit up in the front room?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The computer, you calculate that based on the data that you get. What you know is that you may have to correct in terms of the orbit. You may be able to stay in orbit, or you may have to immediately do a return to Earth. Just depends on what you’re going to see. To a certain extent we did, but you basically are having to pour it into the computer to see what numbers are going to come out of the computer.

[Assistant] How long did you work in the staff support room for 8? Was it primarily just during the lunar portion or were you there for the entire mission?

[User] I was there for the lunar portion.

[Assistant] At the end of this mission I understand that Frank Borman mentioned your name. Did you do any work with the crew?

[User] Not directly.

[Assistant] How did he get your name? How did he know about your role?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I was there for the lunar portion.

[Assistant] At the end of this mission I understand that Frank Borman mentioned your name. Did you do any work with the crew?

[User] Not directly.

[Assistant] How did he get your name? How did he know about your role?

[User] Probably the press. I don’t know, but I had gotten a lot of press attention because I was the first woman. The women’s rights movement was bubbling up across the country at the time, and I’m sure people were asking, “Where are the women?” I was the woman that NASA drug out.\n\n “Oh, this is a woman.”

[Assistant] And she’s cute.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not directly.

[Assistant] How did he get your name? How did he know about your role?

[User] Probably the press. I don’t know, but I had gotten a lot of press attention because I was the first woman. The women’s rights movement was bubbling up across the country at the time, and I’m sure people were asking, “Where are the women?” I was the woman that NASA drug out.\n\n “Oh, this is a woman.”

[Assistant] And she’s cute.

[User] Yes, “This is a woman; she’s young.”

[Assistant] I wondered if you would talk about that, because it seems like that would eat up a lot of your time with media interviews and requests. Were you given any assistance by Public Affairs? Was there any guidance?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Probably the press. I don’t know, but I had gotten a lot of press attention because I was the first woman. The women’s rights movement was bubbling up across the country at the time, and I’m sure people were asking, “Where are the women?” I was the woman that NASA drug out.\n\n “Oh, this is a woman.”

[Assistant] And she’s cute.

[User] Yes, “This is a woman; she’s young.”

[Assistant] I wondered if you would talk about that, because it seems like that would eat up a lot of your time with media interviews and requests. Were you given any assistance by Public Affairs? Was there any guidance?

[User] None, not any real guidance, no. There was a Public Affairs guy at TRW too. No, they just called and said, “Would you talk to so-and-so?”\n\n “Okay.”

[Assistant] No one said, “Be sure to talk about this great thing”? Was anyone encouraging you to say certain things?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, “This is a woman; she’s young.”

[Assistant] I wondered if you would talk about that, because it seems like that would eat up a lot of your time with media interviews and requests. Were you given any assistance by Public Affairs? Was there any guidance?

[User] None, not any real guidance, no. There was a Public Affairs guy at TRW too. No, they just called and said, “Would you talk to so-and-so?”\n\n “Okay.”

[Assistant] No one said, “Be sure to talk about this great thing”? Was anyone encouraging you to say certain things?

[User] No, the only thing I remember was that at some point I said something about space trash, and they didn’t want me to talk about space trash. I don’t remember what the question was and I don’t remember who it was. Somebody asked me something about hazards up there. I think I said something about the thing that made me the most nervous and was really unaccountable was that we had this trash running around up there and nobody really was tracking every bit of it. They didn’t like to emphasize that there might be real hazards out there.\n\n They changed our name. We weren’t called the abort program anymore because that suggested it might be dangerous. We were initially called abort support. They decided they didn’t like that for PR [public relations] reasons, so we were changed to the return to Earth team.

[Assistant] Sounds a little more positive.