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

[User] I would provide answers to these people too. I’d work with J. R. and ask him questions [about] making technical decisions, evaluating as much as anything the Rocketdyne people. We changed some management people at Rocketdyne. We were talking to Rocketdyne. We went through Rocketdyne corporate office to make changes at Rocketdyne, as we did with Martin in the external tank.

[Assistant] Tell me a little bit about the testing program for the main engines. What are your recollections of those events at the time?

[User] I witnessed a few engines blow up. We did most of the engine testing down at NSTL [National Space Technology Laboratories, later renamed Stennis], and we would have a group of people down there. First half, we would go through a test readiness review with Rocketdyne on each of the engine tests. They had some very good test people down there who later worked in development. We had our druthers, but we were very happy when we got a good test. It was a struggle I guess you’d have to say. I used to say when we’d have a test that we’d have a little problem, the engineers would start working on the problem, then by the time we got back to Rocketdyne they’d already figured out what we were going to do next, how we were going to fix it. We didn’t know how to fix it.

[Assistant] Was there ever a point where you thought that maybe this fantastic wonderful engine might not work and might not be ready for the first flight?

[User] We didn’t say it was ready till we thought it was ready. We had enough testing for the first flight.

[Assistant] How did you determine that it was ready for that first flight?


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

[User] Just work with them, try to help them. Most any manager tries, regardless [of] what they’re managing, to build a team to work together. You try to help them. You don’t really direct these people. Some people may think being a manager is direction, but you’re really there to provide the resources to help them and help their relationship with the next level. We’d try to protect our managers, often giving them the resources to evaluate their people, and giving them new people, different people. You do a certain amount of things, rewarding them the best you can. In government, [there’s] less chance for reward. You select managers first, that’s your first job, then you help them get a chief engineer. Works pretty good.

[Assistant] Tell us about your work on the solid rocket booster [SRB] and solid rocket motor [SRM] when you were manager of the Shuttle Program Office.

[User] It was much the same. We had two failures. One was the nozzle almost burned out on one flight. We struggled with a solution to that. George Hardy and I went out to Thiokol. I lived at Thiokol for about a month while they worked that problem. And we’ve done the same thing with J. R., a couple of us at Rocketdyne, the chief engineer also. We believed very much in getting our technical and our management team on site to really work close, know what’s going on.

[Assistant] Could you tell me the difference between the project manager and a chief engineer?

[User] They’re entirely different jobs. They work as a pair really, but in the end the manager makes the decision. Chief engineer provides his evaluation, and he overviews the total program. The manager, at management level or a looser level, he makes the decision. Many times his decision is based on what the chief engineer says, what he recommends. The chief engineer also brings the resources of our engineering organization to bear on the programs. He manages all the engineers [and provides an] engineer support level.

[Assistant] Can you tell us a little more about the testing program or the qualification of the SRBs and SRMs?


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

[User] No.

[Assistant] Things went pretty smoothly compared to the main engines?

[User] I don’t know if you’d say they were smooth. We had a lot of problems with the tank. Not so much in the testing, we had a very extensive test program on the structural testing on the external tank. The idea was if we would really do a good job testing then we’d know all the load situations. When it comes to redesigning the external tank, which eventually we had to do, we’d know what’s going to happen.\n\n The solid rocket motor we didn’t have as much. We had some test cases, primarily some insulation problems. We had some nozzle problems. They were not technology problems; it was getting it done correctly. In most cases size affected that, whether it be in the tooling, how you put it together, or whether you’re putting insulation on the inside. Again it was the nozzle primarily. We really had very good luck with the propellant at Thiokol.

[Assistant] What role did you play in the decision to build the lightweight tank?

[User] I was not even out there. I had retired before that.

[Assistant] What about the decision not to paint the tank white? Were you involved in that decision?


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

[User] I don’t know if you’d say they were smooth. We had a lot of problems with the tank. Not so much in the testing, we had a very extensive test program on the structural testing on the external tank. The idea was if we would really do a good job testing then we’d know all the load situations. When it comes to redesigning the external tank, which eventually we had to do, we’d know what’s going to happen.\n\n The solid rocket motor we didn’t have as much. We had some test cases, primarily some insulation problems. We had some nozzle problems. They were not technology problems; it was getting it done correctly. In most cases size affected that, whether it be in the tooling, how you put it together, or whether you’re putting insulation on the inside. Again it was the nozzle primarily. We really had very good luck with the propellant at Thiokol.

[Assistant] What role did you play in the decision to build the lightweight tank?

[User] I was not even out there. I had retired before that.

[Assistant] What about the decision not to paint the tank white? Were you involved in that decision?

[User] Yes, I think that was before the first flight.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about that decision?


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

[User] I was not even out there. I had retired before that.

[Assistant] What about the decision not to paint the tank white? Were you involved in that decision?

[User] Yes, I think that was before the first flight.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about that decision?

[User] We took the paint off to save the weight. Initially designed was white paint, then we just made it that muddy color.

[Assistant] Were you involved in that decision at all?


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

[User] Yes, I think that was before the first flight.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about that decision?

[User] We took the paint off to save the weight. Initially designed was white paint, then we just made it that muddy color.

[Assistant] Were you involved in that decision at all?

[User] I’m sure I was.

[Assistant] I thought I would ask you just a couple questions about management. Were there any decisions that were made by the [NASA] Management Council that impacted the elements that you oversaw?


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

[User] We took the paint off to save the weight. Initially designed was white paint, then we just made it that muddy color.

[Assistant] Were you involved in that decision at all?

[User] I’m sure I was.

[Assistant] I thought I would ask you just a couple questions about management. Were there any decisions that were made by the [NASA] Management Council that impacted the elements that you oversaw?

[User] I think most of the program decisions at that level were made by Yardley. I’m sure the Management Council, which was the Center Directors, were involved and made decisions for their own programs, but I don’t know if they were specifically Council decisions. They basically overviewed the program, they made certain funding decisions. Basically the program in those early years was in the hands of John Yardley.

[Assistant] Would you tell us about your relationship with him and working with him on these components?


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

[User] I’m sure I was.

[Assistant] I thought I would ask you just a couple questions about management. Were there any decisions that were made by the [NASA] Management Council that impacted the elements that you oversaw?

[User] I think most of the program decisions at that level were made by Yardley. I’m sure the Management Council, which was the Center Directors, were involved and made decisions for their own programs, but I don’t know if they were specifically Council decisions. They basically overviewed the program, they made certain funding decisions. Basically the program in those early years was in the hands of John Yardley.

[Assistant] Would you tell us about your relationship with him and working with him on these components?

[User] We had a good relationship with John. He wanted you to keep him informed, and he expected you to call him if something was wrong or something wasn’t right. I had a good relationship with John. He was a good guy; I think he made friends with everyone.

[Assistant] What about your relationship with Bill [William R.] Lucas [Marshall Center Director]? How did that work when you were manager of the Shuttle Program Office, and he was overseeing the site?


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

[User] I think most of the program decisions at that level were made by Yardley. I’m sure the Management Council, which was the Center Directors, were involved and made decisions for their own programs, but I don’t know if they were specifically Council decisions. They basically overviewed the program, they made certain funding decisions. Basically the program in those early years was in the hands of John Yardley.

[Assistant] Would you tell us about your relationship with him and working with him on these components?

[User] We had a good relationship with John. He wanted you to keep him informed, and he expected you to call him if something was wrong or something wasn’t right. I had a good relationship with John. He was a good guy; I think he made friends with everyone.

[Assistant] What about your relationship with Bill [William R.] Lucas [Marshall Center Director]? How did that work when you were manager of the Shuttle Program Office, and he was overseeing the site?

[User] I had a good relationship with Bill. We had worked together in materials, and we’d been friends for many years. He was a good strong technical [engineer]. I think we had a good relationship with all our contractors; we had a good relationship with JSC. Although some people don’t believe that, we had a good relationship with them, with KSC. We had a good relationship with Headquarters. All in all everybody tried to help each other.

[Assistant] I read somewhere that you were in charge of 20 Shuttle missions when you were the Shuttle program manager. Would you tell us about the role that you played when missions were getting ready and when they were in flight?


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

[User] We really hadn’t worked it a great deal. The issue really was we didn’t realize that a piece of foam, which was pretty lightweight, would hurt the orbiter. We assumed that much of the damage on the orbiter was due to stones and rocks out at Edwards [Air Force Base, California] and also down at Kennedy, that a lot of the damage we saw was just dirt. We didn’t really have any damage on the tank to my recollection that would indicate some loss of tile such that we’d overheat the thermal structure of the orbiter.\n\n We didn’t really consider, at least when I was still there—we had some come off after first tanking test. It was an integration question primarily; it was a question between ourselves and the orbiter. We never put the two together, that it would cause damage or catastrophic failure. I don’t know exactly why. I’ve never gone back and looked at the testing of it, but basically an integration question.

[Assistant] Are there any other technical issues with the various components or issues about testing that we might not have covered that you thought we should discuss?

[User] I think it was pretty thorough. I think you’ll find many of the issues, much like the external tank foam with the orbiter flight, was an integration issue. To some extent I think some of the other issues they had with the solid rocket motors coming off would have been an integration issue. The two big issues were the orbiter brick or the TPS [thermal protection system] and the engine. They were the two controlling problems.

[Assistant] What do you think your biggest challenge was while working as manager of the Shuttle Program Office?

[User] Just pulling everything together. The total program was a big issue. I worked hard on the engine. We may have to change people; sometimes changing people is not a lot of fun. Just keeping abreast of what’s going on.

[Assistant] If you had to pick one greatest accomplishment while you were the program manager, what do you think that that would be?


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

[User] I think it was pretty thorough. I think you’ll find many of the issues, much like the external tank foam with the orbiter flight, was an integration issue. To some extent I think some of the other issues they had with the solid rocket motors coming off would have been an integration issue. The two big issues were the orbiter brick or the TPS [thermal protection system] and the engine. They were the two controlling problems.

[Assistant] What do you think your biggest challenge was while working as manager of the Shuttle Program Office?

[User] Just pulling everything together. The total program was a big issue. I worked hard on the engine. We may have to change people; sometimes changing people is not a lot of fun. Just keeping abreast of what’s going on.

[Assistant] If you had to pick one greatest accomplishment while you were the program manager, what do you think that that would be?

[User] Getting the team pulled together and getting that job done. We made some good management decisions. We changed some people in some of the contractors. They were tough decisions to make—you really can’t consider that an accomplishment. Just getting the whole team to work together, getting it all done.

[Assistant]
Rebecca, do you have any questions for Mr. Lindstrom?

I think he’s covered it all very well.


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

[User] By the time I was there, I think, it had improved dramatically. There were quite a few stores in Star City itself, and they were privately owned, and the food -I mean, it wasn't like going into a supermarket here, but you could pretty much get whatever you needed to get by, and then if we needed to go into Moscow, we could go on the weekends. Moscow's like any other big city. You can buy anything in Moscow. It's a little expensive. It's probably like shopping in New York City, those kind of prices, but Moscow's great. You can get anything you need.

[Assistant] Were you able to bring any of your family members over?

[User] My wife came over to visit. We made a decision that we would treat it more like an employment, and I would go over, and she would come and visit me when she could, and I actually got to come back for Christmas and the holidays. I think, in retrospect, it was difficult, but it was, for me, probably the right thing to do. You tend to work some pretty long hours over there, and it was easier for me to separate the two so I could work whatever hours were required and not really have to worry about the family side of life. Also it was kind of comforting knowing that she was back here taking care of everything. We didn't have to worry about getting someone to rent our house while we were gone, what are we going to do with the house, who's going to take care of it or watch it for us. So she was kind of handling things back here, and that was a nice kind of burden I didn't have to think about.

[Assistant] Let's talk a little bit about the Russian language and how that affected your job over there.

[User] The Russian language.

[Assistant] Was that hard to overcome?


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

[User] No. Actually, I got to the point where I could -you know, speaking off the cuff is hard enough. So, speaking off the cuff in another language is tough. If I had about five or ten minutes to think about what I wanted to say, then I could think about what I wanted to say and I could think about how to say it in Russian, and I'd be okay. I just needed about five or ten minutes to sit down and -and by the end, you know, I could just say I want to say this and then think about how to say it in Russian, but I just couldn't just stand up and do it all real time. That was pretty hard.

[Assistant] These social gatherings, would there be like an order, you knew you were going to be second or third or -

[User] No, it was more social. It just depended on where you were standing and how things were going. They were a lot of fun. You get put in that position, actually, quite a bit. I know Jim Halsell is over there now, and he's going through the same thing.

[Assistant] One of the stories we heard was that the Russians like to sing at some of these parties, and you're expected to know a song in English and sing it. Have you ever run across a time when you had to -

[User] We had a big Halloween party when I was there. The Two, Three, and Four crews were there. Susan and Carl are both members of MAXQ, the band. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

[Assistant] I've heard of it.


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

[User] Oh, yes. He did his Elvis thing, and, of course, all the women thought that was terrific. That was a really good party. I think they had another one like that since I left. I think it was when Ken Cockrell was over for a visit, I think they had another of that kind of party. But it was great. Everybody said it was the best party they had been to in Star City.

[Assistant] We got to talk with General [Yuri] Glaskov when we were down in Florida. He seemed to share some really good stories about the experience of having the Americans over there. Were you able to work with him at all while you were over there?

[User] Oh, yes. I know General Glaskov very well. I never felt bad about just stopping by his office unannounced and just walking in and saying hi or if I had a problem. If we had a problem that we couldn't resolve, then we had to take it to him. He was always willing to listen to our side of it and what our position was. He's a really terrific guy. I hope he can stay in that position forever. It probably won't happen, but he's a good guy to have over there, a good friend of ours.

[Assistant] He seemed to really enjoy the Phase 1 Program and was looking forward to the Phase 2 Program. It sounds like in Star City it's really going well.

[User] I think it is.

[Assistant] What would you say was the most memorable experience that you have through the Phase 1 program, whether it was your flight or the DOR job?


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

[User] Oh, yes. I know General Glaskov very well. I never felt bad about just stopping by his office unannounced and just walking in and saying hi or if I had a problem. If we had a problem that we couldn't resolve, then we had to take it to him. He was always willing to listen to our side of it and what our position was. He's a really terrific guy. I hope he can stay in that position forever. It probably won't happen, but he's a good guy to have over there, a good friend of ours.

[Assistant] He seemed to really enjoy the Phase 1 Program and was looking forward to the Phase 2 Program. It sounds like in Star City it's really going well.

[User] I think it is.

[Assistant] What would you say was the most memorable experience that you have through the Phase 1 program, whether it was your flight or the DOR job?

[User] That's tough. I think probably the most memorable parts of it for me are when I get a chance to see somebody after they've been on Mir, either John on orbit when he came off and came over into the Shuttle, or the other day I saw Andy for the first time. Andy and I were over in Star City together, and as he had issues that came up in his training that he wanted resolved, you know, he would come to me or somebody in the DOR organization to try to get those things resolved. I think it's when you see these crew members after they come back, you know, seeing Dave after he came back, and Mike, I think that's probably, to me, the part that I'll probably remember the most about Phase 1.

[Assistant] What does the future hold for you as far as follow along jobs that are related, or have you been assigned another flight yet?


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

[User] I think it is.

[Assistant] What would you say was the most memorable experience that you have through the Phase 1 program, whether it was your flight or the DOR job?

[User] That's tough. I think probably the most memorable parts of it for me are when I get a chance to see somebody after they've been on Mir, either John on orbit when he came off and came over into the Shuttle, or the other day I saw Andy for the first time. Andy and I were over in Star City together, and as he had issues that came up in his training that he wanted resolved, you know, he would come to me or somebody in the DOR organization to try to get those things resolved. I think it's when you see these crew members after they come back, you know, seeing Dave after he came back, and Mike, I think that's probably, to me, the part that I'll probably remember the most about Phase 1.

[Assistant] What does the future hold for you as far as follow along jobs that are related, or have you been assigned another flight yet?

[User] I haven't been assigned to another flight. I'm still continuing to work on a lot of the same type of issues that I worked on when I was the DOR. That's why I said, that flight, the one on STS-81, kind of started me down sort of a road of being involved in Phase 1 and Phase 2, and I'm continuing to work a lot of Phase 2 issues, station issues, especially those that deal with RSA and the Russians. You know, you make the contacts, you make the personal relationships over there. So it makes sense to try to continue to use those things when a DOR comes back. So I've actually maintained a lot of the same contacts with the Russians that I had when I was over there and actually made a few more, and eventually I hope to get assigned to one of the assembly flights here soon.

[Assistant] Do you focus on the training portion of it?


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

[User] No. I’m aware of it. I realize how it works. Once again, when you’re a representative aboard a ship, you have to know how it works, what to do about it, what are the intricacies of how it does operate, because the recovery crews may not be familiar with it.

[Assistant] Let’s move on to Apollo 11. As you mentioned, there were four of you that volunteered to be part of the possible quarantine with the crews in those Apollo missions. Of course, for Apollo 11, you were chosen as the first one to go in with the crew. How did that come about that you got picked out of the four volunteers?

[User] Well, it wasn’t a matter of getting picked. You might say it’s the luck of the draw. We actually drew straws, and the short straw went in first. I just happened to draw the short straw. Literally, it’s, “Hey, how do we do this?” You know, everybody wanted to do it, because to be a part of an event like that, it’s just really great. But at the same time, I didn’t feel it would be appropriate to say, “Well, I’m going to be first,” because why should I be first? So we did that, we just drew straws.

[Assistant] Were you concerned before that? I know, as you mentioned, to be apart of this history, but were you concerned at all? I think I read that you had been married just prior to that.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Were you concerned about the possibilities of contamination, or did your group really take that seriously as a true concern?


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

[User] Well, it wasn’t a matter of getting picked. You might say it’s the luck of the draw. We actually drew straws, and the short straw went in first. I just happened to draw the short straw. Literally, it’s, “Hey, how do we do this?” You know, everybody wanted to do it, because to be a part of an event like that, it’s just really great. But at the same time, I didn’t feel it would be appropriate to say, “Well, I’m going to be first,” because why should I be first? So we did that, we just drew straws.

[Assistant] Were you concerned before that? I know, as you mentioned, to be apart of this history, but were you concerned at all? I think I read that you had been married just prior to that.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Were you concerned about the possibilities of contamination, or did your group really take that seriously as a true concern?

[User] It’s interesting you ask that. The ICBC, National Academy of Science, was very concerned. That’s why we had all these constraints placed upon us, and that’s why we took what we thought were all possible measures without impacting the safety of the crew to ensure that we minimize the hazards. As ICBC stated, there is a potential back contamination from the lunar surface. Because of problems of importing pathogens from another environment, you had to take that concern seriously; therefore, we did everything we thought prudent to satisfy those concerns. About that time, there was a book out by Michael Crichton, and I read that book.

[Assistant] I was going to ask you if you read it. (laughter)


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

[User] Okay. That’s going to take awhile.

[Assistant] Well, that’s okay. Do you want to take a break first?

[User] Yes, why don’t we take a break?

[Assistant] Okay, okay.

[User] Because that gets quite involved.

[Assistant]
All right.\n\n (pause)

When we stopped we were going to start with your experiences on Apollo 11, so if you want to walk us through those?


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

[User] Right. In the LRL, we did have additional people accompany us. We had a PAO rep. I think we had some LRL support people already were preplanned to be on the side with the crew, just to facilitate food preparation and things like that. However, the rules that the ICBC put down were that if any person handling lunar sample became directly exposed to the lunar surface materials, they would have to be required to go in quarantine with the crew at the time of exposure. There were, I think, two incidents I recall. One was a glove tear. I forget what the other one was. But in each case, because they were working with lunar samples, quarantine was compromised with that individual. That individual had to go through a double-lock to the quarantine side, to the crew side of the quarantine facility, LRL. Once again, those were the conditions that we set procedurally up ahead of time.

[Assistant] So you’d already made arrangements in case something happened?

[User] That’s right. So those procedures were already in place, and that was the protocol that you had to follow if there was a violation of quarantine or exposure to lunar surface material.

[Assistant] The bag that you brought in that had the rocks and the dirt and everything, you had that with you as well once you got to the LRL?

[User] Yes. I forget how we turned that over, but we carried it back with us in the quarantine facility.

[Assistant] Had it been opened up while you were in the MQF?


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

[User] That’s right. So those procedures were already in place, and that was the protocol that you had to follow if there was a violation of quarantine or exposure to lunar surface material.

[Assistant] The bag that you brought in that had the rocks and the dirt and everything, you had that with you as well once you got to the LRL?

[User] Yes. I forget how we turned that over, but we carried it back with us in the quarantine facility.

[Assistant] Had it been opened up while you were in the MQF?

[User] Took a peek.

[Assistant] So you did look a little. Well, if you want, it’s almost three o’clock and we talked about stopping about three. We can stop here and make arrangements for you to come back and we can talk about your experiences starting with Apollo 12, and if there’s anything we haven’t talked about Apollo 11 then we can talk about that then, if that’d be okay.


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

[User] [When] we did thermal pathfinder here I think it really opened a lot of eyes as to what the thermal system was really like and just how much attention to detail it took.\n\n Everybody knows when something gets cold it gets smaller. When we put this large telescope with large space simulators and all this stuff together, before we put it in the chamber we had to go around. I think we made over 1,000 measurements of gaps that we had to monitor so they didn’t collide or they didn’t impact some function with the test that would throw the test. One of my guys has a spreadsheet, and I know there’s over 1,000 lines on it of all the gaps and all the interferences and things that we had to monitor. It’s just staggering. It was staggering, just the attention [to detail].\n\n You’re working with something that’s 10,000 pounds and 25 feet long. You have to set it and the things next to that—you can’t have a gap that’s larger than something, or you have a problem. It was the same with tensioning blankets and all kinds of things. Nothing could be done haphazard. Everything had to be thought out.

[Assistant] Yes, it sounds like there was quite a bit of detail in everything. I know Conrad was telling me about the details he had to provide.

[User] Yes, the details.

[Assistant] It’s just astounding to me, not being an engineer myself.

[User] It is. It is.

[Assistant] You talked about coming down here and having a captive audience because you’re here to work. What were your hours like when you would come down and work?


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

[User] Yes, the details.

[Assistant] It’s just astounding to me, not being an engineer myself.

[User] It is. It is.

[Assistant] You talked about coming down here and having a captive audience because you’re here to work. What were your hours like when you would come down and work?

[User] Our base hours were six days, 10-hour days. Typically we’d work that. We did work a few weekends straight through where we needed. We did work some 11- and 12-hour days once in a while. I typically worked a little more than that just because I had to get ahead of everybody in the morning and clean up a little bit when they left. I had work to pay attention to here, but I also had my own business reports and other things to do. That stuff didn’t go away. I worked usually half days on Sundays. Most of the guys had Sundays off. They’d sleep in, they’d do their laundry. It was pretty much just get ready to go back to work Monday.

[Assistant] When you started coming down here in 2010 what were your rotations like? How long would you stay down here?


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

[User] It is. It is.

[Assistant] You talked about coming down here and having a captive audience because you’re here to work. What were your hours like when you would come down and work?

[User] Our base hours were six days, 10-hour days. Typically we’d work that. We did work a few weekends straight through where we needed. We did work some 11- and 12-hour days once in a while. I typically worked a little more than that just because I had to get ahead of everybody in the morning and clean up a little bit when they left. I had work to pay attention to here, but I also had my own business reports and other things to do. That stuff didn’t go away. I worked usually half days on Sundays. Most of the guys had Sundays off. They’d sleep in, they’d do their laundry. It was pretty much just get ready to go back to work Monday.

[Assistant] When you started coming down here in 2010 what were your rotations like? How long would you stay down here?

[User] In 2010, we were only coming down for meetings. We didn’t really deploy down here till late ’13. That’s when those kind of hours kicked in.\n\n Then it depended. Everybody had a little bit of a different rotation depending on their family life or demands back in Rochester. Some guys, once we got through design phases, moved to other programs so that when their hardware went into the chamber they’d come down for a month or something and then they’d go home. Other guys were more support that were on constant rotations.\n\n I did like three weeks down one week back for a long time. Then there was a period I went to like two and two. Then when we just finished here, I think I was down here like four, five months straight almost this last go-round. It was a long time. I went home a couple weekends. I’d fly home late Friday and fly back Monday morning sometimes, but you’d spend so much time in airports.

[Assistant] I was just thinking that. You mentioned you can’t just directly fly from Rochester to Houston.


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

[User] No, it’s two planes each way. When we were getting done down here, there was so much heavy work getting done, I just felt I needed to be here just for safety.\n\n The optical system we had in the top of the chamber that had the large mirrors and the center of curvature system on it, we had to bring that down on three separate cranes. That thing weighed almost 20,000 pounds. I wanted that to come down really slow. Didn’t want anybody hurt. We had some disassembly to do just as it got to the bottom. We had some disassembly to do while it was still not quite set on its cart. It was just things like that.\n\n There were things that we put together. As I mentioned there was a suspension system. The top and the bottom was hung by titanium rods. There was a lot of joints, and those joints were put together and they sat there through I think six cryo cycles over a period of five years. It was questionable if they were going to come apart just because of the load on them and with the vacuum, whether or not the greases had migrated away, and whether or not we’d just get them apart.\n\n Potentially you could have had hourly issues. As it was, we didn’t have any, but there was a lot of reasons that I felt I needed to be here.

[Assistant] How did you get your hardware down here? Were you trucking it down? Were you flying it down?

[User] Trucking it, yes. Actually when we left we just pulled it all out of here. I think we used, I’ve heard two stories, 16 and 20 40-footers, tractor trailers, to get it out of here. Then the big pieces are still sitting over there. A lot of stuff.

[Assistant] That is a lot more stuff than I realized.

[User] Oh, yes, it’s a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of stuff. God, I think we had 100 miles of cables in that chamber.

[Assistant] A hundred miles of cables.


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

[User] Trucking it, yes. Actually when we left we just pulled it all out of here. I think we used, I’ve heard two stories, 16 and 20 40-footers, tractor trailers, to get it out of here. Then the big pieces are still sitting over there. A lot of stuff.

[Assistant] That is a lot more stuff than I realized.

[User] Oh, yes, it’s a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of stuff. God, I think we had 100 miles of cables in that chamber.

[Assistant] A hundred miles of cables.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Jonathan was telling me about the importance of keeping it sealed and keeping those temperatures. With all of that wiring, how do you actually keep something sealed up tight to maintain that 40 Kelvin temperature? Normally when you put a wire through something there’s got to be a hole. So how do you ensure there’s not a leak?


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

[User] Oh, yes, it’s a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of stuff. God, I think we had 100 miles of cables in that chamber.

[Assistant] A hundred miles of cables.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Jonathan was telling me about the importance of keeping it sealed and keeping those temperatures. With all of that wiring, how do you actually keep something sealed up tight to maintain that 40 Kelvin temperature? Normally when you put a wire through something there’s got to be a hole. So how do you ensure there’s not a leak?

[User] There are connectors that they put on chambers that they’re sealed. But the interesting thing is the cable is a huge thermal conductor. They have vacuum connectors, so the vacuum connector part is easy. The hard part or the tedious part was the thermals. We had to build in the back of the chamber—if you go in there it’s still there—there’s two shrouds. There’s a helium shroud and an LN2 [liquid] nitrogen shroud.\n\n Behind those shrouds we have aluminum shelving we built to actually run these cables on as conductors so the aluminum would conduct. They were foil-wrapped with thermal tapes to the shelves so that over the length that they traveled inside the helium shroud they would not be conducting any heat in.\n\n As I said there’s like 100 miles of cables we took out of there and put in there. We have pictures of them. I can’t even describe the pictures to you. You’d have to see them. It’s just like bookshelves of white cables. They have these things they call towel bars. When they had to jump to the next shroud you’d have a rod, and they’d just all be running across it like a waterfall. The cables had to be engineered.\n\n You had a thermal engineer working on how we’re going to handle these cables in there. Then we had a dynamics engineer working on how we actually created the loops, splayed them out, so that they wouldn’t disturb the telescope while they were plugged in.

[Assistant] Things that you don’t think about.


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

[User] There are connectors that they put on chambers that they’re sealed. But the interesting thing is the cable is a huge thermal conductor. They have vacuum connectors, so the vacuum connector part is easy. The hard part or the tedious part was the thermals. We had to build in the back of the chamber—if you go in there it’s still there—there’s two shrouds. There’s a helium shroud and an LN2 [liquid] nitrogen shroud.\n\n Behind those shrouds we have aluminum shelving we built to actually run these cables on as conductors so the aluminum would conduct. They were foil-wrapped with thermal tapes to the shelves so that over the length that they traveled inside the helium shroud they would not be conducting any heat in.\n\n As I said there’s like 100 miles of cables we took out of there and put in there. We have pictures of them. I can’t even describe the pictures to you. You’d have to see them. It’s just like bookshelves of white cables. They have these things they call towel bars. When they had to jump to the next shroud you’d have a rod, and they’d just all be running across it like a waterfall. The cables had to be engineered.\n\n You had a thermal engineer working on how we’re going to handle these cables in there. Then we had a dynamics engineer working on how we actually created the loops, splayed them out, so that they wouldn’t disturb the telescope while they were plugged in.

[Assistant] Things that you don’t think about.

[User] Because the first test we did we found that—they weren’t splayed out and looped, we thought if we just draped them to the floor it’d be enough. But it was picking up the small motions off the floor. The floor like this was enough to disrupt the test.

[Assistant] All sorts of things that you learn.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] I did want to ask you about those tests. You had the OGSE [Optical Ground Support Equipment]-1 and 2. What was your role during those tests?


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

[User] Because the first test we did we found that—they weren’t splayed out and looped, we thought if we just draped them to the floor it’d be enough. But it was picking up the small motions off the floor. The floor like this was enough to disrupt the test.

[Assistant] All sorts of things that you learn.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] I did want to ask you about those tests. You had the OGSE [Optical Ground Support Equipment]-1 and 2. What was your role during those tests?

[User] I mentioned Tony Whitman. Tony Whitman was my chief test engineer. When we were down here and I was orchestrating and managing getting hardware put in, Tony was working with Goddard to develop the test plans, test procedures. Then he would work with Goddard and Ball and the rest of the team to run the test.\n\n We kind of had swapping roles. Once we were ready with the test and then we had the test article in the chamber, I would go home. Tony would run the test. While we were home, we already knew a lot about what we had to do for the next test. There was engineering and design work that needed to get done. I’d go home and push that, get those things ready to go, so that when the test was over we could ship the next bunch of stuff down.\n\n That was kind of the way it worked. We never got to a point where there was nothing to do. You were always getting ready for the next test and every test built off itself. I think the test schedule held pretty well. Last-minute developments was a little bit of a hustle to get something changed to correct it for the next one.

[Assistant] I was wondering if you would talk about that. Were there things that you had to do on the fly during these tests? All of a sudden something flared up, and we need X?


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

[User] No. Actually when the test started I went back, and we just worked on the final set of paper. At that point I had started releasing people from the program. I kept the manufacturing engineers. They started working the paperwork to get it out of the chamber and close it down. There was a lot of work we had to do to actually take all the equipment out of the chamber.\n\n There was paperwork that had to get done. There were systems that had not been used in five years. We had to go back and see if they still worked. We had to get ready with load test plans and things like that, because the lifting equipment hadn’t been used since we put the stuff in. It was a whole raft of things we had to get organized and restart to do. It was not a quiet time; we were busy while they were down here testing.\n\n When the door opened it was like you were expected to be there with everything you needed to start work. That’s the kind of things we were doing. Then when the test did finish, I think when the door opened we didn’t get at it right away. We spent a month. They were trying to redo a couple anomalies they thought they saw, so we helped. We worked on that for a month before we actually got started taking the telescope out.

[Assistant] How many people did you have working down here during the test for Harris?

[User] During the test? I’m going to say 15 actually on the test here. Probably had another half dozen dynamics engineers, optical engineers back in Rochester for support, and probably had another 10 or a dozen engineers working to get ready for the next phase. Then I had a program office, I got a finance person and a scheduling person and a business person.

[Assistant] Everything it takes to make the organization operate. Were there any major challenges that you had to face when the test was ongoing? Obviously you mentioned Harvey. Harvey was kind of a big deal.

[User] Harvey was probably the toughest because we didn’t know where it was going. The [hurricane] got here and it parked. Do you live here?

[Assistant] I do actually. Yes, I live right outside the gates.


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

[User] Harvey was probably the toughest because we didn’t know where it was going. The [hurricane] got here and it parked. Do you live here?

[Assistant] I do actually. Yes, I live right outside the gates.

[User] So you were here.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] They were sending me pictures. They were using 30-gallon garbage cans as rain gauges. When one would fill up they’d put another one out next to it. They ended up with 55 inches. Just like a tape measure, they’re measuring. I had guys run to [a store]; they bought 25 air mattresses. … We were concerned. The test was going to be safe if all these things didn’t happen. You started looking on a regular basis. There were meetings after meeting after meeting as to how you manage the people going back and forth, as you heard, and how they’re getting fed, getting sleep, when’s the storm going to end, what’s the storm going to do next.\n\n My management in Rochester, of course, was concerned about our people down here. So hourly I’m getting e-mails or phone calls from a different manager from one place or another asking me, “What’s the status? Who’s who? How many people are there? Who are the people? How long have they been there? How much sleep?” All this human relations kind of stuff was going on.\n\n Our parent company, Harris, is in Melbourne, Florida, so they’re very familiar with hurricanes. They’ve got hurricane protocols, so their hurricane people were calling me all the time.

[Assistant] You got no rest.


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

[User] So you were here.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] They were sending me pictures. They were using 30-gallon garbage cans as rain gauges. When one would fill up they’d put another one out next to it. They ended up with 55 inches. Just like a tape measure, they’re measuring. I had guys run to [a store]; they bought 25 air mattresses. … We were concerned. The test was going to be safe if all these things didn’t happen. You started looking on a regular basis. There were meetings after meeting after meeting as to how you manage the people going back and forth, as you heard, and how they’re getting fed, getting sleep, when’s the storm going to end, what’s the storm going to do next.\n\n My management in Rochester, of course, was concerned about our people down here. So hourly I’m getting e-mails or phone calls from a different manager from one place or another asking me, “What’s the status? Who’s who? How many people are there? Who are the people? How long have they been there? How much sleep?” All this human relations kind of stuff was going on.\n\n Our parent company, Harris, is in Melbourne, Florida, so they’re very familiar with hurricanes. They’ve got hurricane protocols, so their hurricane people were calling me all the time.

[Assistant] You got no rest.

[User] I’m trying to get ahold of guys down here, and phones aren’t working. They were lucky. The site was in the right place, I think. They were really lucky. Then some of them went out and helped do some aid work right after it ended.

[Assistant] Yes, I understand that was a big push.


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

[User] They were sending me pictures. They were using 30-gallon garbage cans as rain gauges. When one would fill up they’d put another one out next to it. They ended up with 55 inches. Just like a tape measure, they’re measuring. I had guys run to [a store]; they bought 25 air mattresses. … We were concerned. The test was going to be safe if all these things didn’t happen. You started looking on a regular basis. There were meetings after meeting after meeting as to how you manage the people going back and forth, as you heard, and how they’re getting fed, getting sleep, when’s the storm going to end, what’s the storm going to do next.\n\n My management in Rochester, of course, was concerned about our people down here. So hourly I’m getting e-mails or phone calls from a different manager from one place or another asking me, “What’s the status? Who’s who? How many people are there? Who are the people? How long have they been there? How much sleep?” All this human relations kind of stuff was going on.\n\n Our parent company, Harris, is in Melbourne, Florida, so they’re very familiar with hurricanes. They’ve got hurricane protocols, so their hurricane people were calling me all the time.

[Assistant] You got no rest.

[User] I’m trying to get ahold of guys down here, and phones aren’t working. They were lucky. The site was in the right place, I think. They were really lucky. Then some of them went out and helped do some aid work right after it ended.

[Assistant] Yes, I understand that was a big push.

[User] Which was nice.

[Assistant] Did your company send a plane? I understand some of the companies chartered planes.


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

[User] I’m trying to get ahold of guys down here, and phones aren’t working. They were lucky. The site was in the right place, I think. They were really lucky. Then some of them went out and helped do some aid work right after it ended.

[Assistant] Yes, I understand that was a big push.

[User] Which was nice.

[Assistant] Did your company send a plane? I understand some of the companies chartered planes.

[User] I had a plane lined up to bring some people down. About the time it was going to become available we got a commercial airline, so we canceled it. Yes, they were working with Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas] to bring a plane in, because we had people here so long.

[Assistant] I’m sure people were exhausted and ready to come home and get some relief.


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

[User] Which was nice.

[Assistant] Did your company send a plane? I understand some of the companies chartered planes.

[User] I had a plane lined up to bring some people down. About the time it was going to become available we got a commercial airline, so we canceled it. Yes, they were working with Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas] to bring a plane in, because we had people here so long.

[Assistant] I’m sure people were exhausted and ready to come home and get some relief.

[User] Yes, it got to be hard. Every time you looked outside it was just raining. …\n\n I told Goddard early on, I said the biggest threat down here was water. It’s just water. Whether the roof leaks, whether you lose a pipe, whether you do anything, you have so much electronics outside the chamber that water is the thing that will kill you the quickest. Luckily, over the years, there was enough provisions put in. They had shielding over the top of some of the cabinets. Some of them they put curtains around. They survived it. It was just luck.\n\n Could you test that telescope again for that many days with that storm and come out the same? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. I’d just as soon sit on this success.

[Assistant] Luckily everything went well. That’s good. Have you been back since the test was done? Obviously you’re here today.


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

[User] I had a plane lined up to bring some people down. About the time it was going to become available we got a commercial airline, so we canceled it. Yes, they were working with Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas] to bring a plane in, because we had people here so long.

[Assistant] I’m sure people were exhausted and ready to come home and get some relief.

[User] Yes, it got to be hard. Every time you looked outside it was just raining. …\n\n I told Goddard early on, I said the biggest threat down here was water. It’s just water. Whether the roof leaks, whether you lose a pipe, whether you do anything, you have so much electronics outside the chamber that water is the thing that will kill you the quickest. Luckily, over the years, there was enough provisions put in. They had shielding over the top of some of the cabinets. Some of them they put curtains around. They survived it. It was just luck.\n\n Could you test that telescope again for that many days with that storm and come out the same? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. I’d just as soon sit on this success.

[Assistant] Luckily everything went well. That’s good. Have you been back since the test was done? Obviously you’re here today.

[User] I left in June. June 15th I left here. I think just before the last truck left I left. This is my first trip back.

[Assistant] I imagine the SESL looks a little bit different without all your hardware.


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

[User] Yes, it got to be hard. Every time you looked outside it was just raining. …\n\n I told Goddard early on, I said the biggest threat down here was water. It’s just water. Whether the roof leaks, whether you lose a pipe, whether you do anything, you have so much electronics outside the chamber that water is the thing that will kill you the quickest. Luckily, over the years, there was enough provisions put in. They had shielding over the top of some of the cabinets. Some of them they put curtains around. They survived it. It was just luck.\n\n Could you test that telescope again for that many days with that storm and come out the same? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. I’d just as soon sit on this success.

[Assistant] Luckily everything went well. That’s good. Have you been back since the test was done? Obviously you’re here today.

[User] I left in June. June 15th I left here. I think just before the last truck left I left. This is my first trip back.

[Assistant] I imagine the SESL looks a little bit different without all your hardware.

[User] Yes. Things feel different. I thought about driving down to [Building] 32 when I leave here and just seeing what’s going on down there. We are interested, if they do more work in that chamber, if they need any kind of work similar to what we did there, to do more work. We certainly know the place well now. We know the chamber well.

[Assistant] What’s going to happen with all your hardware? You mentioned all the stuff that you brought down. Do you envision reusing that for other programs?


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

[User] I left in June. June 15th I left here. I think just before the last truck left I left. This is my first trip back.

[Assistant] I imagine the SESL looks a little bit different without all your hardware.

[User] Yes. Things feel different. I thought about driving down to [Building] 32 when I leave here and just seeing what’s going on down there. We are interested, if they do more work in that chamber, if they need any kind of work similar to what we did there, to do more work. We certainly know the place well now. We know the chamber well.

[Assistant] What’s going to happen with all your hardware? You mentioned all the stuff that you brought down. Do you envision reusing that for other programs?

[User] It’s all going to Goddard. It’s all government equipment. There’s a program up there they call WFIRST [Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope].

[Assistant] Yes. I think Gary told me he’s working on that.


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

[User] Yes. Things feel different. I thought about driving down to [Building] 32 when I leave here and just seeing what’s going on down there. We are interested, if they do more work in that chamber, if they need any kind of work similar to what we did there, to do more work. We certainly know the place well now. We know the chamber well.

[Assistant] What’s going to happen with all your hardware? You mentioned all the stuff that you brought down. Do you envision reusing that for other programs?

[User] It’s all going to Goddard. It’s all government equipment. There’s a program up there they call WFIRST [Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope].

[Assistant] Yes. I think Gary told me he’s working on that.

[User] Yes. Some of it may get used there, some of the optical equipment. The optical equipment is probably the only stuff. Some of the thermal telemetry equipment will be reused for sure. … These payloads are all very different, and it’s very hard to come up with infrastructure that’s just universal. … Like I mentioned, some of the big [hardware] is still here. I think it’s going to get excessed right out of Johnson because of the size of it. The optical stuff will probably get reused.

[Assistant] Looking back, what do you think are some of the more important lessons learned during the test, or even as you started working on plans when you were one of the first two guys working on these concepts?


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

[User] My greatest contribution. I think it would be just keeping things together and moving forward. I put a lot of time into pushing the schedule, pushing the lower detail of the schedule to like I said keep moving forward. It’s something you got to do every day. I use this term. I’m going to walk around and kick chairs. I’m not big on e-mail; I’m not big on phone calls. I like walking around seeing people, just keeping things going in the right direction. Trying to know something about everything that’s going on.

[Assistant] What are you working on now? Are you still closing this out?

[User] It is a tremendous amount of work to close a program out. By the time you make sure you’ve accounted for all the assets and materials that are left over, going through the government transfer process. We have to organize and maintain the records on the program for 15 years after launch, which right now is [2036]. Then we’ve also got to show the government that we’ve delivered everything that was in the contract. There are documents [that] you have to show that all those have been delivered or they’re available for delivery. There are literally thousands of those. I [probably had] five engineers working on just gathering all this [information]. We have a formal/informal technical document we have to write that summarizes the program. There are a number of things going on. That’s going to go on for a little while longer.\n\n We’re still running some support. We’ll probably run a little bit of low-level support through launch, probably be very low level, probably a couple people at the most.

[Assistant] I think I’ve run through my list of questions. I always give people the opportunity to add any additional information or talk about something that they might have wanted to discuss. I wasn’t sure if there was anything you thought we haven’t covered.

[User] No, I think you covered it pretty well. It’s really hot down here.

[Assistant] It is, yes. There’s lots of mosquitoes too.


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

[User] It is a tremendous amount of work to close a program out. By the time you make sure you’ve accounted for all the assets and materials that are left over, going through the government transfer process. We have to organize and maintain the records on the program for 15 years after launch, which right now is [2036]. Then we’ve also got to show the government that we’ve delivered everything that was in the contract. There are documents [that] you have to show that all those have been delivered or they’re available for delivery. There are literally thousands of those. I [probably had] five engineers working on just gathering all this [information]. We have a formal/informal technical document we have to write that summarizes the program. There are a number of things going on. That’s going to go on for a little while longer.\n\n We’re still running some support. We’ll probably run a little bit of low-level support through launch, probably be very low level, probably a couple people at the most.

[Assistant] I think I’ve run through my list of questions. I always give people the opportunity to add any additional information or talk about something that they might have wanted to discuss. I wasn’t sure if there was anything you thought we haven’t covered.

[User] No, I think you covered it pretty well. It’s really hot down here.

[Assistant] It is, yes. There’s lots of mosquitoes too.

[User] It’s hot down here. Somebody made a comment one day that the Sun is only a mile from the Earth here.

[Assistant] It does seem like it some days.


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

[User] No, I think you covered it pretty well. It’s really hot down here.

[Assistant] It is, yes. There’s lots of mosquitoes too.

[User] It’s hot down here. Somebody made a comment one day that the Sun is only a mile from the Earth here.

[Assistant] It does seem like it some days.

[User] I know. Overall I think everybody did enjoy the program quite a bit. Aside from being here for five years, people made a lot of friends amongst their coworkers in these other companies. It was interesting. There’s Northrop Grumman. There’s Ball. There’s a company called Genesis [Engineering Solutions]. There’s ATK. There’s Minus K. When everybody’s here we really did work together, because it was a common problem, common effort. It was not siloed. People got to know each other over the years. In that respect it was a very positive experience.

[Assistant] Definitely heard that from a lot of people. That this was a very complicated test, but things just went off really well. What do you attribute that to? The fact that things weren’t siloed, that things worked so well, people got along so well.


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

[User] … I was born in a coal mining district in western Pennsylvania, moved to the Philadelphia area, went to high school there, a small high school. I was in golf, basketball, and miscellaneous sports. Not only lettered sports…

[Assistant] What about some significant events? Any significant about the high school years? The war was rolling up about that time, I guess.

[User] Well, I always knew, from about age five on, what I wanted to be, because my father flew in World War I. I used to put his uniform on as a little kid, and I decided I wanted to be in aviation. So I was sort of directed in high school. I had a lot of activities and all that, but I didn't flounder around as to what I wanted to do and be. That's sort of was the way I was in high school.

[Assistant] Where did you go right after high school?

[User] I got a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic, went there, took aeronautical engineering, met my wife, married her. Oh, I enlisted in the NROTC before Pearl Harbor. My father talked me into that. He said, "There's going to be a war. You better get involved early." So I enlisted in September of '41, and Pearl Harbor was December of '41. And then I was pulled out in my junior year, because they had run short of ensigns, and assigned to the Saratoga.

[Assistant] As ship's company?


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

[User] I got a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic, went there, took aeronautical engineering, met my wife, married her. Oh, I enlisted in the NROTC before Pearl Harbor. My father talked me into that. He said, "There's going to be a war. You better get involved early." So I enlisted in September of '41, and Pearl Harbor was December of '41. And then I was pulled out in my junior year, because they had run short of ensigns, and assigned to the Saratoga.

[Assistant] As ship's company?

[User] Yes. Well, I had a dual commission. I was aviation/deck. I worked the flight deck crews, and I also stood officer-of-the-deck watches on the bridge.\n\n I had met my wife before I was called up to active duty and married her on my first leave, married her in '45. We've been married for fifty-three years.

[Assistant] Congratulations.

[User] That's a long time, isn't it?

[Assistant] A very long time, yes, sir. Well, tell me about the Saratoga. Was that basically the ship you served on for the whole time?


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

[User] That's a long time, isn't it?

[Assistant] A very long time, yes, sir. Well, tell me about the Saratoga. Was that basically the ship you served on for the whole time?

[User] … I [boarded] in the Indian Ocean, and we went up and raided Surabaya and Sabang to hit oil depots. I never heard a shot fired or saw an enemy aircraft, and we came right home. Actually, I didn't get married that leave. We went back out, participated in raids on Tokyo and supported Iwo Jima. [At] Iwo Jima we were kamikazed heavily by five planes and a couple of bombs. We took a lot of casualties and a lot of damage and went back for repairs, and then I got married on that trip.

[Assistant] At Pearl?

[User] No, we went to Bremerton for repair. It was too [damaged] to do at Pearl. The ship was pretty wrecked. So I went home and got married and brought my wife back out to Bremerton and then down to San Francisco, and then we went out and she went home.

[Assistant] Was that in '44, probably?


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

[User] … I [boarded] in the Indian Ocean, and we went up and raided Surabaya and Sabang to hit oil depots. I never heard a shot fired or saw an enemy aircraft, and we came right home. Actually, I didn't get married that leave. We went back out, participated in raids on Tokyo and supported Iwo Jima. [At] Iwo Jima we were kamikazed heavily by five planes and a couple of bombs. We took a lot of casualties and a lot of damage and went back for repairs, and then I got married on that trip.

[Assistant] At Pearl?

[User] No, we went to Bremerton for repair. It was too [damaged] to do at Pearl. The ship was pretty wrecked. So I went home and got married and brought my wife back out to Bremerton and then down to San Francisco, and then we went out and she went home.

[Assistant] Was that in '44, probably?

[User] … [No—'45]

[Assistant] It was all wound down by that time, wasn't it?


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

[User] No, we went to Bremerton for repair. It was too [damaged] to do at Pearl. The ship was pretty wrecked. So I went home and got married and brought my wife back out to Bremerton and then down to San Francisco, and then we went out and she went home.

[Assistant] Was that in '44, probably?

[User] … [No—'45]

[Assistant] It was all wound down by that time, wasn't it?

[User] [Not quite.] Our ship was not very maneuverable, so they … assigned us … to training air crews in Hawaii, and then when the war ended, we hauled servicemen back … from Hawaii to the West Coast.\n\n Then I was assigned to a Naval Air Modification Unit [NAMU] in Johnsville. I ended up a Program Manager … putting turbo superchargers into F-4Us. And then I got out and went back to school and finished my education.

[Assistant] At the hangars there at Johnsville, which then became a war minster.


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

[User] … [No—'45]

[Assistant] It was all wound down by that time, wasn't it?

[User] [Not quite.] Our ship was not very maneuverable, so they … assigned us … to training air crews in Hawaii, and then when the war ended, we hauled servicemen back … from Hawaii to the West Coast.\n\n Then I was assigned to a Naval Air Modification Unit [NAMU] in Johnsville. I ended up a Program Manager … putting turbo superchargers into F-4Us. And then I got out and went back to school and finished my education.

[Assistant] At the hangars there at Johnsville, which then became a war minster.

[User] Oh, you've been there?

[Assistant] Yes, sir. In fact, I lived there. When I retired from the Marine Corps, I worked at the Naval Air Development Center [NADC], which is now closed, all except for the centrifuge.


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

[User] [Not quite.] Our ship was not very maneuverable, so they … assigned us … to training air crews in Hawaii, and then when the war ended, we hauled servicemen back … from Hawaii to the West Coast.\n\n Then I was assigned to a Naval Air Modification Unit [NAMU] in Johnsville. I ended up a Program Manager … putting turbo superchargers into F-4Us. And then I got out and went back to school and finished my education.

[Assistant] At the hangars there at Johnsville, which then became a war minster.

[User] Oh, you've been there?

[Assistant] Yes, sir. In fact, I lived there. When I retired from the Marine Corps, I worked at the Naval Air Development Center [NADC], which is now closed, all except for the centrifuge.

[User] Well, that was the same as NAMU [Naval Air Modification Unit]. It became NADC [Naval Air Development Center].

[Assistant] Yes, sir, it did.


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

[User] Oh, you've been there?

[Assistant] Yes, sir. In fact, I lived there. When I retired from the Marine Corps, I worked at the Naval Air Development Center [NADC], which is now closed, all except for the centrifuge.

[User] Well, that was the same as NAMU [Naval Air Modification Unit]. It became NADC [Naval Air Development Center].

[Assistant] Yes, sir, it did.

[User] I was there for less than half a year, as I recall. I think I went there in the spring and went back to school in the fall, and then I got my graduate degrees.

[Assistant] I was always amazed at the Brewster Aircraft Company hangar that's still there today—they haven't wrecked it—where they actually made the Brewster Buffalos, quite an airplane.


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

[User] Well, that was the same as NAMU [Naval Air Modification Unit]. It became NADC [Naval Air Development Center].

[Assistant] Yes, sir, it did.

[User] I was there for less than half a year, as I recall. I think I went there in the spring and went back to school in the fall, and then I got my graduate degrees.

[Assistant] I was always amazed at the Brewster Aircraft Company hangar that's still there today—they haven't wrecked it—where they actually made the Brewster Buffalos, quite an airplane.

[User] They flew like a buffalo. Their dive-bomber wasn't any better. I [don't] think the Brewster Buffalo ever shot down anything. It was so busy getting shot down itself.

[Assistant] The Marines flew them at Wake, if you remember, and didn't do well.


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

[User] I was there for less than half a year, as I recall. I think I went there in the spring and went back to school in the fall, and then I got my graduate degrees.

[Assistant] I was always amazed at the Brewster Aircraft Company hangar that's still there today—they haven't wrecked it—where they actually made the Brewster Buffalos, quite an airplane.

[User] They flew like a buffalo. Their dive-bomber wasn't any better. I [don't] think the Brewster Buffalo ever shot down anything. It was so busy getting shot down itself.

[Assistant] The Marines flew them at Wake, if you remember, and didn't do well.

[User] Did they do anything?

[Assistant] No, sir, I don't think so.


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

[User] They flew like a buffalo. Their dive-bomber wasn't any better. I [don't] think the Brewster Buffalo ever shot down anything. It was so busy getting shot down itself.

[Assistant] The Marines flew them at Wake, if you remember, and didn't do well.

[User] Did they do anything?

[Assistant] No, sir, I don't think so.

[User] It just was underpowered. I always liked the looks of it. It looked like it would be fun to fly that airplane, but it wasn't.

[Assistant] I guess I knew too much about it to think I wanted to fly it. It was before my time.\n\n So after the war, up to Rensselaer to finish your degree, then?


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

[User] Did they do anything?

[Assistant] No, sir, I don't think so.

[User] It just was underpowered. I always liked the looks of it. It looked like it would be fun to fly that airplane, but it wasn't.

[Assistant] I guess I knew too much about it to think I wanted to fly it. It was before my time.\n\n So after the war, up to Rensselaer to finish your degree, then?

[User] I got a master's degree and then went to work in NACA Lewis as an aerodynamicist and did propulsion aerodynamics for most of my ten years out there. At the end, I took a nuclear engineering course and got into plasma propulsion… And then Abe Silverstein took a few of us down to Washington to help set up NASA.

[Assistant] You're getting way ahead of me. That's right where I was going to go.\n\n I see you went back again in '75 for your Ph.D.


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

[User] It just was underpowered. I always liked the looks of it. It looked like it would be fun to fly that airplane, but it wasn't.

[Assistant] I guess I knew too much about it to think I wanted to fly it. It was before my time.\n\n So after the war, up to Rensselaer to finish your degree, then?

[User] I got a master's degree and then went to work in NACA Lewis as an aerodynamicist and did propulsion aerodynamics for most of my ten years out there. At the end, I took a nuclear engineering course and got into plasma propulsion… And then Abe Silverstein took a few of us down to Washington to help set up NASA.

[Assistant] You're getting way ahead of me. That's right where I was going to go.\n\n I see you went back again in '75 for your Ph.D.

[User] … My Ph.D. is an honorary, earned in the school of hard knocks, not in academia.

[Assistant] Oh, Doctor of Engineering, Rensselaer, honorary. Okay, gotcha.\n\n Tell us about the NACA nuclear school. In '57, that was right up at the pointy end of the stick in those days, wasn't it, nuclear propulsion. It must have been just coming around.


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

[User] I got a master's degree and then went to work in NACA Lewis as an aerodynamicist and did propulsion aerodynamics for most of my ten years out there. At the end, I took a nuclear engineering course and got into plasma propulsion… And then Abe Silverstein took a few of us down to Washington to help set up NASA.

[Assistant] You're getting way ahead of me. That's right where I was going to go.\n\n I see you went back again in '75 for your Ph.D.

[User] … My Ph.D. is an honorary, earned in the school of hard knocks, not in academia.

[Assistant] Oh, Doctor of Engineering, Rensselaer, honorary. Okay, gotcha.\n\n Tell us about the NACA nuclear school. In '57, that was right up at the pointy end of the stick in those days, wasn't it, nuclear propulsion. It must have been just coming around.

[User] It was a gleam in the eye. As far as I know, the only way they've ever used the plasma physics propulsion is for stationkeeping and attitude control, because [it has] very high-specific impulse and uses very little propellant. The nuclear rocket got quite a bit of attention for the early years of the space program, but was never developed, and I wasn't involved with that.

[Assistant] I was afraid you wouldn't be able to talk much about it. When I saw nuclear school at NACA, I didn't know exactly what that was going to be.


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

[User] … My Ph.D. is an honorary, earned in the school of hard knocks, not in academia.

[Assistant] Oh, Doctor of Engineering, Rensselaer, honorary. Okay, gotcha.\n\n Tell us about the NACA nuclear school. In '57, that was right up at the pointy end of the stick in those days, wasn't it, nuclear propulsion. It must have been just coming around.

[User] It was a gleam in the eye. As far as I know, the only way they've ever used the plasma physics propulsion is for stationkeeping and attitude control, because [it has] very high-specific impulse and uses very little propellant. The nuclear rocket got quite a bit of attention for the early years of the space program, but was never developed, and I wasn't involved with that.

[Assistant] I was afraid you wouldn't be able to talk much about it. When I saw nuclear school at NACA, I didn't know exactly what that was going to be.

[User] They were preparing us—some of us—for the entrance of nuclear into aviation and space. They considered nuclear power for an airplane. Remember the B-36, with that big eight-ball reactor in it? I mean, some of these ideas were wild, and that was not a good idea, but they did it. How would you like your planes flying around overhead with nuclear reactors [on board]?

[Assistant] It would be just fine, as long as they didn't crash into my house.


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

[User] It was a gleam in the eye. As far as I know, the only way they've ever used the plasma physics propulsion is for stationkeeping and attitude control, because [it has] very high-specific impulse and uses very little propellant. The nuclear rocket got quite a bit of attention for the early years of the space program, but was never developed, and I wasn't involved with that.

[Assistant] I was afraid you wouldn't be able to talk much about it. When I saw nuclear school at NACA, I didn't know exactly what that was going to be.

[User] They were preparing us—some of us—for the entrance of nuclear into aviation and space. They considered nuclear power for an airplane. Remember the B-36, with that big eight-ball reactor in it? I mean, some of these ideas were wild, and that was not a good idea, but they did it. How would you like your planes flying around overhead with nuclear reactors [on board]?

[Assistant] It would be just fine, as long as they didn't crash into my house.

[User] Well, … assuming that one or two crashed occasionally, you'd have a big mess.

[Assistant] They would certainly shun away from that quickly after you had a couple crashes.\n\n Well, that was '48 that you went to NACA.


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

[User] They were preparing us—some of us—for the entrance of nuclear into aviation and space. They considered nuclear power for an airplane. Remember the B-36, with that big eight-ball reactor in it? I mean, some of these ideas were wild, and that was not a good idea, but they did it. How would you like your planes flying around overhead with nuclear reactors [on board]?

[Assistant] It would be just fine, as long as they didn't crash into my house.

[User] Well, … assuming that one or two crashed occasionally, you'd have a big mess.

[Assistant] They would certainly shun away from that quickly after you had a couple crashes.\n\n Well, that was '48 that you went to NACA.

[User] Right. I stayed there for ten years.

[Assistant] How were you lured over there, from Pennsylvania to Cleveland?


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

[User] Well, … assuming that one or two crashed occasionally, you'd have a big mess.

[Assistant] They would certainly shun away from that quickly after you had a couple crashes.\n\n Well, that was '48 that you went to NACA.

[User] Right. I stayed there for ten years.

[Assistant] How were you lured over there, from Pennsylvania to Cleveland?

[User] [I applied to both Langley and Lewis. I was offered a higher starting grade from Lewis.] I could use [the extra money], so I went to Cleveland. As long as I could work in aerodynamics, I didn't care. And I knew I could work under John Evvard and Abe Silverstein at Cleveland. That was fine.

[Assistant] Can you tell me about some of the people who were there, now that you mention Abe Silverstein and that bunch?


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

[User] Right. I stayed there for ten years.

[Assistant] How were you lured over there, from Pennsylvania to Cleveland?

[User] [I applied to both Langley and Lewis. I was offered a higher starting grade from Lewis.] I could use [the extra money], so I went to Cleveland. As long as I could work in aerodynamics, I didn't care. And I knew I could work under John Evvard and Abe Silverstein at Cleveland. That was fine.

[Assistant] Can you tell me about some of the people who were there, now that you mention Abe Silverstein and that bunch?

[User] They were great people there, as there were down here. Silverstein is my hero, really, and my mentor, because he brought me along, gave me opportunities, took me to Washington with him, gave me important responsibilities at a very young age.\n\n Evvard is a character, but a bright one. He was a Cal Tech [California Institute of Technology] graduate, and I worked directly under [him]for most of the time I was there.

[Assistant] Oh, I can't let that go by. You have to tell us why he was a character.


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

[User] [I applied to both Langley and Lewis. I was offered a higher starting grade from Lewis.] I could use [the extra money], so I went to Cleveland. As long as I could work in aerodynamics, I didn't care. And I knew I could work under John Evvard and Abe Silverstein at Cleveland. That was fine.

[Assistant] Can you tell me about some of the people who were there, now that you mention Abe Silverstein and that bunch?

[User] They were great people there, as there were down here. Silverstein is my hero, really, and my mentor, because he brought me along, gave me opportunities, took me to Washington with him, gave me important responsibilities at a very young age.\n\n Evvard is a character, but a bright one. He was a Cal Tech [California Institute of Technology] graduate, and I worked directly under [him]for most of the time I was there.

[Assistant] Oh, I can't let that go by. You have to tell us why he was a character.

[User] No.

[Assistant] [Laughter] You're right, you don't.\n\n There are lots of instances in the research we did that said that—


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

[User] No.

[Assistant] [Laughter] You're right, you don't.\n\n There are lots of instances in the research we did that said that—

[User] … I was put in a group of theoretical aerodynamicists and physicists. It was called the Applied Mechanics Group, and it was set up by Silverstein. And these are names you probably never have heard of, but it included Sy Ostrach, Steve Maslen, George [M.] Low. You must have heard of George Low.

[Assistant] Yes, sir.

[User] Wolfe Moeckel, Barry Moscowitz, [Hal Mirels, and] Frank Moore. About five or six of that group of eight ended up in the National Academy of Engineering, which is pretty hard to get into. But I only stayed in that group for less than a year, and then I got an assignment to run an experimental aerodynamics branch, where I did the [unclear] work that you asked about. It turned out I was better at experimental work than theoretical. I really didn't ever think that I was a creative mathematician. I could do the work in college and get A's in it, but I couldn't apply it as creatively as the best, and I didn't do as well. But I did fine in the other stuff.

[Assistant] Tell us some more about Abe Silverstein, if you would.


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

[User] … I was put in a group of theoretical aerodynamicists and physicists. It was called the Applied Mechanics Group, and it was set up by Silverstein. And these are names you probably never have heard of, but it included Sy Ostrach, Steve Maslen, George [M.] Low. You must have heard of George Low.

[Assistant] Yes, sir.

[User] Wolfe Moeckel, Barry Moscowitz, [Hal Mirels, and] Frank Moore. About five or six of that group of eight ended up in the National Academy of Engineering, which is pretty hard to get into. But I only stayed in that group for less than a year, and then I got an assignment to run an experimental aerodynamics branch, where I did the [unclear] work that you asked about. It turned out I was better at experimental work than theoretical. I really didn't ever think that I was a creative mathematician. I could do the work in college and get A's in it, but I couldn't apply it as creatively as the best, and I didn't do as well. But I did fine in the other stuff.

[Assistant] Tell us some more about Abe Silverstein, if you would.

[User] He's ninety years old, just turned ninety. Talked to him the other day.

[Assistant] You two were portrayed as quite a team back in those days. Was it the personal relationship that made the professional relationship so good?


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

[User] I was at Lewis…

[Assistant] That must have been exciting work in those days.

[User] Yeah. But they were doing work at Langley and Lewis on that subject, and some of the other [labs]. The Air Force at Wright Field, I think, was doing some work in it. We weren't the only ones.

[Assistant] Is that where the variable ramps and cones came up? Is that how we—

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Was it invented at Lewis and Langley in those days?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] You must have been proud of that, then.

[User] Yeah, I was.

[Assistant] You should be.

[User] Sort of.

[Assistant] In '58, you were selected as a member of—we touched on this before—a member of the special team of scientists and engineers that developed the program plans for what was—


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

[User] Sort of.

[Assistant] In '58, you were selected as a member of—we touched on this before—a member of the special team of scientists and engineers that developed the program plans for what was—

[User] Can I interrupt?

[Assistant] Sure.

[User] I'm talking about things that I think I did, and you're going to have all this. That's how I got into trouble with my last interview. I don't mind saying it, but for God's sakes, don't make it come out like "Cortright claimed he did this." That what [James R.] Hansen did. If I ever see Hansen again, I'm going to tell him. I don't really appreciate that, because—

[Assistant] We'll send this tape to him.


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

[User] Can I interrupt?

[Assistant] Sure.

[User] I'm talking about things that I think I did, and you're going to have all this. That's how I got into trouble with my last interview. I don't mind saying it, but for God's sakes, don't make it come out like "Cortright claimed he did this." That what [James R.] Hansen did. If I ever see Hansen again, I'm going to tell him. I don't really appreciate that, because—

[Assistant] We'll send this tape to him.

[User] I'm not basically a credit-grabber, and I'm only telling you these things because they were interesting to me at the time. I never did any of these things by myself. I always had a team of people on everything I ever did in my life. My professional life was working with people. I almost never did anything by myself that was noteworthy. But my people did, my little teams did some very good work, and I figure I helped them. I'm not just saying that to sound generous. That's the honest-to-God's truth, the way it was.

[Assistant] We believe you.\n\n Where was I? We were talking about the team that decided what NASA was going to look like. That was in '58. Can you tell us who selected that team and put it together. I think we covered just about what it did.


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

[User] I know. You probably thought you might ask me about that at some time. I don't know whether I'll comment on it. But I do not get good reports from people I respect who are still working at the centers or with the centers. I think the downsizing has created a very high ratio of support contractors to in-house people.

[Assistant] Oh, yes, sir.

[User] And that means the in-house people are more paper-pushers than researchers, particularly at research centers. Now, Johnson always had so many big projects that they always had to have that high ratio. But even at Langley now I saw that there are almost half as many support contractors as there are in-house, maybe more than half. I saw the number a while back. It was like 1,500 or 1,400 support and 2,400 in-house or something like that, a very high ratio. It's very hard to keep a large fraction of your people doing research when you have to pay attention to all these support contractors. It's a problem.\n\n Well, that's off the track again.

[Assistant] It's interesting, your attitudes on that, because Johnson Space Center now is 80 percent contractor and 20 percent government. It's very skewed right now.

[User] So you're pretty much a project management organization. Well, it always was sort of that way, but you also had some very good creative people down there, most of them coming from Langley. You know, the old crew under Chris [Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.] and Max [Maxime A.] Faget, Scott Simpkinson from Cleveland, and that type, George Low, Gilruth himself, they were outstanding people, and they were creative. They could have, and did make it, in the research field before they went into managing these big efforts.

[Assistant] Max Faget keeps up busy with his NACA stories. He's a pretty colorful character.


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

[User] And that means the in-house people are more paper-pushers than researchers, particularly at research centers. Now, Johnson always had so many big projects that they always had to have that high ratio. But even at Langley now I saw that there are almost half as many support contractors as there are in-house, maybe more than half. I saw the number a while back. It was like 1,500 or 1,400 support and 2,400 in-house or something like that, a very high ratio. It's very hard to keep a large fraction of your people doing research when you have to pay attention to all these support contractors. It's a problem.\n\n Well, that's off the track again.

[Assistant] It's interesting, your attitudes on that, because Johnson Space Center now is 80 percent contractor and 20 percent government. It's very skewed right now.

[User] So you're pretty much a project management organization. Well, it always was sort of that way, but you also had some very good creative people down there, most of them coming from Langley. You know, the old crew under Chris [Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.] and Max [Maxime A.] Faget, Scott Simpkinson from Cleveland, and that type, George Low, Gilruth himself, they were outstanding people, and they were creative. They could have, and did make it, in the research field before they went into managing these big efforts.

[Assistant] Max Faget keeps up busy with his NACA stories. He's a pretty colorful character.

[User] He is. I like Max. I'm very fond of Max. He always was stimulating.

[Assistant] Yes, sir, that's the right word.


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

[User] So you're pretty much a project management organization. Well, it always was sort of that way, but you also had some very good creative people down there, most of them coming from Langley. You know, the old crew under Chris [Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.] and Max [Maxime A.] Faget, Scott Simpkinson from Cleveland, and that type, George Low, Gilruth himself, they were outstanding people, and they were creative. They could have, and did make it, in the research field before they went into managing these big efforts.

[Assistant] Max Faget keeps up busy with his NACA stories. He's a pretty colorful character.

[User] He is. I like Max. I'm very fond of Max. He always was stimulating.

[Assistant] Yes, sir, that's the right word.

[User] Full of ideas. Didn't necessarily buy yours or the party line. But very creative, and if problems came up, Max always had a solution, and frequently they were the best ones. Smart guy.

[Assistant] In '59 and '60, your group developed plans for, and initiated at least six that I know of, lunar exploration projects. I am most familiar with the Ranger, the Surveyor, and what later became Lunar Orbiter. But I'd like to talk briefly about each one, if I could. I believe Ranger was first in the chronological sequence, so let's start with that one. What can you tell us about Ranger?


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

[User] On the Lunar Orbiter?

[Assistant] On the Surveyor.

[User] Sixty meters, Surveyor landed, three out of five.

[Assistant] No, my mistake. Lunar Orbiter.

[User] Lunar Orbiter. Yeah, that was something. It was very good. It was probably about like that. That wasn't much worse than—if I can expose a gripe here—you know, we had LANDSAT-type satellites very early that were surveying the Earth for various reasons—geological, crop control, land development-type control. The whole Earth was being mapped. I think the early resolutions were—I don't know. I don't remember exactly, but maybe fifteen feet or something like that. And the Air Force wouldn't let us show pictures any better than like fifty meters, as I recall. Well, they were getting reconnaissance pictures down in a few feet or less. I don't know, incidentally, what they were. I don't know what they are today, but I know they're very good.\n\n The interesting thing is, the Russians were doing the same thing, and we knew that. They were taking pictures of anything they wanted over here in the inches or a foot-type resolution. We were still held to the 150 feet in all the things we mapped, and I don't know, I don't think it's been relaxed too much yet. It's better than that. But then the French came along and they did it, and they released low resolution. The Russians are releasing, were releasing better resolution of this country. If you wanted to buy it, then we could…

[Assistant] Well, the Spot That is very good.


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

[User] Spot That is very good. [Have] you used your computer to go into Terra Server yet?

[Assistant] No, sir.

[User] I photographed my house in Virginia, my house in Florida, where I used to live in Washington, where I used to live in California. Pictures of the house from orbit taken off [the] Internet. Now, they don't have the entire world on their computer base yet, even though they've mapped it, but you can get Baghdad, I think. You can get some of the Middle East stuff that's on there, if you want to look at Hussein's palace. Or depending on where you live. Probably Houston's been done. You can probably find your house out there, just on Internet. Go to Terra Server. It's fun.\n\n At any rate, that's just a gripe, the military constraints. And then it gets in their own bureaucracy, once they set it up. I don't want to come across as a critic. I'm a great admirer of the military, actually. But they did some dumb things, like we all did, but I remember other people's dumb things better than my own.

[Assistant] Tell me about the duration of the Lunar Orbiter. How long was it up there? There was five of them. Did they all stay up for weeks or months?

[User] I don't remember. They mapped the entire moon at medium resolution and selected areas at high resolution. They found, as I put in the book, that the areas that were slated for Apollo landing were rougher than Earth-based photographs would give you to believe, and they did help select Apollo landing sites. A very successful program.\n\n There's some anecdotes in that book, but you're not relying entirely on the spoken word. This is to be a written product or not?

[Assistant] It's going to be both. We're going to take the audio and put it on a Web site eventually.


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

[User] I photographed my house in Virginia, my house in Florida, where I used to live in Washington, where I used to live in California. Pictures of the house from orbit taken off [the] Internet. Now, they don't have the entire world on their computer base yet, even though they've mapped it, but you can get Baghdad, I think. You can get some of the Middle East stuff that's on there, if you want to look at Hussein's palace. Or depending on where you live. Probably Houston's been done. You can probably find your house out there, just on Internet. Go to Terra Server. It's fun.\n\n At any rate, that's just a gripe, the military constraints. And then it gets in their own bureaucracy, once they set it up. I don't want to come across as a critic. I'm a great admirer of the military, actually. But they did some dumb things, like we all did, but I remember other people's dumb things better than my own.

[Assistant] Tell me about the duration of the Lunar Orbiter. How long was it up there? There was five of them. Did they all stay up for weeks or months?

[User] I don't remember. They mapped the entire moon at medium resolution and selected areas at high resolution. They found, as I put in the book, that the areas that were slated for Apollo landing were rougher than Earth-based photographs would give you to believe, and they did help select Apollo landing sites. A very successful program.\n\n There's some anecdotes in that book, but you're not relying entirely on the spoken word. This is to be a written product or not?

[Assistant] It's going to be both. We're going to take the audio and put it on a Web site eventually.

[User] Okay. Well, I'm not trying to speak to an audience. I'm just rambling.

[Assistant] That's okay. How did Lunar Orbiter get switched—I think it got switched. Please correct me if I'm wrong—from Surveyor Orbiter to Lunar Orbiter?