Memories of the Apollo and Space Shuttle Programs

Lawrence Korb

• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781640825918
• eBook ISBN: 9781681398259
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Science & Technology Biographies
• Index: Technology & Engineering

I have had the privilege of being an engineer who worked on both the Apollo and Space Shuttle Orbiter Programs for more than 45 years. It has been a fascinating and rewarding experience, along with its share of pressures and disappointments. Come take this exciting journey with me. In this book I present the contributions of 30 key scientists who, over a period of 2500 years, made the Moon visit possible in my lifetime. I review the birth of the Space Age, early Russian dominance in the sixties, and the successful landing on the Moon. The details of the failure analyses of the Apollo Fire, which cost the lives of three Apollo astronauts, are presented, along with the corrective actions taken. I cover the contribution of the Mercury and Gemini programs, the details of the design of the Apollo and the greatest material challenges we faced. The book also describes the Lunar Module; without its concept, we may have never made the Moon landings. The book also details how we beat the Russians to the Moon, covers all Apollo missions, and how we saved the Apollo 13 astronauts. Finally, I present what I consider to be the Apollo legacy. This book presents the details of the building of the Space Shuttle Orbiter and the crucial development of its heat shield. It also points out key failures that had to be resolved. Included is a Chapter on the Russian Space Shuttle, the Buran, comparing it to the Space Shuttle Orbiter. The book covers the failure of the Challenger Spacecraft and what went wrong, as well as how we determined the cause of the Columbia Spacecraft failure. It also discusses the science of reentry of the Space Shuttle Orbiter, the future of manned space, and the legacy of the Space Shuttle. This book is a detailed documentary of the American's manned space programs. Read on and enjoy!

Chapter 1

Standing Upon the Shoulders of Giants

Introduction

The other day, I was talking to someone about the Apollo Program and the lunar landing. I marveled at how lucky my friends and I were to be engineers at the North American Space Division at the time when the lunar contract was awarded. Then I started thinking, “How did all of this come about?” What combination of events made it possible for man to design spacecrafts to go to the Moon, land, and return safely to the Earth?

Man is a relatively recent species on the Earth. Modern man as a species has only been on the Earth for 200,000 years. The horseshoe crab has been around for over 500,000,000 years and never sent a fellow crab to the Moon. Why did man do it first?

Was it because of the size of man’s brain? Our origins, according to DNA, show that we are probably descended from chimpanzees. The chimpanzee’s brain is about 300 cubic centimeters (cc.). Our next oldest relative, Homo Habilis, had approximately 500 cc. of hard drive, followed by Homo Erectus with about 1,000 cc. of grey matter, and finally, two species of modern man: Homo Sapiens Neandrethalensis (Neanderthals) and Homo Sapiens (“anatomically” modern man), both of whom had a brain of 1,300–1,400 cc. Some thirty thousand years ago, the Neanderthals died, leaving anatomically modern man as the only living member of the human species. But man’s brain is not the largest in the animal kingdom. It is dwarfed by the size of the sperm whale’s brain (7,800 cc.) and the Indian elephant’s brain (7,500 cc.). As for the brain-mass to body-mass ratio, the mouse has 50% more brain cells per pound than man.

Is it because we are able to communicate? All species talk to each other—ants, birds (who sing and squawk), wolves, whales, and even the bees who dance to tell fellow bees where the nectar is, etc. Even germs learn how to build biofilms with passageways to provide oxygen and food to the entire germ colony on the interior and to get rid of wastes. Perhaps, our communication is more sophisticated.

Is it because other animals cannot understand engineering? Tell that to the groundhogs who dig miles of tunnels per acre, to the birds who build nests that survive in all weather, to the beavers who build dams, or to the ants who float across a stream on a leaf part and build anthills and plant gardens to eat the yeast it grows, or to the spider who builds a web with proteins stronger than steel, or to the bee who builds a honeycomb, or to the wasp who makes his paper-like nest.

Is it because man cooperates with one another, to achieve a greater goal? Well, wolf packs can mount a coordinated attack and kill a moose weighing forty times as much, and whales encircle schools of fish, forming a bubble periphery to drive the school to the surface, and then swallow them by the millions. How about the ants that build twelve-foot high anthills with multiple passages, and each ant seems to know and do his job.

It is difficult to find a single inherent characteristic of man that other animal species do not have, which enabled him to go to the Moon. Modern man has existed for 200,000 years, but that is such a small existence compared to the horseshoe crab that had a five-hundred-million-year headstart on us. To put this into perspective, I like to use lifetimes. I am eighty-five years old. Modern man has been around about 2,353 times my age.

When I go back to half my lifetime, we were still landing men on the Moon. At that time we didn’t have cell phones, office color reproduction machines, personal computers, computer chips, digital cameras, CDs, DVDs, MRIs, iPods, iPads, pacemakers, hand calculators, Blackberries, or GPS devices.

Going back to the day I was born in 1930, they had only discovered two atomic particles: the proton and the electron. The neutron had not yet been discovered. Hence, there were no atomic bombs nor atomic energy plants.

For our listening pleasure, we had wind-up Victrolas, which later were replaced by electric phonographs. There were no main frame computers, nor radar, nor FM radios, nor high-fi’s, nor stereos, nor transistors, nor lasers, nor jet aircraft, nor helicopters, nor satellites, nor fiberglass, nor plastics like, Nylon, Orlon, Teflon, or Kevlar®, and no electron microscopes. There were also no antibiotics, nor most vaccines. Contact lenses, synthetic rubber, and colored films had not yet become available, but “talkies” made their appearance in movies, some four years before my birth, and the first liquid rocket ever invented rose forty-one feet in the air just four years before my birth.

Now let’s go back only two lifetimes to 1845. That is before the Civil War and nearly the time of the California Gold rush. There were no light bulbs, no phonographs, no movies, no telephones, no power plants, no cars, no electric motors, no bicycles, and of course, no airplanes, or even the railroad telegraphs. Dynamite had not yet been invented. Principles of electricity had been worked out, yet no one knew an electron carried electrical current, for it had yet to be discovered, as did the proton. Vitamins were unknown, and there was no Pasteurization. The periodic table of elements was unknown, as was the difference between elements and compounds.

Going back three lifetimes takes us to 1760, forty-three years before steamboats existed and sixty-seven years before the first train was patented. This was sixteen years before we became a nation. There was no atomic theory nor scientific concepts of the existence of atoms or ions, nor hot air or hydrogen balloons, nor steel mills, nor knowledge of gas laws, nor knowledge of electromagnetism, nor electric batteries, nor gas lighting. Life was truly primitive.

It was only 6.1 lifetimes ago that Columbus discovered America and less than 24 times my lifetime when Christ was born.

Certainly men gazed at the Moon during the two thousand centuries that followed man’s birth and wondered what it would be like to visit the Moon and, perhaps, a few even believed it was possible. But it takes more than desire to get there. Those of us who were lucky enough to work on the Apollo Program realize we just happened to be around when that “window of opportunity” opened up. Before man could go to the Moon, a social revolution was required and key laws of physics needed to be discovered. As I delve into man’s history, I have selected thirty truly intelligent men who (in my opinion) set the stage for us to go to the Moon.

History

Hunter-Gatherers

The first major step on the way to the Moon was for man to change his lifestyle from a hunter-gatherer to that of a farmer-village dweller. As a hunter-gatherer, the family or tribe picked fruit, vegetables, hunted game, and shared the food with all members. (In a way, it was a socialistic society, in that each one had entitlement to the spoils gathered.) The elder members of the family were considered to be wise and became their leaders. The elders set the rules and passed down the customs, traditions, and knowledge to the junior members.

Farmers and Early Civilizations

Hunting success, in many cases, was not a reliable source of food. As the numbers of humans rose, they collected together in villages, they domesticated animals for help with the labor (oxen, horses), for transportation (oxen, horses), for milk (cattle, goats), for meat (cattle, goats, sheep, hogs, and chickens). They collected and ate eggs. They fished for food. They also planted fruits and vegetables, grazed their animals, and provided them with limited grain. They used the wool of the sheep and the hides of animals for clothing. This lifestyle had many advantages. It was a capitalistic adventure and different members would barter goods.

People developed their languages, became specialized, performing additional tasks such as pottery making, baking, beer making, weaving wool, selling produce, making tools, sewing clothing, etc. They formed schools to pass intelligence to the next generation. They acquired the mathematical skills of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, so necessary for bartering. Their villages grew into cities and were generally located on rivers or the sea, giving them a necessary supply of water. Those on the seacoast built ships and conducted trade with other seaports, while some on land formed caravans to find salt, spices, and foreign goods. Most importantly, they learned how to measure time, distances, and quantities (weight, volume). Some dabbled in astronomy to be able to prepare for and predict the growing seasons. They soon realized they needed some sort of government to provide common items such as roads and soldiers for defense, and along came taxes. Without the development of agriculture, cities, language, schools, trading to increase wealth, arithmetic, and the ability to measure distances, weight, and time, we could never have gone to the Moon.

Sumerians—Number System; Abacus

About 4000 BC, the Sumerians set up a counting system based upon twelve (or multiples, thereof). A year had 360 days (more or less), the day was divided into two twelve-hour sections (daylight and darkness). Each hour had sixty minutes and each minute had sixty seconds. A circle had 360 degrees. Each degree of arc was divided into sixty minutes, and each minute of arc was divided in...

Table of contents

• Author’s Note
• Preface
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39
• Apollo Index
• Index-Space Shuttle Orbiter