It was my great privilege to be asked to help the NASA Alumni League – Florida Chapter kick off their month-long celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. I attended their June 18, 2019 meeting at the Debus Center at Kennedy Space Center.
Rather than giving a speech or showing a PowerPoint presentation, Roselle Hanson and I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to have the attendees talk about what it was like to work on the Apollo program at KSC. I polled several Facebook interest groups, “If you could ask a question to someone who worked on Apollo at KSC, what would you want to know?” I got some great questions and used those as conversation starters.
The questions and answers below are transcribed directly from my recording of the event. Where I can identify the person who spoke on the recording, I’ve indicated their name.
Q. What was your personal motivation for coming to work on the Apollo program? Was it the race against the Russians? Kennedy’s challenge? The opportunity to work on new technologies?
A. I wanted to go to work for NASA after having been a contractor. I was at Boeing and Brown Engineering before, in Huntsville.
A. Apollo 15 was my first launch as an employee. I grew up in LA in the 50s, and NASA was out at Edwards. They were testing the X-15’s, and we used to go out there for an air show every year and see the X-15 and B-52, all the NASA aircraft out there. I was hooked on that. John Glenn’s mission – we were stuck in the car, riding across country, listening to that on the radio. It all connected. I always wanted to be an engineer, so coming to work as a co-op for NASA was the perfect job – and still is!
A. My decision to become involved with the space program was even before Apollo. It was Sputnik. I was in college at the time, when Sputnik was launched. Of course the rumor at the time was that the Russkies were gonna beat us, and that bothered me. I was fortunate enough that shortly after that I got on with NASA at Huntsville, Alabama, to continue my education and get a degree in engineering. When I got out of school, I hired in with NASA. I’m thankful for that to happen to me, and it’s the best thing that everhappened!
A. I came to NASA in ’68, right out of school, from Purdue. It was my third job, actually. Our whole community up there just had a big sense of awe for NASA. Purdue put out of graduates who became astronauts and went to the moon, and they were highly regarded. My personal feelings were that we did want to beat the Russians. It was a good sense to support the country, even then. We weren’t exactly Berkeley back then!
Q. Over the decade leading up to the moon landing, did the pressure of work increase, or did it stay the same? And how did the pressure affect your life? (Audience laughter)
A. It was a ten-year marathon that never stopped!
A. [Bill Heink] Perhaps one of the best examples I ever had: on two separate occasions, working late, having young kids at home, and my wife taking care of them and running the household and doing all that kind of stuff. On two separate occasions, I got home from work – she always left me a plate of food! I was lucky to get home at 8 or 9 – and I come in, and I sit down to eat a plate of cold food – before microwaves! – And sitting on the kitchen table in front of me are pictures of my children, with a note from her that says, “This is what your kids look like, if you ever get home in time to see them.” I thought that was really cold, but it was an example of what life was like back in those days.
A. Apollo 8: I’m in the Firing Room, and we’re loading fuel, and there’s a built-in hold. I drive home, and when I get there, my wife says, “It’s time!” I take her to the hospital. She delivers our fourth child. And thirty minutes later, I’m back in the car to go launch Apollo 8. (Audience applause)
[Jonathan] One of the stories someone told me was about driving home late at night after a test that ran long really long, and they remembered seeing a vulture on the road. He got home and went to bed, and when he got up the next morning, he found himself covered in blood. He went outside and saw that the windshield of his car was smashed, and there was a dead vulture in the back seat. He’d hit the vulture and hadn’t even realized it had happened, and gone to bed. That’s a real example.
A. I graduated from college, and I interviewed for the Navy and NASA. The Navy guy said, “We’re gonna put you working on computers!” I said, “You’re gonna have to teach me how to spell it, first!” I turned him down and went to the NASA guy. They put me at Langley, and the first launch that I sat through, everybody had taken out long poles, and they had rubber bands tied together like a slingshot. And all 12 or 13 engineers were folding paper airplanes. They would put them on the end of this pole, and tilt them down to get the shot off, and they would pull it back as far as they could go and turn it loose. And they’d sit there and bet on where it was gonna land, and who was gonna win. The boss came in the second or third day I was there — a guy named Joe Short — and Joe stood there and watched the whole proceeding, and he said, “What the H is going on?” I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you – I’m the new guy.” He said, “Well, see if we can find out what’s going on.” And I asked a couple of the engineers, and they said, “We’re designing Apollo.” So I went back and told him what I had been told. He turned and looks at me and said, “Well, who picks up all that paper?” One of the engineers, who had shot some of this paper up there, grabbed me by the arm, and said, “He does.” (Audience laughter) So I picked up all that paper, which I realized was the initial Apollo design, and we took it back to the office and threw it in the garbage can.
Q. If you think about all the people you worked with or for back in the early days, who was your best boss or mentor, and what did you learn from them that helped you in your career?
A. She’s here – Laura Gosper. She taught me that whenever I was going to do something, I needed to be ready and have a proposal in my hand with an answer.
A. [Al Kohler] I was a lucky guy. I graduated from high school here in Titusville in 1959. I immediately went to work for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency as a technician trainee, and my first boss was Ike Rigell. [Audience applause] You couldn’t be luckier than that. Thank you, Ike.
A. [Ike Rigell] My boss and mentor for many years was Dr. Hans Gruene. He was one of the original von Braun people. He was the most cost-conscious Federal worker I’ve ever witnessed. When we moved from Cape Canaveral to the O&C Building, they had the executive area, he didn’t want paneling. “That’s a waste of money!” He didn’t want carpet. Dr. Debus said, “Hans, you’ve gotta take it.” Let me say one more thing and see if anyone agrees with me. I was out there 40 years, and I never worked a day in my life at the Space Center. If you love what you’re doing, it ain’t work. [Audience applause]
[Jonathan] After reading Ike’s book and knowing that he had to clean out spittoons in a bank lobby as a kid, this had to have been pretty glamorous by comparison!
A. [Ike] That was work!
A. He wasn’t really my supervisor, but when I was a co-op student in the 80s, Ernie Lautzenheiser. He had some fascinating stories about the early days, when all the German engineers were there. I tried to encourage him to write a story about his life and experiences, but he wasn’t interested in that, unfortunately.
A. I had the privilege of sharing an office with Ernie Lautzenheiser for many years. But the people I want everyone to remember: Don Buchanan, Jim Phillips.
A. I had a lot of great bosses and mentors, but I wanted to highlight one who was two levels over me, and he’s here in the room: John Conway. John is a ball of energy, but he was also a visionary. He was always one step ahead of Headquarters. He always told me, “Rita, if you’ve got a great idea, you’ve got to put pencil to paper, because the first one to put pencil to paper is gonna make it happen.” I took that throughout my career, and it really works. He did so many things in a leadership way that I took with me and tried to incorporate in my career. [Audience applause]
Q. Fantastic. It looks like John has a rebuttal!
A. [John Conway] Listen: I had the greatest people in my organization. And all I tried to do was look after them, because they sure as heck looked after me. I’ll tell you one story about growing up. I also started at Langley and transferred here, and was here for the whole business. Pete Minderman was a mentor of mine in the CIF [Central Instrumentation Facility] Building. In the CIF Building, talk about a long adventure – I remember one time where I didn’t go home for four days. I slept in a trailer out there on chairs, because those doggone [GE-]635 computers were breaking every fifteen minutes. We’d switch from one to the other and back to the other, trying to figure it out. But Pete one time said to me, “You’re now being recognized as our software expert. Let me tell you what that means. It means you get invited to a lot of meetings, and you get asked your opinion on a lot of things you don’t know a damn thing about.” And he said, “Oh, and there’s one other thing – you better be right 100% of the time.”
[Jonathan] One quote that I use a lot when I talk about leadership lessons from the Rocket Ranch is from Dick Lyon, and he said, “In the very early days, I would sometimes go to my boss, Tom Utsman, and say, “Tom, I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what I’m doing. Can you look at this and see if you think it’s okay?” He’d look at me and say, “Dick, look around. Do you know anybody else that’s ever done this before?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, then how are we gonna figure it out? We’ve just got to pick something and go with it and try it out. You won’t find an expert to help you with this.” That’s the spirit of what was going on here. There was a lot that was being invented, and there was such an interesting dynamic between the need to keep real tight configuration control while giving people the freedom to go off and design things. I think it’s very rare that you find a blend that works that well nowadays.
Q. This was a question from one of the fans: I’d be interested in knowing if, on a day to day basis, were they in a constant state of awe and inspiration over the historical nature of the work they were doing? Or was it just another job, made worse by the fact that Bob the Supervisor was a real jerk and coworker Larry had bad hygiene and always brought smelly tuna sandwiches for lunch? Was it ever ‘just another job,’ or were you always in awe?
A. In awe.
A. You’re not conscious of making history, but you’re trying to do the best you can.
A. Carry on from the ones before you.
A. [John Conway] The motivator was you’re out there with a whole team of people, each doing their part, and you lived in mortal fear that you were gonna let the rest of the team down. It wasn’t anything about glory or all that stuff. It was, “Oh my God. I’ve got to get my part right and not let everybody down.” A lot of us felt that way. Part of a big team. The worst thing you could do was have your thing hold everyone else up or cause a delay.
[Jonathan] That sense of responsibility and accountability – so many people seem to be lacking that these days. It’s a very powerful thing.
A. When I came here in ’68, John Conway was the section chief. JoAnn Morgan worked for John. I had a lot of experience writing computer programs. I had done a lot of programming in Huntsville. NASA was not letting engineers write their own programs then. They had programmers who worked for John, and they wanted them to write the programs. My section chief had some experience, and we went and talked to John, and John came up with a test to see if our engineers could write computer programs. We passed the test, and we were the first engineers ever to write our own computer programs.
Q. You mentioned JoAnn Morgan, and here’s another question that came up: How did you feel about women joining the ranks as technicians and engineers?
A. You should ask that question to JoAnn, about how they treated her!
A. I worked with Marshall for 17 years. Jody Singer was just one of the workers at the time. She is the Center Director at Marshall now.
A. Nobody really cared. We cared about having people that were really good performers. It didn’t matter if you were green or had long hair or whatever, as long as they could get the job done.
Q. Here’s another from the internet: How was the shock and grief of Apollo 1 transformed into the incredible energy and commitment necessary to successfully make it to the Moon?
A. [Bob Sieck] Leadership. There’s the usual thing after an event like that, the shock and the grief in what happened. You get to this point where your confidence is low, because you’re a member of the team, and everybody else is stoop-shouldered. And the leadership that we had at the time obviously recognized that, and that there were problems to fix – and that’s the next phase, what went wrong, so these things can be fixed technically. But you still have this workforce, who was empowered to do this thing, which was to find a way to get to the Moon and get the crew back safely, but that is now impaired because of the emotions that went with it. When we were brought on board as journeymen engineers early on, we were constantly reminded that this is all about the crew and their mission. And you’re responsible for this and this and you’ve got to make sure it works, but never lose sight of the priority, which is to get these guys to the Moon and back safely. And now in addition to our deficiency technically, because we hadn’t figured it out, we’ve got an emotional problem that says, “We failed the crew.” The first step of going to the Moon, which is what Apollo 1 was, we failed. We didn’t get it done. So we had people that came in – in the case of Launch Operations, it was Rocco Petrone. For us Spacecraft people, it was people like George Page. And it was the program managers – George Low and others – that came through and told us, “Hey, we’re gonna find out what happened technically, we’re gonna change the culture, and we’re still gonna go to the Moon.” We had astronauts who testified to Congress and said, “No, we’re not gonna give up. This government/contractor team which has gotten us this far is gonna take us the rest of the way.” And with that kind of encouragement, and with the environment we were in, which was the Administration saying, “whatever you guys need, we’re gonna give you whatever you want to get to the Moon.” The results speak for themselves.
But it was a different environment to work in. We had what I call ‘war time rules.’ I was a GS-11, and I could sign purchase requests on my signature along for up to $50,000. That’s a lot of money in 1964! What turned it around was the empowerment, the management supervision, and the enforcement. And what happened inwardly was the feeling “I’m not gonna let this happen again on my shift.” We’re gonna keep an eye out, and if we don’t like what we’re seeing, we’re gonna call “Time out!” I think that’s what gelled the team more than anything else. For me personally, when I was working on something — and I liked being in the blockhouse during launch count with the headset on, with all the consoles and all the lights — when I wasn’t on console, I’d still like to watch. The boss reminded me, “Now Bobby, when you signed this checklist that says that you reviewed the data from your systems, you just gave a ‘go’ for launch. It’s just as important as somebody does in the control room on launch day with the headset on.” That was the message to everyone, whether you were an inspector or technician. You torqued those bolts and you put an inspection stamp on it, that was your warranty that it was done properly. And that was just as important as a ‘go for launch’ that was gonna happen with somebody else in the control room, weeks down the road. And that was constantly reinforced to us. I think that’s what made it work. Teamwork.
Q. An allied question with that was, did you really believe a moon landing was going to take place before the end of the decade? And was there a specific event that made you a believer that we might actually be able to do that?
A. [Ike] I think that what gave us the confidence for Apollo 11 was Apollo 8. That was one of the most significant launches we ever launched. As Bob said, we had tremendous management. And the nerve or guts or whatever you want to say that gave the go for Apollo 8—you know, we’d never flown humans on the Saturn V. That was a bold step, very bold.
[Jonathan] I remember being tremendously transfixed by that – that we’re no longer just going around the Earth. As a kid – I was 12 years old when Apollo 11 landed – but I just lived, ate, breathed the space program. My launch control center was the top of a washing machine. We used to turn the knobs and switches on the washing machine console and pretend it was launch control.
Q. Here’s a question for you: How did you feel when Apollo 18, 19, and 20 were cancelled? And at what point did you get an inkling that we were going to stop the Moon landings, and that we might not get to Mars in the 1980s? What was that like for you when it changed?
A. [Bill Heink] It was just a bummer. [Audience laughter]
A. It was indeed. I felt crapped on. We put three complete, ready, and paid for vehicles in museums. And we still haven’t gone back. I rest my case. [Applause]
Q. I hope that you all get to do something like Ike did and write down some of your memoirs about the time, at least for your kids and grandkids. What’s the one thing you want to tell people about those days, but no one asks you about?
A. I happened to be design and construction back in 1963 when I started with NASA. The design struck, but the construction never gets mentioned. We were people back then who were in the design phase for the VAB, the crawler way, the water systems, the O&C, the headquarters building, and all that seems to be way way way in the background. It never gets mentioned. I like to tell people that, and we really had a hand in it. And when it came to the construction of what we authorized, NASA designed, we were out there. There were five of us assigned to the VAB. We processed 1,138 changes to the construction of the VAB. So we were just sitting on our butts. We were out there inspecting. And when it came to buying it off, we were the ones that did the inspection to approve the operational use of whichever facility it happened to be. I want you all to appreciate Design Engineering! [Applause] In addition, it was the birth of the environmental scene. And the DER – the Department of Environmental Resources – and the Corps of Engineers, who really were in charge of construction – we were kind of like the customers. We had to deal with those before NASA had an environmental establishment, which I remember Al Kohler got involved in. I had many sessions with the mosquito people – Jack Salina – he was in charge of mosquito control in Brevard County. And we participated in the things that we would construct to facilitate his ideas of how to lower the population of mosquitos. I have two daughters that enjoyed growing up in the Apollo era.
[Jonathan] One of the things that amazed me about Apollo – and I don’t hesitate to tell people about design and construction – is that the construction of Kennedy Space Center was a civil engineering project on the same scale as the Panama Canal. People just don’t realize that. And it came together so fast. And the first time you got the LUT together with the 500F Saturn V, most of it matched up pretty well. All of these things came together at one time. Astronaut Dave Scott told me that he couldn’t believe the degree of precision that went into all the planning. You guys would know that you were gonna launch a vehicle to the Moon at 9:34 a.m. on July 26, 1971. You could tell them that 9 months in advance and launch the Saturn V at that exact moment. That you could do that kind of planning without computer assistance is one of the unsung stories of Apollo.
[Jonathan] Also thinking about environmental concerns, one of the things Jack King once told me that it looked like they were going to have to delay a launch off of 34 or 37 because there was a nesting pair of roseate spoonbills nearby. There was an environmental concern, because these were protected birds, and they had to assure people that this nesting pair of birds would not be affected by the launch. Jack brought it up at a meeting after there was another delay of some kind, and he said that Rocco turned red in the face, but paused and said, “Okay, we’ll make it work.”
Q. Thinking about this brand new facility, hundreds of thousands of acres, buildings on a scale never before imagined, a VAB that was nice and shiny, a LUT that was 400 feet tall — what was your favorite place to hang out? I know people liked to go fishing illegally! One of the stories I heard was that someone was up on the LUT at lunchtime, when people should have been stopping work for lunch, a bunch of guys crossed the swing arm into the engine compartment of the S-IVB. He wondered what was going on, so he went to check it out. They had set up a table and chairs on the work platform and were playing Hearts! It was a nice cool place in there in the midst of the heat and humidity.
A. Post Apollo, but connected to Apollo. I was in the Flight Crew Training Building. We had the CM and the LM simulator in there. I used to go eat lunch in the LM simulator after it was deactivated. You’d just sit there knowing that all those guys that walked on the Moon trained right here, used this equipment. Amazing. It’s a constant memory.
A. When I first started, I was a co-op during the Apollo program. And they told us that were working with logistics to get familiar with all the facilities – go around to all the facilities. So I took a shuttle bus to the VAB, and they were stacking a Saturn V. I didn’t know that there was a glass elevator right alongside that Saturn V. So I’d get in at the first floor and ride that thing all the way to the top, and ride it down, and right it back up. I was like a kid up against the glass, looking at every single foot of that Saturn V. I couldn’t believe how big it was, and it was inside a building!
A. I moved into the VAB fairly early. My office was on the tenth floor of Tower E. There was a group of us, everyone of us ate muffins on the roof of the VAB. I had fond memories of that. That didn’t last too long, because they got smart and closed it off.
A. [John Presnell] Most people hung out at The Mousetrap. [Laughter]
Q. One last question. I know you’re all serious people, but I had the feeling from my interviews that you all did things to break the tension every once in a while. What the best practical joke that you played on anybody or that was played on you? That you can talk about publicly.
A. [Ike] One was in Blockhouse 26 or 5/6, I don’t recall, but people smoked back then. One of the guys took some hose and ran it up through the rack, and then he blew smoke in it and it appeared to be coming out of the rack! People were yelling, “Fire! Fire!”
A. In the very early days…I don’t remember the secretary’s name, but we had one of those timer things that makes your Christmas tree lights blink – we put it on the electric cord to her typewriter. She’d start typing along and it’d quit, then she’d start typing again and it’d quit. She never batted an eye.
A. [Al Kohler] When I was a young guy – not an engineer yet, but a technician trainee one summer – in the NL building, in one of the shops there, they put me to work – and this is the honest to God truth – they put me to work putting together a Heathkit signal generator. Can you imagine that? In the early days, Heathkits? I went out to lunch, and when I came back, it was people like Herb Daft and those guys, they had taken all the resistors and bent the leads to look like a resistor symbol. They waited until I came in to see the shock on my face! I didn’t know what I was gonna do next! What a mess!
A. This is not so much a practical joke as a funny experience. In the VAB, they were storing solid rocket booster segments, and of course smoking was not allowed. But yet smoking was still permitted – you just couldn’t have matches and lighters and such. So Design Engineering was asked to install these resistance heaters in certain smoking areas, that people could put their cigarette or whatever in to get their tobacco products lit. There was one guy who liked to smoke cigars. It was time for him to stop for a smoke break. And he went up there and unwrapped his favorite cigar, and as all cigar smokers do, they lick it and seal all the holes in the shaft of the cigar. He got it good and wet and sealed. And he stuck it through that hole to the resistance heater, and standing on that metal railing, it knocked him on his keister! So Design Engineering got the work order to go there and install thick rubber mats in front of all those resistance heaters to keep the smokers from getting shocked.
A. You asked us how we felt it the end of the Apollo era was announced. We were all heartbroken, but I think I felt the same when 135 rolled to a stop. I was wondering what I was gonna do if I had to give up my credentials to get back out on the Space Center, where I’d spent most of my life. But I was fortunate enough, before I had to give up my badge, to go around to all the facilities and thank those vehicles for the good time that they’d shown me. And I still miss it every day.
A. I remember my very first day of work out there. The personnel office was out at Cocoa Beach. I reported for duty there, and they sent me out to 37, in my new office working for Carter Dowling in the Networks area. I got out there, was standing at the foot of the elevator thing. They were painting the tower with red epoxy paint, which is very tough stuff. One of the painters dropped his bucket, and it landed right beside me. I got covered in red epoxy paint. My first assignment was to go get cleaned up and file the papers to get my clothes and glasses and everything replaced.
A. [Larry Wilhelm] In one of the presentations that I was doing, Dr. Gruene was the principal, and all the directors were sitting in the audience. We were on the third floor in the headquarters building. And I was doing a three-screen presentation, barreling along. And all of a sudden, Dr. Gray says, “Larry, sit down.” So I go sit down. My director was Ray Clark. I was sitting right behind Ray. And Dr. Gray sends out somebody, he goes off and comes back in five minutes or so, and he essentially repeated everything I was saying when I was told to sit down. And the whole room became silent. And I went, “Nyah-na-na-nyah-na!” [laughter] The whole room just erupted. Ray Clark turned around, and he was banging around the desk, and he said, “Larry, I can’t believe you said that!”
[Jonathan] We’re about out of time. I think if we are going to continue telling stories, we need to go to The Mousetrap! I did want to thank you for the invitation to come here, Roselle, and I will be back for the reunion on the 14th. I can’t tell you what an amazing chapter this has been in my life, to be able to get to know you all and to spend time talking with you and to share your experiences with you. As somebody who came from outside the program, one of the things someone told me was, “You’re never gonna get people from Kennedy to talk to you if you weren’t an insider.” I’m eternally grateful that it wasn’t the case. Because it was people like Ike and Bob and John Tribe who helped open the doors for me. I’ll always be grateful to you for the work that you did to send Americans to the Moon, and to get the Shuttle flying and to run it through so many wonderful missions. There’s nothing I can say except that you guys are my heroes. Thank you very much.
