The SoapBoxers

I was working on the Space Transportation System Operations Contract (STSOC, pronounced STEE-sock). STSOC was manned with people from many companies, the biggest partners being Rockwell, Bendix and Unisys. I worked supporting the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). While I was there, the SAIL consisted of two engineering articles, the Shuttle Test Station (STS) and the Guidance Test Station (GTS). The STS was a full mock up of the shuttle (less wings and engines) with every piece of electronics, cabling and hardware in place. The GTS was only a cockpit. We simulated or stimulated every function of the Shuttle. Every “vehicle” that had a set of General Purpose Computers (GPCs) was given an orbiter designation. The Challenger was OV-099, Columbia was OV102, the STS was OV-95 and the GTS was OV-63. Many of the OV designations were planned but never built. The challenger was never intended to be a flight vehicle, but the simple addition of engines allowed NASA to have one more flying ship to complete their task.

My arrival back at the Johnson Space center on the opposite side of the table of the NASA personnel who I had worked with the year before, also marked the return to the original numbering scheme of shuttle launches. I started working on STS-26. I was in the Simulation group responsible for the math models that simulated or stimulated the various avionics that control the Shuttle. We could provide electrical inputs that would simulate what the avionics would experience in flight, or we could simulate the entire piece of equipment. There were many math models, from main engine thrust, to aerodynamics, to the Remote Manipulator System, to the Inertial Measurement Units. I worked on most of these models throughout my carrier. The SAIL was used to verify the software loads for each mission. We provided a real time simulation of all shuttle functions. Astronauts, usually not the ones assigned to the mission as they were busy with other training, would fly our rig and evaluate the operations. In this way I met even more of the astronauts and became friends with some.

The SAIL worked two 8 hour shifts every week day, with graveyard and weekends for maintenance to fix, clean and install equipment. During missions, we were on call around the clock, receiving downlink data during launch and landing to be an extra set of eyes on the performance of the vehicle. As a simulation engineer, I had to work on the models and support the testing. Our work area was not in the control center, it was in the bowels of the computing lab. We monitored strip chart recorders to make sure both the shuttle software and our simulation were working properly. My time as a simulation engineer in the SAIL encompassed the missions STS-26 through STS-68 (the 65th flight).

When I was young, I had dreamed about flying in space and all the wonderful places we would explore. That dreaming seemed to end when NASA moved its focus from the Moon to near Earth orbit. During my time working what could be described as the first half of the shuttle program, I was part of a re-expansion of the exploration mission. There were missions to Venus, Jupiter, and around the Sun. There were also the deployment of some of the great observatories; the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) and the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT). Although it was a job, it was still an adventure.

I also made molds to mass produce sensors for measuring the volume of blood in the astronaut’s legs. The theory was that during launch, a certain about of blood rushed to the lower extremities, the legs. If the change of volume of the leg were measured, the danger to that astronaut could be gauged. It was a simple system with a single transmitter taped to one side of the leg and two receivers on the other side. Sound waves could accurately measure the distance and using the assumption that the leg was a cylinder, the volume change could be measured. Up until I was asked to make the molds, these sensors were assembled at the University of Kentucky. As the Astronaut corps grew and the need for many more sensors came about, the professor at UK opted out of the building business. Again, my engineering curiosity was satisfied as I watched a ceramic die eat away at an aluminum block in an electrically charged oil bath.

Another project involved making a laundry basket to put all of the loose articles in until it was time to clean up. It was a simple net with a tension gap (two tight ropes that could be pushed apart to get your hand in that would snap back to closed when you pull your hand out). It only flew once. It seems that a lot of things were put into it during the flight rather than being put away. So much so, that there was a lot of work to do before re-entry to get all of it stored properly. Astronauts are just like the rest of us kids, we don’t want to clean up when there is fun stuff to do.

The neatest part of this last activity was that I got to work closely with Astronaut Judy Resnik. I really liked working with Dr. Resnik. She was always helpful in our efforts, recognizing that I was still a student, but that I did have some experience that I could leverage into completing tasks and working independently. I was saddened when she was lost on STS-51L, commonly known as the Challenger Disaster. I knew other members of that mission as well. Their loss was a loss for the entire space program.

I was in school when the Challenger was lost. I had an orbital mechanics professor who was rather abrupt, as his German upbringing would make him. He would come into class, set his brief case on top of the pile of homework we had stacked on the desk and start teaching. Just before the bell, he would open that brief case, put our graded homework on the other corner of the desk and put our newest effort in his brief case. If you were not early, you homework was not graded. On the morning of January 28, 1986, the professor walked in without his brief case and just stood in front of the desk. After a few moments, showing emotion we did not think he had, he stated “Seven people I consider friends have just died.” Then he walked out and we all went looking for a television to figure out what had happened. The University of Texas had a contract with NASA to validate all of the orbital mechanics calculation for each flight, and our professor was the leader of that project. He had met and worked with every astronaut who had ever flown in space. He was right, we had lost seven friends.

Let’s go back to the start of the activity. An astronaut would fly up to the satellite and put a probe into the rocket nozzle. This is the business end of a rocket that failed to ignite when commanded to do so, but could still be “live”. An astronaut’s space suit is designed to keep air in and enough of the hostile environment of space out long enough for him or her to perform some activity outside the relative safety of their ship, it is not designed to take a direct blast of a rocket.

The team designed all of the hardware needed. I provided clearance drawings to make sure all of the equipment would fit and the tasks could be performed. I also helped develop some of the training material. My name is now part of the NASA permanent record as Dale commented during training (I paraphrase) “there isn’t as much room as Martin’s drawings showed.”

Not all went as planned. I was back in school by the time the launch occurred. Another Coop finished the task and gathered some mementoes for me that I have framed and hanging in my man room. I watched as Joe caught the first satellite as planned, but then things went poorly. There was an appendage on the satellite that we had failed to account for that prevented the use of the bridge. This meant that Joe had to hold the satellite while Dale put on the adapter. Joe is possibly the smallest male astronaut (small in stature, not in character). In space you can move immense objects, it is just a matter of overcoming momentum very slowly. Joe had to hold on as Dale tightened bolt after bolt so that the satellite could be secured in the payload bay. It was amazing to watch and more amazing that they succeeded. It went so well that NASA chose to capture the second satellite even knowing that the adapter would have to be put on manually again.

It was an honor to be part of that mission. The crew and other members of the team were wonderful to work with. We all looked at the task and new we could do it, from the Ph.D. to the Navy Captain to the coop. We even designed t-shirts for the team, a catcher’s mitt extended from the space shuttle payload bay catching a satellite. This was also my first experience with quasi-secrecy. Although the mission was not classified, we did not want the whole world to know every detail of our efforts. Some of my drawings ended up in Aviation Week and Space Technology Magazine. Outer space blue covered the header line with my name, the date and my NASA division, but it was definitely my drawings. In the article, details of our discussion were also revealed. This really annoyed the team leader, but nothing could be done about it.

The Man-Machine Interface Division worked on the human factors considerations of space flight. We used a computer program called Panel Layout and Integrated Design (PLAID). This software package allowed cutting edge depiction of hardware by drawing hidden line removed perspective models. This was black lines on white paper. The worst graphics on computer games today would put that package to shame. We typed in all of the vertices and arc data and previewed the drawings on a Techtronics display, green lines that required a button push to clear the screen when you wanted to draw the next picture. We provided drawings for the astronauts to see what would be in the payload bay and what they could observe. These drawings were used for training and to help managers and customers visualize what was going to happen during the mission. We also supported the Space Station proposals that were presented during the Reagan years.

I primarily worked on STS-8, which at the time was cutting edge because it was the launch of the first African American into space. Today, that seems odd, since we as a culture have moved so far away from physical looks rather than ability defining the opportunities presented. Guion Bluford is one of the nicest, most optimistic and most encouraging people I have ever met. During this time, I met several astronauts as well as people who had been involved in many of the earlier manned flights.

The next mission was STS-9. The primary payload was the Spacelab, a laboratory in the payload bay. Since not the activities would be in the lab, there was little need for training pictures of the payload bay. This is when we really got involved in the Space Station concept effort. We worked on the interior designs of the various modules as well as overall structure. The module layouts were to validate that all of the equipment and personnel would fit and function. The overall structure pictures were for training, what would the astronauts see as they approach the station during assembly. Of course those initial concepts are just a memory of or hint of what is in the final designs that have been assembled. I went back to school and dreamed of making a huge impact on the space program and bragging to my class mates about how cool my Co-op experience had been.

Werner von Braun had a space travel dream that he brought with him from Germany. He wanted a space station to launch other missions to the moon, mars and even further. That plan would save significant costs in energy by starting from Earth orbit rather than from sea level. The plan was temporarily bypassed to get to the moon before the Soviets. Now that the race was won, the old school space men tried to drive back to that plan. The problem is that with the race won, the funding was reduced. At the same time the von Braun crowd were gathering the leftovers of the Apollo program to get the first American Space Station in place, the politicians were throwing every penny they could find into a giant leap in technology that would become the Space Shuttle.

Many people believed at the time and still believe today that the Shuttle was supposed to save the Skylab. Even if the Shuttle had launched in time to rendezvous with the Skylab, there was never any adapter designed or funded that would have allowed attachment to or boost of the Skylab. The Shuttle program was separate from and competing for funding with the Skylab program. I watched all of this haggling through high school. It helped to shape my political values and drove my continued interest in space. If it were not for the un-manned NASA activities during the same time period (Pioneer, Voyager and Viking) I could have become disheartened with the political intrigue and apparent lack of vision in the U.S. space program. The problem that I saw was that there was no continuation plan as the Apollo program shut down.

I was almost out of high school and planning a career as an astronomer when the first space shuttle launch occurred. I had watched the drop tests using the Space Shuttle Enterprise, which had no engines and was lifted and dropped by a modified Boeing 474 jumbo jet. I still do not understand why Star Trek groupies pushed so hard to name that vehicle Enterprise since it would never fly in space, but they did and they succeeded. The drop tests were interesting from an engineering point of view, but seeing the flame and watching the Columbia launch into space was just breathtaking. Many of my readers may not understand just how much better television quality is now compared to the early 1980’s but that was still dramatically better than what was available twelve years earlier when man first stepped on the moon.

The first Shuttle launch was a first in many ways. The biggest first was that a vehicle was launched with men on board with out completing an unmanned test. When John Young and Robert Crippen climbed on board, they were indeed sitting on top of a bomb on national, or rather world wide, television. This could have been the single bravest act ever captured on film. The mission was only two days, but it was considered a complete success. The Space Shuttle was the most complex machine ever built and it worked the first time.

The engineering part of my brain really enjoyed the experience of first flight. The adventurer in me protested that we were limiting ourselves to near Earth orbit activities. Where was the return to the Moon, manned flight to Mars, the colonization of the Moon? It seemed that all our frontier spirit had been dropped for technological gadgetry. Entering college, I was still looking at Astronomy as my field of choice, but the scholarship money was in engineering. The opportunities to become an Astronaut were actually expanding as NASA grew the corps. For me, the opportunities were limited. My eyesight was such that the rules for becoming an Astronaut would have to be really relaxed for me to be selected.