Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. You are asking your self what do my Dad and I have to do with it. There are a couple of reasons:
- First we live in Houston. The motto for the City in the 60’s was Space City Houston. The professional baseball team changed its name from the Colt 45’s to the Astros.
- Second my Dad had a contract to work a component of the Apollo launch systems.
- Third give a little history of the company.
The project was a subcontract with one of the prime contractors. The whole program of getting a man to the moon by the end of 60’s required a whole lot of people from big and small companies to do their part to make the goal.
The subcontract was not very glamorous but it was important. You could say we where the stepping stone for each of the Apollo mission launches.
The project was to develop a three dimensional space frame analysis computer program for the launch tower at Launch Complex (LC) 34, 37 and 39. LC 39 was where Apollo 11 was launched from on its historic flight.
The project started several years before the historic flight. The program was written FORTRAN and hand punched on cards contained in 10 or 12 boxes. (Each of the boxes held 2000 cards. This was considered a large program back at that time.) The program also had to compute all of the trigonometric functions for polar coordinates. The trigonometric functions would not be available as built functions until FORTRAN IV. Since this was experimental software, the Control Data Corporation timeshare computer facility would only let my Dad run the program late at night on Friday or Saturday. This was because when a bug would occur, it would cause the computer to dump the entire operating system. The reload would take between 10 to 12 hours.
When Dad had a lot of cards to correct or change I would occasional get to go and help. Can you image how I felt being all of 13 years of age and working a NASA project? I did learn how to read Hollerith code. (Punch Cards and Hollerith code)
My Dad had to make a lot of trips to Cape Canaveral or the “Cape” as it was called. These trips where to develop an as-built of each of the three towers. That required all of the components and structural members had to be measured and in some case weighed. So you can see as-built drawings have always been a part of the companies business.
LC 39 was configured differently for each mission. The program had to be run for each launch to determine if the any of the structural members had to be changed to a bigger or smaller member.
Dad tells a story about his first time going up the elevator which is on the outside of the tower. He had gone through several days of the intense safety classes. They showed him how to escape the tower from 300 feet up and to determine wind direction so he could run up wind once he was on the ground. He told me that a lot of topics where covered, but a few items where missing.
On his first trip up the tower, got on with a bunch of big and brawny iron works. The whole group stepped to the side of the elevator and grabbed hold of the hand holds and squeezed so hard their knuckles turned white. My Dad said to himself they where kidding the new kid on the block, so he stood in the middle of the elevator. I forget to tell you something, the elevators have a front and back door. The elevator suddenly came to a stop and both doors opened. The wind caught my Dad and he started out the opposite door. There was no catwalk or landing at that level. One of the iron worker’s grabbed him as he was about to fly out the door. He said the grip was like a vise.
After the doors closed the iron worker turned to my Dad and said “Why do you think there are two big guys on each side of the astronauts going into the elevator.” From then on he stepped to the side and white knuckled the hand rail.
I hoped you enjoyed this blog, I did. It is always fun remembering some very fond memories.
P.S. For you information my Dad and I are still working together after all these years.