NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Maxime "Max" Faget, a mechanical engineer who worked on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft, part 1 of 3

When John Glenn first went into orbit, this was some time after, of course, the shepherded made his subarnels like. And we were already responding to the president's idea to go to the moon, and some of this had already moved to Houston. And I was there in Houston, and our main concentration was getting on with the lunar program. As far as we were concerned at that time, we engineers, Marko is a done deal, and we were looking forward. Well, during a flight, they had sensors on the bird so that if the heat shield were to come off, we would know about it.

Now there were three position sensors, and one of them said the heat shield would lose. And I got a call from the people that were operating the thing saying, what are we going to do this, that we think the heat shield might be loose, and would it be all right to keep retrorocket package, which also held the heat shield down? Would it be all right to keep that on there while we were re-entering? Well, fortunately, I had thought that perhaps maybe the retro package wouldn't be... Okay. Okay. L-O-R versus Earth orbit rendezvous. What did you think was the best way to get to the moon? Well, when we first were planning the lunar mission, we were planning to use what was called an overrocket. You might like that title, but the overrocket was supposed to have any of these large engines in the honor.

And the people at Huntsville, Alabama, who were in charge of building the rockets, came to the conclusion that it was too big a step to go to an eight-engine Nova, and it proposed to go to a four-engine vehicle, which turned out to be the Saturn. Later on, they added the fifth engine in the middle, but at that time, we were suddenly faced with the fact that we didn't have enough capacity to carry the whole vehicle to the moon and back. The first planning was whatever we planned to go to the moon and come back on was also going to land on the moon, and we could see we couldn't do that. And there was a proposal at that time to have a rendezvous in Earth orbit where we would assemble what we planned to go to the moon with, or as a hobo that had proposed to do a lunar orbit around the moon.

So we considered both of these things, and when we did, we came upon a very important conclusion that didn't have anything to do with the weight carrying capacity. There was a lot easier to design the lunar landing vehicle if we didn't have to also design it so it could re-enter the atmosphere after it was finished. So going to the lunar orbit rendezvous allowed us to carry two vehicles to the moon, one for the purpose of landing and returning to the command and service model, and the other one just transportation to the moon and back. That divided the problem into two problems. Each one was solvable by itself in the complexity of trying to make one vehicle do two things with overcome. As well as the fact that it got the weight down to what the Saturn could handle. What did you think of lunar orbit rendezvous when you first heard about it? You were not a component, were you?

Well, when I first heard about lunar orbit rendezvous, I said, my gosh, we don't even know about a rendezvous in Earth orbit yet, no. How are we going to be able to assure ourselves that we could get the two vehicles together in orbit and dock together at the moon? That seemed like a very chancy thing. Now during the Gemini program, of course, we learned a lot about rendezvous and we learned a lot about attaching two vehicles together. The Gemini actually rendezvoused and attached itself in the Gina rocket. We had all that behind us, but the time we actually went and the lunar orbit rendezvous was certain it was a proper thing, it was a wonderful idea. If we had done Earth orbit rendezvous, von Braun's idea, would we actually be better off today for it?

No, no, I don't think so. I think that the Earth orbit rendezvous would have been very complicated and we may have ended up a little egg on our face. That was a pretty, it sounds simple. But what you really like to do is when everything leaves Earth, you like it to be in the condition that you plan to use it. Now here we're going to send something into orbit in two pieces and put them together and no one knew anything at all about constructing things in space at that time. And I already think we'd have really gotten hung up on a lot of issues by trying to go Earth orbit rendezvous. Now of course this is knowing what we did and what we didn't do. What about direct descent using the Nova rocket? Do you think that would have been possible? I think it would have been possible directly sent.

The one bad part about direct descent, to land on the moon, you still would have had to use a hydrogen, oxygen hydrogen propulsion to get the performance to land on the moon with direct descent. And we were beginning to have second thoughts about using cryogenic propellants, particularly hydrogen at the moon. So we avoided that aspect of it. As a matter of fact, we were actually going to stage just before we landed on the moon with direct descent. We were going to have what we call a lunar crusher and a lunar lander. The lunar crusher would have been the high performance, oxygen, hydrogen, engine. And just before it got ready to land, it would separate the landing component and the return component from the crusher. And we'd land that on the moon.

So even that had that complexity. Now if we didn't have the lunar crusher, I doubt if we could have made the lunar landing. So that made a rather impossible thing partly possible. How big would that know the rocket have been, Max? Well, it would have been almost twice the size of the Saturn. And the part that went to the moon would have been much larger, too. The reason we had this crusher idea was because when that was landed, the crew would have been something like about 80 feet from the surface of the moon. So they would have had to, apparently, you know, more or less land than think by remote control. We had to have a huge landing gear and not have enough spread, so the thing would tip over after it landed. Tipping over was a real problem in landing on the moon. It turns out, of course, that people don't understand this, but this, a thing called

Freud's Law, which relates gravitational forces to dynamic forces. Now when you got one-sixth to gravity on the Earth, you got a much lower Freud number. And consequently, we had to put this very wide-trend landing gear on the moon, so it would be certain that the lunar module, which we finally ended up with, would not tip over at landing. Interesting. Good. Cut. Well, the Russians really, when we started the man's space program, they had a big advantage over us, and this had to do with the size of their nuclear bomb. The Russian bomb was much cruder than ours, so consequently they had to use a much larger launch vehicle to deliver a nuclear device if they were going to attack the United States. And we, with a much more sophisticated nuclear device, didn't need that size of rocket.

So the rockets that were being developed before man's space flight were merely to accommodate the ballistic missile program and they ended up with a much bigger one. So it made it easy for them to do a lot of things with that heavy lift capability as a consequence. My only thinking was, well, you know, the Russians, if they had a crude bomb and they had to make things big, well, they did that, but we had a much better class of engineering. Now when I actually got into cooperative programs from the Russians, I was truly amazed at the sophistication, particularly their mechanical engineers. They're very good. Electronic-wise, they were behind us, but from a standpoint of mechanical engineering, there are equals.

No doubt about it. Great. Okay. Roll out. Terrific Max. That was the story I had ever heard before. I didn't know that. Kind of. He looked for challenges to take him. And he was, I grew up with that kind of leadership, and frankly, I thought that the whole world had that kind of leadership all the time. I found out later in life that that's not really the case. But he was our... Battery's running down. How's your footage, too? We're just about that. Okay. Great. We got battery in it. Magnetic. Good. We'll pick up from there. Yeah. All right. I want to remind you of something, because what the film is not rolling. Grant said... I asked him how he liked being a flight director. He said, you know, of course, it was the best job in the world. And he said, for one reason, he said it's written right in the mission rules. And he read me, the flight director may take any action. I'm going to ask you to say that to me, because he didn't say it to me on camera. I'm like, if that on camera.

Okay. Great. We did it with that. How's your... Did they run out that fast? Battery's started at a goal. It's just done. Oh. That's been up for a long time. Can we go through that camera report when we run out of that camera report when I mention it? Hmm? Can we go through that camera report when I mention it? Sorry. It isn't. It's 20 seconds. My dad reports, guys. Okay. So, gosh. We'll go through the light. Then we'll get a solid one. That was pretty heady time. You know, this was obvious that we were running with the Russians. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't know how that was going to turn out. We didn't... I didn't know how far ahead they were. Maybe somebody else in America did, but we didn't have a good sense of it. We just knew that we were behind rushing to catch up. And it was always there as a kind of a prod for us to do better and to do well and to get it done on time.

Let me ask you about that. Go ahead. Sure. What about... What about the Russians? How instrumental were the Russians motivated? Well, you know, the whole man program, I think, started as a response to Sputnik. And then, once it got started, the Russians seemed to... Of... Of 66. Six. And what was the moon in the place? A feeling... The Russians are somewhere in the dust, maybe, even now. They're not that close anymore. They don't feel that close. And we've been so successful. We've done, you know, 10 missions and 20 months, incredible record. And we're heading towards January 27th. 19. Right. Right. Take me there. How do we get there? Right? What was the feeling of at the end of Gemini? As we move through the Gemini flights, we just almost kept the mental scoreboard of all of the things that we were able to do that enabled us to be successful when we got to Apollo. And the more Gemini's we flew, the more confident we felt about our capability to handle problems.

The whole, you know, hatched blowing off. No. I don't... Did himself in in the career or something? No, no, no. Did himself in the career in the sense that this hatch, he worked on the hatch. I don't think so. I think the hatch design we had was the best design that people could come up with at the time. And frankly, I don't think people thought about quick exit, quick exit from the spacecraft. I think they thought more about the safety of the hatch so that it wouldn't come off when you didn't want it to. And therefore, it was kind of designed with that in mind to be very safe and then not come off or to have any kind of failure modes that would give you a problem for the coming off. But I don't think people had in mind a quick opening hatch to allow a very quick escape from the vehicle. That didn't enter our minds as one of the requirements for how to design the hatch in the and the getting out system. Okay. I didn't know.

I've asked that question before and other people have different opinions about it. Yes. Gus was integral in that whole CSM design. And, you know, there were a lot of people who felt like, you know, he was particularly nervous about it. Because of that? Because of the... Because of the Mercury flight. Yeah. What effect? Because I know you were the guy as we move towards Apollo 7. You were the guy. Because I've interviewed Wally. I've interviewed Cunningham. Well, I've interviewed you on this very same subject. What was the effect of the fire? Do you think now 30 some years hence? On Apollo 7. On... On Shirah. Well... Let's take a slide. Sorry. Here we go. Still, yep. Okay. All right. Do you think that... Did the Apollo 12 experience, we became convinced that gee, we really could target this thing and correct and tune it so that it could land. The pilots had a good chance of landing it within, you know, yards, hundreds of yards or tens of yards maybe of where we were trying to land.

I mean, they walked over to that surveyor. So they couldn't have been that far away, could it? I mean, probably a hundred yards from the target. Trying to get pretty impressive. Good cut. Terrific. It's amazing. It is. It's amazing. I mean, we didn't have a beacon on the thing, telling us, you know, here come get me. Sean's tickled. I am. You're changing up. Okay. And when we were doing that, Sean, all the people in this control center, most of us were 20-ish. I mean, let's see, how old was I? Apollo 13. I was 33. And became 40 overnight. Yeah, right. Right. My hair got this color overnight. But it was, it was really heady stuff, heady stuff. I'm going to talk about Apollo 13 next.

And some things it got said. Again, Grant was tipped in the office. And you got to ask. How about this? Where do you have some energy to grow, probably? Near Scranton. Yeah. I grew up near Scranton. Did you? Yeah. Near the lower water gap. Yeah. Okay. Grant, the camera's not rolling. One of the things I want to capture in this. And we've talked about the flight director being the key guy. You know, there's craftsman right back there. And anytime, you know, he'd come up and say, what are you doing? Mm-hmm. And you got deep coming over and patting on your chest and going, you know, what are you doing? And then you got your own senses. By the way, they never did that. Nope. They never did that. Uh-huh. They followed and we would tell them, you know, and go through the odds and so on.

Because Grant said, you know, he had deep was over there patting on your chest and they need to get to sleep, you know. Well, I never remember that. I never remember it or, I mean, he never struck me that way. Did I remember it? I think everybody was just struggling to get everything done. Tell me about the first 20 minutes. Didn't you just come on when 13 hit? I'd take me back. Okay. What? 13. The actual package wouldn't come off when we wanted it to and we had made windtone tests with it on and with it off. And we knew that it was perfectly safe to have him enter with the retro package on. So that's what we did. By the way, the heat shield, the heat shield was perfectly all right. It was just a bad center. But the entry was kind of dramatic because the retro package was not made for entry heating. And John Glenn could see all this burning material going by the window that they wanted to look out.

He thought I'll go lie. But he made a very nice landing just as we planned. Oh, that's great. I want to talk to you about lunar orbit rendezvous. And your first impression of, what did you think was going to be the best way for us to get to the moon? All right. One second. Can we do it again? I don't know.