Science Reporter; 58; Room at the Top

The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. You are entering what is perhaps the world's smallest efficiency apartment, somewhat smaller than an elevator. From all appearances, it could be just a slightly extraordinary airplane cockpit. But for the three men who make the voyage to the moon in fact, it will have to be all things. Office, laboratory, TV and radio stations, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, den, and even gymnasium. It must shelter them from space debris, protect them from heat and cold, give them air to breeze and water to drink. And finally, it must guide them without error to their destination a quarter of a million miles away and return them safely to Earth. This diminutive sanctuary, the Apollo spacecraft, is our story today on science reporter.

Hello, I'm John Fitz, MIT Science reporter. Today, we are at North American Aviation Space and Information Systems Division in Downey, California to see the Apollo spacecraft being built for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Visualize, if you will, a day late in this decade as America prepares to launch its first manned flight to the moon. The mighty Saturn V rocket has been assembled in the vertical assembly building and carried upright by a giant transporter to launch pad 39A at Cape Kennedy. The three astronauts take their place in the command module at the very top of the six million pound rocket and all is in readiness for the launch.

Five giant engines, each generating a million and a half pounds of thrust, will lift the vehicle from its pad and start it on its way. Thirty-six miles above the Earth, Saturn's first stage will burn out. Then it separates from stage two. Moments later, the second stage engine will fire and the launch escape system, so vital to crew safety during the first three minutes of flight, will be Jefferson. Saturn's mighty second stage will boost the space vehicle towards orbital altitude, 100 miles above the Earth's surface. After stage two burns out, retro rockets will separate it from stage three.

Saturn's third stage will accelerate the spacecraft to 17,500 miles per hour and put it into Earth orbit. Then at a precisely calculated point, Saturn's third stage will be restarted propelling Apollo on its way to the Moon. After five minutes, stage three will burn out and the spacecraft will coast the rest of the way to the Moon 65 hours away. Midway, any necessary course changes will be calculated and the astronauts will maneuver their spacecraft onto a corrected flight path. Also during the coast period, the fairings in closing the lunar excursion module will be separated. The command module will turn around to dock, nose to nose, with the land. This gives the astronauts direct access to their landing vehicles. As the spacecraft draws near to the Moon, the surface module engine will reduce its speed, putting it into orbit around the Moon about 80 miles above the lunar surface.

Two of the crew members will transfer from the command module to the land. Then the two vehicles will separate. Using its own rocket descent engine and attitude thrusters, the land will lower itself to a gentle drop down on the surface of the Moon, with the two astronauts in their scientific and documentation equipment. After completing their mission on the surface, the astronauts will lift off from the Moon using an ascent engine. LEM's descent engine and landing structure will be left behind on the Moon. When LEM reaches lunar orbit again, it will rendezvous and dock with the command module. The two crew members will then crawl back to the space cabin, rejoining their colleagues who had remained on board. The LEM will be separated and left behind in lunar orbit.

Then the service module's main engine will fire the Apollo vehicle out of lunar orbit and back toward Earth a quarter of a million miles away. As Apollo nears the Earth again, the pilot will jettison the now expendable service modules and guide the command module into a planned reentry corridor. As the spacecraft lands toward home through the atmosphere, it will generate temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the outside heat shield. To help carry away the heat, an ablative coating melt vaporizes and disappears in a fiery trail behind the men and their ship. At 24,000 feet, a droid shoot will open to stabilize and further slow the spacecraft. At 15,000 feet, pilot shoot will pull out the main 88 foot parachute of the Earth landing system which lower the Apollo command module and its precious cargo to its final rendezvous flash down.

To learn more about the amazing vehicle that will carry three men, half a million miles through space, we talk to Mr. Milton Sherman, assistant program manager at North American. We're in the spacecraft mock-up area, John, where we've built life-sized models of the elements of the spacecraft, primarily as an engineering tool for our people to use to establish equipment locations, line routing, wiring runs, and the light. In back of you is the command module, which is primarily used right now for interior arrangements and layouts. Here is the service module, and directly in back of me is the lunar excursion module or adapter, the LEM that houses the LEM. Oh, you have no idea how big these things are until you really see a full vehicle. It's awfully hard from drawings or from physical dimensions to get a feeling for, or even from a model like this, a little model of useful for pointing out major elements. I think you saw in the mission description how the launch escape tower, the titanium tower and the rocket motors are used.

I might point out the command module itself, which is this unit here, then the service module with the engine extending below it into the adapter housing directly over the LEM. In this cutaway of the adapter, which is an aluminum honeycomb structure, and it's just used to house the lunar excursion module, you can see how the LEM fits inside. And all of it that makes up the spacecraft. This total portion here is what is termed the spacecraft and NASA terminology. Can we take a look at some of the mock-ups in gravity? Yes, I think we ought to go inside the command module first and see how the astronauts actually live. This super structure is here for some tests. We were conducting the suited astronauts and it permits us easier access in and out. Of course, it's not part of the spacecraft, John. Why don't you step on in? You'll know that we've got the couches removed. I see.

There's some work being done on them and it gives us a little more room to look around. But normally there would be couches in here. Yes. Normally, the three couches are side by side with the spacecraft commander sitting on this side where you are. And the navigator sitting in the center, then the systems managers sitting on what would normally be the right side or the side over here. Now, since they're lying on their backs, they look up at the main display and control panel right over ahead. And you'll note that all of the instruments on this side of the display and control panel are those associated with flight determined their attitude and their maneuvering capabilities. Those from about here on over on the panel are all associated with individual subsystems for communications, the environmental control and the light. Now, after they're on in their space environment, the navigator can get out of his center position, so he can still as see folded back down, then he has access to the basic navigational system, which is up here on the forward bulkhead. You'll notice the optical eyepieces.

These give you your capability for taking sightings and star sightings and the like. And then the essential elements of the guidance and navigation system here are communications equipment is located on this lower equipment bay, as we call it, as well as the autopilot or stabilization and control system equipment. We also have some storage here for scientific equipment. The heart of the environmental control of it is this environmental control unit over here, with either air and the cooling. It really serves three functions that takes care of the distribution of water. It handles the effluent glycol cooling loop, which cools all the electronic equipment through cold plates at the base of the electronic equipment. And it also provides the five PSI pure oxygen environment at a temperature that's essentially a seriously environment. When the astronauts are on their space mission, they can take their suits off and wear a constant wear garment as sort of a light cover all type of garment. I notice they also have food over here. Yes, they have food storage up here and again over here.

Most of the right-hand equipment bay, the bay over on this side, is devoted to personal equipment, personal hygiene, waste storage supplies, and additional food and sanitary supplies. Now, you'll note this open hatch at the top. This is the hatch that will normally be closed but can be opened when we're docked with a lunar excursion module. Yes, the astronauts then that go into the lunar excursion module go right up through this hatch. They're in a weightless condition. Not nearly as hard and 0G to get in and out of this for us right now. Yes, I was going to say, I don't see how anybody can enter out of this thing with a spacesuit on. I've heard nothing of business, too. That's one of the problems that's trying to buy them around in a 1G environment that's shipped with design for 0G. I notice that the top of the command module is cut off. What goes up there? I've taken the upper deck off, John, and have it mounted right over here, and of course this is a subsystem that's particularly important to the astronauts because it contains the earth landing system, the parachutes for recovery.

After they've gone through the high heats of reentry and get down to about 25,000 feet, we start our earth landing sequence. There are three sets of parachutes involved in this. Drug parachutes, pilot shoots, and the main shoots. There are two droves that are located in mortars and that are deployed by a powder charge just like a regular mortar shell. And the purpose of those is to slow the craft down and get it oriented properly to start the rest to continue on with the landing sequence. Then the three pilot shoots, this is one of them here, packed into a mortar, are deployed again. On a time sequence, they're done about eight seconds after the droves are deployed. They, in turn, pull out the large three 88 foot diameter ring sails parachutes, and the craft comes on down for recovery then. Do you use the parachutes in an abort situation to bring the craft down? Yes, the parachutes are used in any kind of a recovery operation, whether it's an abort or a normal recovery. The abort case, though, is very important. I think we might talk about it in a moment.

We've concentrated our early development both on the earth landing and on the abort because they're so vital to crew safety. The escape system itself has its main motor, 135,000 pound thrust motor, which fires and pulls the command module off the stack. At the same time, a small 3,000 pound pitch motor up here gives a sideways kick to it to get it off laterally away from the HUD, away from anything that might have happened to cause the abort situation. Now, when it gives that sideways kick, it sets up a little bit of a spin. So we have two little surfaces called canard surfaces that fold out and tend to damp out that sideways spin and put it in the proper position for starting our parachute sequence. Before we can deploy the parachute, though, we have to get rid of the whole thing. So we have a little tower jettison motor here that fires and takes the spent cases and the tower off the command module. We had occasion to get a very realistic test of this under emergency conditions of white sands not long ago. This test of the launch escape system and the earth landing system took place on May 19th at White Sands, New Mexico.

We're using a little book jo2 booster as a test vehicle and the autopilot on a little jo2 failed, setting up a roll condition for the booster. Well, I can see it begin to twist. Yes, just slightly. Actually, it achieved a roll rate of about one revolution a second as it went on. This, of course, is a fast X camera, which for tests and instrumentation purposes, and it's more than real time. I think we're really starting a slow motion picture. We're seeing a very slow motion picture. Five seconds after the lift off, the booster came apart due to the excessive G-loadings on the setup by the roll condition. The booster itself exploded. Yes, the booster exploded. There are large solid propellant grains in the booster and they came right out through the skins, as you'll see. As the booster broke up, this automatically actuated the launch escape system. They're the launch escape motor is firing. Those are grains of the booster going off wildly in all directions.

But meanwhile, the launch escape system is carrying the command module high enough so that you can put the parachute down. Yes. There's a picture now of the tower and you'll note the conards deployed. They're the towered jettison motor fired. This is a picture taken from onboard the command module looking up at the tower. They're the top section of the heat shield that's being deployed so we can start our earth landing sequence with the parachutes. If you recall, the first action that takes place is the deployment of the two drone shoots and they're the two drones out and deployed there. They will stabilize the spacecraft blown in forward so that they can then be released and the three pilot shoots deployed. As the pilot shoots deploy, they will pull out. They're the three pilot shoots pulling out three 88 foot ring sail parachutes. They are deployed in a reefed condition and then the reaching lines are cut and the parachutes blossom out into their full 88 foot diameter.

Let's take a look at the service module. John and get some exercise too. We're going to climb up here. One of the major systems in the service module is the service propulsion system. This is the engine for it right here. It's a 22,000 pound thrust liquid hypergolic engine, which just means that the fuel and oxidizer ignite when they come in contact with each other. The primary use of it, of course, is to put us in lunar orbit and also to bring us back to the earth from the moon. The structure is divided up into six bay, about 13 feet in diameter. The outer skin is mainly taken up with radiators to cool the command module by flowing fluid through from the command module into the service module. The fifth bay, which is open here, has in it the cryogenic gas storage system, which is high pressure, very low temperature, hydrogen and oxygen that supply fuels for the fuel cells, the three fuel cells up at the top of the primary source of electrical energy. In addition to the fuel cell, the oxygen tanks supply the astronauts with breathing oxygen.

In the little tanks, you'd have enough for them to breathe all the way to the moon? Yes, under that kind of pressure, we have about 600 pounds of oxygen in there, 200 are needed for the mission and about 400 are used for the fuel cells. The byproduct of the fuel cells, incidentally, is drinking water for the astronauts. You said there was a thick bay, but the sixth bay is on the other side of the service module, and it's empty and reserved for scientific experiments. With a general purpose spacecraft like this, we'll have lots of opportunity for both. There's orbital and lunar scientific experiments. I'd like to also point out the reaction control system. This is one panel of four that are equally spaced around the craft. Each one contains four little hundred pound thrust engines, and they're for fine positioning of the spacecraft during the mission. They're kind of interesting for a design standpoint, and that they contain right on the panel their complete system, the fuels and oxidizers, helium pressure, and plumbing and welding and everything. They can be replaced as a unit and serviced as a unit.

If you look across here at the adapter, you can see through that port inside the lamp installed inside it. There isn't anything very exotic about the lamp adapter, John, but there are a few interesting facts about it. It's a 13 feet in diameter at the top and 21 feet in diameter at the base. It stands about 23 and a half feet tall. It's made of an aluminum bonded honeycomb material, and as such, it requires bonding and curing in a large oven called an autoclave, and because it's made in four longitudinal segments, it uses the largest autoclave we know of, and we're in the world. It's designed this way so that we can run along the wells that join the four segments, linear shaped charges that are detonated to separate the four segments and peel them back like an orange peel. You probably saw it notice that in the little mission film that you saw. I'm wondering why I did it that way, so that when the command and service module fly around and dock with the lunar excursion module, they can then draw the lunar excursion module out of that. All the time that this maneuver is going on, the LEM adapter is joined onto the top stage of the Saturn V booster, which is placed in this trans lunar injection.

The whole of the top isn't big enough for the LEM to be pulled in. That's right. It has to open it and get the LEM out. The sides of it's rather impressive, and you've got to realize that you have the service module on top of this, the command module and launch escape system on top of that when it's sitting on the pad, and the whole thing is sitting on top of the Saturn V booster. So you have a stack of launch of 360 feet high to get off that launch pad. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The three Apollo astronauts should complete their round trip journey in 196 hours, a brief eight days. But as an essential prelude to their historic mission, years of effort have gone into developing the skills and techniques necessary to build their spacecraft. This is the enormous manufacturing area at North American. But it is manufacturing in a way that we in the era of the assembly line and mass production have almost forgotten. Over a period of four years, only 20 spacecraft will leave this floor.

Of these, only a few are destined for the moon. The others are test and practice models, but each will have been custom built virtually handmade for unique specifications. By skilled technicians who know that with a manned space vehicle, the margin for error is zero. The command module is made up of two separate shells, an inner pressure type crew compartment and an outer protective heat shield. With a constant eye towards reducing the spacecraft's weight to the minimum, aluminum skins for the inner compartment are chemically milled. Great vats of acid eat off the excess metal until the sheet is hardly the thickness of a sheet of construction paper. The 60 separate skin pieces and machined parts of the pressure cabin are then collected for the all-important welding process. Much of the welding equipment is new, designed especially to meet the requirements of Project Apollo, where it is commonplace to join edges together, which are only 6-100 of an inch thick. Rigorous controls check the growing spacecraft at every step. After each individual weld pass is completed, it is X-ray and leak tested.

And again, once strength giving aluminum honeycomb has been bonded to the cabin shell, it goes back to X-ray for final inspection. When the pressure cabin is complete, it's aligned with a stainless steel outer shell, so the spacecraft vital circulation system can be installed. The stainless steel outer shell is removed and shipped to the Avco Corporation in Lowell, Massachusetts, where the heat shield a blade of material is added. The ablative is a gummy rosin. To give it strength, it is injected cell by cell into a honeycomb matrix, bonded on to the surface of the shell. After baking, the hardened rosin must be ground down to exact depth specifications, which vary over the surface, depending on anticipated heating. The module then goes back to Downey, or joining with the inner cabin. After cold plates, tubing and wiring have been attached, the inner pressure cabin goes to building 290, the country's largest clean room. No one can enter this room without first putting his shoes through a cleaning machine, then donning a special coat and head cover.

It's not a war on germ, but rather one on small dust particles that can get into the delicate equipment and cause malfunction. All the basic spacecraft hardware, contributed by no less than 1,500 subcontractors and vendors from across the entire country, is gathered in this room for installation and testing. Piece by piece, and with painstaking care, the once-empty pressure shell is slowly built, delicate instrumentation for the guidance and navigation system, for the telemetry equipment, and for the central timing system to name only a few, are tested, put into place, and then retested. Achieving easy access to the spacecraft and the giant service module is no mean trick. Teared platforms have been specially built and adapted to allow several groups of workers access to different systems at once. After assembly is completed, both the command and service modules are brought to this table and subjected to vibration testing.

When the complete spacecraft is fitted and declared ready to fly, it has one last test to pass before shipment. Computers, programmed to simulate the lunar mission are connected to it. Step by step, they mimic the entire flight from launch to splash down, activating each system on the vehicle as it would operate during an actual trip. Any malfunction can be spotted in the data as it is monitored by these computers. Once manufacturing is completed, transporting the Apollo spacecraft poses yet another challenge. The giant LEM adapter is made at North American Tulsa Oklahoma plant far from any rivers or waterways. It stands about 28 feet tall with a girth about the same, much larger than any airplane cargo area. The solution to this dilemma of transporting the adapter was found in a helicopter. Meanwhile at Downey, the command and service modules are prepared for their last earthbound trip. Gently, workmen ease the stack into a remodeled cargo plane appropriately dubbed the Pregnant Gutty. Its destination, Cape Kennedy, launch complex number 39.

Once there, technicians will join the modules with the adapter and the launch escape tower. The completed stack will then be made into the giant Saturn and ready for its final countdown. In a parallel program, another important part of the Apollo system, the human part, has been readying for its trip to Cape Kennedy. At the manned spacecraft center in Houston, Texas, a computer-controlled simulator makes it possible to practice the flight to the moon. At these computer consoles, simulation engineers set the conditions of flight, inserting malfunction at strategic points in the mission to test the astronauts' abilities under emergency conditions. Then from this backstage position, they quietly observe the actions and response patterns of the crew on the inside. From the outside, the simulator is an unlikely looking cubistic affair, an organized jumble of boxes. These structures, however, house electronic equipment to supply realistic visual and acoustical cues to the inside of the cabin on the basis of mathematical models.

Inside, astronauts recline in an exact duplicate of the Apollo spacecraft. Through the five windows, they see the heavens precisely as they would appear under flight conditions. And closed circuit TV provides visual cues for practice in rendezvous and docking. They eat space foods, drink water made by fuel cells, and listen to the roar of the giant Saturn rocket. Apart from accustomed themselves to the craft environment, the astronauts and ground crew use the simulator to gain crucial flight experience. And most simulated flights aren't programmed to go smoothly. Booster and spacecraft malfunctions are programmed in, requiring the crew to choose between abort and continue. It is practice in this critical region of fast decision-making that will probably contribute most to the success and safety of the mission. In the fifties, the United States set her sights on orbiting a man. By the early sixties, longer range goals had been established.

Three men would be sent to the moon and returned safely to Earth. Now, step by step, technological advances and training are carrying a through sustained weightless flight, maneuvering, rendezvous, docking, and finally, it will be the voyage itself. For the time is now not so far off, when the astronauts and engineers will have done with their mockups and simulators. It will be the end of a long but meticulously traveled road. Yet as with Project Mercury, it may well be but the beginning of another road to some more distant place. I'm John Fitch, M.I.P. Science reporter. I'm John Fitch, M.I.P. Science reporter.

This is NET, the National Educational Television Network. The National Educational Television Network.