V during preparations for launch, then
hold it down as the engines came to full
thrust before launch. There also had to
be clearance to allow the rocket exhaust
to pass through the MLP to be de ected
away by a water-cooled ‘bucket’ below
the complex.
SHINING LIGHT
Kennedy was responsible for the initial
control of the vehicle during launch until
the internal control systems could take
over, then it became the responsibility
of Houston. As the vehicle began to rise,
it shone a laser beam to a re ector on
a tower one mile (1.6 km) away. This
became the reference co-ordinate for
the navigation systems for the rest of
the ight.
The Marshal Space ight Center in
Huntsville, Alabama, is situated within the
Redstone Arsenal, where the design work
on military missiles had been done after
World War 2. Here, the original German
team, under Wernher Von Braun, had
designed the missiles deployed during
the Cold War, before transferring to the
civilian programme under NASA.
In the 1960s, Marshal had the biggest
computer centre in the eastern United
States to carry out the analysis of the
launch vehicles being designed. It had
three Univac and two IBM mainframes,
then the largest available, in a single
building. (From 1968 to 1970, I worked
at Marshal on the design of Apollo Skylab
for Teledyne Brown, who had the main
vehicle design contract for NASA. In the
stress of ce, we had electro-mechanical
Friden calculators. We programmed the
mainframes by carrying boxes of punched
cards across to the computer building.)
The Michoud Assembly Facility,
situated just east of New Orleans,
Louisiana, was administered at this
time by Marshal. Originally used to build
military vehicles in WW2 and the Korean
war, it was taken over by NASA in 1961
to build the larger Saturn vehicles. One
major addition to its facilities was a
vertical axis lathe with the capacity to
machine the 30-foot diameter (9.14 m)
structural rings needed. The Saturn V
design was chosen over a larger diameter
proposal partly because it would t
within the 12 m roof height at Michoud.
APOLLO SPACE PROGRAM
The facility has the advantage of easy
access to the Gulf, allowing barges to
carry completed stages to Kennedy for
assembly and launch.
The Johnson Space Center at Houston
is home to the astronaut training centre,
as well as mission control for all manned
space ights. It was set up in 1958 with
staff from Langley, becoming a major
facility with the announcement of the
Apollo program in 1961. It took on the
Mercury and Gemini control tasks prior
to the Apollo ights. It also housed
the quarantine facilities for astronauts
returning from the Moon and stores most
of the Lunar rock samples brought back.
It has links to tracking stations around
the world, including the large Parkes radio
telescope (featured in the lm ‘The Dish’
in 2000) in Australia and the Jodrell Bank
dish near Manchester.
NASA is not the huge organisation
it appears to be. Hundreds of private
companies carry out most of the work
under contract, ranging from aerospace
giants, such as Boeing on McDonald-
Douglas, to smaller companies, such
as my old employers Teledyne Brown
Engineering, which has been involved
in spacecraft design since the 1950s.
More recently, NASA facilities have
been opened up to the growing numbers
of private space projects, which are
becoming the future of the industry.
The rst full-duration ring of the S-II ight
stage occurred at Mississippi Test Facility,
now known as NASA Stennis Space Center.
(Image courtesy of NASA)
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