"Amiable Strangers"
Three distinct personalities, one goal: reach the moon.
- By Michael Klesius
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 21, 2009
NASA
The Apollo 11 astronauts walk past the base of the mammoth Saturn V rocket in early June, a few weeks before it propelled them to the moon. In the foreground, Bill Schick, Apollo Test Conductor, leads the crew around the launch pad during a walk-through emergency egress test. Armstrong would later tell biographer James Hansen, “In the first stage, the Saturn V noise was enormous, particularly when we were at low altitude because we got the noise from seven and a half million pounds of thrust plus the echo of that noise off the ground that reinforced it. After about thirty seconds, we flew out of that echo noise and the volume went down substantially. But in that first thirty seconds it was very difficult to hear anything over the radio—even inside the helmet with the earphones. It was considerably louder than the Titan. In the first stage, it was also a lot rougher ride than the Titan. It seemed to be vibrating in all three axes simultaneously.”
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Comments (1)
While the astronauts were deserving heros of the Apollo project your series needs a section on one person in particular, George M. Low. It was he who met the challange of the disastrous fire that killed three astronauts and brought together the science and engineering that made the capsule workable.
George was originally brought from the Cleveland NASA lab to the Office of Manned Space Flight by Abe Silverstine. After the fire he was transferred to Houston to take over the design of the capsule. Without him the Moon landing may never have happened. After the landing and the instigation of the Space lab project he was made Deputy Administrator of NASA. His life story would be worth an article.
Posted by Robert E. Blue on June 24,2009 | 12:16 PM