‘And if nothing big happens?’ Kolff asked.
‘Something big always happens,’ Von Braun said.
The Germans were stunned after they and the Army experts had developed a set of rockets with enormous power and a body of compact scientific instruments to ride atop the rockets and send back to Earth data concerning the upper atmosphere. This beautiful and sophisticated arrangement of equipment carne close to what Kolff had been dreaming of, and one afternoon he showed Von Braun a set of calculations: ‘With this, and just a little more boost, we could throw that science package right out of the atmosphere and into Earth orbit.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Von Braun snapped. ‘Not where people can hear.’
But someone at Huntsville did hear, not this specific conversation but others which had idly speculated upon the power of the new rockets, and on the eve of test-firing the package, a harsh warning came down from the Department of Defense at Washington, signed by the Secretary himself:
In firing the test rocket you are to take every precaution to ensure that no part of the rocket or its payload escapes into outer space. International consequences would be grave if this were to happen. Every member of the team will be responsible to see that it does not.
So the American capacity to loft an object into space, where it would orbit the earth at an altitude of about a hundred and twenty miles and stay there for years, untouched by storms or rust or the decay of its power supply, was killed before it had a chance to demonstrate its ability.
The Germans did not despair. Quietly and with remarkable skill they turned their attention to that chain of almost insurmountable problems which would enable them to throw into the air not some small device weighing three pounds, but a monstrous space vehicle weighing twenty-five tons. The burning interest of men like Kolff could not be quenched by directives from Washington.
Occasionally, just occasionally, they had to face the fact that whereas their Peenemünde team was accomplishing miracles at Huntsville, at other bases about the nation American scientists, with no help from any Germans, were accomplishing equal results. ‘I doubt that their rockets will fly,’ some of the Germans predicted, but Kolff, having listened attentively to what General Funkhauser had reported about American industry, suspected that with or without the Germans, America was going to solve the rocket problem.
But when one after another of the American rockets fizzled, he noticed that the authorities kept coming down to Alabama to consult with Von Braun, and he realized that at last his leader, whom he admired so intensely, was recognized as essential to the American effort. And because he was Von Braun’s engineering genius, he was essential also.
Therefore, when he finished his work at the Redstone laboratories, always moving his great design of a master rocket ahead inch by inch, he returned to Monte Sano and its neat German community with a sense of deep satisfaction. His wife had a secure home now, much better than the farmhouse she had shared with cows in Pomerania, and his son had a proud position in the school band: youngest member and best trumpeter.
And then one night he climbed the hill with disastrous news. Assembling the Peenemünde people, he told them, ‘Professor Mott has been fired.’
Yes, the fine young engineer who had searched Europe for them, who had herded them to safety at the village near Munich and inducted them into American life at El Paso, was no longer needed by the Army. A delegation of Monte Sano Germans formed immediately and drove down into Huntsville to the house the Motts had rented, and there they found Stanley and Rachel sitting disconsolately in the middle of their austere living room, facing the Mondrian prints they had brought with them from El Paso.
‘We’ll go on strike!’ Kolff said, and five men who had learned English because Rachel had been so generous with her time assented.
‘Don’t be foolish,’ Mott interrupted. ‘I’ve never been an Army man. Just a civilian employee. And now my employment’s ended.’
‘But you saved us all,’ Liesl Kolff cried.
‘And we will fight for you now,’ her husband vowed.
The protests were prolonged and heartfelt. These Germans knew they were of value to America and were able to contribute that value only because Stanley Mott had championed them against enormous odds. He had found them, saved their lives, and delivered them to the laboratories of the New World. Now they would defend him.
Even Wernher von Braun made representations to the Army command, who replied that Mott was merely one more civilian whose job had been completed, and he must go. Frantic calls to universities and other learned institutions proved that the scientific explosion which was about to overtake America had not yet begun. ‘We can’t even find jobs for our doctoral candidates,’ one graduate school reported. ‘We’re advising them to go into high-school teaching.’ Mott, with only an M.S., had little bargaining power.
To his surprise, Rachel was remarkably philosophical about his dismissal. ‘You know what the old general told us when he was ousted: “War promotes, peace demotes.” ’ She assured Stanley that if they did have to settle for a high-school job, no matter where, she was sure that she and the boys could adjust, and without knowing where they were to go, she started packing.
It was Dieter Kolff who saved them, or rather his wife, for Liesl heckled her husband incessantly: ‘You cannot allow these good people who saved our lives … how many times …’ At this point in her sentence she would stand with her heavy arms cocked at an aggressive angle, her stubby hands on hips that grew broader year by year, and demand to know what he proposed doing.
What he did was use the telephone at the base to call General Funkhauser out at Allied Aviation: ‘General, the wonderful young man who saved us both, he’s being fired.’ When Funkhauser established that the man was Professor Mott he exploded, causing the phone to rattle, and three days later, in the Allied four-engine plane, he came roaring in to Huntsville. Within minutes he was meeting with the Motts and Kolff in the latter’s office.
‘I can’t give you a job right now with Allied,’ he said as he stalked about the room. ‘But if we did have a job opening’—he pronounced it chob—‘I thought you might like to know how highly we prize a fine engineer like you. Guess what our salary would be?’
Mott was too humiliated to play games, so he gave an abrupt, absurd figure: ‘Fifteen thousand?’
‘Eighteen,’ Funkhauser said in volatile German. ‘And I assure you of this, young man. There is going to be a scientific awakening in this country—aviation … atomic power … space. Things you and I haven’t dreamed of yet. And when that happens, men like you are going to be at a premium.’
He dropped into a chair, grasped the arms, and stared at Mott as if he were a horse to be traded. ‘You’re a commodity. What can we do today with a commodity?’
Suddenly he jumped up, pointed an accusing finger at Kolff, and cried again in German, ‘Stupid, why didn’t you think of it?’
‘Of what?’
‘Those fellows in Hampton, Virginia! They’re always looking for men exactly like Mott.’ He grasped Mott’s arm and said, ‘You are of enormous value, young man, we’ll prove it.’ Grabbing for a telephone, he arranged a meeting for that afternoon, then told Dieter, ‘You’re flying with us.’
During the short flight to Virginia the two Germans reminded Mott of the extraordinary group of people he was about to meet: ‘The National Advisory Committee for Aero-nautics—NACA, with each letter pronounced—is like nothing else in America. A board of twelve leading experts who serve without pay. They hire eight thousand extremely bright engineers and theoreticians to investigate flight—airplane engines, airplane design, airport facilities, new metals, new fuels. If America is preeminent in aviation, it’s because of NACA.’
‘Would I fit in?’ Mott asked. ‘I’ve never had advanced courses in aviation.’
‘You’d be ideal, Stanley,’ Dieter said, patting him on the knee. ‘From what I’ve heard of NACA, it doesn’t go looking for aviation experts. It hires the
most brilliant engineers it can find and turns them loose. Your wide background is what they’re looking for.’
Funkhauser interposed an additional consideration: ‘Stanley, we’re entering the age of space. We need people who can think about bold new horizons. Americans equal to Germany’s Oberth and Russia’s Tsiolkovsky. You know who they are?’
‘I do.’
‘Good. You’re far ahead of the others.’ He winked at Kolff. ‘NACA doesn’t know it needs this young man, Dieter, but we know it needs him.’
Mott’s introduction to NACA was disarming: a clutter of unimpressive buildings not far from the James River, a panel of four intense specialists, a series of penetrating questions. ‘You come highly recommended,’ the spokesman said. ‘Was it really you who saved the Peenemünde documents?’
‘It was,’ Funkhauser said. ‘I searched all over Germany for him, and he searched for me.’
‘And what were your main courses of study?’
‘Mechanical engineering, materials, structures.’
‘Excellent,’ and the spokesman explained the philosophy of NACA, a philosophy which had enabled the agency to pioneer far more than half the discoveries that had made flight possible, profitable and safe: ‘We like to bring in engineers who’ve had wide experience in general principles. Who know what a vector is, a slide rule. And we put them to work on every conceivable type of problem until they appreciate the complexity of flight, trusting that they’ll apply what they know to what we don’t know.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘When can you start?’
‘Tomorrow,’ General Funkhauser said.
‘We could use you tomorrow,’ the NACA man said.
‘That sounds wonderful, sir, but I have to close out my duties at Huntsville.’
‘Why? They fired you, didn’t they?’
‘I can’t just walk out.’
The NACA men nodded, almost approvingly; if this man was loyal to people who had fired him, he would certainly be loyal to those who hired him. ‘Agreed,’ the chairman said. ‘Start work as soon as you can get here. But by the way, where did you say you were educated?’
‘Bachelor’s, Georgia Tech. Master’s, Louisiana State.’
With spontaneous enthusiasm the chairman rose, reached across and shook Mott’s hand. ‘That’s a spectacular combination. We have seven superbrains in NACA. Three from Louisiana State, two each from Purdue and Georgia Tech.’ When he led Mott toward the door, he added, ‘We don’t want you to come here just to work. We want you to become one of our next superbrains.’
Mott halted and his throat choked up, but after a moment he asked, ‘Could I call my wife?’ The NACA men heard him say, ‘Better than you could have dreamed, darling. They’re shifting us into the fast lane.’ She must have responded with a question about opportunities in the new job, for he replied, ‘Unlimited,’ and hung up.
When Mott reported to NACA he was assigned to the operation that stood at the very heart of Langley’s contribution to the nation, the vast wind tunnel in which models of the best airplanes in the world were tested and improved upon. It was a huge white building, two blocks long, of astonishing shape: ‘Looks like a monster doughnut covered with confectioner’s sugar that somebody squashed from two sides so the hole almost disappeared.’
The speaker was a white-haired engineer named Harry Crampton, who had worked in the smaller Langley tunnels for thirty-one years and who now supervised the masterpiece. ‘We call it the Sixteen-Foot Tunnel,’ he said, pointing to a diagram of the multimillion-dollar center, ‘because here, where the wind reaches its maximum speed, beyond Mach 1, the cross section is sixteen feet. That’s enormous. You can place your model in the center and it will avoid turbulence occurring along the walls.’
He led Mott into the tunnel itself, a cavernous affair with enormously thick and polished walls. Its crushed-doughnut design meant that it had two fairly long straightaways, four abrupt 90° corners, and two short connecting arms. ‘A very narrow capital O might be a better description,’ Crampton said, and Mott, in his desire to be cooperative, made his first mistake: ‘Some scientist did a good job here.’
Crampton stopped, stiffened, and in the gloom of the great tunnel, said, ‘Scientists are men who dream about doing things. Engineers do them. This was designed by engineers, built by engineers, and is run by engineers. You’re an engineer, young fellow, and you’re to be proud of it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Mott said.
‘You thought that if an engineer was real good, he became a scientist. It’s the other way around. If you want to be an engineer but find you have ten thumbs, you become a scientist.’
He led Mott on a walk-through of his tunnel, counterclockwise from where it narrowed. At the first squared-off bend stood an axle from which protruded twenty-five huge wooden propeller blades, so exquisitely shaped that they cleared the tunnel walls by less than an eighth of an inch. When they revolved at furious speed they created a massive movement of air, and only a few feet farther on, a second set of blades caught this moving air, accelerated it, and whipped it down the back straightaway at a speed of over five hundred miles an hour.
‘Twenty-five blades in the first set, twenty-six in the second,’ Crampton said. ‘Why?’
‘To avoid resonance,’ Mott answered quickly, and the old engineer was pleased, for if the sets had been identical, and rotating at their enormous speeds, the moment would come when they would spin in harmony and set up a vibration that would tear the building apart. With a 25-26 ratio, that harmonic resonance could be avoided.
The propeller blades were made of a handsome white spruce, and Crampton asked why, but Mott could not answer. “I’ll give you time to think about it,’ the older man said as he led Stanley between the stationary blades and into the long straightaway. ‘Here’s the secret of any wind tunnel. The air comes roaring off the propellers, and you gradually broaden the diameter of the tunnel so that a huge mass accumulates, traveling relatively slowly but at high pressure. Now, here you suddenly constrict the diameter, so that the same mass of air has to rush through a sharply diminished opening. It must go faster. It reaches the speed of sound, and then as the diameter opens up, the speed of the air actually becomes supersonic’ And when Mott studied the interior of this great twisting worm, he realized that in no portion did the diameter remain the same for long; it was always either expanding or contracting.
‘What we’re doing is playing games with our mass of air. Slow it down, rush it ahead. The result? When it comes past the critical point, it’s a monster gale.’ Like a proud parent, Crampton looked at the test section, then laughed. ‘But at the same time, the air is playing games with us.’
‘In what way?’
‘You understand what the sound barrier is?’
‘Mach 1. About seven hundred and sixty miles per hour at sea level.’
‘It varies according to temperature.’
‘I thought temperature and altitude,’ Mott said.
‘Many people do. Only temperature. Now think a moment. The higher you go close to Earth the colder it gets. But the governing factor is temperature.’
Crampton leaned against the tunnel wall, polished like a jewel to allow the air to pass with minimum friction, and pointed to the handsome metal pylon to which vehicles to be tested were attached. ‘Seems incredible, but three years ago we could move air past that stand at Mach 0.9, just under the speed of sound, or Mach 1.1, just over. But the tunnel would not allow us to study what happened close to Mach 1, which was where the mysteries happen in high-speed aviation. Breaking the sound barrier it was called. Many judged it to be impossible. Too many planes went haywire when they attempted it.’
‘Three years ago you couldn’t do it. Can you do it now?’
Crampton ignored the question. He tapped the carefully tapered sides and said, ‘They must not allow any of the high-speed air to escape, because that’s how we build up our miles-per-hour. But as the air approaches Mach 1 in this fin
al constriction, so much accumulates in such a little space that it begins to vibrate, choke, flutter. It allows us to photograph nothing.’
‘But just beyond Mach 1 it calms down?’
‘Yes. We knew that if we could get the plane through that barrier, supersonic flight would be more predictable. This wind tunnel proved that. So the barrier became a terrible psychological and physical problem. I have some old schlieren photos in my office showing you how terrible. The whole tunnel seemed to vibrate and we honestly believed that no airplane could pass through and survive.’
‘How was it handled?’
‘Simple. A determined pilot named Chuck Yeager took his X-1 up to a great height, where the atmosphere wasn’t too heavy, and flew right through the barrier, but in our tunnels we still couldn’t analyze the science of it, and when other pilots tried to break through it, they crashed.’
‘I always thought the English broke the sound barrier. I saw this movie in which Ralph Richardson’s son …’
Crampton groaned and lowered his head, as if bearing a savage burden, one often borne before. ‘Movies are going to destroy human intelligence. That damn-fool movie dealt with crazies who took their planes up and dived them, without control, until they accumulated speeds that tore them apart. Chuck Yeager took his X-1 up and flew it, under perfect control. All the difference in the world.’
‘Did you get the wind tunnel straightened out?’
‘Not me. A genius named John Stack.’ He paused to consider how he could best explain to Mott. Then pride captured him. ‘At NACA we solve everything, eventually. That’s our job, and now it’s yours.’
‘This time, how?’
‘Stack reasoned that if the tunnel was choking at Mach 1, it must be because it was receiving too much air. He concluded that we were feeding in much more than necessary, and it was his brilliant idea to come in here just before the throat and bleed off just enough of the supercharged air to allow the remainder to pass through without creating turbulence. Look at this photo.’ And he showed Mott a high-speed schlieren photograph of an unsatisfactory model perched atop a narrow steel pylon, more than a hundred minute wires leading from a hundred sensors mounted on various interior parts of the plane. It stood in the midst of a wind roaring past at Mach 1, with the air eddies magnificently depicted as they swirled about the uneven protuberances. Even Mott, untrained in wind-tunnel analysis, could see that the wing on this model created far too much turbulence. And what was remarkable, the general body of air, even at Mach 1, was orderly and in no way turbulent. Mr. Stack, whoever he was, had solved his problem and opened the pathway to the development of airplanes that could break through the sound barrier almost as undisturbed as a horse-drawn carriage heading for a country picnic in 1903.
Space: A Novel Page 26