Brand had been backup CMP for Apollo XV, and was still the backup commander for the last two Skylab flights scheduled for the second half of 1973. The backup crew for ASTP was Alan Bean, Jack Lousma and Ron Evans. Bean and Lousma were also assigned to the forthcoming second manned flight for Skylab. Ron Evans had just finished Apollo XVII. ASTP offered an opportunity for a full support team. Bob Crippen, Dick Truly, Bob Overmeyer and Carol Bobko, joined the program in 1969 after cancellation of the DOD program, known as the Manned Orbital Laboratory.
Bob Obermeyer would prepare and be the technical advisor in the Soviet MCC during the flight. Crippen, Truly, and Bobko would be capcoms. All of them would serve in many other ways over the course of the next two-and-a-half years.
As a first for me, I introduced the crewmen assigned to ASTP at a February first press conference. This was a full load of very talented pilots and they would add considerable value across our technical team. The press conference also gave Slayton the opportunity to recognize Dr. Berry, of MSC, and Dr. Van Camp, of Mayo Clinic, for their efforts leading to his return to flight status.
1973 brought name changes to two institutions, very close to my everyday work life. President Johnson died on January 22, 1973. The Manned Spacecraft was renamed in his honor, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. This was made effective in February and celebrated in August 1973. President Johnson had been a very key participant in the startup of the manned space program, the Apollo XI goal and in the locating of MSC in Houston. People were proud to have the name Johnson Space Center, JSC. During the same year, North American Rockwell changed its name to Rockwell International. North American Aviation had a long and illustrious run in the history of aviation, producing forty-two thousand military aircraft between 1935 and 1945.
Later in May, the Soviets introduced their crews, Alexi Leonov and Valerie Kubasov as the prime crew. Leonov had flown one Voshkod flight and conducted their first EVA. Kubasov had served in back up roles in Soyuz 5 and 6. The prime crew for a precursor mission was Anatoly Filipchenko and Nicolai Rukavishnikov. Filipchenko was back up for Soyuz 4 and flew as the command pilot for Soyuz 7. Rukavishnikov flew on Soyuz 10. The Soviets also had a support team of cosmonauts who had not yet flown – Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Yuri Romanenko, Aleksandr Ivanchenkov and Boris Andrea. All combined, this was a very competent “A” team of highly skilled crewmembers.
The March 1973 meeting was a full meeting including all the working groups and it was held in Houston from March fifteenth to thirtieth, 1973. As a result of the crew announcement in January, General Shatalov, now the head of the Cosmonauts at Star City, joined this meeting to begin to define the crew training process. He and Bob Overmeyer started the development of the “Crew and Ground Personnel Training Plan” ASTP document numbered 40 700. This document would define the training content for each of the three training exercises in each country, a total of six sessions. The cosmonauts would visit in July based on the assumption that the Soyuz crew assignment would be made before that time. The astronauts were to visit Star City in the fall. I had met General Shatalov earlier in the October 1970 meeting. He did the familiarization ride with me in the Soyuz simulator. He was impressive and with a ready explanation of the workings of Soyuz. Most recently, he and two other cosmonauts had flown together in Soyuz 10, docked and flew around the Salyut station.
WG 1 had some solid accomplishments and they agreed to:
Exchange of specialists to observe and participate in the MCCs before and during the mission.
Conduct the joint work of medical doctors
Prepare the crew and build the crew activities plan
Review the scientific experiments and training schedule was conducted with the technical directors.
More study was needed for the contingency return of a mixed crew and a decision was planned at the next meeting, during the summer.
Pete Frank, WG1, confirmed the guidelines for mission planning, specifically timing of orbital events for rendezvous, Soyuz propulsion maneuvers, docking orbit, inclination of the orbit, and time of the US launch at seven-and-a-half hours after the Soyuz launch. And confirmed that both sides would use the same math models for the atmosphere and gravity field. Development of the new control center interaction plan would contain all of the necessary voice and data traffic between the control centers.
The Technical Directors agreed that, during the mission period, the Flight Directors would be primary for decisions and the Technical Directors are in an advisory role. We also agreed to have a scheduled phone call between the Technical Directors every two weeks starting on April twenty-fourth. This is a reflection of the growing amount of traffic between all the working groups and provides a regular opportunity to engage.
WG2 discussed the tracking orientation requirements. This lead to a planned exchange of external materials to test for unwanted reflections in the optical tracking phase and added spacecraft lights to the planned exchange. They also conducted the PSR (preliminary systems review) of the docking targets on Soyuz and for the NASA fixture that would assure correct target placement.
WG3 worked the subject of the interface seals for the docking systems and then on to testing of the exchanged interface seals. The seals were specified to work over a wide range of temperatures and were giving our side some difficulties in meeting the specs. One action item from the docking system PSR, regarding inadvertent release of structural latches was reviewed and some further analysis was planned. WG4 continued discussion of signal characteristics for the radios and compatibility testing. The plans for communication lines and networks between control centers were regularly reviewed as the requirements definition matured over time. The preliminary design review of the VHF/FM radio was conducted. Training for the Soviet specialists involved in the testing of the VHF/AM radios at the Grumman Aerospace Company in Bethpage, New York, was scheduled to begin on April thirtieth.
WG5 made progress on life support compatibility, flammability safety and crew transfer procedures. The Soviets discussed the changes being made in the Soyuz oxygen regeneration system. And because of the higher O2 concentration in the docking module, all of their camera equipment, flight suits and electrical equipment exposed to the environment would have to be retested for safety in a fifty percent oxygen environment. We sent some of the material that we had developed for our space coveralls to assist the Soviets in their design to protect against flammability of their unpressurized clothing. In the end, they developed their own flight coverall material.
This was a full agenda and all of the subjects were advanced if not yet completed.
Earlier in this text, I outlined some of the differences and mysteries about how the Soviet side was organized and performed their work. In our programs, it is an integral part of our regular routine to visit the contractor plants where the hardware is being fabricated and tested. It allows the importing of those insights into our everyday consideration of decisions. It is always refreshing to look at the growing and evolving machinery. It is especially mandatory for the men who will strap on these machines to see, touch and feel the specific hardware they will fly in. More than mockups, more than “just like,” it must be the real thing. The arrival of the crews made that discussion imminent. Opening that discussion required a first move and we offered a tour of the Downey plant to Bushuyev and his delegation. Once opened, we asked about a reciprocal visit.
It became clear that a visit to his factory was a problem for Bushuyev. He could not make that happen. I don’t recall the sequence but, at either this meeting or the next one, he offered a visit by our delegation and the crews separately to the Soviet launch site where the spacecraft would be open to the crew. We would still tour the Downey plant, and the schedule was set for July. We added a visit to the KSC launch site for our delegation and separately one for the crews. This “compromise” satisfied our goal of access to the real flight hardware.
Somewhere in these few months, Chet Lee and I opened up the subject of a mid-term review by t
he senior leadership in NASA and the Soviet academy. We had already introduced the subject of a joint Flight Readiness Review (FRR) in June before the July 1975 flight. The idea of a mid-term review was to keep senior leadership on both sides engaged in a face-to-face project assessment, about halfway between the April 1972 meeting and the joint FRR, estimated to be in late June 1975. Without a mid-term, it would be more than three years between senior leadership face-to-face engagement. Too long a time. After more discussion of the value to both sides, Chet Lee took the initiative to propose it to our NASA HQ. It was soon agreed and was proposed to Academician Keldysh for a fall 1973 meeting.
Full Scale Apollo/Soyuz Mockup
We also had an opportunity to participate in an international event and call attention to the progress being made in ASTP. By mutual agreement in the PAO subgroup during December 1972, the two sides committed to build a full-scale mockup of the Apollo-Soyuz docked together. The purpose was to demonstrate the progress on ASTP by displaying this mockup at the May1973 Paris Air show. This turned out to be an excellent opportunity to focus attention on the project and its launch in 1975. Chuck Biggs, of the MSC PAO Office, was the point man for all of the arrangements for building the mockup and its display at the Air Show. Rockwell volunteered to build the mockup. And although we were late in identifying this possibility, the Air Show organization responded graciously and constructively, making room for the display with the mockup by co-opting some of the parking lot. It was heralded by some in the press as “the focal point for the Thirtieth Paris Air Show.” The Apollo-Soyuz was on display on May twenty-fifth to June third, 1973.
There was another key player in this venture. Larry Griffin, twin brother of Gerry Griffin, was active duty Air Force back from his tour as a forward observer pilot in Vietnam. Since the Air Force was beginning to prepare for their role in Shuttle operations, Larry Griffin was assigned to my office to help transition experience from NASA and JSC program operations. Larry had a great flying experience base to help with the 747 transport of the model from California to Paris. The trip even included a “show the flag, low altitude pass” over the city of Paris. You might wonder how I liked the Air Show. Well, I never saw it. The rest of my job, in the form of Skylab, claimed its rightful attention. The Skylab flight schedule began in May 1973 and the last of the manned visits landed in February 1974. This flight period contained some very tense weeks and it coincided with critical milestones in a busy ASTP year.
Skylab 1
I was at KSC for the launch of the Skylab workshop, our first U.S. Space Station. This launch was to be followed on the next day by the first crew, commanded by Pete Conrad with Paul (PJ) Weitz and Dr. Joe Kerwin. The launch was beautiful and awe-inspiring as they always are.
The pre-programmed commands from the SIB Instrument Unit began the process of waking up the workshop’s systems. One radiator cover away, four sections of the payload shroud away and the rotation of the telescope from forward to the side of the docking adapter readied the Skylab to receive our CSM on the nose of the assembly. In thirty minutes or so, the ship started to give out the early signals of distress. The solar arrays and the meteoroid shield both had erratic and confusing telemetry indications. One indicated a partial deployment, and another that both solar wings were not still attached. Don Puddy’s team in MCC anticipated that there were at least two problems. The possibility that both solar panels had failed would cut the onboard power drastically. The ATM arrays also provided five kilowatts. And, the loss of the micrometeoroid shield would fairly quickly result in high heating on the sun side. (Normally, the vehicle flies in the solar inertial mode where one side of the structure is always pointed towards the sun.) An unexpected indication from an accelerometer at the time of maximum dynamic pressure was found in a post launch data review. This suggested a failure of some part of the structure. Soon enough, temperatures on the external structure started to rise. Without a fix and in the same attitude, internal temps were calculated to reach seventy-seven degrees Celsius (one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit) and one hundred sixty-five Celsius (two hundred ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit) on the outer skin. Some of the rate gyros were not averaging as they should and caused excessive usage of the nitrogen gas. It was decided to delay the crew launch by five days.
The heating and projected internal temperatures were the dominant problem for the operations team, with the HOSC fully engaged and contributing. The MCC flight control team did a great job of improvising around the bad data from the rate gyroscopes. They used the power received by the solar panel to estimate pitch up from the solar inertial and skin temps on the opposite sides to judge the roll. Calculation of momentum let them approximate yaw. They had to get the vehicle out of full solar inertial and find an attitude that provided sufficient power but was better for reducing internal temperatures. A pitch up attitude of about forty-five degrees seemed to be the best compromise; it was enough power to charge the batteries to get through the next night pass and stabilized the internal peak temperatures forty-two degrees Celsius (one hundred eight degrees Fahrenheit). There was work for everybody. How did the heat affect the rest of the provisions onboard? What should be resupplied? How to shade the ship? How to get more power? We had other subjects to address back in Houston, like the stowage in the CM for the rescue trip in a matter of days.
I remember George Merrick, of Rockwell, and Chet Lee being on the plane ride back to Houston after launch. We were all relatively unfamiliar with Skylab, but knew that there were two airlocks for exposing experiments, on the solar side and the anti-solar side of the ship. This seemed like a gift from above for the heating problem. Why not devise an umbrella of sorts that could be stored in one of the airlock boxes and extended into space to provide shade? The more we talked about it the better it sounded. When we got back to Houston, people had already thought of it but the frontrunner candidate was a standup EVA in the CSM open hatch and a wand-type device to attach it somewhere to the external structure. There were several good candidates and at least two came right down to the wire. At MSC, Jack Kinsler, of parachute competence, and Don Arabian, of getting-it-done competence, prevailed and so did the parasol. The box was about four feet long and about eight to nine inches on a side. It was this box and the many other new tools stowed under the couches that gave the CSM team and me a fit in trying to stay within the allowable center of gravity limits for safe uprighting of the capsule in an abort. And then we had to work at expanding those limits. Rusty Schweikart did a great job of representing the crew and prepping them for the parasol deployment.
Skylab Cutaway View
SL 1 Workshop launch
Skylab 2
Pete, PJ and Joe lifted off on May twenty-fifth, ten days late and loaded for an exciting trip. The probe and drogue docking took five attempts. We were getting a message that it was time to move to a new design. Most of my mission – following time was spent in the Mission Evaluation Room (MER). It was gratifying to see problem solving from that end of our system. The flight control team, the new Flight Directors and the HOSC team were impressive in how they handled this near-Apollo-XIII start to our new space station.
Skylab 2 Off the “Milkstool” on Pad
Parasol in Work
When the crew arrived at Skylab, they flew a planned external inspection of the whole lab. Pete reported, “Solar wing 2 is gone, it’s off the bird” and, “Solar wing 1 is partially deployed, there is a bulge of meteoroid shield under it in the middle, and holding it down,” and “the air lock is free of debris.” When the inspection fly-around was completed, Conrad was optimistic that they could clear the solar array wing from the hatch in standup EVA. Weitz stood up in the hatch, while Kerwin held on to him, and Conrad piloted the CSM. They just could not pull the solar array up, it was being held by the strap from the meteoroid shield. By mid-afternoon on the May twenty-sixth, the crew was in the workshop and it was warm enough to force them to the cooler docking adaptor module occasionally.
The parasol wen
t out according to plan and when it was first deployed, Conrad reported that it was only covering two-thirds of the intended area. The ground was confident that as the material warmed up that it would gradually extend and cover what it was planned for. By the twenty-ninth, the cooling down was proceeding and the Huntsville engineers calculated that it would soon stabilize at twenty-six degrees Celsius, about eighty degrees Fahrenheit. The crew then went into actively performing their major experiments – medical tests, solar observations and preparations for earth resources tasks. One of the earth resources experiments involved decreasing the sunlight on the solar panels and going to batteries for the extent of the pass. Four batteries dropped off-line and the flight controllers were only able to restore three of the four. One battery is worth two hundred fifty watts.
Skylab 2 in Flight After Workshop Repair
The next major activity was to start on the plan to clear and erect the solar array panel; the crew rehearsed all this inside the workshop with Kerwin in a suit. Again, voice communications with MCC aided by TV coverage confirmed that the crew was ready to try freeing the solar array. The geometry on the outside can be thought of with the parasol being at the top of the workshop. The solar array wing was ninety degrees from the airlock that the parasol was deployed at. At first, Kerwin had a lot of trouble because he just couldn’t restrain himself to one position and he was having trouble getting the cutter on the strap that was holding the solar wing down and against the fuselage. Kerwin discovered if he shortened his space suit tether he was able to get the cutter device in place and cut the strap. Kerwin and Conrad went to pull the solar array wing up and very soon it just popped up and it was now in place, looking fine to the crew. This restored about twenty-five percent of the total original power in the workshop.
Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program Page 29