There was an investigation board on the cause of the failure of the meteoroid shield. The design was such that the shield was supposed to fit very tightly against the external wall of the tank and stay that way through launch. However, it did have some gaps that were apparently measured preflight. This allowed the air rushing by the vehicle to build pressure under the meteoroid shield and blew it off the vehicle. As a result, part of it wrapped around the solar arrays and just broke the latches on the other solar array 2, which was now gone. The meteoroid shield was large and fairly limp, so it was not able to be rigged to the specifications.
In March of 1969, the Administrator, Tom Paine, had supported an open program with private communications limited to special medical situations or operational emergencies. If held, a summary of any private communications would be provided to the press. John Donnelly, Chief of PAO, opposed routine medical conference on a private loop. In March 1973, the current administrator Jim Fletcher allowed routine medical conferences on a private line and the flight surgeon would release a bulletin describing the same to the press. They also approved private communications “in matters of extreme emergencies.” They could be initiated by the crew or the ground and would be paraphrased for the press. Late on May twenty-eighth, Conrad asked for a private conference; he was asked if this was an emergency.
“It’s not any emergency right now,” replied Conrad. Bill Schneider, who was the program director at NASA Headquarters, approved the request.
The conference was planned for May twenty-ninth and it widened the rift between OMSF and PAO. Conrad apologized for the difficulties with the ergometer, which was used for astronaut exercise and in one of the medical experiments. Conrad also brought up the solar array deployment, the docking probe and workshop temperatures. When the news media got the summary, the immediate question was, “Where is the emergency?” As a result of this event, Capcoms were instructed to be sure to ask if an emergency exists before any other private communications. There was another way to communicate by voice from the astronauts to the ground. There was an onboard voice recorder running all of the time and it had the nondescript name of “Channel B.” In February, well before the flight at a press conference, Conrad told the press that they would receive transcripts of Channel B recordings.
Donnelly and Myers agreed to release all Channel B data, but exclude comments specifically on the medical experiments. The flight surgeon wanted to do this because the experiments involved other doctors who sponsored them and their comments would be solely directed at the content of the medical experiments. Low backed the doctors’ exclusions also. In discussing this with the crew, Conrad felt he was left in the dark sometimes about upcoming plans for flight events. For example, he learned about the EVA plans to free the solar panel during a birthday greeting from his wife. These restrictions really had an effect on the last Skylab mission, causing a real communication block between crew and ground. When operators start to bias their communications or to use an alternative communications like Channel B, it disrupts the normal open conversations between the astronauts and the ground. I recall that something like this happened on Apollo XV, and it could have caused an even larger problem.
When it came to physical exercise by the crew, the doctors at first wanted control of all physical exercise before and during the mission; that did not play well. And for Skylab, it was decided to leave to the astronauts the choice of how much P.E. to do. There was a metabolic experiment M171, and it had a prescribed routine. It was very difficult for the crew to perform the routine with the equipment that they had onboard. For example, both Weitz and Kerwin did not finish the exercise. Conrad did, but he complained that it was like a maximum workload for twenty minutes.
Joe Kerwin at the Skylab 500
During week two, the astronauts were able to use the ergometer in an unorthodox way, so that the doctors wanted another M171 test before the EVA. The crew was surprised at this and requested a private conference. Conrad felt that they were in excellent health and they wanted to exercise. When he ran M171 protocol in a different way he finished without difficulty. It was observed that the first three days were very hectic and the workload ended up being fatiguing. They had a holiday for most of June first, and it was on that day that crew conducted what they called the “Skylab 500.” This involved the crewman running on lockers in the workshop, in what was a free running sprint around the outer circumference of the free volume of the workshop.
Because of my location in the MER and because some of my time was back in the office, I missed all of the background on the dispute over the use of the air-ground loop and the problem with full disclosure to the media. This was being handled by the on-console team, as it should be. And most of it was in face-to-face discussions between the principals and not on the Flight Director loop. And it was not my issue to resolve as the spacecraft program manager. It did resurface in ASTP.
The crew of Skylab 2 returned after twenty-eight productive days in Skylab. Most significantly, the Skylab was recovered from imminent failure and stabilized. Plans, equipment and procedures were being readied to replace the parasol material with more capability to endure the longer-term effects of the solar environment. The twenty-eight days was a new U.S. record but it would be surpassed on the last two flights.
Skylab 3
The crew of the second mission to Skylab included Alan Bean (also backup to Stafford on ASTP), Jack Lousma and Owen Garriot. Because of early concerns about the recovery of Skylab, the launch had been moved up by three weeks. My station for the launch period was at KSC for the FRR, about two weeks before scheduled takeoff, and back at KSC for several days as the launch countdown begins. July twenty-eighth was the liftoff, and the ride up was nominal. Once on orbit, quad B developed a leak and the quad was shut down. It was confirmed by seeing particles out the window. There are four quads on the service module outer surface each with four thrusters. They are located ninety degrees apart. The spacecraft can be flown with two good quads and mission rules allowed continuation with one quad out of service. This was the first time in Apollo that we had an RCS leak.
Alan Bean on Astronaut Maneuvering Unit
The World in Jack Lousma’s Visor
Very quickly on orbit, Lousma developed motion sickness, with nausea. An onboard medication was taken and did some good. But, the condition returned for Lousma and, by dinnertime, all three were feeling the effects. Things did not improve on the next day and it was bad enough that the crew asked for a break and some bunk time. This crew also found what many others did – they did fine on the planned activities but when they had to find something or troubleshoot an unexpected problem, it took a surprisingly long time. By the third day, they were getting better and were back on the activation. Getting behind with the sickness and dealing with unexpected trouble-shooting had started a ripple effect of not eating or sleeping right. The crew worked at getting their routine back in sync.
Skylab was a different animal than most of our previous experience in human space flight. For the first time, the primary objective of the flight team was to deliver a certain amount of experiment time and associated data to the Principal Investigators for the solar science, the life sciences and the new field of remote measurement of earth resources. These were the major science areas that Skylab was designed to serve. The Apollo lunar surface science was the closest analog but it was a short time out of the entire mission duration. This objective was viewed as a contract to provide a certain level of service to the science community and it dominated the operation.
Just as the work was returning to normal, quad D leaked and we were concerned that there might be a generic problem in the two leaky quads that would show up in the other quads soon. Simulator runs showed that the two remaining good quads would be adequate for a deorbit. Engineering analysis lead us to conclude that it was not a systemic condition. The records from the loading confirmed that there was no contaminated oxidizer. We still believed that it was likely that the two leaky qu
ads could be used for deorbit, if necessary. The rescue capability of CSM 119 gave us the confidence that we still had another potential solution. And it gave us the time to fully understand what our remaining capabilities were with the two quad problems. From my vantage point in the MER, I was impressed at how much info on the leaks could be derived by the team, which was lead very effectively by Henry Pohl of Engineering.
Events proceeded at a fast pace. The EVA crew of Lousma and Garriott deployed a larger shade, made of longer lasting material and into a position over the parasol. The temperature inside dropped. This step left the crew mostly free to do their science work with the solar telescopes, earth resource observations, medical measurement and occasionally being a plumber or an electrician to keep the Skylab humming.
After the difficulties of a slow start, the crew seemed to exult in gaining on the planned timeline and logging more productive science time. The result exceeded the science contract and a new record of fifty-nine days duration was posted.
Skylab 4
NASA’s public reaction to the highly productive performance of the second crew was certainly to give them just praise, but it also raised the standard for the upcoming third visit to Skylab by Gerry Carr, Ed Gibson and Bill Pogue. And the content of the flight was increased accordingly. A newly discovered comet by the astronomer Lobas Kohoutek made its appearance in March 1973, eight months before Skylab 4. The best observation opportunity for Skylab would occur as it swung around the sun in December. So this assignment and its new maneuvering requirements were added to the flight. The man hours per day target for experiment time was raised to twenty-eight man hours, about a ten percent increase. The ATM program added twelve new joint observing programs. Ten to fourteen earth resources passes were added to the presently planned twenty. The new medical measurements were added. In almost three months of flight coming up, there will be more unplanned equipment repairs. In fairness to all, optimistic planning was the NASA MO. Aim high and you should get more results that you otherwise would. Another wild card was the matter of motion sickness and whether it would afflict this crew.
Final View of Skylab
The crew took off from Complex 39, Pad B, on November 16, 1973. The launch went well and in less than eight hours, the CSM was in position for docking. Again, the probe did not achieve capture. After two attempts, the crew initiated the hard docking technique and that was successful.
The crew took their prescribed anti-nausea medication, but it did not help Bill Pogue, he became nauseated and vomited a small amount. The crew requested a delay twice from the planned end of day status report and unfortunately decided to minimize Pogue’s condition as nausea only when they finally made their status report.
The spacecraft had the onboard voice recorder with the channel B. This channel recorded all the astronaut communications and dumped the contents to the ground. The internal crew discussion then resulted in a transcript in MCC within less than twenty-four hours. Their downplaying of Pogue’s problem became known and resulted in an admonition delivered by Al Shepard to “tell it straight.” And they did many times during the flight by using Channel B, the voice-dump with a built-in twenty-four-hour delay. This situation had to have been a downer for the crew and it probably inhibited their comments on the normal air to ground circuit, even in the case of the overload of work they were asked to do. They slept in the CSM the first night, as a precaution against moving around in the larger volume workshop, which was believed contributed to the likelihood of nausea.
Once they moved into the Workshop, activation began, and was immediately disrupted when iodine mix was dumped into the waste tank instead of the water tank. They did have an expected repair of the water coolant supply from the EVA suit. There were also some added girth measurements that also took a lot of time, as there was no preflight training for it. There was next a repair of a failed antenna that was on the earth’s side of the ATM. The repair resulted in half of the motion control capability restored, to the delight of the experimenters on the ground. A week into the flight, in a look back session over the first week, Carr explained that things were frantic and they were very frustrated that they were unable to keep up with the flight plan.
Once back at it, one of the control moment gyros (CMG) seized up. The gyros were the muscle of the attitude control system of the Workshop and they were backed up by a nitrogen gas and thruster system that had been used significantly during the early stabilization efforts. The flight controllers were working on procedures to operate in the degraded mode with one of the CMG’s inoperative. The crew continued to complain to MCC on Channel B, but that mode of communication had a limited audience and was delayed. It was certainly not as widespread as a primary air to ground communication loop. As an example of the crew difficulties, the teleprinter was an efficient way to send up changes to the checklist but a message that was three or four inches long on the teleprinter took thirty minutes to transcribe into the checklists. The program scientist, Bob Parker, estimated that the time spent on experiments was about twenty-five man hours per day, down ten percent from the planned rate.
The parahelion (the point of closest approach to the sun) was to occur on the twenty-eighth of December. In the Christmas day EVA, Carr and Pogue reloaded the ATM film, pinned the now functioning door open, then repaired a filter wheel and bent the shutter blade out of the way. Carr and Gibson performed another EVA on December twenty-ninth, specifically for comet observation and recording with hand held instruments. It should be noted that in the second half of December the crew kept up with timeline.However, the continuing sense of an overloaded timeline caused Carr to communicate his questions to the ground via the Channel B communication link. He wanted to know how they were doing. Did the single exercise take too much time? If the experiment program was behind, what can be done to close the gap? The ground also was inhibited by the open air to ground loop and they did not want to press the issue. In response they sent up a long teleprinter message trying to give an overall summary of where they were on the timeline. And they scheduled a debrief for December thirtieth on the open loop. The plan compared the experiment hours for Skylab 4 for just the second half of the first month and they were very close. This exchange made the parties wish they had done that earlier.
The flight controllers tried using heaters to warm the lubricating oil for the CMG. There was also a conference between all the crewmembers and all the experimenters. This was very good and helped to give both camps a better understanding of what had gone on and was coming in the future. Gibson spent a lot of time and even stretched his time trying to catch solar flares with the instruments and he finally did catch one in the last days of the mission and described it to the ground.
It was now time to deactivate Skylab and prepare for separation and entry. The CSM thrusters were used to increase the orbit altitude and added approximately five to eight years of on orbit time for the workshop. No one had any particular plan to use that time but it gave the maximum time possible. As they left, the vehicle was unpowered and left in a configuration with the docking port up, pointing away from Earth. During the period after deorbit and before entry, Carr was surprised because of the loss of attitude control of the CSM. He quickly switched over to the backup system. The crew landed safely after a record eighty-four days on orbit. No Skylab debriefings for me. It is time to recycle the clock to several months earlier in ASTP time and pick up the rest of the busy 1973 year.
Alex Tatischeff
I cannot exactly place when Alex Tatischeff showed up to help us with interpreter duties, but it was most likely during 1972. He was in his seventies and as soon as he showed up, I claimed him as my interpreter. He seemed happy with that. He had a courtly, gentlemanly manner about him and made a positive impression on all who met him. This was first impression, soon to be confirmed by various acts of kindness, thoughtfulness, caring and insights. They spread outward from Alex like rays from a light.
Alex was raised in an aristocratic family in the
Czar’s court. His father was the Czar’s ambassador to Germany. He was especially well versed in Russian history. He always differentiated between his country, Mother Russia, and the present “regime,” as he called it, as if it were a temporary condition. At the time of the revolution, Alex was about sixteen. He fled the country and escaped through the Caucusus. I only know a few facts about the next times of his life. He got to Paris somewhere in the ‘20s and lived by singing in cabarets. His thirties and forties are unrecorded by us. He arrived in America by the ‘50s and worked in the Agricultural Department until a Senator named Joe McCarthy came on the scene. His purge of Communists caught this Russian émigré’ in its sweep and he was extradited to somewhere. He showed up in the ‘70s as an interpreter, maybe via the State Department or the interpreter community. He said he was drawn to the ASTP venture to help his new country, America, do something out of this world with his birth country, Russia. A patriot, twice over.
Sometimes, I forgot Russia was his home, now long removed. We were walking through a palace in St. Petersburg that was designated as an “Institute of Friendship and Peace” by our hosts. This was a typical over-done title, much like the Communist slogans on the buildings. As we walked listening to the guide’s description, Alex leaned over towards me and whispered that his sister had once owned this place. He was connected, even if by the past. Whenever we walked through Moscow, he would likely be wearing his three-piece-suit and overcoat, tall and distinguished. Almost all of the “babushka ladies” who passed us would give this nod of respect to Alex. It was definitely not directed at me. It was as if they saw something in him, maybe something they had lost and still missed. Or maybe it was just my imagination. But it happened all the time.
Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program Page 30