“Yes, we've already tested for miscibility.”
“And there were no reactions at all.”
“None.”
“No temperature fluctuations, no pressure changes.”
“None.”
Roger grunted, like he was not totally convinced, then leaned back in his seat.
Mary felt lucky to be here, especially since her participation had originally not been authorized. Once the maiden test-firing of hydyne and been scheduled, Mary just assumed she would be allowed on the Hill to watch it. The company would be testing her invention, and in her mind it only made sense for the inventor to be present. Mary's written request for an authorization and pass, she felt, should have been routine. But the next day she received a visit from Tom Meyers, who gently apologized.
“Necessary personnel only,” he informed her. “We engineers don't get to visit the Hill very often. We're the ones who design the stuff, but a different crew does the testing.”8
“That's outrageous,” said Mary, her blood pressure quickly rising. “I invented this propellant! I need to see the test—to watch the results.”
Tom shook his head. “All you need to see is the data. Within twenty-four hours of the test they'll bring us a box full of charts and graphs with the results. If you're really an engineer, like Webber keeps insisting, you should understand that what you need is data. The smoke and fire of the test may be exciting to watch, but it's meaningless to an engineer.”
Of course, he had been right. There was no real reason for her to be present on the day they conducted the first full-up test of her propellant. All she really needed was the data—the thousands of numbers that would pour forth from the chart recorders indicating exhaust temperature, chamber pressure, flow rates, thrust, specific impulse, and so on. Numbers and data. What else was there?
Still, the billows of angry smoke, the torrents of high-speed flame, and Tyrannosaurus rex–like roar of the firing would have been great fun. Really great fun—so she decided not to let the issue rest. She pestered her supervisor endlessly to be given permission. When that didn't work, she pressured his supervisor, and then his supervisor, climbing the ladder of command rung by rung until she received the proper answer. Finally the word came down from upper management: “We're tired of being pestered by this lady. Just let her go!!”
Mary would never forget the first time she went to Disneyland. There was a moment—a brief moment of almost-spiritual transference. The kind of moment whose image glues itself to some secret spot on one's brain cells. For Mary, that indelible moment was the instant she crossed through the turnstile for the very first time, moving from the dreary, gray, asphalt-parking-lot world and into the vibrant, colorful, dreamlike world of Walt Disney's imagination. From night to day, from hell to heaven; it was a moment in time that would always stand out in her memory. Today turned out to be just such a day.
There was a parking lot a hundred feet from the main gate. Their car pulled in and stopped, and all four got out.
The Santa Susanna Field Laboratory consisted of 2,800 acres of knobby hills, buttresses and bowls.9 Had this been the Old West, there would have been dozens of perfect hiding places for cattle thieves and bank robbers. By the time the 1950s rolled around, there were a hundred buildings, blockhouses, and test stands scattered over those 2,800 acres, all well hidden from each other in the many deep topographical undulations. To get from one place to another, it was best to catch the “Santa Su Bus,” a converted World War II vintage ambulance that ran a circuitous route throughout the compound twenty-four hours a day. If you missed the bus, you had to walk.10
Today, they missed the bus.11
Mary's three companions started walking up a narrow asphalt road. She had not worn her best walking shoes, but she did her best to keep up. Fortunately her love of hiking and backpacking had kept her in shape, and when the gradient steepened, she managed to overtake and pass the three men. Chaparral lined both sides of the road, and the smell of sage and mint mixed with the early-morning air to form a sensation of endless possibilities.
Mary walked another hundred yards, lengthening her lead over the technicians, and came to a place where the road leveled out at a small gap in the chaparral-covered sandstone knolls. Reaching the summit, Mary found herself standing above a magnificent bowl of rock and boulders, like a micro valley. Along one side of the bowl stood three mammoth liquid-fuel-engine test structures. Each one was a complicated matrix of steel I-beams, steel rods, steel platforms, steel buttresses, steel stairs, and an endless number of steel rivets holding the superstructure together. Mary had seen a number of grainy black-and-white photographs of these monoliths—three or four 8 × 10 prints were pinned up on the employee-lounge wall back at the office. Because she had seen pictures, she fundamentally knew what to expect. But it was quite another thing to see the test stands live and up close. She had pushed through the turnstile into Disneyland, and the image stole her breath.
And then she saw it: a Redstone A-7 engine mounted beneath one of the test stands. It stood there, patient and still, awaiting its master's instructions. The engine's bell nozzle pointed downward, as in flight position, aiming its business end toward a massive concrete blast deflection ramp.
But this was not just any Redstone A-7 engine; it was her Redstone A-7 engine.
“There you are,” she whispered to herself.
As Mary stood at the road's apex, observing the test stands and admiring her engine, the three technicians arrived. Two of them walked past her and headed downhill toward the blockhouse. The third man—the one who had driven their car—stopped and introduced himself.
“Hi. I'm Art Fischer.”
“I'm Mary Morgan.”
“Impressive, isn't it?”
“I want to live here.”
Art laughed. He always took pleasure in observing the look of awe that washed over an engineer's face when they saw the test stands for the very first time.
“We have your A-7 mounted on VTS-1.”
“VTS-1?”
“Vertical Test Stand One. The very first test stand built on the Hill.”
“Anything significant about that?”
“Yeah. We felt it would be good luck.”
Mary took a few more steps to position herself for a better view. She heard some laughter, which drew her attention to the narrow road that stretched between the test stands and the blockhouse. A pair of beat-up World War II surplus Jeeps appeared to be racing from the blockhouse to the stands. Both Jeeps were filled to capacity with well-dressed engineers.
“What are they doing?” she asked.
“Racing.”
The engines of both Jeeps sputtered and strained like they were on the verge of giving out, providing the vehicles a just-barely-there power level and giving Mary the impression of a competition between two struggling tortoises.
“Some race,” she said, shaking her head.
“Just watch.”
A few seconds went by, then suddenly the engines of both Jeeps roared to life with a newfound energy and muscle. The vehicles inexplicably accelerated like a couple of high-power drag racers, turning the struggling tortoises into carnivorous cheetahs. Moments later, the Jeeps reached the end of the road and braked to a tire-screeching stop. Far below, she could hear the drivers and riders laughing and whooping like school kids. Mary turned and gave Art a quizzical expression.
“Engineers. Deep down inside they're all frat boys.” He pointed to the test stand with the A-7 engine. “We have the liquid oxygen loaded for your test. The tank naturally vents off vapors, creating an invisible cloud of gaseous oxygen in the vicinity of the test stand. So when…”
“So when the Jeeps reach that point, their carburetors get a jolt of pure oxygen,” she finished, smiling.12
“Mrs. Morgan, welcome to the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.”
The garage-size blockhouse sat on a wide concrete pad, surrounded on three sides by the Oligocene knolls. Being the first such building at the SSFL, they called i
t Blockhouse Number 1. Uphill from it, a seasonal arroyo had once trickled spring runoff through the narrow canyon, meandering gently downward till it arrived at the pancake-flat San Fernando Valley. There it would sate the orange-grove fields secretly marked for destruction. The US government, along with its commercial partner North American Aviation, had paved over the arroyo with concrete and asphalt, diverting the runoff into storm drains. Where the water went after it entered the storm drains, no one could remember. The cement, the concrete, the asphalt, the water diversion—it was all transparent testament to humankind's peculiar need to rework nature's art.
The initial early-morning chill had vanished. It was September, and a Santa Ana condition was brewing, blowing the air hot and dry as it forced its way west. Unstoppable and shameless, the Santa Anas blustered up from the valley floor, turning the hillside sage into crisp kindling. Next to the blockhouse, a few hardy strands of fescue and weeds had managed to shimmy their way up through minute cracks in the concrete pad, where they awaited their herbicide fate. As Mary and Art arrived at the blockhouse, a tumbleweed rolled past. Two coffee-drinking, Kent-smoking men in their thirties were sitting outside at a card table, reading books. They wore the standard uniform of an aerospace engineer: white shirt, dark slacks, black leather shoes, dark tie. A black cat was lazing atop the card table, its eyes peacefully closed.
“Hi, Art,” said one of the men. “Who's this?”
“Mary Morgan. She's an engineer.”
“Actually, I'm an analyst.”
The second man spoke up. “What's an analyst?”
Mary had her answer ready. “An analyst is someone who does twice the work of an engineer but gets paid half as much.”
Both men seemed to understand. “Got it.”
“Be nice to her,” said Art. “She invented the cocktail you're burning today.”
Mary could see the change almost instantly on the men's faces. Their expressions went from “What on earth is this woman doing here?” to “I'm impressed.”
“Really. Well we'll do our best to make sure you have a successful test.”
Mary reached over to pet the cat. “Who's this?”
“That's Newton. He's our mascot here on the Hill.”
Newton responded to Mary's touch with a loud purr. He opened his eyes halfway to see who was paying so much attention to him, then went back to sleep.
The Santa Anas continued their bluster as the blockhouse clock ticked slowly onward. The firing had been scheduled for 10:00 a.m., but it was almost 2:00, and no one had any idea when the test would occur. Now Mary understood why everyone brought books to read; testing rocket engines was one of those hurry-up-and-wait activities.
“We're having some problems,” was all she was told.
Mary decided to take a walk.
The spacious concrete tarmac in front of the test stands was so new Mary could almost feel the exothermic reactions occurring just beneath her feet. The same thermodynamic equations used in rocket-propellant science were also used in calculating the rates of concrete curing.
Mary ignored the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign and approached the test stand. She wanted to touch the engine, to run her hands along its polished metal exterior. She had never been this close to a large liquid-propellant rocket engine before. Until now, her career had been nothing but paper and pencils and erasers and slide rules and chalk boards and equations and reference books and mechanical Fridens. Indoor fluorescent lighting, wooden and steel desks packed end-to-end, bridge games at lunch, and tedious staff meetings. But here was where everything came together: a real, live engine, twice the size of her little Volkswagen Bug, ready for its close-up. Massive and impressive, powerful and commanding, awesome and awe-inspiring. In short order, this engine would be ignited, its fuel and oxidizer force-fed into the combustion chamber, and it would pour forth exhaust gases so hot they could melt a car to mush in seconds.
As Mary got to within a hundred yards of the test stand, she realized her depth perception had been off. Everything was much larger than it appeared from four football fields away. The engine she had intended to reach out and touch turned out to be mounted thirty feet off the ground. To get closer, she would have to climb the test-stand stairway. She looked up to see where that route would take her, and then her eyes met those of two technicians perched two stories above her. One of them shouted down.
“Miss, you're not allowed in this area without a hard hat.”
The second man said, “Actually, you're not allowed in this area even with a hard hat. Who are you?”
“Mary Morgan,” she shouted back. “I invented this new propellant we're testing today.”
The first man pointed to the blockhouse. “You need to be over there. This is no place for a woman in a skirt!”
Then both men turned and disappeared into the metallic labyrinth of girders and beams, guy wires and gussets, rivets and struts.
Mary shouted back, to no one in particular. “Fine! Next time I'll wear pants!”
She took one last longing look at the A-7 engine high above her, then retreated toward the blockhouse. When she arrived, it was obvious someone had called to report her little test-stand sojourn. A soon as she walked through the door, an engineering supervisor pointed to a metal folding chair sitting alone in a far corner of the otherwise-empty room.
“You can observe—nothing more. Sit there. Be quiet. Touch nothing.”
The man had a no-nonsense severity to both the quality of his voice and the composure of his expression. Whoever he was, one thing was certain: he was either in charge of the test-firing or at least considered himself to be.
Once Mary had seated herself, the man left, entering an adjoining room through an open door. Mary could see the second room was filled with electronic gear. Another one of those pesky AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY signs was stenciled above the doorway.
I'm being treated like a visitor.
The loudspeaker boomed. “Three minutes.”
Three minutes. Everything Mary had worked for since the day Betty Manning dropped her off at Ray's schoolhouse all those years ago came down to what would happen during the next three minutes, forty seconds. Three minutes until ignition, then forty seconds for the duration of the firing. The maiden test of the A-7 engine with hydyne would be shorter than the contract required. As a precaution, advancements in large rocket engines were always carried out in increments. Forty seconds today, 155 seconds sometime in the future. Forty seconds of smoke, flame, fire, and scientific triumph. But only if the engine didn't have a propellant leak, system malfunction, chamber burn-through, meltdown, explosion, or detonation.
The loudspeaker: “LOX tank vent valve closed. Fuel vent valve closed.”
Mary wondered why they did not refer to her new fuel by its name.
“LOX tank pressure up. Fuel tank pressure up.”13
From her position in the chair, Mary would not be able to see the test. After waiting all day? Unacceptable.
“Turbopump lube pump on. Turbopump vent chamber open.”
All the test engineers and technicians were preoccupied in the control room next door, and no one seemed to be paying attention to her.
“Main LOX valve closed. Main fuel valve closed. Ninety seconds to ignition.”
There was a small viewing window ten feet in front of her.
“LOX and fuel-tank regulators set to fifteen PSI.”
Mary looked back toward the control room.
“Fire EX system pressurized. Fire EX main valve closed. Fire EX pump on.”
She made sure no one was watching her and stood up from the chair.
“Peroxide regulator set to four-fifty PSI. Sixty seconds to ignition.”
She started walking toward the window.
“Open fuel tank pressurizing valve. Open LOX pressurizing valve. Forty-five seconds.”
A few steps, and Mary was there. The window was a small rectangle of glass about the size of a toaster, four inches thick. It was mounted high, desi
gned for observers taller than a petite woman. Mary stood on her toes. The window was dusty, but it had a clear view of the test stand.
“Igniter on. Twenty seconds.”
The man who had ordered her to essentially sit down and shut up had not returned. Mary glanced again to her left to make certain no one was paying attention to her, then turned her eyes again to the test stand. Through the window she could see the vented oxygen vapors whispering round the propellant tanks, like some large, ghostly apparition. Mary stood motionless, eyes fixed on the Redstone A-7 engine.
The outdoor siren began its loud wail—the “ten-second warning.”
“Ten seconds. Nine…eight…seven…six…”
Mary held her breath.
Here we go.
A few more seconds, then she saw it—a large flame pop out of the engine. Then nothing, then another pop of flame. And then it ignited full-bore, blazing with a stinging light as if from the sun and roaring like a monstrous earthquake.
It ran for three seconds. Then it stopped.
Three seconds. A measly three seconds. Mary stood there, astonished.
“What happened!?” she shouted. “What the hell just happened!?”
“Authorized Personnel” be damned; Mary ran into the control room.
“What was that!? We're supposed to have a forty-second run!”
Art Fischer walked over, an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry. Our safety systems initiated an automatic shutdown. It registered some combustion instability in the chamber.”
“What caused the instability?”
All the technicians in the room laughed. Three-finger Roger stood up from his chair and faced Mary.
“You tell us. You're the engineer.”
“The NAVAHO rocket was like an Apple II computer; it was state of the art for about four weeks.”
—G. RICHARD MORGAN, ROCKET ENGINEER, RET.1
From the loudspeaker atop the blockhouse came the sound of a bland, robotic, male voice.
“LOX vent valve closed. Hydyne vent valve closed.”2
Mary stood in the control room. She turned to face the man with the microphone and smiled.
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