Growing Up With Spaceflight- Apollo Part One

GROWING UP

WITH SPACEFLIGHT

APOLLO 1 to 13

(Part One)

Wes Oleszewski

Growing up with Spaceflight- Apollo Part One

SECOND EDITION

Copyright © 2015, 2019 Wes Oleszewski

Klyde Morriss LLC

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Publisher:

Elite Online Publishing

63 East 11400 South #230

Sandy, UT 84070

EliteOnlinePublishing.com

Series edited by Pat McCarthy and Jim Banke and Chris Rottiers- any improper formatting of dates are my doing and not theirs... especially not Chris’.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-1942898016

DEDICATION

Dedicated to Walter Cronkite,

who took us all to the Moon.

CONTENTS

APOLLO: THE SEEDS OF INSPIRATION

APOLLO 1: SCIENCE SERVICE BOOKS

APOLLO 1: GRAND PLANS

APOLLO 1: THE BLIZZARD OF ‘67

APOLLO 1: I WOULD ALWAYS REGRET TURNING THOSE PAGES

APOLLO 1: SA-204

APOLLO 1: PLUGS-OUT

APOLLO 1: THREE BURNED SPACESUITS

APOLLO 1: GHOST IN THE RX-4 HARD-SUIT

APOLLO 7: ALMOST EVERY SCHOOL KID IN AMERICA WAS WATCHING

APOLLO 7: THE SILVER FIREMAN

APOLLO 7: AS-205

APOLLO 7: WALLY, WALT AND WHAT’S HIS NAME

APOLLO 7: TV? THERE WAS NO MISSION-CRITICAL NEED

APOLLO 7: COUNTDOWN

APOLLO 7: SHADOW OF THE APOLLO 1 FIRE

APOLLO 7: WE HAD A FAIRLY TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE ON THE WAY TO PAKISTAN TONIGHT

APOLLO 7: THE GREAT TV MUTINY

APOLLO 7: THE APOLLO ROOM, HIGH ABOVE EVERYTHING

APOLLO 7: RETURNING TO EARTH- IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE

APOLLO 7: THAT WAS A GREAT ROCKET

APOLLO 8: ALUMINUM FOIL AND A WIRE COAT-HANGER ANTENNA

APOLLO 8: COME ON FOLKS- GET REAL

APOLLO 8: THIS IS WAY BETTER THAN CARTOONS

APOLLO 8: SOMEWHERE OVER THE MOON

APOLLO 8: BE ADVISED; THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS

APOLLO 9: $500,000 COLDS

APOLLO 9: YOU’LL NEVER SEE IT COMIN’

APOLLO 9: BEFORE SPACE ADAPTATION SYNDROME HAD A NAME

APOLLO 9: HAVE THEIR HELMETS PAINTED RED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

APOLLO 9: GO OUT ON THE FRONT PORCH OR SOMETHING

Apollo 9: I LEFT HIM THERE ON PURPOSE

APOLLO 9: COMING TO TERMS WITH AUGIE SPITZER

APOLLO 10: AMAZINGLY CLOSE

APOLLO 10: DRESS REHEARSAL

APOLLO 10: THEY’RE NOT TOYS- THEY’RE SIMULATORS

APOLLO 10: THEY JUST HAD TO GET VIETNAM IN THERE

APOLLO 10: LISTEN TO THAT COMMUNICATION!

APOLLO 10: IF SHE’S GOING TO BLOW, SHE’S GOING TO BLOW

APOLLO 10: CHARLIE BROWN AND SNOOPY

APOLLO 10: WE HAVE ARRIVED

APOLLO 10: PUT THE TAILHOOK DOWN AND WE’RE THERE

APOLLO 10: SON OF A BITCH!

APOLLO 10: WHO DID IT?

APOLLO 10: COUNTLESS PASSES OVER OUR LIVING ROOM CARPET

APOLLO 11: THEY'RE TAKING SUCH AN AWFUL CHANCE

APOLLO 11: FROM THE BIG D TO THE LUNAR D

APOLLO 11: A LIFE ALTERING EVENT AND A PAPER LEM

APOLLO 11: IT WAS JUST A NUB

APOLLO 11: MOON GERMS!

APOLLO 11: IF I GOT BLOWN UP, I WOULD REALLY BE IN TROUBLE

APOLLO 12: THAT’S MY HAIR DRYER!

APOLLO 12: TRIGGERED LIGHTNING

APOLLO 12: THE NIGHT MEN OF APOLLO 12

APOLLO 12: REGULAR PROGRAMMING MAY BE INTERRUPTED

APOLLO 12: SURVEYOR 3

APOLLO 12: MARCUS WELBY HAD THAT EFFECT ON PEOPLE

APOLLO 12: OKAY, OKAY, KKKKKKKKKK

APOLLO 12: WE DON’T DO IT THAT WAY ANYMORE

APOLLO 13: TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA

APOLLO 13: SOMETHING RATHER VIOLENT HAPPENED

APOLLO 13: I THOUGHT FOR SURE YOU'D KNOW

APOLLO 13: NASA COULD INDEED DO ANYTHING

WHAT’S GOIN’ ON OUT THERE!

MY ROLE IN GETTING APOLLO TO THE MOON

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Everything that we do in our adult life stems from something that we went through in childhood that other people blew off.

- My Mom, November 22nd, 2014

APOLLO: THE SEEDS OF INSPIRATION

Documentaries of the era would have you believe that in the late 1960s every place that you looked there were hippies on acid with flowers painted on their faces ambling around blowing bubbles while angry civil rights mobs marched down every street and burned buildings as F-4 Phantom jets dropped napalm on Vietcong in the hills nearby. Such imagery is as far from the truth as those events were from our neighborhoods. For a majority of the nation this was a time when most of us were living much closer to a Leave It To Beaver existence than the one depicted in the Hollywood documentaries. Sure- my Mom did not wear a dress to do housework and my Dad was only seen in a suit when going to a funeral, but other than that we were happy and safe.

My friends and I played outside totally unsupervised from the time we got out of bed in the morning until the streetlights came on in the evening. We made good use of every second of summer weather, played brutal contact sports such as cream-O in the fall, belly-flopped sleds and hitched bumpers on icy streets in the winter and netted crayfish in the ditches in the spring. It was an era of plain white T-shirts, Red Ball Jets sneakers, skinned knees and grass stains for a boy like me.

In the industrial Midwest we were surrounded by factories that had been there since before our parents were born. Some of these had their windows still painted black from the black-out days of World War II. I frolicked in a backyard that terminated at a set of railroad tracks on which a train passed twice a day— taking industrial materials in on the morning runs and hauling finished products out in the afternoon passages. Those trains ran on tracks some of whose fixtures had the date 1886 stamped on them. Across the tracks was a farmer’s field where corn, wheat and beans were grown on rotating seasons.

In my world the norm was that you grew up, maybe you graduated from high school, then you went to work in the shop, as the local industry was known. You had kids and they too followed the same path; that was just what’cha did. I was lucky to grow up in that sort of environment, I was also lucky to be inspired to look for my future in a different direction than the shop. There was nothing wrong with working in industry or a factory, heck, my Dad worked on the railroad and those industrial complexes put food in my stomach. But, being a little scrawny asthmatic, I would have lasted about a month working in the shop. It is not that heavy machinery scares me, I had been climbing aboard my Dad’s railroad engines since I could walk. The simple fact is that I am a klutz with any sort of tool, so I would be the one who fell into the blast furnace or got caught up in a huge industrial lathe and ended up as a footnote in a single day’s local newspaper.

The seeds of my spaceflight inspiration were actually planted long before the history making triumph of Apollo 11; where the entire world seemed to hang on each Moment of the mission. In fact, the circumstances that led me in the spaceflight direction began at about the same time as the early Gemini missions. The circumstances that turned me into a space-buff, however, began with a troubling note.

I was in the second grade in the fall of 1964 when my parents were called in to meet with my teacher and were given some stunning news... Wes can't read.

My astonished parents were informed by my teacher that I was unable to read aloud those captivating adventures of Dick and Jane and their fascinating dog Spot. They were told that they had to take me downtown to the Board of Education building to meet with a Reading Specialist. In 1964, such a visit, to such a person was a real embarrassment— something to be done quietly and in the shadows- because it meant your kid was somehow defective. If the word got out, the Moms would gossip and the other kids would tease.

Thus my parents meekly took their defective son downtown. We entered the big, dark, old brick building with its echoing hallways and met the lady who was The Reading Specialist. She had been waiting for us and was very nice as she led us to a doorway that opened to a big room. She directed me to go inside and wait while she had a few words with my parents. The room was a former high school classroom that now had living room-styled furniture in it and was filled, (and I do mean FILLED,) with books. The books were seemingly tossed around everyplace and were about all sorts of subjects. There was also one, almost unnoticeable feature in that room- a very large mirror on one wall.

I walked around the big room for about 90 seconds got bored. Thus, I found a book on the Boeing 707. I sat down with it and started reading. Unknown to me, behind the mirror at the end of the room was the amazingly savvy reading specialist and my worried parents- watching my every move.

See... she told my folks, he can read- he's just bored with Dick and Jane.

She also informed them that the book that their scrawny second-grader was currently reading was on the sixth grade reading level. My Mom asked about my teacher's concern that I could not read aloud. In the following discussion my folks were informed of the difference between Can't read and Won't read. Interestingly, I'm currently the author of more than 20 books and I still refuse to read aloud to the public— ever.

My parents were given marching orders to get me anything, ANYTHING to read in which I was interested. Comic books, Mad Magazine, science books, sports books; anything that I was interested in should be provided. Mom and especially Dad were then spring-loaded to respond to what sparked an interest in me. Some of the material that my folks fed to me included spaceflight, because I had shown interest in that subject. They subsequently subscribed me to the Science Service line of books. That subscription, in 1966 came with a free Apollo Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and Command Service Module (CSM) model to build. I built them as fast as I could and they became my favorite toys- I liked the books too, of course. Later-, along came Apollo and my folks knew they had hit the jackpot.

Thanks to NASA, the United States manned space program and Project Apollo, my parents found the key to the one thing that would alter the path on which their son would travel for the rest of his life. Along that path other sparks of inspiration would show their effects, but the foundation would be firmly constructed in Apollo. I am sure there are others who say the same thing, and who have stories similar to mine. NASA, on the other hand, saw their decline begin after Apollo 11 just as my interest began to really expand. Caught in the bluster of ill political winds, NASA had its single weakness exploited— they did not have tooting your own horn as a mission objective.

Spaceflight is as much about INSPIRATION as it is about EXPLORATION. I was inspired by Apollo. Inspired to the point where, being raised in a social strata where the norm was toiling in blue-collar industry, I directed my life toward technology and toward a technical education. Apollo showed me a different direction, and instilled an attitude in me that I could do anything, especially when people told me that I could not. I ended up with a degree in Aeronautical Science and in a career making contrails across blue skies. Inspiration is the greatest benefit of human spaceflight. When people quack about the cost they need to be asked what value does changing a kid's life for the better have?

Perhaps the answer to that question is the true value of Apollo and of the United States’ space program itself.

APOLLO 1: SCIENCE SERVICE BOOKS

For those of us growing up with spaceflight in the 1960s, Apollo was somewhat distant following the final Gemini mission. Although the first launch was scheduled for February, 1967, just a few months after Gemini 12, we had not seen a lot about it on the TV news or in the newspapers. Additionally, to most of us kids, NASA’s manned space program was just Gemini. When someone talked about astronauts, we imagined them in a Gemini spacecraft. Even on TV, the popular show I Dream of Jeanine, that premiered in 1965, depicted astronauts flying in Gemini throughout most of the show’s run. Even children’s toys involving spacecraft were shaped like a Gemini and sometimes had Apollo written on them. Thus, as the transition from the Gemini program to the Apollo program actually happened, much of America still had Gemini on the brain.

For me, being all of nine years old, I had an Apollo CSM and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) model that had come with my Science Service subscription, but the books that came with it only illustrated Apollo in some of the earliest terms. My copy of the Science Service volume Man in Space, although published in 1965, had a cover that depicted one of the earliest LEMs descending to the lunar surface. It had a round forward hatch opening, Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters mounted on extended tripods, no ladder on the forward strut and a number 10 painted on the side. Looking at it compared to my model LEM that came with the subscription, I thought that the rounded features of the LEM on that book cover were far more cool. I often wondered why they had not sent me a LEM with a round forward hatch.

In the single illustration of the CSM in that book showed what looked like a can with a cone in the front. It was the same drawing that was used in the 1962 edition of the book. A cut-away of that cone showed three astronauts wearing Ban Lon shirts. In the same section of the book showed the Mercury and Gemini astronauts all wearing space suits. To a nine-year-old it was somewhat confusing. Apparently Apollo astronauts would wear street clothes in space. I thought to myself, That wouldn’t be much fun. After all, why fly into space if you did not get to wear a cool spacesuit?

Yet, no matter how outdated the drawing may be, they still fired my imagination about the space program itself. Considering that I was the kid who supposedly could not read, it turned out that these books on spaceflight turned me into the kid who could not stop reading, (unless Dick and Jane were involved of course.) If the Doubleday Science Service book series had been intended bait to kids into an interest in technology with an Apollo moon ship model for ten cents followed by a series of well-illustrated books, in my case they had done the trick.

APOLLO 1: GRAND PLANS

Of course, while we on the outside of the manned space program were basking in Gemini’s afterglow, Apollo was moving ahead at a pace not seen in a government project since World War II. While the news media and the public at large were primarily focused on Launch Complex 19 and a Gemini launch every half dozen or so weeks, just over seven miles to the north a new Moon Port had risen from out of the Florida palmettos. Massive structures to support the giant Saturn V launch vehicles had been constructed and huge components for the vehicle itself were arriving. Meanwhile the up-rated Saturn I vehicles, now called the Saturn IB, were being shipped to Cape Canaveral and launched from Complex 37 and 34. The Saturn IB was set to be used extensively in the first manned Apollo missions as well as the Apollo X missions.

On February 18th 1965 the Associate Administrator of Manned Spaceflight Dr. George Mueller testified before Congress concerning NASA’s budget. In that testimony he called, what had previously been known as Apollo X, the Apollo Extension System, it was a name that would not last very long. On September 10th of that same year the name of the program was officially changed to the Apollo Applications Program and as time went on the program would extend as far as the establishment of long-term lunar bases. Plans for these launch vehicles had also evolved into a Gemini-style rendezvous and docking between a manned Apollo CSM and an unmanned LEM, both of which had already been approved and funded. The idea was similar to the Gemini and Agena process where the LEM would be launched atop one Saturn IB and the manned CSM would be launched atop another Saturn IB.

Launch vehicle AS-206 was at the Cape in December of 1966 and stacked on Pad 37B during January 22nd and 23rd, 1967. It was assigned to boost the LEM and AS-207 was in preparation to fly the CSM and crew consisting of Command Pilot Jim McDivitt, Senior Pilot Dave Scott and Pilot Rusty Schweickart from Pad 34. Later, Deke Slayton had advised that those crew titles for the Block II missions should be changed to Commander, Command Module Pilot and Lunar Module Pilot. AS-207 would have to wait to be launched, however, because the first manned Apollo mission was already staked on the pad at Complex 34 from which the manned Saturn IBs were set to depart. The flight waiting on Pad 34 was AS-204; also known as Apollo 1.

APOLLO 1: THE BLIZZARD OF ‘67

Up in the great state of Michigan we were totally unaware of the fever pitch at which the work on Apollo was progressing at Cape Canaveral and other NASA centers around the country. In fact, on Thursday, January 26 th , 1967 we were getting our first taste of a massive blizzard. After local weather broadcasters predicted a good amount of snow, we got plenty more than that. My Dad had driven the family car to the railroad depot in Flint, Michigan, about 30 miles south of our house. He was working as a railroad engineer on the third trick night shift at the Buick Fisher Body plant. This meant that he had spent all night running a switch engine in snow that began to come down far more heavily than predicted. By the end of his shift on Friday morning, the roads were impassable and the snow was coming down even harder.

Dad called home to see if we were all okay and to tell Mom that he was stranded. She was a bit scared— considering that this was the worst snow storm in a half century