FTV: Is It Necessary?

 

     In the final run up to the first manned Moon landing in 1969, NASA was still working on the final configuration of the Apollo spacecraft.  The orbiting Command Module (CM) was in fine shape but there were things that needed to be tweaked on the Lunar Module (LM) that would land on the surface.  Weight was a prime consideration for the craft that would carry two men to the Lunar surface.  The final dress rehearsal flight, Apollo 10, took astronauts Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford within fifty thousand feet of the surface before they separated their ascent module from the descent stage and flew back to rendezvous with the CM.  Some speculated that the two might try to land anyway, but everyone at NASA, including the two astronauts, knew the LM was still too heavy to land on this practice run.

     Clear communication between all parties involved was always a huge part of the simulations used to train the crew and mission control teams, yet even on Apollo 10, they learned yet another valuable lesson.  While flying above the surface and close to some fairly lofty mountains, Cernan switched on the radar unit they would use for navigation on their closest approach.  Stafford had missed Cernan’s move and when he went to switch on the same unit, he actually turned it off.

The minutes of panic this miscommunication cost nearly caused them to form a new crater on the surface.  A quick analysis of the problem and some deft flying by Stafford brought them out of a deadly tumble.  They were able to reunite with the CM as planned with Cernan later commenting, “He [Stafford] do know how to fly!”  Cernan and Stafford certainly proved that communication isn’t just ‘nice’ in space flight, it is absolutely ‘necessary’.

     In Chris Kraft’s book Flight – My Life In Mission Control (Dutton Press – 2001), he relates a story about the discussion to include a TV camera on board the LM for the first manned landing mission, Apollo 11.  For some reason, George Low, the head of the Apollo Program Office, decided the addition of television wasn’t necessary on the flight even though just about everyone else involved thought otherwise.  According to Kraft, “Low didn’t think it was really important [to have a TV camera on board].  It would add extra weight and would take some of the astronauts’ valuable Moon time to set up.”  Some of the scientists with instruments slated for the flight agreed that, “Television didn’t add much to their research, and if they weren’t against it, they told Low that they couldn’t really justify it either.”  Low told Kraft he wanted, “The TV thing resolved,” to which Kraft replied, “We can settle it by just keeping the camera.”  This was not good enough for Low so he scheduled a meeting to gather more input about it.

     Kraft did not exactly stack the deck, but he made sure every department who wanted the TV camera on the Moon to capture this moment in history was represented.  The Public Affairs people were especially concerned;  if the camera got nixed, they would have to explain it to all the networks who were already making plans to air the broadcast coming from the Lunar surface.  A large crowd, including the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, packed the largest conference room at the Space Center.  Everyone was given a chance to air the pros and cons of the idea.  Ed Fendell, Kraft’s lead communication engineer, was slated to make the last presentation.  Kraft was totally surprised when Fendell wrapped up his portion of the program by stating that television was a ‘nicety’ and should be left behind!

     Kraft’s first thought was, “My own guy!” before he took his turn to address the group.  The room grew quiet (no doubt just from the look on Chris’s face) as he said, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”  When Max Fagat, another mission designer, echoed Kraft’s remark, he changed Chris’s comment to, “We can’t believe what we’re hearing.  We’ve been looking forward to this flight – not just us, but the American taxpayers and in fact the whole world – since Kennedy put the challenge to us.  Now you’re willing to exclude the people of Earth from witnessing man’s first steps on the Moon?  I don’t believe it, and if you think about it, I don’t think you’ll believe it either.”  A murmur of agreement rippled across the room with Neil Armstrong’s “Yes” adding an exclamation mark to the meeting.  The camera issue was solved and the world got to witness history because Chris Kraft was not about to let the public’s participation be left as a ‘nicety’.

     The first black and white images from the Moon’s surface were a bit blurry but overall, the world sat transfixed as Armstrong uttered,” One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”  The pro TV folks at NASA were elated, but couldn’t help but feel like it could have been done, for the lack of a more descriptive word, better.  By not bypassing the chance to share the history of this momentous achievement with the world, they also set the wheels in motion to make it better for the next landing.  By the time Apollo 12 flew, engineers had essentially redesigned TV camera technology to make the camera for the second Moon landing a lighter unit that broadcast in color.  The same innovations were soon available to private companies on Earth and quickly became affordable for households on just about any income level.  A ‘nicety’ that may have still come along in the future, but who’s to say how long it would have taken before color TV to become commonplace?

     Armstrong needed a way to practice landing on the Moon.  The LM was a rocket that flew more like a helicopter but the Moon’s gravity is only one sixth of the Earth’s.  To simulate these conditions, a vehicle called the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) was built.  For all the world, it looked like a giant bedstead with a small ice fishing shack mounted near the front.  A jet engine pointing down was mounted in the center – this negated five sixths of the LLTV’s weight.  The one thing that could not be simulated on the Earth was the lack of an atmosphere on the Moon.  At one point, Armstrong had to punch out of the vehicle, ejecting only five tenths of a second before it crashed after it lost attitude control.  Another was built, but it too suffered a similar fate with a different test pilot on board.  Kraft and Bob Gilruth (his boss) both hated the LLTV and tried to convince Armstrong to not fly it.  He refused saying, “Yes, it is [dangerous].  I know you’re worried but I have to support it.  It’s just darn good training.”

     Kraft and Gilruth reluctantly let the astronauts continue to train with the LLTV but held their breath with each flight.  Every astronaut who landed on the Moon trained with one.  Upon returning to Earth, Kraft grilled them about performance, looking for any reason to stop using the LLTV for training.  Every returning astronaut said the same thing as Armstrong:  Dangerous or not, it was essential for them to train in the LLTV in order to land safely on the Moon.  In this case, Kraft did not think the LLTV was a nicety – he thought it was dangerous.  Armstrong and the other astronauts held a different view – it was an essential  and necessary part of their training. 

     Consider whatever handheld device you use to make phone calls, take pictures, surf the internet, or browse social media.  They kind of remind me of the communicators Captain Kirk and the Star Trek crew would flip open back in the late 1960s (especially when flip phones were in vogue).  The truth is, these were futuristic props representing how far along technology would be by the Twenty Third Century – Star Trek Enterprise future.  Who knew that it would only take a couple of decades (not centuries) for technology like this to exist?  The mobile phone truly was a luxury (nicety?) when it first came out and the earliest models hardly resembled the handheld units in use today.  In fact, the first mobile phones reminded me of World War II era walkie-talkies more than phones.  Again, we can trace our current level of computerized technology to the space program.

     The movie Hidden Figures (2017) takes us back to the time when ‘computers’ at NASA were humans crunching numbers.  Astronomers throughout the ages have used human computers to compile tables, charts, and data bases of their observations.  Orbiting a satellite, sending humans to the Moon, and probes to other planets takes a considerable amount of math.  When NASA started to transition between human and electronic computers, it took quite a bit of cross checking to see if the ‘new’ computers could be as accurate as the ‘old’ ones.  In the end, it turned out the only real difference between the two was the speed at which the electronic ones could spit out numbers.  Many of the (mostly) women who performed these duties were shifted into data input and handling with the new electronic computers.  The Apollo program needed computers on board to help with navigation to get to the Moon, orbit it, and then return to the Earth.  The only problem?  Computers of that time period were nearly as big as the Apollo Command Module itself.

     Again, it became a matter of ‘essential equipment’ vs ‘yes, it would be nice to have a computer on board but we can do without it’.  Cooler heads knew that the ‘essential’ side of the equation trumped any other considerations, so NASA and its contractors set about on a crash course to build computers that would fit in a spacecraft.  Then they had to write the software needed for them to operate.  By the time Apollo flew, it had four computers on board (three plus a back up) that were similar in size to the first desktop computer tower we all owned back in the day.  The Lunar Module also carried one called the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), a twin to the one on board the CM.  As with the phone technology mentioned above, the development of these units for the space program put computers in our homes and offices (at more affordable prices and on a quicker timeline than they would have been with no space program to drive it).  We might be able to argue that early computers were ‘nice to have but not a necessity’ but very few would make that claim today.  If you don’t believe me, put down your electronic device of choice for one day and see if it makes you break out in a cold sweat.

     With a couple of years of teaching Jr High Science under my belt, I took my first field trip to the Shiras Planetarium in Marquette.  Growing up only three blocks from its location (it was attached to the south side of the new Marquette Senior High School which opened in 1964-65), I was a frequent visitor from Grade six through my college graduation.  Astronomy was one of the things I taught from the get go so it seemed to be a trip well worth the time and effort to put together for my students.  Over the next forty years, my classes took a fall field trip to the planetarium.  With a limited number of seats (66) and classes numbering more than 100, we scheduled two showings so one group could eat lunch at the Marquette Mall while the other group was at the program.  When the class sizes dropped enough, we began scheduling one program per trip and added a second stop at the newly opened Michigan Iron Industry Museum located halfway between Marquette and Negaunee.

     Over the years, I got some good natured ribbing about these trips (“Gee, I wish I could have a day off like you get!”) but taking a field trip took time and planning.  Trips including four hours of travel by bus also meant a longer than usual day, often with us returning well after school was out.  On a couple of occasions, I had to defend why we were spending the time and money to take field trips in the first place.  From day one, we never asked the school to pay for the transportation.  We simply told students, “If you want to go, it will cost ‘X’ amount.  If you do not want to pay to go, then you will be expected to be in school.”  We also made sure everybody understood these trips were not just ‘jaunts for the fun of it’.  There would always be tie ins to what we were learning in the classroom.  It was not always stated, but one of the most important benefits of these trips may have been a more social educational goal.  We teachers learned a lot about the kids and they learned a lot about us.  Yes, these were all ‘nice trips’ but the paybacks, in my mind, were essential to the educational well being of my Jr High students.

     On one occasion, a short timer principal in the district told me, “You can only go if you take all of the students because we are not going to babysit the ones who don’t go.”  Past experience told me dragging kids somewhere on a bus who don’t want to be there can cause unnecessary trouble, so I refused.  I was then informed, “Okay, then you tell the ones who do not go to stay home!”  Again, I refused because the job of telling a student to stay home was way out of my purview.  This became obvious when I told the principal, “That would be your job” and it was his turn to refuse.  After he again invoked the ‘all must go or no trip’ edict, I gave him a sense that I would comply (although it was a purposely false option I knew he would not take):  “Okay, but you will need to come to my three classes and announce that we can not go and why.”  The subject was dropped and we continued taking our normal field trips in this manner during the rest of my years teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth grade.  Did the kids who did not choose go on the trip stay home?  I have no idea because the rest of us were on the road having a good time all day.

     In a world of trade-offs, we constantly play the risk / benefit game.  In deciding if something is ‘nice or necessary’, we are engaging in a similar form of negotiation.  Personally, I would rather err on the side of ‘necessary’ rather than have hindsight prove that not doing something just because it was dubbed ‘nice but not necessary’ resulted in a pile of regret.  Sometimes it just takes a stubborn approach to a problem to make sure we err on the beneficial side of things.   

Top Piece Video:  You Need Love – in the world of NICE or NECESSARY, Love would have to qualify in both categories!  Just ask Styx