FTV: Simple, Reliable, & Effective
Growing up, one of my favorite sayings we applied to solving complex problems was, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” In the best NASA tradition, we trimmed it down to the acronym, ‘KISS’. During the period where some people strived to be more politically correct, someone came up with the idea that it should be shortened to just ‘KIS’ by eliminating the ‘stupid’ part. The thinking was, “The term ‘stupid’ might hurt someone’s feelings.” To me, this was a load of poppycock and it stripped the KISS philosophy of its intended punch. KISS was not designed to hurt anyone’s feelings. Like a physical slap to one’s own forehead, the sole purpose of KISS was to remind oneself that in many cases, simpler solutions trumped overly complex ones. Rube Goldberg’s illustrations of overly complex machines doing simple jobs (called ‘Rube Goldberg Devices’, naturally) are a cartoonish exaggeration of this very idea.
Christopher Columbus Kraft (2-28-1924 to 7-22-2019) was employed by NASA as an engineer during the development of the multi-step Manned Space Program (MSP). We have featured Kraft in two previous FTVs (FTV: Mission Control – Parts 1 & 2 11-27-24 & 12-4-2024) so we won’t repeat his full biography here. Suffice to say that he (like many in the engineering field) always thought that the solution to any problem should be ‘simple, reliable, & effective’. As Kraft and his fellow NASA engineers invented the hardware and software for the MSP, he would be the nagging voice reminding his team about ‘simple, reliable, & effective’ solutions to problems whenever he could see things getting too complicated for his own tastes.
This approach to building Mission Control and flight procedure manuals worked very well during NASA’s first manned flights that employed the Mercury spacecraft. The NASA think tank spent long hours researching the best way to get the astronauts into space and home again in one piece. On many occasions, they had to be flexible enough to change on a dime when unforeseen situations arose. For example, after two suborbital flights (taken by Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom), John Glenn was launched into space to fly the United States’ first manned orbital flight. Between his first and second lap around the Earth, a green signal light flashed on a controller’s console at Mission Control indicating the heat shield landing bag on Freedom 7 had deployed. The heat shield was critical as it kept the 3,000 degree F heat the craft would experience during re-entry from incinerating the ship. Just prior to splashing down in the ocean, a cloth bag underneath the heat shield would deploy to help absorb the impact and then keep the capsule afloat.
While the press pool alerted the whole world that Glenn would be doomed if the landing bag had been deployed in orbit, the NASA controllers began discussing the situation. Without explaining why they were asking, the capsule communicator (CapComm) asked Glenn if the light showing that the heat shield landing bag was deployed was off (it was). They also asked if he heard any unusual bangs or thumps from the bottom of the Mercury capsule (he had not). Most of the engineers in the discussion thought it was an instrument failure and the normal landing procedure could be followed. Some suggested that the retrorocket pack strapped over the heatshield could be left in place (instead of being jettisoned after the three rocket motors were fired to slow the craft down for re-entry) just in case. Craft resisted the idea as it had never been simulated. Finally an engineer from the company who built the capsule asked, “But what if it is not instrumentation and the heat shield is loose?”
In Glenn’s case, the KISS solution was to leave the retrorocket package in place just in case. Glenn had already figured out why they were asking him questions about the heat shield before they instructed him to not jettison the retrorocket packet. He landed safely and inspection of the capsule after the mission showed the warning light had occurred because of a miswired switch on the spacecraft. The next flight also developed a problem while in orbit that needed to be addressed, but it came from the pilot, not the spacecraft.
The second orbital flight by Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter was basically a repeat of Glenn’s three orbit jaunt. Kraft had not been impressed with the lackadaisical effort Carpenter had displayed during training and would have dismissed him from the program if it was up to him. As one of the original Mercury 7, he had already cemented himself as a new American icon so the NASA officials higher up the chain of command wouldn’t hear of it. This would have been the simple, reliable, and effective way to avoid what happened next, but again, it was not Kraft’s call.
As soon as he reached orbit, Carpenter began using the capsule’s thrusters to turn the ship this way and that as he positioned himself to take photos of the Earth. On three occasions, Mission Control cautioned him that he was using too much fuel. Even when CapComms Grissom (and then Shepard) passed along a direct order to save fuel, Carpenter’s sight-seeing ways continued. Two minutes before the critical deorbit burn of the retrorockets, he was still flying forward with the all important heatshield facing the wrong way. Carpenter lost some time getting the capsule in the proper orientation which caused him to fire the retros a few seconds late. This mistake at orbital speeds caused Carpenter to land down range 250 miles away from the recovery vessels. It took a few hours to reach him (unlike Glenn who had landed in sight of his recovery vessels). When the ships arrived, they found him floating in a rubber raft next to his capsule, munching on a candy bar. Carpenter didn’t think there had been any major problems, but Kraft’s ‘simple, reliable and effective solution’ was to make sure Carpenter never flew again.
When President Kennedy announced the United States intended to land astronauts on the Moon before the end of the decade, NASA had to shift into high gear. In order to test all of the steps needed for such a flight, they needed an upgrade from their one man Mercury capsules. Given three options, the mission planners opted for the Cadillac version – a two man craft that would eventually be called ‘Gemini’ (‘Geminee’ in NASA speak). The major changes needed to upgrade from Mercury would challenge Kraft’s ‘simple, reliable, & effective’ mind as the craft and mission designers struggled to get it off the drawing board and into space.
One of the major challenges was the rocket booster needed to get a larger, heavier craft into orbit. The Redstone rockets used in Mercury were not powerful enough, so they settled for the twin engine Atlas rocket. The Atlas was not only more powerful, it used hypergolic fuel – two substances that ignited when mixed allowing for the elimination of a combustion chamber. Tests of the Atlas had shown it had a propensity to explode so it was decided to add ejection seats for the two astronauts. Mercury capsules had an escape tower that would fire and pull the astronaut clear of a failing rocket. The designers wanted to eliminate the weight of this tower for Gemini, hence the need for ejection seats. Kraft pointed out that the rocket was powerful enough to do the job even with the simpler escape tower design, but he was overruled.
The ejection seats were eventually incorporated into the capsule design, but the problems they encountered found Chris Kraft still lobbying (unsuccessfully) for the ‘simple, reliable, and effective’ launch tower. To test if the seats would work on a rocket traveling over 2,000 mph, a four mile long rocket sled track was set up on the desert near California’s China Lake. The first tests did not go as planned: on the first run, one of the rocket motors came loose and destroyed a demonstration capsule. Through many tests, many crash test dummy astronauts were killed. Seats were ejected from a tower the height of the Atlas rocket to simulate the astronauts aborting from a stricken rocket still on the pad. During these trials, the parachute* shroud lines kept getting tangled and the seats would either land upside down or at too great a speed to be survivable. (*It should be noted another new technology was also being tested with the ejection seats – a ‘ballute’ – a combination balloon / parachute). When the chief engineer from the Gemini Program Office told Bob Gilruth and Kraft, “The remaining technical problems are in debugging the details of a very complex design,” Kraft’s scowl said it all: “The ‘very complex designs’ were exactly the wrong kind of solution.” He pitched the escape tower idea again but was still overruled because of the amount of time and money that had already been invested in the ejection seat plan.
Another innovation that was being considered for the Gemini craft was using a type of parasail for the final landing instead of a parachute. Parachuting into the ocean meant a craft landing well outside of the predicted zone could lead to another country retrieving it. The parasall coupled with landing skids would allow Gemini to land somewhere inside the United States. This one must have really rankled Kraft and not just because it was another untested technology. Installing the parasail meant altering the capsule’s design and adding more complexity to it. There would have to be a mechanism to deploy the parasail and skids that would involve a system of shroud lines, hinges, reels, and explosive bolts. A series of tests were run by dropping one half scale size Gemini capsules from a helicopter. The only thing that the parasail equipped craft seemed to do well was make impact craters on the desert floor. Kraft argued for the simple, reliable, and effective parachutes that had a proven record of performance but the chief design engineer was committed to the innovative parasail design.
Powering a long duration flight for Gemini (and later Apollo) would need a longer term electrical source than batteries could provide. Fuel cell technology was the answer, but it was still not ready to be flown in space. A fuel cell generates electricity when oxygen and hydrogen from separate tanks are combined from opposite sides of a platinum-coated membrane. The process not only creates electricity but also potable water. The fuel cells worked and would be perfect for Gemini and Apollo, but the big and balky units in use on Earth needed to be turned into smaller, more reliable units for use in space. It was a simple and effective technology, but not yet reliable.
The last nagging problem in the Gemini program was the Atlas rocket itself. It was powerful but the g-forces it generated (7.6 g’s) would be near the level of what the astronauts could tolerate. The bigger problem lay in an effect called ‘pogoing’. As the pressure in the fuel lines of the rocket pulsated, it generated a front to back oscillation that added an extra 2.5 g’s to the rocket and payload. The rocket engineers thought they had found a simple solution; adding pressure relief valves to stabilize the line pressure during flight. Instead of fixing the problem, it doubled the g-load caused by the pogoing to 5.0 g’s. In one test, the shaking was so violent that the second stage of the rocket separated prematurely and rocketed off to a crash landing 700 miles away in an unpopulated area (thankfully).
With all of the problems and the lack of simple, reliable, and effective solutions forthcoming, the Gemini program was not making the progress it needed to make. Summoned before a congressional committee to update them on how their money was being spent, assistant director George Mueller did not impress. Trying to explain the difficulties being encountered, he managed to only raise their level of skepticism that the Gemini program would ever fly.
The first problem solved was the pogoing of the Atlas rocket. As the fuel tanks emptied, the open space allowed the fuel to slosh which resulted in the oscillating action. Pumping helium gas into the empty space coupled with a surge protector brought down the added g-forces to the required .25 g’s. Director Webb was summoned to meet President Kennedy during the fall of 1963 to assure him that the Moon project would be able to meet his end of the decade deadline. The Gemini problems were being worked on and the success of the Gemini project would pave the way for Apollo. It would also help Kennedy in his bid for re-election in 1964.
Kennedy’s assasination in Dallas in November of 1963 could have derailed the entire Moon landing program except for a decision that was made when he was elected in 1960. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had taken the reins as the government’s biggest promoter of the space program. Construction on the new Manned Space Center in Houston was already underway and Johnson was not about to pull the plug on Kennedy’s legacy program.
As the nation mourned their slain president, the problems that had perplexed Project Gemini began to fall into line. The paraglider landing system was finally scrapped in favor of the tried and true traditional parachute landing in the ocean. The escape tower was still replaced by the ejection seats but the astronauts were counting on the reliability of the Atlas rocket to keep them from having to endure the 28 g’s they would be subjected to if the seats were needed (and thankfully, they never were). The last problem was the fuel cells that would be needed to power the longer duration missions. Progress was being made, but not fast enough to keep them from having to tweak the earliest mission plans.
After two unmanned test flights (Gemini 1 and 2), Gus Grissom and John Young were scheduled for Gemini 3, the first manned flight. Grissom had a little fun when he named their capsule Molly Brown (after the popular musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown). It was a little tweak of his own for all the guff he had taken about his Mercury capsule sinking and almost taking him with it. The brass was not amused but the word was out and they couldn’t change it – although they did do away with astronauts naming their capsules.
Delays allowed the Russians to get Voskhod 2 in space where Alexei Leonov made the first tethered spacewalk. When the thruster problems for Gemini were finally worked out, G3 took flight on March 23, 1965. Aside from the corned beef sandwich Wally Schirra had talked Young into smuggling aboard (the floating crumbs in the cabin made them decide to stash it after one bite), it was a flawless flight. As they bobbed in the ocean, Grissom refused to open the hatch until the recovery team was on site. “That was no boat,” he muttered after losing his lunch in the rolling seas. They had proved that the Gemini craft was a nimble, maneuverable ship that would allow NASA to test all the steps they would need to get Apollo astronauts to the Moon before Kennedy’s deadline.
Each flight would add another notch to their belt. Long duration flights, rendezvous, docking, and spacewalks would all be tested on future flights. In the end, Christ Kraft’s ‘simple, reliable, & effective’ mantra would remain the hallmark of getting Gemini into space and Apollo to the Moon.
Top Piece Video: I could not really think about a simple, reliable, & effective song – so I settled for Simple Minds.