I arrived in Huntsville, Alabama at around nine o'clock (ten o'clock EST). I bought some groceries and rolled into Ditto Landing camper park about half an hour outside the city. I have a pop-up tent from approximately nineteen seventy-four that has quite a few patched holes in it and the fabric has long since lost its waterproof quality. I threw that thing up, then put together a sandwich, and slept.
This morning I cleaned up and headed to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, which is home to Space Camp. Yes, the Space Camp. I always thought it was in Florida or something. It turns out after the depression and the fall of the cotton mill industry here, the U.S. military came in during the second World War and set up munitions factories. Ever since then this city has been a hub for the aerospace, defense and engineering industries. I visited the University of Alabama at Huntsville campus this morning and saw slew of tech companies lining the main drive, their sleek logos beckoning to graduates like sirens. The campus directory resembled that of a NASA research park (excepting the lone arts college building). Overall I get a big physics, engineering and space vibe from this part of town.
The Space and Rocket center was really neat. I spent half an hour watching one little exhibit video about the Chandra x-ray observatory. I learned a lot about what it takes to lobby for your project over thousands of other equally viable, valuable and reasonably priced space exploration projects. (It helps to have friends on the Hill). There were displays of rockets in the courtyard and a life-sized model of a shuttle with ESBs. There was also a huge military presence, both in the form of helicopters and ground-to-air launchers outside, to displays and sponsored exhibits inside. This is a military town for sure.
I entered the Saturn-V hangar where the eponymous rocket lay in exploded display. This was the rocket that carried the first humans to the moon. The exhibit focused on the development of the first stage propulsion units, the H-1 and F-1 jet engines. As you may know, Kennedy's call to put a 'man on the moon' within the decade of 1960 and the rally of the scientific community was a huge achievement. During those ten years, millions of ideas were thrown out, rigorous testing was done, design flaws were found and corrected nearly overnight, and people went without much sleep. So said my new friend Roy.
The F-1 jet engine that enabled space flight for humans.
Roy Logston's primary job on the Saturn-V rocket was systems testing of the S-IVB, which included the J-2 engine. I sat down with him while he espoused the near flawlessness of the J-2, its specific impulse of 435 seconds (which can't physically be improved upon very much), and his work with the Skylab (predecessor to the International Space Station). We walked forty feet over to the actual decommissioned Skylab. Roy pointed up at the solar panel arm and told me about the mission where a micrometeoroid shield that protected the craft from space debris malfunctioned and came off, stripping one of the solar arms with it. Astronaut Pete Conrad had to spacewalk and fix a part by brute force so the remaining solar arm would deploy. The arm finally opened, but it flung Conrad off of the structure and into space and he became the first man to dangle loose in space while attached only by a tether.
Roy also let me know a bit about himself. He was born in 1930 and grew up in eastern Ohio during the great depression. In high school and college he drove a taxi cab, sometimes 80 hours a week on top of classes, leaving little time to sleep. In '53 he was drafted during the Korean War but somehow landed a desk job stateside pushing papers for radio engineers. In college he earned degrees in English, Physics and Mathematics. I can't imagine pulling that off, but he did it! After the Army, he found himself in the Aerospace industry where he remained for 35 years. When I spoke with him, he had long since retired. Roy volunteers as a very knowledgeable docent at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a pastime that surely is better than watching MSNBC and FOX all day at the retirement center. I am glad I bumped into Roy.
Tomorrow I tour UAH and interview Dr. Sheila Cummings!