The man who won the race of the moon | Space

For his annual coverage "Man of the Year" of January 3, 1969, Time The magazine made the rare choice to honor not one but three: NASA astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders. According to the publisher, their lunar Christmas trip aboard Apollo 8 had been a "transcendent legacy" of 1968 and a "journey into the future of man".

The editors of the magazine also called for special recognition a "mix" among the 400,000 or so people working on Apollo at the time: a 42-year-old NASA director born in Austria, named George Low. The name was virtually unknown to the public, but it had not been for Low, Time proclaimed, "there would have been no Apollo 8 flight to the moon."

The publishers could have gone further. Without Low, President John F. Kennedy may have never engaged the nation in a lunar landing and, once committed, he may never have recovered from the Apollo 1 fire that interrupted the program less than two years before the triumph of Apollo 8.

Compared to the giants of the Apollo era such as Wernher von Braun and Neil Armstrong, Low has not been recognized yet. But his reputation has grown over time. "As usual in any big business, it all boils down to one human being making the difference," said Apollo 8's commander, Frank Borman, during a nearly round table discussion. 50 years later. "In the case of Apollo, George Low was the one who made the difference."

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Born near Vienna between the two world wars, George M. Low was part of an influential family that once operated Austria's largest industrial refinery, fertilizer factory and export business. In 1938, George, his mother, and his two brothers and sisters fled the Nazis (his father had died four years earlier) and emigrated to the United States to finally settle on a farm in the north of England. State of New York. In their adopted country, Gertrude Low raised her son so that he did not focus on the past or what could have been.

Quiet, silent and extremely focused on what he was doing, the boy had an affinity for mathematics and mechanical tasks. All his life, he remained an "engineer with dirty hands". Even during his busiest years at NASA, his family did not remember one time he had called in a repairman. Once, when the washing machine broke down, Low spent a whole Saturday dismounting and spreading all the pieces on the damp floor, until he found the damaged room.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, uncrowded, as the age of jet aircraft was about to begin. "Pleasure is one of the main reasons to do anything," he said, and he found a lot in aeronautics. He was enlisted in the army corps while still in the baccalaureate, but eventually returned to Rensselaer to complete his master's degree. In 1949, the same year at his wedding, Low landed an aeronautical research position at Abe Silverstein at the Lewis Research Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), near Cleveland.

Under Silverstein, Low carried out fundamental research on fundamental aeronautical problems such as boundary layer flows and high velocity turbulence, at a time when NACA was assisting the air force in the airborne program. X. Aircraft Classification It is during this work that he first met a young test pilot and an engineer named Neil Armstrong.

When, in 1958, Silverstein moved to Washington, DC, to become director of the space flight programs of the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration, he took Low with him. Alongside pioneering space engineers Bob Gilruth and Max Faget, Low was assigned to the agency's initiative on manned spaceflight, the Mercury Project. Although he would have preferred to participate directly in the engineering work, he needed Low to manage the commercial part of the program, as NASA's Managed Space Flight Authority (OMSF) manager.

Right away, Low had an impact. "George was good at everything," Gilruth recalled in a 1987 interview. "It was worth about 10 men." George Abbey, Low during Apollo's technical assistant, responsible for overseeing the body of astronauts in the space shuttle era, has been reminded that his boss "was at work well before most people in the morning and well after, they left at night.

Low's attention to detail and his almost photographic memory were legendary. A Washington Post The journalist marveled: "Low reads every piece of paper that goes through his desk. He feels that he must touch everything to assimilate it. But once he's done it, he never forgets it.

Perhaps because English was his second language, Low developed the precision of a mathematician with words. He used a green marker to edit and comment everything he read, so that his notations stand out and people instantly recognize them as his own. He even corrected the grammar. The pens were known in the office as "green stingers" or "green hornets".

An important part of Low's work was to testify before Congress on all sorts of subjects, from budget requests to US chances of victory over Russians in space. A licensed pilot, he had a special affinity with NASA astronauts and introduced them to the powerful Capitol Hill players. Low had helped define the Mercury Seven selection criteria and felt that the astronaut test pilot experience was essential to the success of the mission. "It was the toughest group of guys I knew," Low said.

In politics, he was a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. All Cold War calculations concerning Apollo have been left to the White House and Congress. He was, however, naturally competitive. Low hated losing, whether it was a tennis match or a geopolitical race against the Soviets at the moon. "One of the biggest disappointments for me was when I received a phone call on the night of April 12th. [1961]At two o'clock in the morning, telling me that Gagarin was up, "Low remembered later. The Mercury spacecraft was ready to launch Alan Shepard a few weeks earlier. But Wernher von Braun and his rocket team in Alabama, as well as some members of NASA headquarters, were concerned about an anomaly that occurred during a previous unmanned test. "Gilruth and I were ready to go," Low said. "We knew what the problem was and we were sure to solve it." After a tense meeting in Washington to make the decision to go back or not, another animal test flight was ordered , for security purposes. Low was disappointed, but he was never the type to slam the desk or raise his voice. When he was angry, his colleagues noticed, he was silent and his language became more precise and more demanding. He accepted the delay of Shepard's escape while still regretting what he called "a political decision".

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At the time of manned robbery, Low was one of the leading advocates of a lunar landing, a laudable goal for NASA. In April 1959, as a member of the so-called Goett committee tasked with producing a long-term strategic plan for the agency, Low pushed toward the moon. (A writer even went so far as to call him a "moon zealot.") Unlike von Braun or other NASA personalities, he was not inspired by his Children's dreams of launching rockets in the space. It was the dirty hands engineer who perceived a landing on a moon as a technically challenging – and therefore exciting – target that would advance the technology as far as possible.

When other members of the committee suggested that a moon ride rather than a landing would be more cautious, Low, the natural competitor, persisted. He thought both could be in a program of several decades. The circum-lunar flight could begin, but it would be followed by a landing in the 1970s.

On July 28, 1960, he chaired NASA's first planning session to solicit feasibility studies for lunar missions. More than 1,300 representatives from government, the aerospace industry and academia attended the meeting. This is where Low first introduced the program that his boss Abe Silverstein dubbed "Apollo". At a time when NASA rockets still exploded on the platform, Low was captivating the crowd by describing Apollo Moon's modular approach.

The press loved the story. The White House, not so much. President Eisenhower viewed manned spaceflight as a mere cascade and Mercury as a one-time program rather than the beginning of a great new venture. His response was to immediately erase NASA's 1961 budget from any funding for astronaut flights. It took both NASA's director, Keith Glennan, and deputy administrator, Hugh Dryden, to calm the president. They managed to persuade him to restore funding, but without a lunar landing mission.

Bas would not be discouraged. In fact, he has redoubled his efforts to ensure that NASA's plans for manned space flights do not end with Mercury. "I thought it would be important to have something on file," he said. "We had to be ready to go with a bigger program if the government and the administration suddenly changed heart."

On October 17, 1960, Low wrote a note to Silverstein asking a small working group – later called the Low Committee – to propose an "appropriate justification" for the Moon program and to give it "a more solid basis" on a technical level. . and budgetary needs. Silverstein approved with a simple "O.K." written on the memo.

Less than four months later, on February 7th, Low's committee produced a detailed report on how to get to the moon, as well as approximate schedules and budgets. According to the report, with adequate funding, a lunar landing could be accomplished by the end of the decade.

While the team was working on the study, the country elected a new president, John F. Kennedy. A few weeks after its inauguration, the White House was looking for a boost for public relations following the Bay of Pigs fiasco. "When President Kennedy's White House called [NASA administrator] Jim Webb said, "Now, what about this lunar mission?" NASA already had the answers, mainly thanks to the work of the Low Committee, "said Max Faget. It is in fact George Low's plan that is at the root of Kennedy's challenge at the end of the decade.

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Six years later, when the Apollo 1 fire claimed the lives of three astronauts and cast doubt on the future of the Moon program, NASA turned to Low again. In April 1967, Webb appointed him to be the head of the Apollo program.

In an interview with the BBC more than ten years later, Low confessed to finding the accident "dreadful". He was convinced that this should never have happened. On the night of the fire, he was in his office in Houston, working late and listening to tests being conducted at Cape Canaveral. It was clear that things were not going well. Then, the first muffled sounds of the tragedy: "Fire!" Low rushed to Mission Control, where a call came soon: the astronauts were dead. A few minutes later, when Low communicated on the phone with NASA Assistant Administrator Robert Seamans, he was so upset that the sailors could not understand him at first. It was a rare manifestation of emotion that most of Low's colleagues had never seen.

His anger and frustration quickly turned into a resolute resolution of Apollo's problems. "This was the most difficult period of my engineering life," he told the BBC interviewer. Responsible for redefining and rebuilding the Apollo vehicle, he and his staff of NASA and its subcontractors decided to "discover what was hidden in this spacecraft and what could come back to bite us. " the countdown to Kennedy's challenge. From April 1967 to the end of the decade, the moon would rise and go down only 33 more times. "The number of times the moon was going to be in the right position was very accounting," Low said.

During this time, he usually works 18 hours a day, seven days a week. "My briefcase was my desk; my suitcase, my house, as I moved from Houston to Downey, Bethpage, Cape Kennedy and back to Houston, "he recalls. He tried to book Sunday morning at the church and at the family. A journalist who described Low during this period wrote: "He has five children aged 4 to 15 and loves the sophisticated way he does everything for them on Sunday, from water skiing to pancake breakfast. . On Sunday night, however, we were back to conference calls and piles of paperwork, a green pen in hand.

Low's colleagues at the Manned Spacecraft Center had great confidence in his leadership. "George Low was an expert at getting people to work together," Flight Director Gene Kranz recalls in a memoir. "The flight directors knew Low well since his visit to the center of the night at the control center during a flight, where he was sitting silently in the observation room."

He often took his lunch to sit down with the workers at the center and ask how things were going. Trust and respect go both ways. "You would do everything it asked you to do, regardless of the risks and risks," Kranz said. "And you did it because you knew he was sweating down to the last detail."

Low knew that one of the main causes of the fire was the poor coordination of technical changes to the Apollo spacecraft. Solving the problem could make things worse. "Rebuilding meant changes, and changes, problems, they were not perfectly controlled," he said. "Our solution was the CCB, the configuration board." Its goal is to track technical changes that may inadvertently affect another part of the Apollo complex system.

Low has ensured that the board includes "some of the best engineers in the world". He requested participation from each branch of the Apollo supply chain and supply chain, including subcontractors such as North American and Grumman. He assigned astronauts whom he trusted to be his eyes and ears in the stores where the spaceship was built. At Rockwell, he installed Frank Borman; at Grumman, Jim McDivitt.

"George had us [CCB members] in a room, "said Chris Kraft, head of NASA's flight operations. "And he said: All leaders, you will all attend. No substitute. I do not want anyone but you. You must be 100%, because together we will run this program. "

The CWB met every Friday at noon and alternated between Rockwell and Grumman. Meetings often went late into the night and no one left until all issues were resolved. From equipment designers to astronauts, to flight surgeons and astronauts, Low has let everyone express themselves. Often the discussions were lively and Low had to order with a hammer. But it was not a democracy. "After hearing everyone's opinion for and against, I did not vote or delegate. On the contrary, I made the decisions. "

Low has kept a table listing all the equipment that has problems: faulty circuit breakers, sticky and faulty valves, badly wired switches. They were constant tactile reminders of the importance of paying attention to detail. "Each one represented a potential failure in flight," Low said.

Finally, the council was able to understand the chaos. "From June 1967 to July 1969, we met 90 times, reviewed 1,697 amendments, and approved 1,341," Low said. "We tore up the control module, literally the 2 million pieces, and then we restored it as we wanted.

"In the body of astronauts, we were amazed by the new Apollo spacecraft taking shape," wrote Alan Shepard in 1994. "We were gaining confidence knowing that, yes, they create something we can fly safely. Low has always considered this ultimate goal. Later, during all Apollo flights, he would have the habit of having breakfast with the astronauts before the launch. He wanted to shake their hand, look them in the eyes and let them know that he had done everything in their power to ensure their safety.

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In August 1968, it was clear to Low that the first lunar module ready for flight would not be built in time for the initial target date of December for Apollo 8, which was supposed to test both the command / service module and the vehicle lunar landing of Grumman in Earth Orbit. The LG, Low said, "had what we call" first ship problems. "It always takes longer for the first ship to get through."

The redesigned control module, on the other hand, had a jab, even before its first shakedown flight in Earth orbit, planned for Apollo 7 in October. If NASA were waiting for a similar verification of the lunar module in Earth orbit, Apollo 8 would not fly until March 1969. This would make the first lunar landing well past Kennedy's deadline.

"It was a challenge that mattered a lot to us," Low said. "We did not want to give up the country." Waiting for March also increased the risk of losing to the Soviet Union. It was thought that the Russians were close to their own human stroke, and Low hated the prospect of being beaten – again.

The idea of ​​going to the moon before the LG was ready had been imagined more than a year ago, during his first week as head of the Apollo program. During a meeting with Kraft and Deke Slayton, head of the astronaut office, Kraft mentioned several ways in which the program could make up for the delays due to the fire. One was a flight in orbit around the moon before landing, with only the command and service modules. Low took note of it. The idea came to him, and he became interested in it more and more as the delays with the lunar lander worsened.

Kraft, however, had mostly let him out of his mind. "We were all taken aback," he recalled, when Low came up with the idea of ​​the real idea in August 1968. "This was the most daring decision of the space program," he said. Kraft said.

For Low, it was simply asking the right question: how to move the program forward with ready-made hardware now? "Navigation on the moon, lunar orbit, combustion of the big engine, computer programs needed for this, we could fix everything.

After all, the control and service modules have been designed to gravitate around the moon. "It's a mission we should have faced sooner or later anyway," Low said. And that would increase the probability of a successful landing later. "Low's idea of ​​going around the moon was a stroke of genius," said Gilruth. "He broke the back of the Russian effort of landing on the moon and let the United States free to take his time and focus on the work of putting a man on the moon."

George Mueller, who was in charge of manned spaceflight at NASA headquarters, was against the idea at the beginning, saying it posed an unnecessary risk. The Webb administrator was in shock. "Webb thought we must have lost our minds," Low said. Despite all his political skills, the administrator could not face another fatal accident after the Apollo 1 fire and was already planning to retire before the Apollo 7 flight in October. Fortunately, his successor, Tom Paine, was excited to send Apollo 8 to the moon.

Low understood the resistance in Washington, even though he thought this decision was unthinking from a purely technical point of view. "Politically, of course, it was a bad decision," he said. "Remember, [the decision on] Apollo 8 arrived shortly after the Apollo 1 fire. "It took several private sessions to overcome skepticism. Finally, after a series of executive meetings in Washington on November 10 and 11, 1968, Apollo 8 was approved for a mission in lunar orbit. It was announced to the world the next day and, less than six weeks later, Borman, Lovell and Anders headed for the moon.

After the launch of Apollo 8 on December 21st, the first with astronauts aboard the Saturn V, Low monitored the flight from the back row of Mission Control. There were many dramatic and tense moments during this historic week. One of the flights took a little less than 70 hours when telemetry confirmed that Apollo 8 had successfully passed into lunar orbit shortly before 4 am Houston time on Christmas Eve.

When cheers erupted in Mission Control, George Low came out, filled with relief and satisfaction, and looked up at the growing crescent moon. He would remember later: "It seemed different to me."