NASA's Apollo missions took humans to the moon – and my father played a role

I was 13 years old before learning that my father had worked for the Apollo Lunar Missions.

Maybe I could be forgiven for being initially skeptical. By the time he chose to give me this information, we were moving to the former headquarters of Mission to Mars at Disneyland, waiting for our launch for a brief capsule to the Red Planet before a accident requires a quick but safe return to Earth. .

But the story he was about to share was neither a fantasy nor a fairy tale, nor as dramatic or as glamorous as the ones Hollywood turns to.

With the release of First Man, a new drama chronicling the Apollo 11 mission on the moon, I reflect on what it meant to be a child of the 60s and 70s trapped in the excitement of moon missions. The launches, the increasingly ambitious missions, were events that punctuated the life of a young schoolboy strangling Tang – a fruit-flavored powdered drink mix made popular by NASA missions – with the hoping to be an astronaut but ignoring the contribution his own father had already made.

My father worked for decades as an engineer for several aerospace and defense contractors in Southern California, including TRW, Litton Industries and Magnavox. He shared little, either because of the highly technical nature of his work, or more likely because of restrictions related to his security clearance.

Although his work was a mystery to me, his love for traveling in space was not. He came of age as the race for space was getting ready and he was keenly interested in the space program. When my brothers and I were kids, our father woke us up early on launch day so we could watch the event with him on TV (no digital video recorder at the time) . He used the garden telescope to show us landing sites for Apollo missions.

As with any large business, it is important to understand that thousands of people were involved and I do not want to give the impression that my father was with Gene Krantz or Chris Kraft at the Houston Mission Control Center. (Although, like many times, he would have looked at the role, with his short hair, his horn-rimmed glasses, and his short-sleeved white dress shirt and his well-visible pocket protector.)

Like the thousands of people who have lent a hand, he has made a small but essential contribution to the success of the mission. While many participants were trying to bring the astronauts to the moon and come back safely, my father was anxious to protect them from the ground while waiting for their launch.

It was not an easy task, since the astronauts were tied in a capsule perched above a Saturn V rocket containing more than half a million gallons of fuel and 400,000 gallons of liquid oxygen needed to push the Apollo probe out of the Earth's atmosphere. This was also enough to fuel an explosion equivalent to 2 kilotons of TNT.

The emergency tower

In case of launch emergency, the fast separation work of the crew of the Saturn V rocket would fall under the emergency tower, essentially another much smaller rocket mounted above the capsule that would shoot it the launcher and deploy a parachute. when it was at a safe distance.

A series of explosive bolts kept the emergency tower in place until an emergency use during an uninhibited launch or until its scheduled release three minutes after take-off. Keeping these bolts in place until one or the other of these events could save lives and prevent damage to the thrower.

But the stability of the locks was threatened by ocean radio waves and electromagnetic interference that swirled around the rocket before launch, which could inadvertently detonate the devices.

A team of engineers, including my father, was responsible for submitting the locks to a battery of tests to identify vulnerabilities that could arise from the different radio frequencies used on the launch pad, as well as Static electricity from electrical systems.

While these tests were conducted in the mountains outside Los Angeles in early 1967, the importance of the team's work was put to the test when the three astronauts of the Apollo 1 crew passed away. after the fire of a capsule abroad. The fire that killed Roger Chaffee, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Ed White – at a rehearsal launch for the first manned trip around the moon – was due to the combination of a cabin filled with pure oxygen, combustible materials and vulnerable cables, according to NASA's summary.

The inhabited Apollo flights were suspended for almost two years, while the program was reviewed and redesigned. The investigation determined that the control module – the capsule in which the astronauts were going to climb into space – was extremely dangerous, but also revealed that the preparation of the test in emergency situations was inadequate.

The disaster resulted in several design, manufacturing and procedural changes. He also highlighted the risk faced by astronauts even on the ground, which certainly worried my father, so devoted to the process that he was at the remote test site a few days after the fire, when my mother gave birth with me. A military escort was assured that my father was in the delivery room on time.

Two and a half years later, all of NASA's efforts paid off when, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin rose to the surface of the moon. That day, my family was driving to discover the Palomar Observatory in San Diego, hoping to see the probe orbiting the moon through the Hale telescope. Unfortunately, my parents, my older brothers and I missed the moon landing when my father's Jeep had two flat tires on the way home, but we were back in Torrance in front of our black TV and 21-inch white at the hour Watch Armstrong pronounce his famous speech.

NASA would make five more moon landings between 1969 and 1972, and the fire tower should never have been used by astronauts during a launch. A 1973 NASA report stated that no pyrotechnic device failures had been detected during Apollo missions. The reliability of the bolts has been attributed, "to a large extent", to test techniques, among others (PDF).

It was one of the many small components of a huge project, and although my father's words are soft and he does not brag, he is proud of his contribution to the Apollo program and privately as one of the highlights of his career.

And who would not be proud to help achieve something that was previously a fantasy for centuries?

As for First Man, even if it is unlikely that my father is in the movie, I know that he is in the story.

NASA is 60 years old: the space agency has pushed humanity further than anyone and plans to go further.

Take it to the extreme: mix crazy situations – eruptive volcanic eruptions, nuclear collapses, 30-foot waves – with everyday technologies. This is what happens.