The title here has been running through my head recently since the media have once again nearly unanimously acted as willing participants in the fraud that is Mars One, after the project – or is it performance art? – announced its third-round culled-down list of 100 candidates, precisely none of whom will go to Mars.
The chief problem with Mars One is that it’s the product of a fantasist without money, without plans, without industry cooperation, and without the sense God gave a goose. As I read between the lines of recent interviews, many of their volunteers appear to me to be lonely souls with little to look forward to in their lives who seem happy to latch onto even the most vaporous of schemes just for the tiny glimmer of hope it gives them, even if death happens to be the end game.
The media’s almost unfailing neutrality in regard to the non-project, in which they basically rewrite press releases – in effect, becoming cheerleaders – is a particularly regrettable example of the creeping hyper-objectivity of news organisations that increasingly concentrate more on page impressions than truth. Too many stories are presented without questioning anything about them, never mind the in-depth critical analysis that some of them cry out for. The continuing rise of one-sided news written by public relations people – not really ‘people’ in the traditional sense, but I use the term for the sake of convenience – is welcomed by news organisations ever tightly focused on the bottom line, because it’s much cheaper to hire kids just out of J-School to rewrite PR hogwash than it is to actually look into things – you know, see if they’re true or whatnot.
So, on to serious projects instead. What about NASA? Orion seems like a good ship so far, but I’ve been ignoring the chorus saying it’s the first step to Mars. It is the first step to getting past the low Earth orbit we’ve been stuck in for forty-three years¹, but no more than that. Development of the Space Launch System (SLS) is underway, but that’s where current plans end. The budget money ends there, too.
Many problems challenging a manned Mars mission, such as too-heavy but essential radiation shielding, a known 1-2% bone density loss per month in microgravity, and the new and worrying possibility of permanent vision impairment or loss, remain insurmountable. They may be resolved in the course of time, but I don’t think this is the decade, and the next one is doubtful, too. Half-century? Maybe. With current capabilities and limitations, humans would first be incapacitated and then almost surely killed along the way to Mars. Those who weren’t by some miracle dead by landing wouldn’t be able to move due to pesky skeletons with the tensile strength of a handful of matchsticks.
“Oh, details, details”, some freer spirits than me will no doubt think as they strive to come up with a pithy one-sentence retort involving the word ‘haters’. And that’s fine; this is just my annoyingly science-based opinion, after all. But what about actual space travellers? How do NASA astronauts – the ones who remain, anyway – feel about Mars? Joyous anticipation? Unconcealed excitement? Not exactly.
Lori Garver, who had advised Obama and then become NASA’s deputy administrator, was visiting Johnson Space Center. After “rah-rah” remarks, Garver polled the roughly four dozen astronauts in attendance where they wanted to go. An asteroid? No hands. Mars? Three hands. The moon? All the rest of the hands.
I agree.
—
¹If the Earth were the size of a ping pong ball, the farthest humans have ventured away from it since Apollo 17 in December 1972 would be about 2 millimetres. The Space Shuttle’s operating limit was a bit shy of 400 miles altitude, or about 1/10th the radius of Earth. For terrestrial reference, that’s about the distance from Edinburgh to London or Boston to Washington, DC.
A friend was supposed to visit Monday and Tuesday this week, but those plans were cancelled due to the weather, which reminded me that Mark Twain had a similar problem a while back – March 1888 to be precise. Olivia, his wife, was to have joined him for a week in New York City, but it was not to be. From his letter to her dated 10 March 1888:
And so, after all my labor and persuasion to get you to at last promise to take a week’s holiday and go off with me on a lark, this is what Providence has gone and done about it. It does seem to me the oddest thing – the way Providence manages. A mere simple request to you to stay at home would have been entirely sufficient; but no, that is not big enough, picturesque enough – a blizzard’s the idea; pour down all the snow in stock, turn loose all the winds, bring a whole continent to a stand-still: that is Providence’s idea of the correct way to trump a person’s trick. If I had known it was going to make all this trouble and cost all these millions, I never would have said anything about your going. Now in the light of this revelation of the methods of Providence, consider Noah’s flood – I wish I knew the real reason for playing that cataclysm on the public: likely enough, somebody who liked dry weather wanted to take a walk. That is probably the whole thing – and nothing more to it.
The blizzard he refers to was the Great Blizzard of 1888, which paralysed the Northeast US, sank or grounded 200 ships, blanketed the countryside with 20-60 inches of snow, and killed 400 people – 200 of them in New York City. The supremely annoying “Weather predictions must be perfect! You made me stay off the roads and I didn’t have to! What about my Taco Bell dinner! Call 9-1-1! Waaaa!” people in that area would be well-advised to stick that in their collective pipe and smoke it. Those ubiquitous “Me, me, me! Outrage, outrage, outrage!” chowderheads regretfully now fully enabled by antisocial media remind me of the Italian government trying to jail earthquake scientists a few years ago. I’m happy to report that their manslaughter convictions were finally overturned last November.
The GOES-EAST satellite – GOES-13 at the moment – captured the genesis and follow-through of this week’s blizzard in exquisite detail:
GOES-13, known as GOES-N before launch, was built by Boeing Satellite Systems [PDF of GOES-N databook] and contains several other instruments in addition to its imager:
It’s about the size and weight of a large SUV:
The operational infrastructure behind – or perhaps I should say underneath – the satellite is rather breathtaking. Presented in both org chart and geographic styles here:
And now for the other Twain bookend. I’ve read dozens of his speeches, but his talk on New England weather is my favourite. His part begins several paragraphs into this article, at the subhead SPEECH OF MR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
From The New York Times, 23 December 1876
FOREFATHERS’ DAY.
NEW-ENGLANDERS AT DINNER.
THE ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF THE NEW-ENGLAND SOCIETY – SPEECHES BY HON. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, ‘MARK TWAIN,’ REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, REV. DR. JOHN COTTON SMITH, REV. DR. TAYLOR, AND OTHERS – INTERESTING LETTER FROM GEN. SHERMAN.
The New England Society’s annual dinner at Delmonico’s last night was one of the most brilliant celebrations of the kind that has ever been held in this City. The preparations were made with great thoroughness, and the addresses by the respondents to the several toasts were full of earnestness, good feeling, good sense, and good wit. The dining-hall was filled with seven tables, the President’s table overlooking six others arranged opposite to it at right angles. Above the head of the President was suspended against the wall the banner of the New England Society, flanked by silken national ensigns, and on the opposite side of the hall, before the orchestra balcony, was a national shield also draped with United States flags. the tables were elegantly and tastefully decorated with baskets and set pieces of flowers. Before the President was a design, in flowers of delicate hues, representing Plymouth Rock, and there were many viands in the feast that recalled to genuine New Englanders the plain and beauty fare of the land of steady habits. The guests entered the dining room just before 7 o’clock, and at that hour Rev. Dr. John Cotton Smith, at the invitation of President Borden, said grace. Among those present were Rev. Edward Everett Hale, ex-Gov. Edwin D. Morgan, Hon. George William Curtis, Rev. John Cotton Smith, Rev. Richard S. Storrs, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain,) Mayor Wickham, Joseph H. Choate, Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor, Hon. Elliot C. Cowdin, Hon. Salem H. Wales, Commodore J. W. A. Nicholson, G. B. Loring, Hon. Isaac H. Bailey, Dexter A. Hawkins, Prof. Bartholdt, (sculptor of the colossal Statue of Liberty), District Attorney Benjamin K. Phelps, Prof. F. B. Sanborn of Dartmouth College, representatives of St. George’s, St. Andrew’s and St. Patrick’s Societies, Assistant District Attorneys Bell, Russell and Rollins, Parke Godwin, Clark Bell, Police Commissioners, Wheeler and Erbardt, and Prof. W. E. Chandler, the whole company numbering more than two hundred. More than two hours were spent at dinner, when, at 9:30 o’clock, Rev. Mr. Courtenay gave thanks. President Borden then rose, and having called the company to order, he announced that Gen. William T. Sherman had written a letter of regret, saying that in the present condition of affairs at Washington he was unable to leave that city, and William M. Evarts was also detained in Washington and was unable to attend, and that letters of regret had been received from ex-Speaker James G. Blaine, Gov. Tilden, Gov. Chamberlain, of South Carolina, Robert C. Winthrop, and Gen. John C. Newton.
Hon. George William Curtis was called upon to respond to the toast of “Forefathers’ Day.” He was received with prolonged applause, and by many of the company rising to their feet with waving handkerchiefs and loud cheers. His remarks were frequently interrupted by hearty expressions of approval, and his allusion to Abraham Lincoln as the development of the seed sown here two centuries ago by the coming of the Mayflower, was followed by vehement applause. His suggestions for the conduct of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the settlement of the political difficulties threatening the nation roused is hearers to the highest pitch of excitement, and evoked unanimous and prolonged applause.
As Mr. Curtis sat down, he was greeted with the heartiest cheers, which subsided only to be renewed with greater vigor. Cheers followed the announcement of the sentiment, “The President of the United States.” In reply to the “City of New York,” Mayor Wickham humorously arraigned a large number of City officers for alleged shortcomings, charging them with being New Englanders, and succeeding in finding so many against whom the charges were applicable, and indicated them so plainly, as to cause unbounded merriment.
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, in responding to the toast, “New England Culture,” made an address in which wit and wisdom were happily blended. Commodore Nicholson responded to the toast, “The Army and Navy.” Mark Twain provoked a storm of laughter by his rambling talk about “New England Weather.” Rev. John Cotton Smith commanded the fullest attention of the company by his response to the toast set down for him. Responses were made by Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor, Prof. Sanborn, and others.
THE PROCEEDINGS
The proceedings were begun by the President, Mr. William Borden, who said:
Gentlemen, will you give your reverent attention for a moment while I call upon Rev. Mr. Courtenay to return thanks?
Rev. Mr. Courtenay responding to the suggestion of the Chairman, offered prayer as follows:
“Most merciful God, and Father, in whom we live and move and have our being; Thou who can satisfy the desire of every living thing, we render Thee our thanks for the satisfaction of our bodily appetites, and pray Thee that what we shall now hear may be for the satisfaction of the higher appetite of our intellects and our reason for the sake of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
SPEECH OF MR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
The Oldest Inhabitant – The Weather –
Who hath lost and doth forget it?
Who hath it still and doth regret it?
“Interpose betwixt us Twain.”
– Merchant of Venice
“I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all, makes everything in New England – but the weather. I don’t know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the Weather Clerk’s factory, who experiment and learn how in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don’t get it. [Laughter.] There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger’s admiration – and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. [Laughter.] But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. [Laughter.] It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, “Don’t you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day.” I told him what we could do, in the way of style, variety, and quantity. [Laughter.] Well, he came, and he made his collection in four days. As to variety – why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity – well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. [Laughter.] The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing; but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about “Beautiful Spring.” [Laughter.] These are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so, the first thing they know, the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by. [Laughter.]
Old Probabilities* has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the papers and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what today’s weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region; see him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then – see his tail drop. He doesn’t know what the weather is going to be like in New England. He can’t any more tell than he can tell how many Presidents of the United States there’s going to be next year. [Applause.] Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this: Probable nor’-east to sou’-west winds, varying to the southard and westard and eastard and points between; high and low barometer, swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning. [Loud laughter and applause.] Then he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents: “But it is possible that the program may be wholly changed in the meantime.” [Loud laughter.]
Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it, you are certain there is going to be plenty of weather. [Laughter.] A perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out with your sprinkling pot, and ten to one you get drowned. [Applause.] You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know, you get struck by lightning. [Laughter.] These are great disappointments. But they can’t be helped. [Laughter.] The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing when it strikes a thing, it doesn’t leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether – well, you’d think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. [Loud laughter and applause.]
And the thunder. When the thunder commences to merely tune up, and scrape, and saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, “Why, what awful thunder you have here!” But when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you’ll find that stranger down in the cellar, with his head in the ash barrel. [Laughter.]
Now, as to the size of the weather in New England – lengthways, I mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country. [Laughter.] Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states. [Laughter.] She can’t hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about, where she has strained herself trying to do it. [Laughter.]
I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof, so I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on the tin? No, sir; skips it every time. [Laughter.]
Mind, in this speech I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather; no language could do it justice. [Laughter.] But, after all, there are at least one of two things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced by it) which we residents would not like to part with. [Applause.] If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries – the ice storm – when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles, cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. [Applause.] Then the wind waves the branches, and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms, that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again, with inconceivable rapidity, from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold; the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence! One cannot make the words too strong. [Long continued applause.]
Month after month I lay up my hate and grudge against the New England weather; but when the ice storm comes at last, I say: “There, I forgive you, now; the books are square between us; you don’t owe me a cent; go, and sin no more; your little faults and foibles count for nothing; you are the most enchanting weather in the world!”
THE OTHER TOASTS.
The other toasts of the evening were “The Clergy of New England,” responded to by Rev. John Cotton Smith; “Lafayette – who gave us himself and liberty; and Bartholdi – who gives us Liberty and Lafayette.” No. Response. “The Agricultural and Manufacturing Interests of New England,” Dr. George B. Loring, and “Our Sister Societies,” responded to by the Presidents of the Irish, Scotch, and English societies.
The proceedings terminated shortly after midnight.
*At the time of Twain’s speech, Old Probabilities was the widely-used nickname of Cleveland Abbe, first scientist of the American Weather Bureau, predecessor to the National Weather Service.
“I’m feeling a bit tired, did you get all my data? I might take a nap…”
This infantalising of spaceflight really doesn’t work for me, nor am I a big fan of journalists pretending spacecraft have Fnooter accounts and feelings and such. Instead of playing along and thereby helping to downplay serious problems, why not report the facts: a committee of four or five people decides what the fnoots will say in general, with the focus on minimising the negative and maximising the positive; the Assistant to the Director for Cutesy Talk and Multiple Exclamation Points then dumbs it down; then the antisocial media drone pastes it in. Document that process and then maybe – maybe – you can legitimately call yourself a journalist.
1968: Apollo 11’s LM-5 ascent stage under construction at Grumman in Bethpage, Long Island. The ascent stage without fuel weighed 2,445 kg/5,390 lb; double that with fuel. Click for a larger version.
You: “Did you say ‘guillotine’?”
Me [approximating John Cleese]: “Explosive guillotine, yes.”
August 2018 update: See also the companion article Don’t get me started, in which Apollo 17 LMP Jack Schmitt describes a mind-boggling workaround they could attempt if the ascent stage launch pyrotechnics failed to fire.
See also the comments at the end of this article for a photo of a guillotine housing, sent by a fellow who machined many of them at Grumman.
In missions past and present, explosive devices feature in pretty much every spacecraft because they’re a safe, reliable way to ensure that processes start, items such as antennas are deployed, and connected assemblies that need to come apart are quickly and cleanly separated.
On the Apollo missions, over 210 pyrotechnic devices were in the Saturn V stack and the Command, Service, and Lunar Modules, used for everything from extending the LM landing gear to deploying drogue and main parachutes to ensuring fuel was at the correct side of a tank in zero G – for which the word ullage (in French, ouillage) was borrowed from vintners, to whom it means the headspace between the top of the wine and the container it’s in, whether a cask or a bottle.
The Lunar Module had several devices on board:
Control over them was through the Explosive Devices Control Panel:
All of these devices were essential, but particularly key were the devices set off to initiate separation of the ascent and descent stages of the LM when the astronauts departed the lunar surface. This was a three-stage process that took place in the tenths of seconds before the ascent engine was lit:
First, fire circuit interrupters to cut off electrical signals between the stages
Second, fire and shear the four explosive nut and bolt assemblies that affix the ascent stage to the descent stage
Third, using the explosive guillotine, slice through a thick bundle of umbilical cables and wires and a water supply line that run between the two stages
Though these devices were known to be generally reliable, a certain level of trepidation about them is understandable. Blowing up some high explosives to drive a big blade through wires doesn’t exactly sound like the most controlled process even though it actually was.
“Did you know when that unit was up on the moon, and the ascent stage was going to take off, they had all those wires – fourteen miles of them – running from the ascent stage into the descent stage, and it all had to be disconnected before you took off, or you didn’t take off? That’s all there was to it. You couldn’t use wire couplings that just pulled out when you gave it a good, hard yank. Do you want to trust a wire coupling to hold through a Saturn V liftoff and all that g-force and vibration? Uh-uh. Try flying a ship with a few loose wires. So, it was all solid connections, which is why we put a guillotine inside the descent stage: to cut all the wires. Everything had to be timed just right. The explosives had to trigger the guillotine and the blade had to cut through some pretty thick cables, and at the same time, the ascent rocket engine, which was never run before, had to start.” – Bob Ekenstierna, LM descent stage construction supervisor at Grumman
In Chariots for Apollo by Pellegrino and Stoff, a somewhat sensationalist telling of the building of the Lunar Module at Grumman*, they speak of Joe Kingfield, the director of quality control. I won’t quote them directly since they went over the top with their narrative, but Kingfield had frequent nightmares about the liftoff from the moon that involved the guillotine and one or more of the explosive bolts failing. In his dreams, the ascent stage lifted off, but, still connected by miles of wire, dragged the descent stage along the ground and eventually crashed back into the surface. In later years, Kingfield still could not bring himself to watch the footage of the lunar liftoffs taken by the Mission Control-directed TV cameras on the Lunar Roving Vehicles of Apollo 15, 16, and 17.
*Not to be confused with the unimpeachable NASA volume of the same name by Brooks, Grimwood, and Swenson; web and epub links at the link. 2018 update: You can get a free high-quality scanned PDF of this book and many other official NASA histories – see the I got mine at the GPO bookstore post for the NASA Technical Reports Server links.
Charlie Duke, Lunar Module Pilot of the Apollo 16 Orion (the LM pictured in the Finley Quality Network banner above), said that the pyrotechnics for the ascent stage separation gave him brief pause just before he and Commander John Young lifted off from the moon. When the circuit interrupters fired, then the four interstage bolts at the corners were sheared, and finally the guillotine sliced through the umbilical and water lines, the entire ascent stage suddenly dropped an inch or so. Duke thought, “Oh, sh…” but did not have time to finish that thought as the ascent engine fired and abruptly took them away from the surface back toward Ken Mattingly awaiting their return aboard the Casper Command and Service Module in lunar orbit.
You can see a fair amount of the thermal protection fly off the ascent stage as it lifts off, which happened to all of the ascent stages to some extent. In addition, panels on the rear that provided thermal protection for the Aft Equipment Bay were damaged during the liftoff, but they had done their job already. Mattingly took this photograph of the Orion before docking:
Apollo deniers like to point to this and other photographs of the Orion damage as ineluctable proof of chicanery, but what it really means is that they prefer extending and enhancing their apparently quite enjoyable fantasies to, say, reading the post-mission report (9th link in the background material):
At lunar lift-off, four vertical thermal shields (fig. 14-26) on the aft equipment rack were torn loose from the lower standoffs and remained attached only at the upper standoffs. This occurrence was observed from the lunar-based television.
The most probable cause of the failure was ascent engine exhaust entering the cavity behind these thermal shields. A cross section of the lower edge of the shields is shown in figure 14-27. Analysis shows that the thermal shield which extends below the support tube allows a pressure buildup on the closure shield which exceeds its capability. Once the closure shield failed, the exhaust entered the cavity behind the shield, resulting in a pressure buildup exceeding the capability of the vertical thermal shields.
In the lunar surface photographs taken prior to lift-off, some of the shields appear to have come loose from the center standoff (fig. 14-28). Excessive gaps between some of the panels are evident. Both conditions could be caused by excessive pressure in the thermal blanket due to insufficient venting during boost.
The corrective action will include a redesign of the thermal shield to eliminate the projection below the support tube, as shown in figure 14-27, and to provide additional venting to the blankets as well as additional standoffs.
This anomaly is closed.
Not one problem was detected in any of the pyrotechnics during any Apollo mission. The device designs used in Apollo were later adopted by the Shuttle program, with, for instance, the Single-Bridgewire Apollo Standard Initiator (SBASI) becoming the NASA Standard Initiator (NSI).
Edited October 2019 to add: In July of this year, I wrote a more comprehensive article on Bill Tindall that includes several of his memos. You can find it here: https://finleyquality.net/the-thousand-ring-circus/
An introduction to Tindallgrams from one of the documents linked below:
The enclosed collection of memoranda were written by Howard W. “Bill” Tindall, Jr., the former Director of Flight Operations at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. They document key technical decisions made between 1966 and early 1970 for all unmanned and manned flights through Apollo 13, and became widely know as “Tindallgrams.” Astronauts, flight controllers, and engineers took part in this planning, and many have lamented that they had lost track of their copies, so we have bound this set together for them. As Buzz Aldrin remembered, “Bill had a brilliant way of analyzing things and the leadership that gathered diverse points of view with the utmost fairness.”
In 1966, Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager George Low made Tindall responsible for all guidance and navigation computer software development by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bill quickly grasped the key issues and clearly characterized the associated pros and cons, sometimes painfully for us, but his humor, friendliness, and ever-constructive manner endeared him to all of us.
In 1967, Low put Tindall in charge of a group called Mission Techniques, which was designed to bring together hardware development, flight crew procedures, mission roles, and spacecraft and control center computer programming. According to former MSC Director Christopher Kraft, “Those meetings were the hardened core of Apollo as far as operations planning was concerned. That’s where the famous Tindallgrams came from.” He continued, “It would be difficult for me to find anyone who contributed more individually to the success of Apollo than Bill Tindall.”
Those of us who took part in those meetings and other interactions with Bill will always appreciate another aspect of his contribution…he made it a lot of fun!
I’ve read hundreds of Tindallgrams. The one below is my all-time favorite, so I’ve cleaned it up considerably from the microfiche photocopy I got from the Kennedy Space Center years ago. These days, you don’t have to write to NASA and then wait eight or ten weeks before being pleasantly surprised by a ten-pound box in the mail. You can find PDFs with scans of many Tindallgrams here on collectSPACE, all completely weightless through the marvel of modern technology – much of which is the indirect result of Apollo, come to think of it.
In this photo of the LM-2 cockpit at the National Air & Space Museum, I’ve placed an arrow pointing to the panel and highlighted in the inset the DES QTY light being discussed:
By the way, they made the fix as Tindall had hoped – the DES QTY light did come on during landings, but did not trigger the master alarm.
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
