Planning The Apollo Missions, Part 4

and critique just as we did asked Dr Gil Ruth uh we invited him for his comment and it turns out that it was indeed great and then when such invitations are so extended to you as uh older folks as some of us are kind of getting to be be constructive and encourage both Creative Design uh creative designers and the Performing engineers and others and everybody be very encouraging and and uh don't don't be don't be negative unless you know the person is dead wrong and you know it and it's very difficult to know those things and lastly uh I discovered that I needed around me an awful lot of people assuming an awful lot of responsibility and I came to discover that people can assume tremendous responsibility if one assigns the responsibility to match their potential capability you have to provide checks and balances to ensure that such responsibilities are assumed and backed up until they really mature and you shouldn't take the responsibilities away from people that that are really assuming them are trying hard to assume them uh without cause you should nourish it and you'll be glad you did and that's the lessons that I think I learned that I'd like to pass on do you have any yeah I got I got one is this on I can't yes yeah uh in addition to the to the terms creative Innovative and so forth I want to add the word endurance and I'll give you a very specific example as an engineer um several times in the talks I think there were some questions about Apollo 13 well I was responsible for the control systems and in the lunar module where when we had the failure on the command service service module on Apollo 13 and as we went around the Moon we needed a burn out of the lunar module and we had decided early in the in the program that that was not required for the learner uh descent propulsion system to be fired when it was connected to the command service module okay and I will pass on my endurance lesson and that was um I was very interested in having that capability with the learner descent uh propulsion system I uh in a docked configuration I went before Dr craft Chris kraf who was head of the software control board for all of you software Buffs and he says uh boy the impact was just too much but he pulled me aside after the meeting he said Cox whatever you do if you get a chance slip that capability in there without telling me sometime you know I wouldn't be too unhappy so I went I went to MIT instrumentation lab I talked with George Cherry who was a who was headed up the limb digital autopilot design and I said George we got to get that thing in there and in effect we did now it turned out that the backup which was an analog system we went to Grumman and Grumman gave us a great big horrendous impact and so we never implemented this dock configuration control system uh in the backup analog autopilot but we did in the primary it was a software change for all those who've taken this wrap that says software costs too much money etc etc Etc it was easy to do and we did it and so I got it all done and I showed back up at an appropriate time where there was a collection of of other software modifications for the um I forgot what the program was it wasn't Colossus luminary I believe it was but anyway in in the software associated with the lunar guidance computer um and I dumped it into the software control board with very little impact because we' already done it okay and Chris says fine let's do it there was no way I could have realized that we would have ever have had the Apollo 13 incident the truth of the matter is it was the endurance that says if I can really get it done I'm going to try to do it okay that's an example and if I may follow up on that uh I I would say that two things one knowing what your systems are capable of is very very important and not just relying on what the respect values are or what you phenomenal Mission might be and I know from an engineering standpoint we have to fight that often uh just to know what our Hardware uh can uh provide for us the other thing that I would add is is attention to engineering detail and you know as engineers and we like to be managers but if we don't do our engineering job correctly all the way down to the thermal switch that was in the oxygen tank that that ched out that caused us a problem with Apollo 13 to the O-ring that was in the Challenger very very minor detail but very very important and in fact people often ask what is the most critical item and you know we get asked that question often and I know some people don't like my answer but I say it's the item that bit you last the one that was easy enough for you to take care of had you just realized it on the front end on a challenging situation for instance I'm of the opinion we probably had the technical data in about 1979 to know that we were get get too much gapping in the O-rings but I don't think anybody in the program picked up on the fact it was too much gapping uh we had a similar situation with the Apollo 13 and with the thermal switch uh in that Arena so attention to the tail we just can't Overlook and uh it's it's very very important Ben okay I there's been a lot or a number of times people have referred to that this was all done with ordinary people and I think that's a pretty good uh summary uh Ron Barry said when he came to to work he about four years out of college and really didn't know much and and as I recall a lot of us were in that same position uh I think that should be encouraging to those of you that are that are now starting on uh new programs that uh uh we're all pretty ordinary but with uh hard work and with communication that that Joe mentioned there was a lot of good communication Apollo and and each uh there wasn't an awful lot of fighting over who sandbox belonged to who we pretty much knew what we had to do and uh in spite our inexperience and the fact that we're pretty ordinary we we were able to accomplish great things and I think the young people that are here today at the center are ACC are actually capable of doing even greater things Chuck well I'd like to Echo what's been said about communication I think Joe hit an important Point here I can remember hours of CCB configuration control board meetings uh after the fire and uh I learned more about engineering than I ever car sced to know I hope they learned a little bit about uh medicine that maybe they didn't want to know either but uh I think we did a great deal of sharing we learned that you have to have all of this information and an engineer can't do something that's going to impact a man without understanding what it's going to do to the man and vice versa we can't say the man is limited here without understanding what's happening from an engineering point of view lastly I would say the most important thing that I think I learned from the entire thing from a medical point of view was that you have to have the courage to sometimes go ahead when you don't have all the data there's always going to be somebody saying you got to have all the data and the scientist will stand out there and say here is what it takes for all that you're never going to have all the data and we'd never be there if we waited for all the data so don't wait for all the data thank you chck and I'd like to to thank all of you who have been faithful and stayed the distance tomorrow's session we'll be flying the Apollo missions it will be moderated by Joe Allen and will consist of a group of our flight directors Glenn Lenny Jean CR Jerry Griffin Cliff Charlesworth and others thank you very [Applause] much oh