Apollo: The Race to the Moon (28 page)

The tensions between NASA and North American were not over, however. Late in 1965, Sam Phillips and his staff, prompted by continuing problems and delays, had conducted an extensive investigation of the status of NASA’s contracts with North American for the C.S.M. and the S-II stage of the Saturn V and prepared a highly critical report that later would become famous as the “Phillips Report.” “I am definitely not satisfied with the progress and outlook of either program,” Phillips had written to Lee Atwood, and listed a long set of needed changes. Eberhard Rees, von Braun’s deputy center director at Marshall, was near despair over the state of the S-II. In a confidential memorandum with only three copies—for Phillips, von Braun, and his own files—he wrote, “I believe NASA has to resort to very drastic measures,” including the possibility of shifting to a new contractor. “For me, it is just unbearable to deal further with a non-performing contractor who has the government ‘tightly over a barrel’ when it comes to a multibillion-dollar venture of such national importance.”

But Rees was referring to the S-II. The C.S.M. was doing much better, as North American began funneling some of its best people into the Downey plant. North American’s director of engineering, George Jeffs, a rising star with a professional reputation matching any in NASA, was sent over to reinforce program manager Dale Myers as his deputy manager and chief engineer. Jeffs brought with him a small cadre of his own people and cut the number of engineers in the program from 4,000 to 2,000. “We had lots of areas to clean up,” Jeffs recalled, “lots of areas to get down to the meat and potatoes, and get rid of some of the ice cream,” and he proceeded briskly. Houston, remembering the early years of the space program, hoped that the experience with North American was going to turn out like McDonnell on the Mercury and Gemini capsules—a slow start, then accelerating progress as they moved over the hump of the learning curve.

On August 19, 1966, spacecraft number 012, the first Apollo designated for a manned mission, was ready for the Contractor’s Acceptance Readiness Review (CARR). This was a major event in the life of every spacecraft, the moment when it was officially judged to have met the specifications of the contract and became the property of the United States government.

The CARR for spacecraft 012 was held at the North American facility in Downey, a sprawling complex of hangars and manufacturing plants ten miles east of Los Angeles International Airport. Joe Shea presided over the meeting, which was held in the low fieldstone building of 1940s vintage that served as office space for the North American executives. The astronauts who would fly 012 were there: Gus Grissom, one of the original seven astronauts and the second American to fly in space; Ed White, the first man to walk in space; and a rookie astronaut, Roger Chaffee. Also present were Faget, representing Engineering, Chris Kraft, representing Flight Operations, and a dozen other senior people from Houston, plus all the senior North American executives responsible for the C.S.M. contract.

Shea opened the meeting by saying, “This is not a meeting to bring up old bitches. It’s a meeting specifically concerned with spacecraft 012 and its suitability to leave the plant and begin the checkout procedures and booster mating procedures down at the Cape.” He cautioned everyone not to get “ourselves all tangled up between design changes and the specific checkout of this spacecraft as it is presently configured.”

Spacecraft 012 had been moving slowly, Shea acknowledged. “It’s still not completely through all its tests and the CARR is in that sense somewhat provisional but I intend to go ahead with it anyway.” He was in high spirits that day, clicking through the items, punning, arbitrating disagreements. The atmosphere was relaxed, with wisecracks and laughter punctuating the discussion.

Most of the problems raised at the meeting were minor, or had been hashed over already in previous sessions. Even so, the list of items to be reviewed was so long that the CARR went on for six hours. As the meeting was winding down, Gus Grissom asked for the floor and pulled out two photographs from a large envelope. They were identical, but with different inscriptions. The picture showed Grissom, White, and Chaffee seated behind a table on which a small model of the Apollo capsule rested. Their heads were bowed, hands steepled in a caricature of prayer. Grissom gave the first copy to Stormy Storms, general manager of the North American Space Division. “We’ve got one for Joe Shea also,” Grissom said, and passed the second photograph down the table to him. “Joe advised us to practice our backup procedures religiously, so here we are practicing.” There was loud laughter. The picture, signed by all three astronauts, was inscribed, “It isn’t that we don’t trust you, Joe, but this time we’ve decided to go over your head.”

At one point during the CARR, the question of flammable materials in the cabin came up. Since Mercury days, the astronauts had used Raschel netting, attached with Velcro, for rigging up pouches to store the pens, flight plans, and other paraphernalia they had nowhere else to keep. The astronauts had also gotten into the habit of customizing their spacecraft, putting a pouch in exactly such-and-such a place (and having it made of such-and-such a color—some of the astronauts became quite fussy about these details of interior decoration) for a particular purpose. The problem was that Raschel netting and Velcro were flammable. They talked about it at the CARR for several minutes. Shea ended the discussion by noting tersely that the fire rules for the spacecraft prohibited anything that was potentially flammable from being closer than four inches to anything that could create a spark. He told North American to see that the cabin was cleaned up.

A month later, on September 26, North American submitted a memo listing its CARR Action Responses for C.S.M. 012. Under Section 14, Problem 14.7.2, “PROBLEM—Flammable Materials in CM,” North American reported that a walk-through inspection of 012 had been performed and the results were documented in NAA IL 693-300040-66-1009, dated August 22, 1966. It added that “specific NASA direction … on the findings must be made to N.A.A.” Shea told his staff to prepare a direction. They did, and put it into the pipeline. But there were lots of directions going out, and Shea didn’t try to keep track of this particular one.

In early October, Shea received a two-page letter from Hilliard W. Paige, vice president and general manager of the Missile and Space Division at General Electric. Paige was writing to express his concerns about the possibility of a fire in the spacecraft. It was a friendly “Dear Joe” letter; still, Paige was worried. “I do not think it technically prudent to be unduly influenced by the ground and flight success history of Mercury and Gemini under a 100 percent oxygen environment,” he wrote. “The first fire in a spacecraft may well be fatal.” Paige suggested testing the ability of man’s senses to detect a fire or an incipient fire condition. Also, ASPO might consider putting some sort of fire extinguisher in the cabin. He added a handwritten postscript saying that he hoped Joe would personally review the matter.

Shea called in ASPO’s Reliability, Quality, and Test Division and asked for a review of the nonmetallic materials control program. Seven weeks later the chief of the division, Bill Bland, submitted his report to Shea. They had not been able to schedule the review that Shea had requested because of “our usual press of business with more significant problems.” But Bland pointed out that they had just completed technical assessments of the fire hazard in the crew compartment in the command and lunar modules. He attached a copy of the two assessments to his memo, noting the conclusion that “our inherent hazards from fire in the spacecraft are low.” They should of course continue to review their fire hazard potential. Shea wrote back a “Dear Hilly” letter to Paige, sending copies of the evaluations of the command and lunar modules “so you may see how secure we are.” Shea, too, added a handwritten postscript: “The problem is sticky—we think we have enough margin to keep fire from starting—if one ever does, we do have problems. Suitable extinguishing agents are not yet developed.”

The exchange of letters was duly filed away in the rows of file cabinets of letters, analyses, and memoranda involving the spacecraft.

As 1967 began, Joe Shea was beginning to be a celebrity outside of the confines of NASA. When Shea took a few hours off to watch his favorite team, the Green Bay Packers, beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the first Super Bowl, he sat with Walter Cronkite. He was in demand as a speaker and was increasingly looked upon as a spokesman for the Apollo Program. With the red socks and the puns, the quicksilver mind and the intense, Black Irish good looks, Shea finally gave Houston a plausible competitor to von Braun for a place in the public imagination.

Time magazine was about to stamp its imprimatur on Shea’s emerging status by putting him on the cover. The story was to coincide with the launch of Apollo 1, now scheduled for late February. Shea had already undergone the obligatory lunch with the Time editors, and by the last week in January there remained only some wrap-up reporting. When Shea flew to the Cape on Wednesday, January 25, Ben Cate, Time’s Houston correspondent, tagged along to grab interview time on the plane and at meals.

Shea spent Wednesday and Thursday huddling with Rocco Petrone, trying to work out the problems that had plagued spacecraft 012 since it had arrived at the Cape.* Shea and Petrone had never been the best of friends, and each was inclined to see the problems as being the other’s fault. Why had Shea let North American ship a half-finished bucket of bolts to K.S.C.? Why couldn’t Petrone get his launch teams to check out the spacecraft on schedule? It was, Shea remembered, “a knock-down and drag-out.” In Petrone’s opinion, Shea hadn’t spent enough of his career with hardware to understand the nature of the problems the Cape faced.

[* Later, the story would spread that Grissom had hung a lemon on 012 as a sign of his disgust with it. Apparently he in fact hung the lemon on Riley McCafferty’s simulator at the Cape, not the spacecraft. The spacecraft was changing so fast that McCafferty, chief of Flight Crew Operations at MILA, always had at least 150 or 200 new modifications that hadn’t yet been incorporated into the simulator. The ones that did get patched into the software usually had bugs at first, so the simulator was constantly breaking down.]

On Thursday afternoon, Wally Schirra, the backup for Grissom, was chatting with Shea when he came up with an idea. Why didn’t Shea get into the spacecraft himself and go through the countdown test with the crew? That way he could find out what it was like from their point of view. Shea had never done such a thing, but he liked the idea and asked the K.S.C. technicians to wire up a fourth communications loop into 012. Shea went off to have dinner with Cate and then finished the evening by having a couple of drinks with Schirra. He changed his airplane reservations so that he could stay through the test.

The next morning, Friday the 27th, Shea was at breakfast with the crew when the K.S.C. communications people reported that they couldn’t Rube Goldberg a fourth communications loop in time. There wasn’t a fourth jack in the spacecraft, an extra loop would have to go through the hatch… . It was too complicated.

Grissom still wanted Shea to be with them in the spacecraft. The practice countdowns just hadn’t been smooth enough. Things didn’t flow, and when they said something into their headsets, the spacecraft didn’t get an answer right away. The subsystems didn’t check out as well as they should. “It’s really messy,” Grissom told him. “We want you to go fix it.” But if he couldn’t have a headset, Shea didn’t see the point. “You think I’m going to sit at your feet for four hours and not be able to communicate?” Shea said to Grissom. “You’re nuts. You go through the test; I’ll go back to Houston and I’ll come back Monday and do it in the simulator with you.”

At about 11:00 A.M., Shea and Petrone went out to Pad 34 with the crew and took a look at 012 for themselves. Both of them noticed that some polyurethane pads were still in the spacecraft—the technicians used them when they were in the spacecraft to avoid damaging the wiring. Petrone directed that they be removed, except for one that Ed White had asked them to leave—White, sitting in the center seat, was the one who opened the hatch at the end of the test, and he wanted to be able to stand on the pad while he did it so that he wouldn’t step on the wiring.

Shea went back to the blockhouse while the crew was sealed into 012, and the countdown began. He called Ben Cate and told him he was going back to Houston with him after all—there was no point in hanging around if he wasn’t going to be in the spacecraft. They caught the 2:30 National Airlines flight from Melbourne and arrived a little after five in the afternoon, Houston time. Cate headed for home after arranging for the Sheas to come to dinner on Saturday. Shea went to his office at M.S.C., arriving there at about 5:30. With the one-hour time difference, that made it 6:30 P.M. back at the Cape.

Chapter 14. “Did he say ‘fire’?”

Among the people of Apollo, it is known simply as the Fire, needing no other label. Twenty years later, after a visitor had questioned him about it, the Fire would still keep Don Arabian from getting to sleep until three in the morning, turning the data over in his mind, trying to make all the pieces fit. Marty Cioffoletti’s voice would still tighten when he remembered having to listen to the tape of the crew’s voices again and again. Some of the men who had been on the consoles would still be unable to talk about it, stopping in mid-sentence. The history of Apollo is divided into two eras, Before the Fire and After the Fire.

Scott Simpkinson was the engineer in charge of disassembling the burnt-out spacecraft. He also edited the official NASA account of what happened, Report of the Apollo 204 Review Board. Sitting in the card room at the Baywood Country Club where Simpkinson spent his days after he retired, he settled back to discuss the fire once again, after twenty years. The question was put to him: Did they ever find out exactly what caused it?

“There was no positive proof,” Simpkinson replied. “It was the ‘most probable cause,’ I believe we stated in the report. Of course, I have my own opinion, which was shared by many of the people on the board.”