"It was really a wild life refuge. There were lots of birds and animals. And there was 'Al'--he was an alligator in a pond that served as a heat sink for rocket engines being tested. The water in the pond was usually in the 70s but would get up to the 120s rather quickly when a rocket engine was being tested. We would see him move pretty fast to get out. Later, he would put one foot into the pond to see if it was cool enough to climb back into his home." It was retired aerospace engineer Dwight Collier, formerly with RCA-GE, speaking to the "Men's 710" Breakfast and Speaker Fellowship at its December meeting. "Cape Canaveral was really part of the Indian River lagoon estuary system, much like Mobile Bay." Collier had started out with telemetry in 1954 and remembers that the Redstone was on the launching pad when he first got into aerospace at Cape Canaveral, but he went on to Grand Bahama, Grand Turk, San Salvador, Ascension, Eleuthera, and then ships for 20 years--all the time pursuing rocket-related tasks.
We think of our successes as a nation when it comes to rockets and spacecraft. Collier talked about reality, about tests and retests because things do not always work "coming out of the box." Those Poseidon and Polaris missiles that now are taken for granted, began life in testing and often in piles of post-test debris scattered over the missile range. Even when the US responded to the 1957 Russian Sputnik with its Vanguard, the first attempt ended up with a rocket that collapsed after rising a foot in the air, and its grapefruit-sized payload was rolling around in the collapsed debris going "beep...beep...." 12 years later the US was sending men to the moon. You can ask Dwight how a Bic Pen saved the return trip from the moon--now there's a story!
In terms of aerospace, the failure rate was at a 40% level. There is a lot of risk in rocketry since so many things can go wrong with a spacecraft. Early propellants were dangerous because of dispersal issues related to toxic gases given off by rockets. Successes and failures were initially under the oversight of Werner von Braun who was responsible for much of the early space program. Collier worked with him and found him personable and friendly.
The early Russian space competition ultimately turned into cooperation in space and its space station, the Mir, was a blessing for the US. But that is past. The future is especially interesting to Collier. Lockheed Martin is looking to develop a lunar landing facility, which will involve development of water and oxygen storage on the moon to enable the facility to be a jumping off place for deep space work. With the end of our shuttle program in 2010, Collier looks to the development of a vehicle, which can take a dozen or more astronauts into space.
"Few people realize the benefits of NASA," Dwight notes. "NASA is ultimately responsible for a whole range of fabrics, medicines, and a variety of other things developed for the space program. Many of them have ultimately ended up in everyday use by non-aerospace people."
