November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

Everyone, Another Neat Information Update (NIU) is attached for you. I hope you enjoy all the material. Please excuse typos/verbiage errors. We proofread but not exhaustively. The BIG news is there now is a public website up and running at Malcolm's NIU (http://neatinfoupdates.squarespace.com/) powered by SQUARESPACE and Google Drive. Kate Cryderman and I developed our own website, patterned off the SharePoint site that has been up and running for 6 years or so. Kate is the “brains” behind both sites. Thanks a bunch Kate! Everything may not be up and running perfectly and the site has a different look and feel than the SharePoint site, but everything that was on the SharePoint site is on the public website. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the new website, changes/additions to the email distribution and please share the site with others as the public website is available to the whole wide world. There is a feedback/response/contact section on the website, and I/we will respond in kind. There is also a disclaimer at the bottom of the NIU site. Recent updates to the web site include the following:  “THE TREASURE CHEST” has been populated under “COLLECTIONS”. This is a very neat compilation of information, put together by Chris Knear, similar to “THE GOLD MINE” and it includes a very neat “Study of Failures” presentation. The presentation highlights three events including links to some great videos: Soyuz T-10-1 launch escape system use in 1983, a B2 bomber crash in 2008, and a really neat Apollo 11 landing audio-visual! Chris provides some good insight into the events in the presentation. Thanks a bunch Chris! The Apollo 11 landing audio-visual is at http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/.  “Lee Starrick Apollo Home Movies” has been added to the “VIDEOS” Gallery.  I added a couple of items under “OTHER NEAT LINKS”, including “A Journey to the Moon through Texas” and “JSC History Portal”. The Journey to the Moon link includes some neat videos, including a Doris Day clip from 1966!  I added a neat Associated Press archive video site under “OTHER NEAT LINKS”. Search on anything you want and there are certainly some neat space related videos if you search on your space related word(s) of choice! Thanks a bunch for the lead Pete Chitko; “The Master”!  I updated “Malcolm’s Photos” under “PHOTOS” to include the photos I have taken in support of the NIU. I will try to keep these photos updated.  I am starting to populate “Facility Surveys” under “NEAT DOCUMENTS”. These are some neat documents! As a reminder from the last NIU issue, “NIU Article Titles”, under the “NIU ARCHIVE” section, is a listing of all previous NIU article titles. There is a neat video put together by JSC interns at Welcome to NASA, promoting NASA’s journey to Mars. In a previous NIU issue a few years back, I mentioned the video “NASA Johnson Style”, another video by JSC interns and it is very neat, at NASA Johnson Style. The following version of that video includes behind-the-scenes looks and outtakes, also very neat at NASA Johnson Style With Outtakes. The following are also neat: a tour of the International Space Station (short version) and a tour of the International Space Station (long version) in ultra high-definition.

1|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

I think many of us who work at KSC and CCAFS have our own stories and experiences from the SpaceX explosion that occurred on September 1st of this year at 9:07 am local time at Launch Complex (LC) 40. I had just walked out of Operations Support Building (OSB) 1 when I heard what sounded like a big frippin bomb going off followed by more bombs going off. I also saw the windows on the east side of OSB1 moving back and forth. I then saw black smoke on the horizon to the east and concluded something must have happened at LC40 as I knew SpaceX was performing a tanking test of their Falcon 9 rocket that day. I have never experienced anything like it in my over 35 years at KSC, and it is one of those things that will be in my personal memories of “where I was on September 1, 2016 at 9:07 am!” Please contact me or send me an email if you have questions, suggestions, additions/deletions to the email distribution, articles/information/“photos” for the NIU (as I am a seeker of same) or whatever you might have regarding the NIU. Thank you very much for sending or letting me know you have photos and stories of interest! Greg Gaddis sent me the following neat photo after I sent the June 2016 NIU; very neat, with the following explanation: “…The Hennessey Team was out setting their record while the JSC Morpheus Team was out doing some pretty neat work themselves…”, circa 2014! The photo was taken at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility runway at the Morpheus landing site. Thanks a bunch Greg!

Thank you Kate Cryderman for helping me prepare this NIU! All links were working as of ‘press time’. An honor, a privilege and a very great pleasure! Malcolm

2|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

Everyone,

Inside Today’s NIU…

A Neat Information Update (NIU) is provided for you! Please excuse typos/verbiage errors. We proofread but not exhaustively. Hope you enjoy!

 VAB Rocket Height Banners

Please contact me or send me an email if you have questions, suggestions, additions/deletions to the distribution, articles/information/“photos” for the NIU (as I am a seeker of same) or whatever you might have regarding the NIU. The BIG news is there now is a public NIU website, at Malcolm's NIU (http://neatinfoupdates.squarespace.com/). It is patterned off the NIU SharePoint but it looks and works a little differently. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the new website and please share the site with others as the public web site is available to the whole wide world. There is a feedback/response/contact section on the website, and I/we will respond in kind. There is also a disclaimer at the bottom of the NIU. Please let me know if you have ideas to improve the NIU website. If you find a link or something not working, please let me know that too. I will plan to upload the latest NIU to the website. Also, “The Treasure Chest” is now populated under “COLLECTIONS”, which has some very neat information put together by Chris Knear, similar to “The Gold Mine”, including a very neat “Study of Failures” presentation which highlights three events, with links to some really neat videos. Thank you very much for sending me responses/inputs/material for the NIU. I apologize if I do not properly credit you! If that is the case, please let me know! I still have articles to send out and plan to do so.

 Then and Now  Striping Outside OSB1  The Ice House  Children’s Artwork  The VAB Chair Story  The Yeung Family Visit  Hurricane Matthew  The LaRC Trip

NIU Contact Information

Thank you very much!

Malcolm Glenn NIU Master

An honor, a privilege and a very great pleasure!

[email protected]

Malcolm

Kate Cryderman NIU SharePoint Master [email protected]

3|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

VAB Rocket Height Banners. I am still working to get the VAB rocket height banners back up; reference a story I wrote for the February 2016 NIU issue. We are working to repair the banners first. The one photo shows the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket height banner under repair at the KSC Thermal Protection System Facility. It is intended to repair the Saturn V, Shuttle and SLS banners and then go into a holding pattern, awaiting a solution/path forward to complete the project. This is turning out to be an iterative process. We have a design in mind that will reuse the banners and mount them to metal framing and in turn to the VAB building structure, which will be a more permanent design/solution than the previous installation. It is now a matter of going down a path to complete the design, build the framing and install the banners, and most important, find mechanisms to help fund the aforementioned. And it so happens that now is not the best time to put the banners back up as there is lot of construction going on in VAB High Bay (HB) 3. Thank you Eric Weaver, Janet Mills, Rebecca Polo, Martin Wilson and everyone who has helped with this project so far!

Then and Now. I ran across a couple of photos I wanted to do some “Then and Nows” with. The first photo is from the book “Images of America Cape Canaveral” taken at Launch Complex (LC) 3 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS). LC3 was the site of the first launch at the Cape, Bumper 8, on July 24, 1950. The caption from the photo reads as follows: “HUNGRY WORK LAUNCHING ROCKETS. Life was spartan and, for personnel at the bumper launches, in many cases primitive. The majority of army personnel were housed in tents where they were at the mercy of the elements, including extreme heat and humidity. There were clouds of mosquitos, and one would have to beware of the 4|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

large quantities of rattlesnakes and alligators. Here workers are lined up at the lunch wagon at Pad 3 in 1951.” So I tried to recreate the photo as best I could at LC3 at CCAFS. There is a concrete lip/edge that runs from the lower right to the upper left of the vintage photo. I used that as a guide, as well as a concrete seam running from left to right in the lower left of the photo, to help recreate the photo in the present day. My recreated photo is looking from northeast to southwest, and shows the same concrete lip and a concrete seam that may be the same one as in the vintage photo. Neat stuff!

There is a photo in the book “Moonshots & Snapshots of Project Apollo” showing the Command and Service Module (CSM) for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). The photo is shown and the caption reads as follows: “The final CSM scheduled for flight, mated with an SLA carrying the DM, approaches the west side of the VAB on March 17, 1975 – a rainy Florida morning – to be stacked atop its Saturn 1B”. 5|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

DM refers to Docking Module and SLA refers to Spacecraft Lunar Module Adapter above. I recently recreated the photo at the corner of SR3 and Saturn Causeway without the “…rainy Florida morning…”. The stoplights and such are much as they were in 1975 but some other things have changed like the VAB paint scheme as there was no décor (US Flag and NASA Meatball) in the 1975 photo. The vintage water tank also no longer exists, replaced by a more modern lower profile type tank(s) some years back.

6|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

Striping Outside OSB1. Something caught my attention a few months back, by chance when I was in Operations Support Building (OSB) 1 in the VAB area. And that is, there was a curious figure painted on the concrete across the street, where the tour busses make a stop; see photo. And it so happens the marking ties in with the US Flag painted on the VAB. So in the figure, the stars and stripes match the size on the VAB; each star is more than 6 feet in diameter and each stripe is nine feet wide. The overall dimension of the US Flag on the VAB is 200 feet long by 110 feet wide. The US Flag was added to the building for the 1976 bicentennial. Thank you Stephen Smith!

7|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

The Ice House. Some years back, I heard the term “The Ice House” used in a meeting. Not knowing what the heck that was, I put it down “in my mind” as something I wanted to find out about. And so here we are several years later, and I found out something out about it. “The Ice House” is a non-descript windowless building in the KSC Industrial Area; see photo.

Well, the building is called “The Ice House” because it is frickin cold inside, like about 50 degrees Fahrenheit! I had the pleasure of venturing inside the building on August 26th of this year, courtesy of Armando Oliu and Tony Gray! Thank you gentlemen! The building is officially called the “Film Storage Building” and you can see why from the following photo! There are lots of vintage films and such, of different types, stored in the building and the photo is a sampling.

8|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

Children’s Artwork. I happened on this story from reading the book “Orbit of Discovery”, “The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission”, by Don Thomas. The following photos are from the book:

9|Page

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

And the following are some words from the book: “Our families arrived at the LCC and were escorted to the office of Jim Harrington, the STS-70 launch director, where NASA provided food and beverages for them. A parade of NASA managers stopped by to meet them. Our family escorts were fellow astronauts Dan Bursch and Carl Walz, another Ohioan, and from Cleveland no less. They assisted our families any way they could. They were a tremendous help during our mission. While waiting for the launch, there was a LCC tradition for the crew’s children to create artwork of their choice relating to the mission. NASA supplied a white board and some markers and let the kids be creative. By diverting their attention a bit from impending launch, it served as a stress reliever for both the children and our spouses. After the mission, NASA framed the artwork and hung it in the LCC building.” So I did some checking to get a little background on the children’s artwork, and found that the artwork started with STS-26 and continued through the end of the Shuttle Program. Thank you very much Shari Wagler! As mentioned in the noted book, the artwork has been framed and hung. Most of the artwork is on the 4th floor of the LCC and that is where the STS-70 artwork is; see photos. Some of the artwork is also on the 2nd floor of the LCC and the 6th floor of OSB1. The caption/metal tag at the bottom of the STS-70 artwork states: ARTWORK BY CHILDREN OF STS-70 FLIGHT CREW JULY 13, 1995

10 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

The VAB Chair Story. This story has its origins some 30 years or more ago when I worked in the VAB. To make this story short or try to, and as some of you know, I have a thing about walking stairs in the VAB, as in, I like to do it. Over the course of those years I have reported waters leaks and other not normal things to the appropriate entities, and I have also picked up FOD and trash along the way at times. Well, after 30 years, I finally decided it would be a good idea to do a thorough tower by tower and floor by floor walkdown. I have noticed things over the years, like things where they should not be. So I contacted the building manager, Jeanette Roach, recently and asked if she would be willing to do a walkdown with me. Answer, yes. Thank you Jeanette! Over the course of a couple of weeks, we recently performed the described walkdown, from the 41st floor on down, of the towers on the west side of the VAB (A, B and C) and D tower on the east side of the VAB. There is too much work going on in VAB High Bay 3 and towers E and F getting things ready for the Space Launch System rocket to perform such a walkdown at the present time. That will have to wait until later. I took along a large trash bag to pick up trash and Jeanette took notes of followup work to do as we performed the walkdown. Well, if I remember correctly, A tower had the record for the most chairs that did not need to be where they were. There were some 16 chairs we removed from that tower, see photo. Note the one chair with “CCSD OAT” on the back. I knew something was up with that chair but I did not know exactly what at the time, as in, what the heck does “CCSD OAT” stand for? So I made some inquiries after the walkdown. Jim Taylor and Gene Beckett clued me in; thank you gentlemen and thank you Gene! Gene said CCSD stood for Chrysler Corporation Space Division. That clued me on the rest of the story as I knew from memory that OAT stood for Overall Test, one of the Apollo tests performed in the VAB. Chrysler Corporation manufactured the Apollo S-IB stage. Also note the one chair with “OIM AFT” written on the back. This was nomenclature used in Rockwell days at KSC and OIM stood for

11 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

Orbiter Integrity Monitor and AFT stood for Aft compartment of the Orbiter; thank you Jim and Gene. The CCSD OAT chair is currently in my possession.

12 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

The Yeung Family Visit. I had the pleasure on June 24th of this year to share some time with and show the Yeung family around KSC; Winston, Jen, Kimberly and Rebecca. The two sisters had recently participated in the White House Science Fair; they were the youngest there and spent some one-on-one time with President Obama. Below are several links, including one about their science experiment, a blog and some video when I showed them around.  Video from my time with the family. We watched the Atlas V MUOS-5 launch that day! Always neat stuff!  Blog from my time with the family.  Article about the girls and their experiment with a neat imbedded video. I love the handwritten “Lessons Learned”. In fact, the girls were telling me about the lessons they learned during my time with them.

Thanks a bunch Winston, Jen, Kimberly and Rebecca!!!!!

13 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

Hurricane Matthew. I am going to cover this topic, as far as damage from the hurricane, with some photos of my own, and leave it at that. There is lots of repair work going on at KSC and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) and other places recovering from Hurricane Matthew. Most of my photos are from CCAFS and only cover a very small portion of hurricane damage. You can do some Googling to find out more information about the damage if you like. The building with a lot of the building face gone is the Solid Motor Assembly Building (SMAB) at CCAFS.

The building with one whole side missing is just north of the south gate on CCAFS.

14 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

There are before and after photos of the Navaho missile outside the CCAFS South gate. The before photo is from 2010. The Navaho was subsequently covered with a blue tarp. It is one-of-a-kind!

15 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

There are two photos from the CCAFS AF Museum; the green rocket on the ground is a Little John and the faded red one on the ground is a Firebee II.

16 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

There are also a couple of photos of the Orbiter Access Arm from LC39A outside the VAB at KSC. The arm was resting upright on a flatbed trailer before the hurricane. I did not take the aerial photo. The hurricane flipped the trailer and the arm, see the aerial photo. The other photo is after the arm is righted after the storm and it is resting on dunnage. The arm flipped over in a good direction in my opinion as there is an exhaust fan on one side of the OAA White Room (you can see it in the flipped photo) and there would have been more damage to the arm if it had flipped over on to the exhaust fan side. Having been a Swing Arm Engineer in my earlier days at KSC, the arm came out none too worse for wear. You can see some damage, the scraped area in one corner of the White Room, but not bad considering. And mind you, the arm was designed to withstand the effects of a Shuttle launch and experienced all the Shuttle launches off LC39A; some 91 launches, so it is a pretty rugged piece of hardware!

17 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

The LaRC Trip. I was at Langley Research Center (LaRC) recently on a business trip and was able to squeeze in as much as I could see and learn during lunch hours and such! Thank you very much Larry Snyder! The following are just a few things I was able to see! There is a lot of history at LaRC and I am sure I barely touched it! I have more photos from the trip posted in “Malcolm’s Photos”. One thing I was able to get my eyes on is the “Gantry”! Included is a photo of a crash test dummy inside one of the facilities at the Gantry.

18 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

19 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

Originally called the “Lunar Lander Research Facility”, the facility became operational on June 30, 1965. The following in quotes are from plaques at the site, explaining the history: “The Lunar Landing Research Facility was the world’s first laboratory for developing ways of landing on the Moon. The facility became operational on June 30, 1965. Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and 22 other astronauts used the facility to practice making descents in the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module Simulator. Astronauts, suspended on their sides by slings and cable, participated in lunar gravity simulations. They experienced what it would be like to walk on the Moon… …In 1975, NASA Langley Research Center converted the Lunar Landing Research Facility into the Impact Dynamics Research Facility for investigating structural crash effects on aircraft… …the facility was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. In 2006, the Gantry experienced revitalization as the agency focus was shifted back to space exploration… In 2010, NASA built the Hydro Impact Basin to validate and certify that future space vehicles, such as NASA’s Orion crew module, were designed for safe water landings.” The following photo was taken at Memorial Park on Langley Air Force Base (Joint Base LangleyEustis), right next to LaRC. The aircraft from left to right are: F-86 (under repair), F-16, F-105 and F15. The following video explains the park: Memorial Park.

One thing I really wanted to do was to try to find where Apollo 1 is stored at LaRC, at least a general location. That was not such an easy task. There are no directions or signs to say “this is it”! The following in quotes is from Wikipedia:

20 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

“The Apollo 1 Command Module has never been on public display. After the accident, the spacecraft was removed and taken to Kennedy Space Center to facilitate the review board's disassembly in order to investigate the cause of the fire. When the investigation was complete, it was moved to the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and placed in a secured storage warehouse. On February 17, 2007, the parts of CM-012 were moved approximately 90 feet (27 m) to a newer, environmentally controlled warehouse.” The following links provide some good background:  Apollo 1 – collectSPACE  NASA HQ News Release About Apollo 1 - 2007 The following video is also neat in itself, from 1999, “To the Moon” , featured on PBS. Starting at about the 40 min 28 sec mark and ending at approximately 42 min 06 sec, footage is shown taken at LaRC of Apollo 1. There is a photo from 1990 on the collectSPACE site, courtesy J.L. Pickering via Mark Gray, which gave me a good starting point:

21 | P a g e

November 7, 2016

NEAT INFORMATION UPDATE

So with some of the above information, my quest began in earnest. After several trips, I was able to pin down the approximate location of Apollo 1 to what I will call the warehouse area at LaRC. On one trip I just started walking around buildings in the immediate area of interest looking for somebody, anybody. I eventually ran across a nice lady, introduced myself and told her what I was looking for, the Apollo 1 capsule, using the “let’s make friends” approach, a la Christie White (thank you Christie!). I showed the lady the 1990 photo and she said something like “I think it is in the newer looking building over there”. Bottom line I was able to reconstruct, at least with my own eyes, the line-up in the 1990 photo, including the concrete in the foreground but I was not able to access the concrete area for the photo I took below. The “newer looking building” is the building on the left of my photo, and I believe it is the same building as on the left of the 1990 photo. Until 2007, I believe Apollo 1 was stored in the gray type structure on the right side of the 1990 photo, and then it was moved to the building on the left side of that photo. I do not have conclusive proof for what I claim but I know I was at least in the right area! Wow wee, this was not a “piece of cake” but it sure was a lot of fun! Thank you Larry and Alan Alemany!

THE END

22 | P a g e