NASA Gibson, Cecil - May 30, 2001

 

Interview with Cecil Gibson

 

Interviewer: Jesse Esparza

Date of Interview: May 30, 2001

Location: Wimberley, Texas

 

 

ESPARZA: Today is Wednesday, May 30, 2001.  This oral history interview with Cecil Gibson is being conducted at 211 Saddle Ridge Dr. in Wimberley, TX.  The interview is being conducted for the NASA-Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in conjunction with Southwest Texas State University, History Department and is being held by Jesse Esparza.

 

Well, thank you for joining me, sir.  So, I understand that you’ve worked in mission control and continue to attend launchings to this, to this day.

 

GIBSON: Yes, that’s right, I actually retired from NASA in 1990.  Then went to work for Boeing Aircraft Company still doing the same job, and then, I left there in ’98.  And they still call me during the Shuttle flights, and I go back and work in the mission room.  I’ve done that, last three years since I’ve semi-retired I guess now.

 

ESPARZA: Now, I’ve never been to a launch, and so how would you explain to someone like me what that experience is like?

 

GIBSON: The launch—I was a little bit disappointed in the—let me let me back up a little bit.  During the Apollo program, I was down there for several of the Apollo launches, up close in the viewing stand, and the ground just rumbled for miles.  I mean, it was very slow lifting of the ground, and you could, I mean, everything shook, all the buildings shook, the ground shook, a lot of force.  And then, of course, the Apollo launches came to an end, and there was about a ten- or twelve-year period there before the first Shuttle launch.  And I went down for launch number three, and it was a totally different experience.  The ground didn’t shake, [laughter] it was very quick, and it was kind of a kin to a bottle rocket going up in the air; I mean, it was there and it was gone.  Where the Apollo programs, I mean, it just, they were very slow lifting off, lots of power, lots of noise, and the Shuttle is just not like that, it’s a totally different vehicle.

 

ESPARZA:  And so, what age were you when you began working at NASA?

 

GIBSON:  Ah, let’s see, let me back up a second.  I got out of college about twenty-two years-old and went to Huntsville, Alabama.  That was the only facility at that time; they had brought the Germans over from the Second World War with Dr. von Braun, and General Maderis was the U.S. Military General there at the facility.  So, I was twenty-two, stayed there four years till about age twenty-six and then transferred to Houston and finished all my career there at Houston, till I retired at age fifty-five from NASA, and then worked another eight years for Boeing as a sub-contractor, doing the same job.

 

Most of the—it’s, it’s, it’s kind of funny, during the Apollo landing, Apollo 11 actually landed on the moon, most of the people there, the engineering people, the mission people, and everything were in the twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old.  Real young compared to today.  And, because we were the first ones to get involved, there was no, there was no place before to draw up on people for, to space because it was a brand-new industry, just getting started and everyone was young.  I mean, I look back at some of the old pictures and photographs and it’s amazing, you know.  No gray-headed people, [laughter] all the—but very intense, it was a brand-new experience for all of us.  No one had done anything like this before.  There were no guidelines, no textbooks, nothing to look at; we just all picked it up and we made some mistakes.  And luckily, we got over all the mistakes and proved to be fairly successful. 

 

In retrospect, because we were so young, the hours were very long then, I mean, it was not unusual at all.  The normal work schedule, when I was at Huntsville, about the time the Russians launched the Sputnik and everything got started, a normal day was ten hours a day Monday through Friday, eight hours Saturday, and four hours on Sunday.  There, there was, anything above that was over-time, so those were the kind of hours we were looking at.  And its probably a good thing we were all in our early thirties at that time because it was very strenuous and very difficult—very long hours, lots of pressure and lots of learning to do.  We couldn’t get a textbook and open it up and look for an answer; the answers weren’t there we had to do it all as we went.

 

ESPARZA: Let’s, let’s get some background info, are you a native Texan?

 

GIBSON: No, I was born, almost—I was about fifteen miles short of being a native Texan.  I was born in a little town called Achille, Oklahoma, right on the Red River; it’s on the interstate now between Dallas and Oklahoma City, towards Tulsa.  I grew up there, went to high school in Muskogee, Oklahoma.  [I] graduated from there and then went to the University of Oklahoma and graduated from there in 1958, and went—at the time, all during the summer, when I was in college at the University of Oklahoma, I worked for an oil company during the summer.  They basically paid my way through college, and I always assumed that I would always go to work in the oil patch, and I had just kind of accepted that.  And I came home to study finals, the, during Christmas of the year that the Russians launched the Sputnik, and my parents had a small black and white TV; we didn’t have all the fancy color TVs we do now.  And I sat there and watched the Sputnik, and I thought, “Golly, that’s what I want to do.”  

 

So, I got back to the university, tried to find out how do I get a job, as a matter of fact, I had already taken a job with an oil company.  And I went to the, the dean, engineering dean and said, you know, “Well, how do I find out about going to work for NASA?  That’s what I was really want to do.”  And they gave some phone numbers, and I called Huntsville, Alabama.  That was the only facility at the time, and they told me “Oh, sure, you know, if your—bring your degree, come on out, you know, we’re hiring engineers, just hundreds a day, you know, and you can, you know, don’t worry about it, you know.”  I didn’t know where Huntsville, Alabama, was; I had never been past Fayetteville, Arkansas, in my life.  So, I got me a map, bought a new car, and I put everything I owned in the trunk and tried to find where Huntsville was.  And I drove out, and it was, that was ’58; it was 1958. 

 

It, looking back, it reminds me of the gold rush to Alaska.  I mean, a small town of Huntsville had one motel, one hotel, about three or four restaurants, and people were coming into the town—hundreds a day from New York to California, and Texas, and Chicago, and you know, all over.  And they were hiring them all, and there was not enough housing to live in.  I shared a camping trailer, another fellow and I lived in a camping—I mean, these little pop-up camping trailers; that’s what we lived in for six months.  There weren’t any facilities there at all.  The one motel was putting in bunk beds, the old military bunk beds, four deep like in the submarines.  And it was just—it was just very hectic in trying to get started.  But gee, if I had to do it over, I’d do it again.  I thought that was the most exciting part, I think, of the NASA program that I got involved in.

 

ESPARZA:  When did you come to Texas?

 

GIBSON: I’m kind of, my background is Oklahoma, Texas, you know, New Mexico, and at the time I went there you had to go to Huntsville, Alabama, or you didn’t work for, in the space program.  I always wanted, from the time I got there—I got home sick.  I kind of wanted to—I didn’t know what grits were when I went there.  The first time I got in Alabama and ordered breakfast, I didn’t know what this stuff was; I was used to western hash browns.  And it was just a different climate; it’s a different atmosphere, it’s different background.  And I felt more comfortable in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico.  And as soon as I heard they were going to open a NASA facility, they told us originally it was going to be opened in Dallas, Texas.  And I thought, “Well, Dallas is pretty close to Oklahoma,” and several of us drove out this way, and then when we got out this way, we found, no, it’s going to be in Houston, Texas. 

 

And at that time, it was going to be on the north side of Houston, Texas, and then it got located on the south side at Clear Lake because they wanted a water way so when they build the space craft, they could bring them out into the Gulf of Mexico and bring them up Clear Lake and then bring them over to the NASA facility.  They dredged out Clear Lake so they could accommodate these very large ocean-going vessels.  They’ve only used it one time, in all the years that they were there.

 

And it, but to answer your question, I guess.  I was a little bit home sick towards this part of the country and felt more comfortable.  I was single at the time, didn’t have any real ties to the Alabama area.  And as soon as they opened up the facility in, in Clear Lake where Houston, I was one of the first ones to transfer down there.  And I felt more at home.  Yeah, it just felt more at home.

 

ESPARZA: Is that where you met your wife?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, and yeah she’s been from, from the Houston area.  She [Carol Lee Gibson] is now my second, not my first, wife.  My first wife [Kay Gibson] was from Oklahoma.  And I’m sure you’ve heard these stories before, and I won’t dwell on them too much, but the, back when we were, in particular when they started, when Jack Kennedy said we were going to go to the moon within the decade, the hours out there, I mean, several times we worked seven days a week.  It was very long hours, no home life, very, very tedious hours. 

 

My oldest daughter [Kelly Sigel], who lives in Austin now, was born the day they landed on the moon—July 22, 1969.  I was out in the mission room at that time.  They had bunk beds in the halls, they had steam tables out in the halls so you could out there anytime you wanted, you could sleep anytime you wanted.  And my daughter was two days old before I ever saw her, because I was tied up in the, in the supporting of the Apollo landing.  And that was quite a shock to me when I found out that I had a two-[day]-old daughter that had been born while I was out there working.  And we all laugh about it now, I try to get her things that say July 22, 1969, you know, and give to her.  She has three kids now, so they kind of look towards that and, you know, like to remember things like that. 

 

But then we ended up getting divorced, and I got remarried, and I’m perfectly happy now.  I’m not sure if that was the entire, and I’m trying not to be negative because, am really not and, you know, everything worked out real fine.  But it was fun and my wife, at that time, participated very heavily in all the activities.  They had a lot of social activities at the same time that we were doing all the work, at the time.  They called them splashdown parties.  After each one of the Apollo landings, they always had very large parties, very large celebrations and we attended all those things—a lot of parades for the Mercury astronauts.  All the Mercury astronauts had brand new Corvettes, at the time, lined up in front of the building.  It was Building Four there in Houston where the astronaut core stayed.  And they all got new Corvettes every year, different colors. 

 

But we participated in—there were a lot of activities, at the time, it was a very close-knit group.  I mean, it was the NASA people pretty well stayed as a close-knit group from the Houston, I’d say, Houston area.  It was a common bond; everyone had the common goals.  And it was very, very exciting and there were a lot of things going on at the time.  The television stations were just running all over the place.  And, I’m glad I was there.  And it’s one of the—I think it was probably, probably a time in my life that I’ll never forget and will always treasure, and it only happens one time.  You know, there’ll never be another generation like that, it was going to the moon, landing on the moon, starting the Shuttle program, and, you know, it’s been done, [unintelligible], it’s been complete, and it’ll probably never be done again.  And I was part of it.  I really enjoyed it, and I wouldn’t give anything for it.

 

ESPARZA: How do you feel about the younger generations not, not seeing the space program as, as maybe your generation saw it?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, I wonder.  I work with a lot of the young people when I go down there now to work and when I was still working full time for NASA.  I did a lot of college interviews and hired a lot of people to come work for NASA and they, the—it’s unfortunate that the, the things that are going on today don’t receive as much TV coverage, newspaper coverage that they did.  Back in those days, I mean, that’s all around, the newspapers, the TV; every night something was on there.  And that’s kind of gone, I think that kind of kind of kept us moving along the right direction, and it was kind of, kind of a reward for, you know, working those long hours and doing it.  And now today, they don’t work the real long hours; they don’t have any pressing schedules. 

 

And I don’t mean this in a negative sense either, the—I think we were a lot more dedicated to the programs than what they are today.  And I don’t mean that negative, I mean I, the people working, I know a lot of them, the young people.  There’re very intelligent, very enthusiastic, and have a lot of knowledge.  They keep us old guys around, they tell us this.  We go down for the Shuttle flights now, and a lot of my friends still go down, that’s when I get to see them. 

 

When a lot of the problems come up during the flight, we’ve either experienced those problems before ourselves, you know, three or four years, or ten years ago or fifteen years ago, and we’ve been through all the evaluation process, the correction process, what we do and why we do it.  We’ve been through all that, and it’s usually a repeat of a problem we’ve done before.  And we can solve it in ten minutes, where the new people who have never gone through that—they have the background, the knowledge, the technical expertise—it takes them longer to get through that process because they are going through what we went through twenty years ago.  We’ve already gone through it and we can see the answer pretty quick a lot of times and that’s why they keep, you know, us coming down.  We try to explain things, “Oh yeah, we saw this in 1972, and this is what happened, and this is what fixed it,” and it fixes it again. 

 

The people getting with NASA, I think, are very capable, well educated.  NASA has always been real select on hiring people.  Very, GPA is pretty critical.  They have personal interviews to see, you know, how dedicated they are, and they have very good people.  Us old guys just don’t have to go through the thinking process they do because we’ve already been there.  But, they, you know, and its an education process, we go through with the younger the people, “This is why you do this, this is when you do this, this is when you don’t want to do this.”  And they’re very receptive; it’s a good working team.  I’m pretty positive about it.

 

ESPARZA: How many years did you work over at NASA?

 

GIBSON: Lets see, thirty-two, as far as, my retirement plaque says thirty-two years.  When I retired from NASA, I immediately went—I was eligible to retire, to get full retirement.  I wasn’t ready to quit working.  And the Boeing Company there is the prime contractor for NASA, and I went to work for them, doing the same job, just basically doing the same job.  And I worked for them for about eight years, so forty years altogether.

 

ESPARZA: What were some of your duties out there at NASA?

 

GIBSON: When I very first started out, they just kind of stair-stepped up.  When I first started out—oh, well, let me kind of back up a little bit.  When I first got to Huntsville, I was just, I was overcome.  They were hiring engineers, just, I mean, like man.  And they had this one big administrative building, and it was kind of like going into the military.  You took your engineering degree, and you went to Point A, and they had a big overhead thing “Point A.”   You filled out some papers, you went to Point B; you filled out some more papers; you went to Point C.  That usually took about a day.  Then you took an annual, you took a physical.  And then you went back and went through some more tests, and then at the very end of the process, they kind of caught me off guard.  They said, “Okay, you’re hired.  Where do you want to work?”  Well, gee, I’m just out of college.  I don’t know where I—I don’t know.  So I told them, I said “I’m not really sure,” and they said “Well, we need engineers in every area, so here’s ten different disciplines, pick, pick, pick ‘em in any order you want.  We’ll send you to each area for one week, and if you find an area you want to work in, contact us and we’ll just move you into that area.  You can go through the whole ten.  At the end of ten, pick one where do you want to do it.” 

 

The third area I went to was the rocket engine design and propulsion, and all my life I had always been interested in engines.  I always was overhauling the hotrods and things like that.  It just fascinated me.  So, I got over there.  I really enjoyed it, and I liked the people, I understood the process and I said, “You know, this is where I want to work.”  And that was, and after I had been out of college for about three years, 1958, and I finished my career under propulsionary.  So thirty-two—yeah, I must have really enjoyed it, I stayed there thirty-two years [laughs], but I always, you know, it was fun.  Lots of fire and smoke and things like that, so.

 

ESPARZA: Explain the, the work hours, you know; what, what was the usual number?

 

GIBSON: When we first started, during the early part of the program with the Sputniks and the John Kennedy “we’re going to land on the moon in the decade” type thing, the normal work hours were, let’s see, we started at 6:00 o’clock in the morning and we quit about 4:00.  We went ten hours, ten hours a day, five days a week.  Then on Saturday we went eight hours, and Sunday morning we worked four hours.  And that was pretty routine for about the first four or five years of the program.

 

And then when I came to Houston, the hours were basically about the same.  They were all trying to play catch-up.  Somewhere in there, they had decided not to use the Red-stone vehicle to put something in orbit but to use a Vanguard.  And at that point they gave the responsibility of the space program to the Navy.  And they built two or three Vanguards and those are the ones that blew up on the launch pad, the ones you see, the ones that always blow up back in the early ‘60s.  And after about three of those they came back and said, “Oops, maybe we better go with the Red-stone.  Could you guys start working on larger vehicles for Apollo?”  And it, it just got more, you know, and the hours just were very long.  And then we’ve got under a lots of travel once we got going with the Apollo program.  All the vendors were all over the entire United States, and they were all dedicated to the program, and lots of travel.  It was very educational, back in those days, everyone was still learning, we were still coming up on the learning curve.

 

ESPARZA: Did you guys get any vacations out there?

 

GIBSON: The, we got vacations up until about, I guess it was about 1965, 1966, somewhere in there, when the Apollo program got to be really fast tracked, and it looked like they weren’t going to be able to make it within the decade.  And about that time the Apollo 1 with the three astronauts blew up on the launch pad, and killed the three astronauts.  I forgot what you asked me, now [laughs].

 

ESPARZA: Vacations.

 

GIBSON: Oh, vacations.  At that time, they said, “Well, we’ll just give you a letter and you can accumulate the—most of vacations, you could build up six weeks, you could get six weeks, you could save it in one year.  At that time, they said, “No,” they didn’t want a letter, said, “you could take—don’t take any vacations for the next three years.  After we land on the moon, then you guys take all your vacation at one time.”  And we did.  They landed on the moon, and we worked one other flight, I guess it was Apollo 12, and then, of course, 13 got be a real problem.  And somewhere in there, I took off almost four months.  We went to, traveled through Acapulco, Mexico City; we went to Canada.  Took vacations all at one time and, at that point, it was really hard to go back to work [laughs].  You worked full speed, then you stopped, then you took off work for four months.  Then you had to go back to work.  And it was, I don’t know, but it was, it was—and we took all our vacations at one time.  And then we basically started all over again with the Shuttle, and then we went through the process again.  Is that about—

 

ESPARZA: So, when you first came to work for NASA—

 

GIBSON: Now is it, is it running [referring to tape recorder]?

 

ESPARZA: It’s running.

 

GIBSON: Oh, okay.

 

ESPARZA: You first came to work for NASA, you were given a list of what positions you wanted to do.

 

GIBSON: Choices, they were in different disciplines.  There was guidance control, structures, propulsion; they had what they called ground support equipment, which supports all the vehicle.  They had some crew training.  I forget what the, they were the very basic disciplines, and there were about ten of them at the time.  There are much more now.

 

ESPARZA: So, why did you leave?

 

GIBSON: When I left Huntsville, I just left to come back over to this area because I felt more at home, in Texas-Oklahoma than Alabama-Georgia.  I like hash browns better than grits [laughs] for breakfast.

 

ESPARZA: Now tell me again when you retired from NASA.

 

GIBSON: Lets see it was ‘90, 1990.

 

ESPARZA: Any reason why?

 

GIBSON: Well that’s when I, oh no, when I actually finally retired from NASA, yeah, was in 1990.  I had my full, you could retire at age 55 with full retirement, and once you get full retirement, to keep working with NASA, your retirement basically doesn’t go up very much, it, it kind of levels out when you turn 55-years-old.  And if you have thirty years, if you’ve been thirty years for them, and your age 55, you get what they call full retirement and it kind of stays the same.  And this may come out wrong on your tape, but a lot of the people at age 55 were not ready to quit working.  You know, I didn’t want to quit at age 55, so I could go to work for a private company supporting NASA and get my same salary with the private company and draw my NASA retirement at the same time. 

 

Its called double-dipping [laughs].  And I basically was doing the same job I had been doing anyway and joined two salaries, basically is what it amounted to.  And at the time, the two girls were in college, one at the University of Texas in Austin, one at Texas A&M, and we were living in Houston.  And it was fairly expensive in those terms for two of them, so, basically, my NASA retirement would, just went to them.  Just split it down the middle and sent one to College Station and one to Austin.

 

ESPARZA: How many children do you have total?

 

GIBSON: I got two myself and my wife has one from an earlier marriage.

 

ESPARZA: Is that your current wife now?

 

GIBSON: Um huh, yeah.

 

ESPARZA: And so what do you do now?

 

GIBSON: Well, I still go back over, like I say, during the Shuttle flights.  I go back over and work in the room behind the main mission room where all these two hundred or three hundred engineers sit and watch data.  We get all the data back there; we watch all the data all the time around the clock.  And we usually get an indication—we watch data trends, if some of the parameters are starting to go outside the redline limits, we start looking in to see what could be wrong, what the problem is.  We usually do a preliminary analysis and then we get the people in the mission room involved, you know, “Hey, we may have a problem here.  We’re looking at it.”  If it looks like it’s a real problem, then we will bring more people in, in specialty areas to work it. 

 

But its basically monitoring data almost all the time during the Shuttle flight, from about eight hours before lift-off to probably about two or three hours after landing because there’s a lot of activity that goes on before launch, like loading propellant tanks, and a lot of activity after landing, shutting things down and safety and making sure that everything is okay.  But it’s still engineering work but it’s engineering work I’ve been doing for a long time.  So.

 

ESPARZA: Let’s, let’s make a switch.  Let’s talk about some of the social conditions while you were working there, and how that affected the space program.  Like the Cold War, for example, any thoughts on that?

 

GIBSON: Not really, we were kind of, and particularly during the early part of the space program, we were so busy between traveling and working long hours, I wasn’t keeping up with it much, from me personally.  I wasn’t keeping up with much of what was going on in the rest of the world.  I didn’t have time [laughs].  I remember very major acts, events like, you know, when John Kennedy was killed in Dallas.  Obviously, you know, I did remember that.  As far as the Cold War and the Russians, we didn’t—once we got everything going—initially, we were pretty close to what was going on with the Russians in the space program.  As we started catching up and actually getting a head of them, we really didn’t pay much attention after that to what was going on with that. 

 

Yeah, I didn’t know [tape ends].  You ready?  The people in Clear Lake at the JSC [Johnson Space Center], at that time, and I think still to a certain percentage today, were pretty close knit group and our life pretty well revolved around the space program.  And I didn’t get too involved or pay a whole lot of attention of what was happening outside the space program.  We just, and so, as far as other activities, we just didn’t keep track of them.  Even our social life there in the Clear Lake area, at the time, pretty well the only people socially that we got involved with were people that were working for NASA or the contractors or related.  Everyone talked about the space program, even during social things, social events and parties, everyone talked about the space program, and we didn’t get much outside that, that area.

 

ESPARZA: So, what was the “space race” like then?  I mean, were we behind, was the U.S. behind the Soviets or?

 

GIBSON: Oh yeah, we were way behind when they started, when they started.  After the Second World War was over, the Russians took about half of the German scientists at Peenemunde [V-2 (A-4) rocket producing and testing facility in Germany] over into Russia.  And General Maderis, who was the U.S. commander in that area, he took the ones that could escape to the American sector, at that time, and they brought—there were about one hundred of those people, engineers.  They brought them to White Sands, New Mexico, and at White Sands, New Mexico, right after the Second World War, they started working on a vehicle almost identical to the V-2 that the Germans had worked on at the end of the Second World War called the Hermes.  And it was really just an improved V-2 because the Germans, at the, near the end of the war, they had no oil, they had no petroleum products, they had no materials, they were just down to nothing.  And, so, when they got here to White Sands, they started developing those vehicles to American standards, and Americans had all the materials and everything that they needed.  And then they were there for a few years, and then moved to Huntsville, Alabama.

 

But it was fairly intense all during that period as far as the space race.  It really got accelerated when Jack Kennedy made the announcement they we’re going to land on the moon before the end of the decade.  It speeded up just considerably, and it was a national go, all the companies in the United States were dedicated to it.  A lot of the companies got involved and didn’t even make a profit on it.  They were just involved because they felt dedicated to the space program and getting to the moon.

 

ESPARZA: What are your thoughts of President Kennedy’s challenge to NASA?

 

GIBSON: Oh, I thought it was great, yeah.  He’s our idol, [laughs].  He’s really our idol.  He did—he was interested.  Lyndon Johnson, his vice-president at the time, was put head of the space program for Kennedy and Johnson was down at the, well, it was called the Manned Spacecraft Center, at the time, then it got changed over to the Johnson Spacecraft Center.  He was down there a lot.  People thought quite highly of him.  They were very supportive; they gave NASA just about anything they wanted, at the time.  And I think he was probably one of the greatest presidents we ever had.  I wish we had another one, I really do.  Everyone liked, everyone liked him.  He came down here and spoke several times.  I personally saw him down here several times and he just was very dedicated and inspirational, I think, towards, towards the space program.  He really got it moving.  He’s the guy that did that.

 

ESPARZA: Were there any personal doubts regarding his challenge?

 

GIBSON: Uh, yes [laughs].  At the time that the, at the time that they decided to go ahead and go to the moon before the end of the decade, and we started building, and I was in the propulsion area, it seemed like every rocket engine we built during that period, every time we tested it, it blew up.  And I saw a lot of them blow up.  I mean it was very, it’s very discouraging to work on something for months and months and then it goes to manufacturing and a, for like six months or seven months.  Then you get ready to test it and put it on a test stand, and it blows up. 

And, you know, that’s, in your personal life, that’s like eight or nine, ten months that you dedicated to something and it’s gone in a fraction of second.  And it was fairly common back in those days.  And we finally started, we had no background, there was no information, there were no textbooks, there was nothing you could go to, to tell you what to do, you had to improvise and think and it seems like every time we got or solved one problem another one cropped up.  And we finally just worked through all of ‘em.  But it was very close.  We had engines, we did have engines blowing up as late as 1968, like the year when we went to the moon.  It was, the technology was still, you know, pretty, pretty premature.

 

ESPARZA: Did you think the U.S. could reach that goal before the decade was out?

 

GIBSON: Do what now?

 

ESPARZA: Do you think that the goal could be reached before the decade was out?

 

GIBSON: You know, we never, we were so busy trying to get everything to work, I think we kind of lost track of time until it got very close into the 1969 period.  The schedules were very tight, people were pretty motivated, and we almost lived day to day.  It was hard to visualize, you know, four or five years from now what it would be like.  We were just trying to get through this week or next week, you know, and get things working and everything.  I think there was some doubt that they wouldn’t, that NASA wouldn’t make it.  I really do, I think there was some doubt.  You just kept going.  Every time you got a problem, you try to solve it and you kept going.  I don’t know if anyone really had ever got discouraged about it.  It was, we just, we just kept going, you know, in that direction.

 

ESPARZA: Did the assassination of, of JFK affect the program and then you personally?

 

GIBSON: It did me personally.  I wouldn’t, I don’t think it really, if anything, it probably helped accelerate the program.  I mean, that’s, I really, we pretty well, it stopped, you know, we pretty well stopped there for a while, I mean, he was NASA’s hero, I mean he really was.  And, of course, when he got shot, yeah, it was it was traumatic and people, yeah, it slowed down the program for a while, yeah, it did, and then finally people, you know, well we recover and then go on.  Yeah, it did, it had an effect on the program, but it was a two prong effect, I think, you know, it slowed it down but then, I think, after that probably accelerated.  People worked harder because they really like him.

 

ESPARZA: What do you remember of the first lunar landing?

 

GIBSON: Oh, I was there.

 

ESPARZA: You were working then?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, I was there.  It was pretty touch and go.  Me personally, the, the largest or the most significant concern I had is when Neil Armstrong was landing.  We were watching the fuel gauges, and, you know, he came real close.  He, he’d almost ran the tanks dry.  He kept looking for a place to land and he kept moving and moving, all we were doing was setting there watching the fuel quantity gauges go down, down, down, down.  And, you know, when they go to zero, you’ve got a problem.  I mean the engines are going to shut off.  And I don’t remember exactly what was left; there wasn’t much left when he touched down.  And that was a thing, I’d say, a lot of people were concerned about.

 

And the Capcom, the Capcom in the mission room—only astronauts can talk to astronauts, I mean, and that’s, it’s still that way today.  And it’s always been kind of, not humorous, but I guess it was the way they’re trained.  We’ll be working a technical problem to death.  I mean, it looks to us like its serious.  We’re working it, we’ve got a lot of engineers working the problem, and we try different things and different plans.  Finally, and a lot of the times, the Capcom will not even tell the crew that there is a problem.  You know, they’ll know there’s a problem, but we’ll be working ourselves to death and doing everything and finally come up with what looks like a, the solution. 

 

And then we’ll talk to the mission control people, they will talk to Capcom, Capcom then will get on and say, “Oh, Charlie, you know, we got a little problem here.  Can you flip switch three on panel C2 and switch—?”  This is after hours of work, and they flip ‘em and go “Okay, thanks.”  And they never try to do anything to panic the crew on anything like that.  But it’s always funny, you know, here we are in a panic mode trying to solve the problem, finally come up with it, and what the crew gets told is, “Oh yeah, Charlie, would you flip switch three on panel two?  Oh yeah, while your doing it, would you do switch eight on panel three?”  And then you can see the data that starts to straighten out and everything looks okay.  But it’s—I don’t know.

 

ESPARZA: Lets talk about the Apollo 13.  Have you seen the movie?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, I was there, too.  Yeah.

 

ESPARZA: Does the movie do justice?

 

GIBSON: The movie is probably a little over-dramatic about what—it was, it was a serious problem, I mean, when they blew the tank out the side of the vehicle.  I mean, the thing we were trying to do at the time—no knew really, what happened.  And they have a lot of switches.  They were trying to isolate the problem—flip these switches, flip that switches.  And we were going through a lot of analysis and a lot of, trying—and you didn’t have much time to do anything because here again your watching the quantities in the tanks, in this case were for the fuel cells, the oxygen and hydrogen, and you sit there and watch these quantities start go down. 

 

And here again, you know, when they reach zero—and if you don’t have it isolated, the fuel cells will shut down.  When the fuel cells shut down you have no electrical power.  The computers shut down, the lights go out; this is a bad day [laughs].  I mean, you’re there, there’s nothing you could do.  And they worked the problem pretty fast, and then it was later they actually knew what happened.  But they did get the thing, get the right switches flipped and everything and got it isolated where they did have—didn’t go totally dead in the water. 

 

It wasn’t quite as dramatic.  Movies always seem to think, make things, I think a little bit more—but it was a real problem.  But I think it wasn’t worked probably any differently than other problems that NASA had before or even after that.

 

ESPARZA: Did you work longer hours during that mission?

 

GIBSON: Oh yeah, yeah.  But the longest hours were the Apollo 11, when they landed on the, when they landed on the, on the moon, Apollo 11.  I mean, there were about four or five days there that you just virtually lived out there.  But the Apollo 13, it, it, it was still long hours, yeah.

 

ESPARZA: Did that cause any personal health problems?

 

GIBSON: No.  Well see, we were all, we were still all pretty young then.  Everyone was pretty much the same age, they were all, like I say, no gray-headed people.  They were all—when I first went to NASA, I was still using a slide rule.  We didn’t get computers until so much later.  And a lot of the data, we didn’t get these real nice data screens—now, now you have a, if you’re working a problem or you suspect there’s a problem, we can cut, we can have our displays up and on the displays it’ll show you a plot of a parameter, a pressure, a temperature, what have you, volts, amps, whatever it is.  And you can immediately go back, now they have a data base, you could look at that vehicle at those same parameters for previous missions, and it just takes a couple of seconds to call that data up.  And it’ll overlay it right over the data your looking at now.  And you can see if the data now that you think is strange, how it compares to what those same data points did on previous flights on that vehicle.  So, you can pretty quickly tell if you’ve got a real problem or not. 

 

Back a long time age, before you had computers and calculators, and all that kind of stuff, we didn’t have anything, we were doing everything by hand, plotting it on graph paper.  All the parameters usually were radioed to us by, off the landing ships in Hawaii.  And they were in milli-volts and we had to take a chart and convert milli-volts into pounds, pressure, or flow rates or whatever it is, and then plot it on this green K&E paper we all used in college, and do the calculations with a slid rule.  And it would take us quite a bit of time to do that, and now you can do all that on the computer and on the screens and it’s just, seconds, so.

 

ESPARZA: So then, the works hours have shortened now?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, I think we can get a lot more done in a lot quicker time.  The only time you get slowed down is, if you get a problem you never encountered before.  That’s what, you know, a lot of the problems are repeat problems and you have gone through them before, and you’ve got a data base and you know pretty much what to do.  It’s when you get a problem that’s brand new that, that’s—you’re back in the ‘60s and ‘70s when you get a new problem because you don’t have a database to work with. 

 

You can do the calculations a lot faster, you can do the data trends a lot faster, everything is on TV, and NASA is way state-of-the-art on doing that kind of stuff; I mean, it’s fast.  When I go sit in the mission room and work on a computer there and then come home—and we’ve got a, we’ve got three computers here at the house, and the one we use, it’s pretty fast—but I get used to those computers.  I mean, you key something in, its there.  I mean, it’s instantaneous.  Where here, I’ve got to wait a couple of minutes for the, for it to come up.

 

The only thing, I can say, the only difference, it is easier, we’ve got a much bigger database to work from.  All the tools, the analytical tools, electronic tools are much better, much faster and, you know, it’s easier.

 

ESPARZA: Did, and you can answer this how you, how you please, was working out at NASA a reason for your first divorce?

 

GIBSON: Probably not, probably not, it was probably a contributing factor.  I say it’s probably a contributing factor.  I traveled a lot in ‘65, 1965.  Took eighty-three trips in 1965, and some trips were two weeks at a time, and some trips I would, at Hobby Airport in Houston, fly to California for a meeting and fly back that same night, and that was a long day.  But to answer your question, I don’t think—it may have been a contributing factor, but I don’t think it was probably a major factor.  I say that because, gee, I still have a lot of friends that were working there at the same time I was working there and they’re still married to same people.  I say the majority of them are still married to the same people that they were married to then.  It seems like the ones that were married to their, quote, “high-school sweet-hearts,” had know them since the fifth grade; its seems like those are the ones that are still married and they’ve been married for like fifty years or so.  I think, I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it or asked anyone but I—just off the top of my head, I would say the majority of the people that were married then are still married now.  I’d say the majority.  It was a factor but not, not the factor.

 

ESPARZA:  Give me some of your thoughts on the Challenger of ’86.

 

GIBSON: Yeah, I was there, too [laughs].  Yeah, we were.  I remember it was, it was a total shock.  And I’m sure you’ve seen a lot on TV about it.  In retrospect, they should never have had the launch because of all the ice problems, and a lot of people at that time did not want to do that launch because of the ice problems.  But they have done it before and got away with it, so they went ahead.  We were looking at he data screens, and it was right after lift-off, and my data screen was—basically it’s, I don’t know, about a twenty-six inch screen—and it just has lines of data.  It has parameters, and then it has values, and then like a pressure, a pressure, or a flow rate, or what have you, down there.  And then other displays, it just plots it, you have a pressure, a time, and as the flight goes on, you know, it just traces up what that pressure is versus where you’re at in a mission. 

 

And the screen I was watching went blank, you know, sixty, seventy seconds after lift-off.  [I] thought, “What the?”  And I looked around, everybody, you know, the other screens were blank.  And up in the upper hand, right hand corner we keep a commercial TV monitor that—it’s a NASA select real time—and that’s when we looked up there and saw everything coming apart.  And we just stood there, nobody did, you just, you know, like a—“This can’t be happening.”  And, you know, we had no data to look at, no one said anything, and you could see the TV screen, you could see the Challenger blowing up.  And we just, I don’t know, it was—we stood there for minutes.  Everybody just stood there like, you know, “This can’t happen.”  What do you do?  Well, you can’t do anything.  There was nothing to do.  I mean, it was coming apart. 

 

And then I guess, I’d say, probably, fifteen minutes or so, they started telling everybody, “Hey, start recovering all the data you can.  Get all the data printed out.  Do some quick analysis,” that type thing.  And then at the end of the day, they sent—it was, it was late that night, gee, it was early in the morning during the launch, but it was about, oh, I’d say two hours after that happened—they sent NASA guards over there.  We had to sign out to go to the restroom; we had to sign back in.  And they came in and wanted all the data that we could dig up or find or we were generating, anything.  We’d lost a lot of it.  And then we couldn’t do anything.  We were trying to reconstruct.  We didn’t know what the problem was really.

 

And it was about 11:00 o’clock at night, and they came in and told us that, “You guys can go home.  We don’t want you to take anything out of the room at all, no paper, no pencils, no calculators, no nothing.  Everything stays I the room.  You don’t take anything out at all,” and we didn’t.  And we came back the next day, and they started setting up investigation teams and that type things and looking at all the data—and there wasn’t much data to look at.  We lost a lot of it because the antenna on Shuttle which transmits data, of course, when the Shuttle blew up, it was gone.  And when it was gone, you just, there was nothing else to see but—we just sat there. 

 

The screens were blank, the data screens were blank, you could see the commercial TV.  You just sat there, and it was probably fifteen, twenty minutes before anybody even said anything.  It’s just total, “This can’t happen.”  But it did.  And then we spent the next six or eight months trying to reconstruct data.  A lot of it was photographic data from the long-range cameras because a lot of the other data had lost, you know, we didn’t get, we didn’t have.  So, it was a long period after that.  But, yeah, people just, you know, I don’t know, just stopped.  No one said anything.

 

ESPARZA: You were saying something about the ice problem.  What’s that?

 

GIBSON: Before that that night, it got down—I forget what the temperature was in Florida.  They had a lot of ice on the vehicle because it had rained before, and it was below freezing on the launch pad and there was icicles hanging everywhere.  And they were trying to heat up areas to get rid of the ice and they, matter of fact, they still today have a team called the ice team.  And about three hours before launch, even today, the ice teams goes out and inspects all these critical areas for ice. 

 

And if there’s—but now, well it was the icicles, the O-rings [engineering component] in the solid rocket boosters.  The O-ring got too hard, it got brittle, and it wouldn’t, wouldn’t contain the hot gas coming out.  And the hot gas came out around the O-ring and it impinged on the orbiter hydrogen tank.  And a lot of people, when they saw the thing—the, the, the Shuttle really didn’t blow up as you would think as an explosion.  The flame went into the hydrogen tank, and the liquid hydrogen, when you were in a perfect vacuum, when it comes out into a perfect vacuum, it immediately freezes, turns to crystals. 

 

Now, a lot of that white stuff you saw was just frozen hydrogen.  It wasn’t an explosion.  Of course, there were other things too.  But it, that was the cold temperature and the ice around the O-rings that caused them to—and there was ice on the vehicle.  We went back and we looked at those films during the day, that, the day they kept us there after Challenger blew up.  We sat all day and reviewed films, and reviewed films, and looked at films, and it, freeze, we’d freeze it, you know, movie film section to see.  And some of the people did, at that time, thought that they saw on the launch pad, and they did turned out later, flame coming out and smoke coming out where the O-ring had already, it already started leaking before lift-off.  But we would look at films and looked at films.  There wasn’t much else to look at so.  Yeah, pretty grim.

 

ESPARZA: What kind of, I mean did this cause political trauma for the space program?

 

GIBSON: Yeah.  Of course, it was several years after—I forget now how long it was—before they even flew again.  It was a long time.  They had to go in and redesign the whole area.  It did for a while, but I don’t think not for a long period of time.  President Reagan came down—oh, probably not very long after that, four days, five days, something like that, and talked to everyone.  They had to have it outdoors because there were so many employees; you couldn’t get them all in one building or anything.  And they had it outdoors, and he talked to all the employees and the astronauts’ wives and everybody like that.  That helped a lot, you know. 

 

And, then, I guess his message was, “Okay, let’s get back to work, and go do it again,” so.  It was an effect, but I—it wasn’t something that lasted for years.  I’d say it was probably more like, trauma-wise, a couple of weeks, three weeks.  And then everybody pretty well accepted it, and went back “Okay.  We’ve got to do something. And what’s the new redesign?”  So then we started looking at the redesign, [unintelligible] analysis.  But people thought, people thought about it.  Yeah, still do.

 

ESPARZA: Now I’ve never really seen a launch televised.  Are they still televised?

 

GIBSON: Oh yeah. I see them here.

 

ESPARZA: You have to have cable.

 

GIBSON: Ah, we’ve got satellite, it’s on satellite.  It’s on cable, it’s on cable and satellite.  Ah, you can see them on your computer, too.  Ah, I forget I sent—I got the address, the e-mail address last time I was home, and I sent it here to the house.  And you can actually get NASA select real time on your computer.  NASA dumps it out on the internet, and you could sit there, and, yeah, you can watch it.  It’s much clearer to watch it on TV.  I usually—anymore, I wait until after they launch at Florida, and then I go down to Houston the next day and start working, because a couple of times I’ve gone down the day before, the bad weather had slipped, and I hang around hotels with nothing to do, really.  And then the weather gets bad the next day and it slips—so, anymore [laughs]—I’ve got smarter.  So, and, they don’t have a problem with it.  Someone sits in on the launch.  But now I wait until the day after the launch, and then I go down.  So, I usually see the launch on TV here at the house.

 

ESPARZA: I’m a have to start keeping an eye out for that.

 

GIBSON: Yeah, it’s on cable, too.  I’m sure it is.  But if not, I’ll get you the internet address.  You can watch it on [the computer].

 

ESPARZA: Yeah, I would appreciate that, thank you.

 

ESPARZA: Cecil Gibson, today is Wednesday, May 30th 2001.  [Tape two begins here, recording was off]

 

ESPARZA: So, lets talk about Sputnik real fast, where were you and what were your thoughts when you first heard of Sputnik?

 

GIBSON: Okay, I’d, I’d come home for Christmas vacation to my parents’ house, and I’ve never heard of Sputnik, I didn’t know what the Russians were doing anything at the time.  And, I was watching TV while I was studying for my finals and it came on TV and that’s when I kind of got interested in it.  And, that’s, that’s basically, that was like in October of ’57, I guess it was.  That’s what turned my entire life around.  I’d already, like I said, I already worked in the oil fields during the summer between college years, I’d already accepted a job with Continental Oil Company to go to work for them after graduation.  I was the Sputnik and I decided, “this is what I want to do the rest of my life, I don’t want to work in the oil patch.”  So, it actually changed my entire career watching Sputnik on TV that time.

 

ESPARZA: Were there any fears that maybe the Soviets are, well, were there any, what kind of fears did that put in you, you know, knowing that the Soviets launched something first?

 

GIBSON: I didn’t really, I didn’t know the significance, I didn’t understand the significance of it at the time, I just saw something they did.  I didn’t know anything about the rockets or space, I never looked into it, and I guess it wasn’t, there were no fears or anything because I probably didn’t know, I didn’t know what really was going on.  I just saw something that looked new, interesting, and challenging, and I thought that’s what I’d like to do.  I, at that time, I had no idea what the United States had been doing, you know, or was doing and that’s when I went back to the university and got with the professors and they started telling me all this stuff and “gee, that’s what I really wanted to do.”  But it kind of stimulated me to go into the space area but I didn’t know enough, at the time, to be concerned about it or what it might happen, or what the significance was.  I just didn’t know at the time.

 

ESPARZA: So then, upon entering the space program and becoming aware of the US’s capabilities, can you compare, compare those to the Soviets, where, where do we fall?

 

GIBSON: Oh, today?

 

ESPARZA: No, when you entered?

 

GIBSON: Oh, when I entered?  They were way ahead.  They had, after Pidemondus when they took the Germans over to [Unintelligible] city; they started building these large rockets.  The rockets actually were the equivalent of what we use in Apollo and, the same ones are flying today.  When the Germans did the initial design on the large rockets, the Russians really didn’t advance it that much but, at that time, all we had in the United States were small vehicles like the Mercury that the seven astronauts first flew on, but the Soviets were building much larger rockets with the intention of going to the moon.  And I’d say, for about the first three or four years, they were ahead of the United States.  That’s where they were going, they had decided, and they were building the big boosters and the big rockets to do that.  And then, the United States started and just finally, after three of four years, I think, got a head of them technology wise.  And after that, I think they stayed a head of them from that time on, till today.

 

ESPARZA: Right, how did your background experience prepare you for NASA?

 

GIBSON: Oh, not at all. [Laughter] I was going to work in the oil patch, I had not taken any, most all the course I’d taken were like petroleum engineering related, I’m a mechanical engineer, but I was taking courses related to petroleum and things like that, you know.  I’d taken, I don’t think I’d even taken any course in aerospace or anything like that at all, so my college really didn’t prepare me for going into the NASA area, but luckily, since it was a brand new industry, at the time, the other people that were coming in at the same period, they had no experience either.  It was learn as you go, all the way.  We’d just, nothing there, you know, learn as you go.

 

ESPARZA: What are your thoughts on the cancellation of the lunar program, because they closed down the Apollo program right?

 

GIBSON: Right, they were supposed to have four more flights on the Apollo program, I think Apollo 17, as I recall was the last one and they had four more flights planned after that and then the funding got cut so drastically, they just could not afford to do the other four flights.  So those vehicles, all the vehicles actually got built to fly.  Ones at JSC [Johnson Space Center] now, as you drive in the entrance out there you’ll see one of the Apollo’s at the entrance laying on its side.  That, that vehicle is all up, he was built to fly, I mean it’s a complete vehicle.  They put one in Washington, D.C. and there’s a third one at Cape Kennedy in Florida and the fourth one may got disassembled and used for other parts or something along the way.  

 

We were really disappointed at the time but, we had, we actually started working, the engineering people started working on the Shuttle before they landed on the moon.  We started working on the space Shuttle probably in ’67, ’68 before they even landed on the moon.  And back then, there were two thoughts, space station or Shuttle and a huge contingent of NASA was trying to get funding to build a space station.  Another contingent, and this was at the top level, was trying to obtain funding for a space Shuttle and this went on for about two or three years.  And we were working, and before we ever landed on the moon, and at that time, we were working on both the station probably the station more than the Shuttle.  And then, as time went on, it became pretty obvious that well you cant really built a space station until you got the Shuttle to walk the Apollo stuff up and back on it.  And then, the space station got put on the back burner, and then the Shuttle came along and then now, its pretty well operational.  Now there’re doing the space station.

But, there was no real dramatic, sharp.  Whenever they cancelled the Apollo flights NASA was already working on space station and Shuttle, so it really wasn’t a traumatic a thing.  We were actually ready to go ahead with a station Shuttle, at that time.  And, you know, one of the projects that’s come up lately is return to the moon, you know, build a vehicle and go back to the moon again.  Comments I heard, it won’t be so easy the second time, it was really hard the first time, but it won’t be so easy the second time; there’re just too many things going on even though the technology exists.  But anyway, to answer your question specifically, it wasn’t very traumatic because NASA was already geared up for the station and Shuttle at the time that flights were cancelled.

 

ESPARZA: So it was a monetary situation then?

 

GIBSON: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

ESPARZA: What was the budget like?

 

GIBSON: Oh, gee, they kept cutting; I forget exactly what the budget was.  It kept being cut back and back and back during that time period.  And then, oh in the 70s, it fairly well leveled out and it stayed constant, which in essence means it’s gone down because the cost of living has gone up, it stayed constant.  What a lot of people don’t understand, even today, the NASA budget is less than 1% of the total government budget and people put things, I’ve read in the newspapers about NASA spending trillions of dollars and things like that.  Its not trillions of dollars, its, its, it’s a fraction of 1% of the total budget.  Compared to, what I call the give away programs, which are not, where the Federal Government just gives people money for not doing anything, and I don’t think you get any benefit out of that; I mean you’re just giving money away.  But the NASA budget is really pretty low, it, its; based, if you looked at the cost of living and everything, its substantially less now than what it was in say the Apollo era and that type of thing.

 

ESPARZA: And so, with the cancellation of the Apollo program and the implementation  of the Shuttle program and then the Space Station, what’s next? Where, where do you see the future?

 

GIBSON: Well, what NASA’s goal is next is the Mars mission.  They’re aiming everything towards Mars; they actually had some unmanned probes already go to Mars.  The problem you get into the Mars mission, it takes you about a year to get there and about a half of year to get back.  It takes a lot of food, and water and air for the crew, for that long a period.  And that’s why they pretty well gone with unman-typed, you know, small vehicles.  And they even had some land on Mars, you know, in the last year or two.  I don’t know if it’ll ever be a reality or not, it’s a one of the things they have to get around is look at nuclear propulsion as a option because you can reduce that traveling time substantially.  But there’re a lot of problems with nuclear propulsion, hazards, I guess.  They have a plan; they have a long-range plan, yeah.

 

ESPARZA: I was, it was explained to me that there is a law or maybe some type of agreement or treaty saying that no one can colonize the moon, no country.  Are you familiar with that?

 

GIBSON: No, no I’ve never heard of that. 

 

ESPARZA: It was a deal where, you know, you couldn’t go to the moon and colonize and say, you know, the moon belongs to the U.S.

 

GIBSON: Oh, no, I didn’t; of course, there were four flags up there and they were all U.S. [laughter]

 

ESPARZA: Yeah that’s right.

 

GIBSON: So I don’t know.  [Laughter continues] No, I’m not familiar with that, I…

 

ESPARZA: That, I don’t know if, can you remember one of your most challenging milestones working a NASA?

 

GIBSON: Oh gee, probably, probably in when I was just getting started in younger career.  I was in the rocket engine design area, that’s where I started out, back then they were, rocket engines blew up, that’s what they did and all the major companies, aerospace companies in the industry were looking at techniques and designs and all, even the Air Force was looking at, because the Air Force had the same problem.  The Air Force was building defense missiles and they were having the same problems as NASA with the rocket engines blowing up.  And I worked in that area pretty hard for, I’d say, probably about three years and one company came up with an idea that seemed pretty crude at the time, but during that period, oh I’d say in the 1960 to about 1963 area, era, 25 to 30% of NASA’s total budget was going toward solving that problem because if you cant get the rocket engines to work, then you can forget the whole thing.

 

One company came up with a technique that seemed really crude and not very scientific and not very engineering motivated, but they tested some fuel engines and it worked.  And, of course, they formed, NASA formed a big committee, which I got involved in, and we went to the company and spent some time.  And it seemed like they had a handle on it, then, of course, the technology since it was developed under a government contract could be made available to everyone, so at that time, we made it available to about four of five other companies in the United States who were making rocket engines back in that era.  And it worked, and that was probably the most, I worked on that single project probably for about three years.  And I’d say that was probably the most challenging, there was no, no base to work from, you couldn’t go to a book and get an equation, you couldn’t go to anything to get any past historical data; it was all brand new.  And that was probably the most interesting project I worked on. 

 

I actually ended up working on it later in my career because the company that built the rocket engine that lifted them off the moon back to the Apollo command module had not been able to design that, that, that wide and would have kept us from landing on the moon.  They were looking, 1972 landing because this one company couldn’t build a rocket engine with any reliability and once two guys got on the moon, you tried to get off and it blew up, you know, that’s the end of that.  So I got involved in it later in my career when they changed contractors to another company and they had twelve months to design, develop, and get these new rocket engines to Florida.  And they did, and they worked and those were the ones that went to the moon and came back.  That was probably the most challenging and most fun project that I ever worked on.  There’ve been others but I’d say that’s probably the most, most fun one that I’ve enjoyed.

 

ESPARZA: What happens if you’re working on a project and you don’t meet a deadline?

 

GIBSON: Ah, it slips.  The entire project slips, usually.  They work with, they start with kind of, they work with schedules and they call them waterfall charts is what we call them.  And I’ll try to be simple.  If you have some kind of assembly, a valve, just picked it out of the air, you have a valve, well the valve is made up; it has seals in it, it usually has some type of activation device, an electric motor, a numeric motor to open and close it.  And then it has gears in it to rotate the, the ball valve, or the flapper at a certain rate; you don’t want to go too fast or too slow.  And, as you build the device, you’ve got to build an activation system, and then you have to build the seals, and you have to build the valve body itself and then the ball of the flapper.  And each one of these gets designed separately and each one goes into production and you track the production of each one of those items and they’re theoretically should come out of production at the same time.  It goes into the valve, the valve gets assembled and them it goes to testing and then evaluation. 

 

If any, either one of these parts, you know, say the design of the gear, gear mechanism gets behind schedule then depending on how many of these devices you’re making, you’d want them to slow down the schedule production of these other items.  You want to come out the same date with everything to make the valve.  And what they do is track, I’m being very simple, but they track each one of these parts on a waterfall chart of a schedule chart then they track the assembly of the valve on another schedule chart then the testing.  And its all made to all flow together and come out all at the same time and be ready to go.  So, and it doesn’t work that way, if one gets behind then you try to slow down the other items so that you always come out on schedule. 

 

But the end result is in that schedule slips, and if that valve which goes into, oh, a piece of environmental control equipment for the crew to breath or something.  If that slips then the valve’s late, then that valve then goes into another schedule chart with all the other parts going to environmental control system, that slips too; and you’d get a chair reaction.  And the whole thing just slips all the way down.

 

ESPARZA: Does that affect the budget?

 

GIBSON: Yes, because usually, what you’re doing on budgets, I heard people say “well we blew up a trillion dollar satellite in space, we lost a trillion dollars in space,” well you didn’t use a trillion, you didn’t lose a trillion dollars in space, you lost some money for material.  But 90% of that money went into paying salaries for engineers, and technicians, and workmen, and guys in the machine shop.  So it keeps that budget here, you know, and then they take their money and go to the Dentist and buy gasoline, you know, and everything.  So the money is not really lost, it’s all there, but yeah, it does affect the budget.  Usually, it increases the budget because anytime, you’re paying all these guys and they come to work everyday so if it takes you twice as long to make a valve then you’ve spent twice as much money on the valve because you’ve been paying these guys twice as long.  So it extends the budget is what it does.

 

ESPARZA: Let’s talk about, I don’t know if you know the ratio of women engineers working at NASA, were there many?

 

GIBSON: When I, well I can tell you some funny stories.  When I was in engineering school, 1953 [laughter], there were no female engineers.  The engineering building only had men’s restrooms in it, the only restroom was up at the Dean’s office where they had a secretary or the secretary sat.  And when I went to work at NASA in Huntsville and NASA in Houston, I started in Houston in 1962 when they built the Manned Spacecraft Center, and there were no female engineers when I started in 1962.  And as female engineers started, and when we went to interview, I got in the interview process as colleges, we went to interview, we interviewed male engineers.  There were no female engineers to interview. 

 

And when NASA built the Manned Space Craft Center, in all of the outlying test area buildings, buildings, you know, where they did all the tests, you know, and there are a lot of those buildings out there.  They didn’t put any women restrooms in any of them; they only had men restrooms because no one, all engineers were male so they didn’t need female.  And they would usually be typically in the main office, we had a secretary or two secretaries, they would have one small restroom up front but when you get out to in any of the other areas, there were none.

 

I got the shock of my life, and then I went along, I got involved in Apollo, I got along in, near the end of my career, they always use the old guys to go out to interview college and universities for new hires and I had not been out doing that for a long time.  I did it initially when I first started, then I went about twenty years, didn’t do any of it, then I started again.  The first place I went was Texas A&M, the College Station, and I had some meetings set up there in the, interviews set up in the engineering building, the main building.  And I got over there one morning about the time that the bell rang for the first class, I guess it was nine o’clock, first was sitting there and “god lee” here came all these female gals out of the engineering building.  You know, “what’s this?” [Laughter] And it was quite a shock, then NASA started hiring; there were no female engineers to hire, I mean there were none, I’d say probably in, oh shoot, maybe twenty years ago, I’m just pulling it off the top of my head, did we start seeing female engineers appear at NASA.  And it wasn’t because they had a problem hiring them, its just none were available, they were all males, you know, because if you went to engineering you were a male.  You didn’t, females didn’t go into engineering. 

 

And I, but I’d say, I have no idea what the ratios is today, but I’m sure it’s a lot higher.  And some of the best, I hired, I hired some female engineers.  And some of the best engineers that they have over there now when I was working are female engineers that seem pretty quick, you know, and challenging.  And there’re, about fifteen years ago, NASA had to go out to all these other buildings and put female restrooms.  [Laughter]  There were none.  I have no, I’m trying to sit here and guess what the ration, the ratio probably, I’m guessing off the top of my head.  I would guess its probably 20% female now, its still not very high but I’d say, my guess would be 20%.

 

ESPARZA: When, when you worked at NASA, or when you moved out to Houston, did you stay close to the station, the space center?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, I did, I always did.  When I first, when we first came down from Huntsville, we lived where there was very limited housing in Clear Lake, they were still building the Manned Spacecraft Center.  Matter of fact, most of us were working out of Ellington Air Force base because they had finished the buildings out there.  But yeah, I always lived, and then built a house, I always lived probably within less than fifteen minuets from the facility, the NASA facility, probably more like ten, all the time I was there; very close.  And most people lived in Clear Lake City and worked out there. 

 

Most everyone was pretty close, not like California, where you drive an hour and a half, you know, to get to work and hour next drive.  Although it was mostly pretty localized, it was a, Clear Lake was a community, pretty much high-tech aerospace and I remember some statistics from way back that in the Clear Lake area, 90% of the people there had college degrees and the majority of those were technical degrees, that included the wives and the husbands, you know.  It was really high, the college of graduation was extremely high for a normal area, of course that’s right next door to the, where NASA was and I’m sure its still pretty high today.  I guess just about everybody was associated with a, had a college degree.

 

ESPARZA: Was, what was it like trying to get used to that heat out there?

 

GIBSON: Well see, I was born in Southern Oklahoma and I worked for, when I was working for Shell Oil Company during the summer I was going to engineering school.  I was out in the Oklahoma Panhandle where it got to be a hundred and twenty degrees and they always gave us college kids the most interesting jobs like painting twenty foot towers and cutting weeds with [laughter] and things like that.  And it was, it was well over a hundred all during the summer, heat, is that the kind of, you’re talking about temperature heat?  Yeah, not a problem.

 

ESPARZA: Caused a problem for other guys though.

 

GIBSON: No, not really.

 

ESPARZA: It caused a problem when I went down there.

 

GIBSON: Oh, it did?

 

ESPARZA: Yeah, I was burning up.

 

GIBSON: [laughter] The humidity is pretty high, yeah, the humidity really kills you.

 

ESPARZA: Let me ask you this, do you think maybe that people are losing interest in the space program?

 

GIBSON: Ah, yeah.  Yeah, I do.  It’s a, its too, matter of fact, its not, its not interesting.  NASA has a major shortcoming and its always been that way and it probably will never change and its been discussed a lot internal within NASA.  The NASA management system moves up from the ranks, even the head of NASA and all the people that, you know they’re all engineers they’re not public affairs people.  And at the top side of NASA they don’t have a, including me, they do not have a field for going out and telling the general public “look at these new medical devises, a lot of the medical devises that there’re being used now particularly the miniature devises, NASA developed them all.  Teflon pads, NASA developed Teflon, “my god,” fifty years ago when they needed them for seals when they put the cryogenic oxygen, hydrogen, you know, on the vehicle.  NASA, they don’t, they don’t tell people all the good stuff that there’re getting because their engineers, they don’t know how to do it, like me. 

 

There’s a NASA Alumni league, which is of retired, it’s a national, its in Washington D.C. and once you tell them, “hey, if you guys want to do something constructive, start educating, you know,” well shoot, and every time that I get this discussion with some one I say, “well, you know, there’s the weather channel that you get all your weather on, there’s HBO television, and they got all this stuff you wouldn’t have if we didn’t have satellites.  We wouldn’t have satellites if NASA hadn’t come along today, you wouldn’t have all the early weathering forecasts, all that information, you wouldn’t have it.  And they just kind of stopped to think about all that stuff.  There’s stuff, a ton of stuff that’s come out, but NASA never tells anybody about it and I think as a result people are losing interest.

 

ESPARZA: Looking back, could you’ve ever imagined that the space program would have gone this far?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, I don’t think it’ll ever end.  I think its, what do they say, the next frontier?  Ah, there’re getting ready, I know some of the pharmaceutical companies are, there’re a lot of the drugs that you need to help people, they have real problem developing them in where you have a gravity, when you try to mix things really heavy wants to fall to the bottom and the light stuff.  There’s in, when you get this lab built up there on space station, I know a lot of the pharmaceutical companies already want to try out experiments on new drugs to make, and you may come up with new drugs that you could mix in zero gravity and then would benefit people.  They’ve already developed some drugs already up and so I don’t think, I don’t think it will end, I think it’ll keep going, its gonna slow down but it’ll keep going.

 

ESPARZA: I’m under the impression that the military are trying to get their grips on the space program, I mean, is that true?

 

GIBSON: A long time ago, even before Mercury and Apollo came out, the Air Force, because they had unlimited funding, much more than what NASA ever had, they were working on a vehicle called Dinosaur that actually was intended to go to the moon, I mean, it’s a, they had, they were working on programs themselves.  And the Air Force, also, at one time, intended to use these space Shuttled flights out of Van den Burg Air Force base in California to go over the pole.  They were going to use this Shuttle for military application, at that time.  And they devoted a lot of money, built a lot of facilities and got involved in probably as heavy as NASA did in the early to mid-sixties and then the goals kind of got turned around, and I’m not sure exactly what happened but the military interest and then doing space things like that started going down.  And I’m not aware of any type of activity that the military has today going on as far as space is concerned.  There may be some joint funding, small projects, but there was a big interest, at one time, and they put a lot of money into it and then NASA got bigger and bigger and they just kind of slowed down.  That’s several years ago, I’m not aware of any interest they have going on, on today.  So I don’t think NASA’s concerned about it.

 

ESPARZA:  Miniature involvement means larger budget, doesn’t it?

 

GIBSON: Yeah and they have a lot more, yeah.  Their budget is substantially larger than, I mean, way, way larger.  They, at, you know, before the Challenger, they were carrying military payloads and things like that in the Shuttle.  When they carried those payloads, the Shuttle was flow by military pilots and then after the Challenger and they were getting ready to do commercial, you know, like put satellites in orbit.  Now companies like HBO have to go over to European Space Agency or, to, to get a satellite launched, or AT&T has to go, you know; they can’t do it here on the Shuttle.  There’re other ways they can do it with old [Unintelligible] rockets do.  It doesn’t seem like the military has much interest in doing things today even though they would have access to a lot more money to do it.

 

ESPARZA: Out in Houston, I had never been to JSC [Johnson Space Center] nor the, the what is it, Space Center Houston, I mean, how do you feel that, that area being opened up as a tourist attraction, I mean?

 

GIBSON: Yeah the, how I do it or why…?

 

ESPARZA: You now, how do you feel about it, I mean, because I heard a lot of complaints from some of the people out there saying, you know, its kind of taken away from the realism.

 

GIBSON: Yeah, they, boy there was a lot of discussion.  That thing started about fifteen years ago and it looked like it wasn’t, they built it and NASA used to have a lot of the space articles, a lot early space capsules that actually gone to orbit, things like that, in their own museum over there.  And they were letting people come freely into the NASA facility and walk around all the buildings, and that got to be a problem.  And so, when they built the space center, out there next to NASA, they had a lot of funding problems initially and finally got it going and part of that deal was to use a trams to go around through the NASA facility and not let people just wander around.  Before that, they let people just wander around through the buildings, I mean, it was unreal.  And so, not at least, it’s controlled, so I think that’s a good thing.  I think there’s still some kind of resentment about letting people come out there and tour it.  NASA did freely give up all the art, all the capsules and space stuff that they had and moved it over to the space center. 

 

I don’t think it’s a real big problem, but it’s kind of irritating, so I don’t know [laughter].  Its irritating when your trying to work during the mission and then you got all these people [Unintelligible] around you and through, through the building, but its not nearly as bad as it used to be.  Like I said, it used to be before they had space center and the trams, you could just walk out there and walk around.  And its always been a concern about some kind of problem, during a mission, when the Shuttle’s up or space station’s up and, I don’t know if you noticed, when you were down there in front of the mission building, they have a lot of these huge flower pots and everything; those are filled with led.  There’re there, they got flowers in there, in front of all the doors, those are to prevent somebody driving a Jeep or a truck full of explosives inside the building; you cant move those things.  And they have post all the way around all the buildings set in concrete [unintelligible] so it looks artistic but its really there for a reason.  But I think there’s always been some kind of concern about having people kind of roam around out there, and the space center, with the trams, kind of solved a lot of the; at least its controlled.  So, I think people pretty well accept it.

 

ESPARZA: I’m going need you to set me clear on something.  Most of the launches occur in Florida?

 

GIBSON: Right.

 

ESPARZA: Do any occur in Houston?

 

GIBSON: No, never had.

 

ESPARZA: But mission control is in Houston.

 

GIBSON: Mission control is in Houston, they have, they have another, its called the launch, it’s a launch complex, what do they call that thing, its like a mission control in Florida.  Its right out, a couple of miles from the launch pad, and up until, when you get ready for a Shuttle launch or an Apollo launch, the mission control room at the, at Florida has control of the vehicle until the vehicle clears the launch pad.  As soon as the vehicle clears the launch pad, then Houston picks it up.  So, anything that would happen or any action required or anything to be taken before it clears the launch pad, all those decisions would be made in Florida at their mission room there.  It’s only after you clear the launch pad, that Houston picks up on it.  They had some launches early in White Sands, New Mexico, they fired some of the, the Germans fired some of the Hermes, which were the old V2, in New Mexico.  NASA has had some solid rocket motor launches off Wallace Island in Virginia and still do; those are small devices.  Everything else is going out of Florida.  Yeah, they don’t even have the capability in Houston to do anything like that.

 

ESPARZA: Why, set up mission control in Houston and not in California then?  [Florida is what I meant]

 

GIBSON: President Johnson, [laughter].  The main space center, the launch complex was built, the launch complex in Florida originally was built and was part of the Marshal Space Flight Center, NASA facility in Huntsville, Alabama.  It was a division out of Huntsville because, before NASA Houston ever came into existence, Huntsville was already up and running and they built their own launch complex in Florida and then it kind of got adopted by NASA, as NASA got larger, and larger, and larger.  You want to get as close, for any kind of launch.  You want to get as close to the equator as you can for the launch because as you launch against the counter-rotation of the Earth, you pick up, the Earth rotates twenty-four thousand miles and hour, if you’re at the equator; ideally you want to be at the equator, that’s where you want to launch from.  It takes less energy to get more payloads into orbit if you’re on the equator than any other place.  You start leaning towards the poles; it takes more and more, and more energy. 

 

Florida’s ideal, its about as far south as you can get, I guess you could go to Key West, but, anyway, Patrick Air Force Base was there early on; a military Air Force Base.  And so, Florida would be probably better, and you’d have all kinds of problems in Houston, safety.  I don’t know of any place in the Houston area that there’s not enough, it almost has to be Galveston Island.  There’s no place there to build it, it takes a lot of area, and they already that area in Florida that was already in existence, it was already owned by the government and the facilities were already there.  So, I don’t think you got, I don’t think, they wont even let, up until about three years ago, NASA used to be able to do hazardous testing there, in Houston, they had test facilities out back. 

 

They had an incident occur about three years ago where they inadvertently let some toxic material in the air, turned out it wasn’t a problem, I mean, it, its so small now, but they pretty well banned all testing of any kind of hazardous condition there.  Moved all of that to White Sands, New Mexico, which is out in the desert so any kind of hazardous testing, they do that out there.  I don’t think you could ever, people would just revolt to do a launch anywhere near a populated area like Houston.

 

ESPARZA: Where were the astronauts trained?

 

GIBSON: Houston, yeah, and they lived at Houston, yeah.  There’s been discussion over the last, almost twenty years, it comes up about every ten years: “is why don’t we take mission control and move it to Florida, you’ve got mission control in Florida right beside the launch complex control and everything was there.”  And then they said, “well mission control, the cost of it,” because its so huge, and you have all that equipment and those buildings specifically designed just for mission control, “to move it to Florida, I mean it was billions, and billions, and billions of dollars, it just wasn’t cost effective.”  And, on this day and age, with Internet and post circuit TV and communications that are almost instantaneous, it doesn’t really matter if you’re in a room next door or if you’re ten thousand miles away. 

 

During the Shuttle flights, building the space station, they can communicate with the Russians and the Russian mission control room all the time, and there’re half way around the world.  And they have meetings and talk to them, with this day and age, distance, you know, distance doesn’t seem to make any difference, or difference anymore, not a big factor.

 

ESPARZA: Have any thoughts on the, the International Space Station?

 

GIBSON: I think its great; I think it’s probably the next logical step.  It’s coming along, they still have about another two or three years to add equipment to it. I think once, right now basically there’re still building and hauling up supplies.  I think, once it gets finished, which is going to be enough; I think, I think 2006, somewhere in 2005, 2006.  Once they get it complete, I think then, once they get all these labs working where they can, you know, do pharmaceutical drugs and all the new stuff, and I think when the benefits start coming out, I think, I think that’ll be great.  It was built, it was built for a purpose, it wasn’t built just to sit up there in orbit, you know, it was built for actually developing new thing to help people that they couldn’t do in, unless there’re in zero gravity.  So I think it’s an ideal lab for that type of thing.  There’s still going to be about three or four years before it’s done.

 

ESPARZA: When I first heard of the, of the space station, I immediately started thinking TV, you know, assuming that, you know, wow, you know, people can go up there and live up there, and be there, and just watch TV there.

 

GIBSON: Yeah, yeah, they and, you know, in the last flight, after the Russians took up Tito who paid twenty million dollars and, boy that was; it really caused a problem, I tell you.  They just don’t like the, and that happened, you know, right after the American plane over off the coast of China, you know where he got too close and hit the wing tip and it went down.  And there’re so many things in the space station that you could flip a switch and bad things happen.  They just don’t like people up there that are not trained to do all that.  I mean; you could have a major disaster just by flipping the wrong switch.  I understand there’s two more guys over at [unintelligible] that have paid, there’re going up in the next special flight.  One of them is a big movie producer, I thought Tom Hanks would probably be one of them, but I’ve heard he’s not on the list yet. 

 

ESPARZA: No?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, but he’s a big space guy, you know.  Spielberg, I thought was on there and I think he, I’m not sure, they listed two or three guys that are, yeah, there’re in training now to do that.

 

ESPARZA: What’s the next step for NASA, I know there’s the Mercury mission, well the…Mars?

 

GIBSON: Yeah, Mars, the Mars thing, there’re working on which requires a whole lot of new technology.  Most of it relates to the fact that its, it just takes so long to get from here to there, and, you know, you think about it, it took us a long time to get to the moon.  The moon is not that far away, Mars is not that far away, and to even think about travel outside the solar, I mean, “gee,” you’re talking; unless they come with faster ways to get there, what is it, what do they call it on TV: warp 1 and warp 2 [laughter], warp speed, which is a dream.  They got to solve a problem of moving faster in Space before we could ever think about going outside the solar system or, you know, to another, you know, planet; otherwise, you know, a person’s life would be, I mean, you would be born and you’d go there and you’d come back and die.  I mean, you’d spend your entire life [laughter] on the spacecraft.  So, anyway.

 

ESPARZA: Is there anything else, anything I left out, anything else you want to…

 

GIBSON: No, its been very interesting, very interesting.

 

ESPARZA: I thank you for taking time to meet with me.

 

GIBSON: Thank you, thank you, I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it.