NASA Nelson, Raymond - May 24, 2000

Interview with Raymond Nelson

 

Interviewer: Clarissa Hinojosa

Date of Interview: May 24, 2000

Location: Nelson home, Brenham, Texas

 

 

 

HINOJOSA:  Today is Wednesday May 24, 2000, at approximately 1:00. [p.m.]  Clarissa Hinojosa interviewing Mr. Raymond Nelson, at Mr. Nelson’s home in Brenham, Texas.  Mr. Nelson, I wanted to ask you generally about how you got started at NASA.

 

NELSON:  I was working at General Dynamics, and the B-58 program [was] winding down.  We’re starting NASA Houston from Langley [Field, Virginia] and they came to Fort Worth for an interview, and I was interested.  Yep.

 

HINOJOSA:  What’s your specialty?

 

NELSON:  Well, I was in aerodynamics.  I was in the Structures Flight Program Group at Fort Worth, and essentially, we took aerodynamic data from the test program.  So essentially I worked in the aerodynamics area.

 

HINOJOSA:  What components of equipment, or the rockets, did you design?

 

NELSON:  Well, what we did, mostly, were in the aerodynamic or entry, of course, that would be either ascent or entry.  Basically, we dealt more with the entry technology, and I did do paper studies, computer studies.  We called it Little Joe 3, because there was Little Joe 1, Little Joe 2.  It was part of the launch program for the space outfit that was established.  Essentially, my extent of launch vehicles.  Mostly, we dealt with entry and abort systems.

 

HINOJOSA:  So entry is like entry into the atmosphere or entry into say, like, the Moon orbit?

 

NELSON:  No, no.  Entry, from the atmospheric part, of course, once you’re in orbit, you’re in a vacuum, more or less.  Atmosphere is mostly when you’re entering a situation.  And mostly, most of my early experience had to do with the Apollo abort systems.  The boilerplate test program down at White Sands [New Mexico].  Again, that was Little Joe 2 that was the launch vehicle that they used for the well, we had a couple of pad aborts out there.  But the high-dynamic pressure, high-altitude boilerplates.

 

HINOJOSA:  What was Little Joe?

 

NELSON:  I don’t know where the Joe part came.  I have no idea.  Little Joe 1 was what they used for Mercury off of Wallops Island [Station, Virginia].  And Little Joe 2 is what Convair of San Diego was the launch vehicle and they, they did that, and it stuck – the Apollo boilerplate.  The boilerplate’s a prototype of the Apollo vehicle.  And then we did abort tests down at White Sands.

 

HINOJOSA:  What’s involved in aborting a launch?  You’re talking about aborting a launch for a flight?

 

NELSON:  Well, on the pad abort, of course they didn’t have any of the Saturn vehicles, it wasn’t set on top of any of the Saturn vehicles, which would have been at the Cape.  But what the program at White Sands, my early start, we basically was concerned with the abort scheme and how the vehicle would operate in case we had an abort.  For example, the Apollo abort system had a tower on it with a, been so long ago now, with a little kicker motor on there, I remember that. I can’t remember right now what the two motors were on there, but one was to drive it up and one was to tilt it downrange, of the tower, and it would blow the tower.  So far, none of the NASA programs has had to use one of the abort schemes, thank goodness, including the shuttle.  And now on the shuttle, we also did some of the work on some of the abort returns, alongside, mainly.  But they never, thankfully, they’ve never used it.  You ask, ‘what was the abort scheme,’ well, when the astronauts are sitting on top of their firecrackers, for some reason if they need to get out of the way of the fireball, if you had an explosion where you want to kick it away, that was what the pad abort [was for].  And there was two of them – BP-6 and BP-23, I believe, BP being boilerplate – that we did at White Sands, just to make sure that the escape motors on there would get them clear of the fireball if they had a fireball.

 

HINOJOSA:   So if something went wrong with the Saturn V, it was their escape – the abort system was their escape route, to get away from it?

 

NELSON:  Affirmative.  Of course, Mercury had the same thing.  Mercury had the escape system, a tower around it, to pull it off.  And of course, I don’t think now, they don’t have an escape system on the shuttle.  But here they used to have that slidebar thing.  But they don’t need aerodynamics on that.  I really enjoyed that and it was interesting.  It was a big learning experience for me.

 

HINOJOSA:  I wanted to ask you a little about the times, what it was like working there.

 

NELSON:  Did I enjoy it, or what?

 

HINOJOSA:  Yeah, did you enjoy it?

 

NELSON:  Well, yes.  See, I went to work for NASA in October 1962, and if you recall, John Glenn, as I remember was, was it ’61 that he was in , sometime in the early ‘60s.

 

HINOJOSA:  Yeah, it was, I think, May ’61.

 

NELSON:   So then, everything was, NASA was, everything was, it was a glamour, just to be connected.  “Oh, you work for NASA?”  “Yeah.”  But I enjoyed a lot of it because it was things that I had read about, and to actually get to do some hands-on or learning about some of the, even some of the terms.  Back in those days, there were new terms.  But I remember, when I keep saying something about the boilerplate, that BP-6, the first abort test, pad abort test down at White Sands, I was standing about, I don’t know, about six to eight feet away when they lit it off.  I was standing right in front of, who was the, Alan Shephard.  I really got amused because, oh, he could not.  I enjoyed seeing the thing lift off, but he couldn’t have, because all the reporters and everything were snapping his picture in the, the area for the dignitaries and stuff. NASA had all of us out there for the test that weren’t involved with it, the VIP area.  But I got amused at him.  And yeah, that type of stuff, yeah, it was very exciting.

 

HINOJOSA:  What other sort of things did you work on while you were there?

 

NELSON:  So, when I first went there, that was the stage they were in on the Apollo.  We worked on that.  We did a lot of brushfire, anything that came up.  A lot of the studies on that. For Gemini, there was not, Gemini was already being passed, we as such, when I say, “we” in our Aerodynamic Section.  Then it became a branch; Bruce Jackson was our, was the fellow that I talked to in Fort Worth.  In fact, turned out then he was my section head and later became my branch chief, and a little while after that he was my division chief, later on.  We went from being little to being bigger, and then we went through several name changes.  But the other things we worked on.  We, of course, did a lot of computer studies, in aerodynamic wind tunnel data.  We did a lot of simulations.  I didn’t go on as many of the wind tunnel tests as even I would liked to have gone on, but our section did the wind tunnel testing, and then we did the aerodynamic distribution at the various centers, there were various people doing studies.

 

HINOJOSA:  What were the wind tunnel tests for?

 

NELSON:  Well, when I say now ‘simulations’ and in today’s time, many things are.  When they stick the model, the scale model, into the wind tunnels, and get the various forces, the aerodynamic forces, and probably at different orientations, and etcetera, and then you scale it. That is what we used to run the wind tunnel, run the simulations.  All studies, shuttle-wise for example, up here at A&M, we ran quite a bit of early wind tunnel stuff for the shuttle.  When we were running the straight wing.

 

HINOJOSA:  Oh, yeah, now it’s got that sort of tilted [appearance].

 

NELSON:  The shuttle is a Delta-wing.  But we ran a lot of straight-wing studies up there, that I was involved with a lot.  And, of course, they only have the very low speed, about .25 Mach number is as high as it’ll go.  It was mostly ground effects, that type of thing.  The type of thing we did, I did, more than anything, was we take the data from the wind tunnel and then we’d run various studies, like on the abort system, they wanted to make sure it would be stable and not get any, at one time they had strakes.  Strakes being some surfaces that would come out and not too many people were too much in favor of the strakes.  So I remember a study we had and it was called Shoot the Strakes.  In other words, get rid of the strakes.  And it did, put it to bed, did it mainly by taking wind tunnel data and performing various studies.  So they never did build a full-scale prototype, to see if, whether or not.  But we did a lot of brushfire stuff.

 

HINOJOSA:  Brushfire?  Do you mean like troubleshooting?  Or sort of seat-of-the-pants?

 

NELSON:  Well, people would come up with some wild ideas like, “we’ll just do it”  or “why don’t we” and what I’m calling brushfire or studies, computer-test studies, to go in and show whether we could or could not do some of these various things.  Another interesting study that I was involved with and that I really enjoyed, it was really and I don’t remember what the TM stood for, but the TM-9 study we did on the early lunar lander, where they had what they called the coal shoots.  They had these deflectors for the LEM [lunar excursion module], the lunar lander, and for the thrusters, the downward-firing thrusters, it would impinge on the plume.  The exhaust would impinge on the structure itself. So what they were talking about. [holds out hands, palms flattened, and gestures by pushing downward from about shoulder height] And anyone who would listen to this would not see my hands, the supporting structure, for when they had, for when they came and landed on it, well there was concern what would happen when you were firing these motors, these thrusters, what the plume, or what the exhaust would do to the structure.  So there was a thought that they would put deflectors, which is why they called them coal shoots, because you imagine the concave, for protection, so the plume would hit that and it would be a protector for the structure of the lander part, the lander legs.

 

HINOJOSA:  So as not to destroy the legs when they were trying to land it on the Moon.

 

NELSON:  Correct.  Right.  You would not be excessive heat.  Well, we ran quite a few studies on that down at the big Building 32 back in chamber, down there.

 

HINOJOSA:  Oh, at JSC [Johnson Space Center]?

 

NELSON:  At JSC.  And it was a very interesting study, and as a result, I recall, Chris Kraft and, oh, I can’t remember it, my superboss Max Faget.  Max Faget wanted the coal shoot, and the operational people did not want it.  And essentially, they to Ok the coal shoots off, so they didn’t go with it.  And our experience, I guess, with the lunar landers, they never had it.  And the results, not just us.  I mean the propulsion was involved and others.

 

HINOJOSA:  Did you make some other modification to protect the legs?

 

NELSON:  No, they just decided from.  See, when you asked what brushfire-type thing, when someone got, when someone says, “Hey, what if?”  You really can’t test, and incidentally, over a hundred-pound thrusters.  And you don’t know what will happen in a vacuum situation.  It’s hard to do full-scale testing hear on Earth, with the gravity and others.  Luckily, that’s it.  That big vacuum chamber down in Building 32 was big enough, you could put the full-scale item onto the legs, with the shoot, we could stick in a full thruster, on a full-size thruster, you didn’t have to scale it down.  Of course, it dirtied that thing, and they let us do it that just before they were going do some cleaning in the vacuum chamber anyway.  But yes, that’s the type of thing that was very interesting, and it also.  We were in an area that I really enjoyed, because a lot of people did come up with I’d say are harebrained ideas, and many times they put it on us to check it out or want someone, and we happened to be in an area where there was a lot of.  And I’m not indicating, it’s just me doing it.  Sometimes I had a very minor part of it, but I was close enough to the guys that doing it, and in some, in many cases helping to run the simulations.  Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  And I felt like a contributed something.  I mean, to me, I had a good feeling.  Now, no one else may have known that I was feeling that good.

 

HINOJOSA:  Did you ever happen to think of it in, say, a political context, the work you were doing?  I mean, did you think of, we’re in a race against the Russians.

 

NELSON:  Not particularly.  To me, I worked at, well I had worked before I went to college, but when I came out of college I went to General Dynamics in Fort Worth, and then when I left Fort Worth, and then, like I said, we were in the Structures Flight Program Group, which worked on flight data, and it was mostly aerodynamic characteristics.  Getting the data back, but we had air limits, program B-58, the one that exploded all over Oklahoma, where they were failing an outboard motor at Mach 2.  So when I went from General Dynamics to NASA, it was a continuation of that.  See, my degree was in math, actually the education route to a math degree, but the engineering, the aerodynamic engineering was on-the-job training.  I and worked with some guys that were, well, they could have written textbooks, I think.

 

HINOJOSA:   That’s pretty intense on-the-job training, in aerodynamic engineering.

 

NELSON:  Yeah, well, I think a lot of the people, well, like, you ask, what was it like to work for NASA.  I don’t think the guys down there now, or at the time I left, I didn’t think they were able to do what we did in the early days.  Because, see, now they’ve got so many contractors.  When we first went there, NASA didn’t have the contractors like they’ve got, and we did.  And the more experienced guys, like Bruce Jackson, I’m talking about, a guy named Max Hammond, and Ralph Brown, guys like that, they could have written textbooks on aerodynamics and that type of testing.  And then I of course was doing a lot of the simulation, under their direction in many cases.  And now, what they’ve got to do there, they have contractors that are running the stuff and they sort of do a little overseeing of it.  Yes, yes, I learned a lot on-the-job training.  And enjoyed it.

 

HINOJOSA:  I see you’ve brought some things.  Did you want to show me?

 

NELSON:  Well, when I was looking for the form you all had the other day, I was going to go back, especially to see which.  Basically, I stayed in the same general area all the time I was there, but we had name changes, we were the aerodynamic section in the.  A guy named Matthews who was the, our, division chief, and we were an aerodynamic section.  In the, I have trouble thinking of the names right now, but I was looking back in here to see if I had any of the organizational chart, but they’re, these are just things.  I really, no.  These are just things that I was associated with.  But I didn’t have the organization then.  The ALT, that was the early shuttle Approach and Landing Test.

 

HINOJOSA:   Oh, was that the straight-wing?

 

NELSON:  No, this was the early Shuttle, that they flew off of the 747.

 

HINOJOSA:  That was in the early 70s, wasn’t it?

 

NELSON:  Well, ’78, ’78 was where, I guess, this thing was ending up.  So mid-seventies.

 

HINOJOSA:  What was ALT like?

 

NELSON:  Well again, we ran computer studies.  Again, U.S. aerodynamic.  Taking the prototype of the little shuttle, running wind tunnel tests on it.  And we did simulations, and then of course, they did approach and landing tests to see if, how close the data, how close the simulation matched what you’d experience whenever they did some of these tests.  Things I remember about back then, most of these, most of the ALT tests did.

 

HINOJOSA:  I see on the patch there Haise. Was that Fred Haise?

 

NELSON:  Yes, Fred Haise, and Gordon Fullerton, and [Richard] Truly.  And another thing you’re talking about, I remember one time we were running the two-mile run, and several of these astronauts that you get associated with, but I remember Truly, was running.  There he was – he was running about the same pace I was.  We stayed in the same general vicinity.  But yes, there were, now they had fewer astronauts.  When I was there, we came into contact more with the astronauts than you, than I think they do now.  When I say, came in contact, they were in meetings, you’d see them occasionally.  Of course, one of the fringe benefits of the job was.  Whereas, if you worked for some of the other companies, you look over there at some guy, “Oh, it’s Joe Blow.”  But it makes a difference when it’s a name you’ve seen on TV.

 

HINOJOSA:  Must be pretty exciting.

 

NELSON:  Yep.  We enjoyed it.

 

HINOJOSA:  Can we pause for just a second?  So, after NASA, you worked for Rockwell, doing Shuttle support.

 

NELSON:  I left NASA, I retired from NASA August 1, 1986, and then I sat around there, and did not go back to work until the following Monday, at Rockwell.  And Rockwell had at that time two things.  They had RSOC, which was the shuttle, which was basically the current flight supports.  And then we had the Rockwell that was a branch of Rockwell Downey, and our particular bunch, we supported the Program Office, the Shuttle Program Office.  And the area that I was in, again, I was in aerodynamic support, but then later on I got into, still supporting the Program Office, but in range safety.  Lambert Austin was the, I don’t think they had divisions; he was in one of the divisions of the Program Office, and we supported, I supported him, we supported them.  In range safety, I learned a whole lot about things I never knew when I was at NASA that they ever considered.  For an example, after the 51-L explosion, before that, they allowed the people, the people viewing the flight, they were up quite a bit closer.  But after they had that explosion, they started looking at what could happen if you had an explosion at the, on the ground and stuff.  They moved the lines a lot further back.  And they analyzed each of the flights a lot more.  Yes, I got to see, working with Rockwell from the contractors’ side.  Well, when I worked with NASA, we’d say, well, starting with the letter D, those d ---- contractors.  Then when I became one of those d ---- contractors, it was, you know, those NASA guys aren’t quite as high up as I used to think.  It was a different experience, yeah.  But I enjoyed both of them.  And I did, actually, I went on several wind tunnels with Rockwell, as a contractor representative, and we went to help take data that before, I’d just worked the data that had come from it.  So, actually, I saw a broader view of some of NASA activities as a contractor than I did as a NASA employee.  And I enjoyed both sides of the fence.

 

HINOJOSA:  Are there any other things you’d like to talk about, or any other areas.

 

NELSON:  Well, now, I can just tell you the things like I said, when I was there, when I went, went into the aerodynamic section, which was part of the STDs – the Spacecraft Technology Division. And then we became and aerodynamic section – [Bob] Chilton and Cheatam were there Branch Chief and the Assistant Branch Chief, of the Flight Dynamics when I first went in.  As the empire grew, these guys became Joint Branch Division, in fact, Bruce Jackson was one of my division chiefs.  But we, our name changed all the way, we changed from, always doing roughly the same type of aerodynamic studies.  But we were, we took on several different names.  And we had different, whatever was current.  For example, remember when Apollo 13 had that problem?  I didn’t do much with it, but we had guys in our group who did quite a bit with it, and were interested with them.  One of the things I worked with the most, and I started with NASA, the tank, the little spikes on the end of the tank, the air data system.  They instrumented six of those, originally, so that they could get the angle of the tank, angle of side-split.  Supposedly, they were going to get the dynamic pressure and etcetera, turned out we did a good job of measuring the orientation, but the dynamic pressure we didn’t do too good, too hot of it.  We really did a better job reiterating than we did measuring the native stuff.  But, we worked out programs with Rockwell to reduce the measurements back to flight data, and it was successful.  But then after, later on, after 51-L [explosion], they decided, they bought some more.  When I was over at Rockwell, I spent quite a bit of time with Rockwell, since I’d had quite a bit of experience with the air data system that I went to Martin Marietta, who built the tank and then the air data system. I worked on it quite a bit, yes.

 

HINOJOSA:  Thank you very much.  This has been very exciting for me.  Is there any one thing that sticks out in your mind?

 

NELSON:  Yeah, well, there was one.  Astronauts would go to different panel meetings that we’d have, and my section head was the separations subsystem manager.

 

HINOJOSA:  Oh, separation of the sections of the rocket and the ship?

 

NELSON:  Right, for the orbiter, mainly, and we separate it from the tank.  The SR-V [Saturn Rocket V] sort of kicked off with, generally, the orbiter on the tank.  And in the early days, John Young would come to most of aerodynamic meetings, the separation panel meetings.  And one time he and I showed up at the coffee, to get a cup of coffee at the same time, on one of the breaks from the meeting.  And John Young had a nickel, at that time coffee was a nickel.  That tells you how long ago that was.  Anyway, he had a dime, and he looked, and there wasn’t any change, and he said, “Here, let me buy you one.”  I always told people, “John Young is the only astronaut who ever bought me a cup of coffee.” 

 

John Young was -- astronauts tended to really make meetings more, we don’t say the term lively -- but people, when they said something, people generally paid more attention.  And I remember very distinctly, John Young at one of the meetings, and there was a lot of talk about whether the reaction control jets would be activated before he left the ground, or when the mechanism on, because we did a lot of abort studies, like I said.  And I remember John Young standing up and saying, “Fellows, talk all you want to, but that damn Shuttle is not going to leave the ground without the reaction control jets being active,” and left the room.  As far as I know, that was not a discussion item anymore after that.  But yes, I enjoyed that.  But he was the only guy that ever bought me a cup of coffee.  The only astronaut that bought me a cup of coffee.

 

HINOJOSA:  Well, I thank you very much, sir. This has been very enlightening.  I really appreciate it.  Did you notice a difference in the level of involvement that astronauts had, with, say, the Apollo program versus the later Shuttle astronauts?

 

NELSON:  When we first, we had panel meetings on different subsystems, different areas and everything.  In the early days, usually an astro – sometimes an astronaut, like I said a little while ago, drank coffee – John Young was real interested in the abort scheme, abort systems and stuff.  And he usually came to our abort panels.  But after 51-L, all panel meetings, all technical meetings, that I went to generally had one or more astronauts in it.  And we got, there were several of them, that I found out, quite a few of the astronauts were just like most other people, when you go talking with them.  And they were real interesting, and they made a, they perked up the interest in it.  But now, I still get the NASA Roundup, and it’s very seldom that I see on any of the upcoming missions and things that I recognize most any of the astronauts.  But I know one time, when [inaudible] went up with Rockwell, I was again representing the Program Office.  I was the contract representative to report back to them what was going on.  And I got there early, and this fellow [Kenneth] Bowersox, who was one of the astronauts, he and I visited for about half an hour, and I really enjoyed it.  And there were several of that nature.  But always, astronauts took a much more active technical role in meetings after 51-L than it seemed like they did before.

 

HINOJOSA:  Do you think that helped the program?

 

NELSON:  Oh, definitely.  I think one of the big things was that when astronauts spoke, their comments carried more weight than what the average person did.  And the interest in the meeting, I think, went up when they were involved. I know mine did.

 

HINOJOSA:  Did you find them technically proficient?  Did they seem to know what they were talking about in the meetings?

 

NELSON:  I did not run across a single astronaut that I thought was out of place or that made remarks out of place.  I did, a couple times, there were some things that, I wondered how they got into the Astronaut Corps.  But no, in general, they were very personable, to start with. Jan Davis was probably the most attractive astronaut that I ever saw, and she was in several aerodynamic meetings, and she, her input was surprisingly, well, I don’t know whether that’s the right term or not, but she made helpful comments, pertinent comments.  And no, I did not find any asinine statements that any of the astronauts made.  Now, I did hear a lot of the NASA people who were in many cases subsystem managers that I wondered what they were doing in the meeting and it was their meeting, their subsystem.

 

HINOJOSA:  I’d love to ask about that if you’d like to talk about it.

 

NELSON:  Well, no.  The people who worked for NASA, I think they were a proud bunch, I think they were a competent bunch, but I think they got, we got a few people in there that I don’t really know how they got in.

 

HINOJOSA:  I suppose that’s par for the course in any group.

 

NELSON:  I remember a person who made a lot more money and a lot more experience than I did, and one time I went over to help him, or do some stuff on aerodynamic data, and I don’t know how familiar you or somebody else.  Of course, you take data, a moment center, and you reduce the data by a moment center, then you can take that data and transfer it to any center of gravity point or any reference point you want to have, and you can do instantaneous studies.  And this fellow said, “Why don’t they take data around the point you want to study?”  If you stop and think about that, if you’ve got propellant, you’ve got something that’s changing, and you don’t know where it is, especially if you’re doing studies in the externals for the aerodynamics in the externals.  So what you reduce it about is not the pertinent place.  He didn’t know how to transfer data is what it amounted to.  And he, I say, he was a couple of grades higher than I was.  And I never could figure out how, first of all, how he got there, and second of all, why they kept him around.  He was not an astronaut, he was just a guy who slipped through the cracks on that one.

 

HINOJOSA:  There’s always one, it seems.

 

NELSON:  No, there was one other one.  There was one other one.  He was the guy who talked about the computer, and he said “I should be able to walk up to the door and say ‘I want,’ and that computer ought to spit it out.”

 

HINOJOSA:  Oh, like “Star Trek.”

 

NELSON:  Yeah, those two guys stick out in my mind as guys who should have been contractors and not NASA.

 

HINOJOSA:  I thank you very much, sir.