NASA Vogt, Robert A. - June 1, 2000

Interview with Robert A. Vogt

 

Interviewer: Laura West

Date of Interview: June 1, 2000

Location: Vogt home, Canyon Lake, Texas

 

 

WEST:  Today is June 1, 2000.  This oral history with Robert Vogt is being conducted at

119 O.C. Trout Drive, the home of the interviewee, at Canyon Lake, Texas.  This interview is

being conducted for the NASA/Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in conjunction

with Southwest Texas State University, Department of History, by graduate student Laura

West.  Mr. Vogt, are you aware that this interview is being conducted for the NASA/

Southwest Texas State University Oral History Project and will be available for research

purposes?

VOGT:  Yes, I am.

 

 

WEST:  Thank you for participating.  What education did you have and where?

 

VOGT:  I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in Aeronautics and I attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

 

WEST: And how did you find that experience?

 

VOGT:  I found it to be very interesting, a very good school.  It was the first time I had gone away to that school or left home and it was a bit of an experience.  I lived, grew up in New Jersey and attended school in Ohio.  It was a very good experience.

 

WEST:  And what did you do after you graduated?

 

VOGT: After graduation, I went into the Air Force.  I had a commitment.  I was an Air Force R.O.T.C and I went into the Air Force and I was a KC-97 navigator.  That's a tanker that refueled B-47s and B-52s at that time.

 

WEST:  Why do you change your work from R.O.T.C. to NASA?

 

VOGT:  Did you say why?

 

WEST:  Yeah.

 

VOGT:  My commitment was for three years.  After getting in the Air Force, I realized I really didn't want to make it a career.  So, I looked forward to getting into the aerospace industry after I did enough service.

 

WEST:  Okay, so you went to work first for [the] Martin Marietta Corporation and then you did what there?

 

VOGT:  I was associate engineer and then I became a full-fledged engineer at Martin Marietta and we worked on several project.  One project was the LACE program which was a air breathing missile launched there and I was working on the active sonar control system there.  I also worked on proposals.  One proposal was on a very large short take-off vehicle that Martin didn't win that contract but it had twenty-two engines, which I thought was kind of interesting.  [I] worked for battery layer control.  Another project was [a] space project.  There was a scientific probe going to the Sun that I worked on, providing the thermal shielding and so on for that vehicle.

 

WEST:  And how did that translate into working for NASA?  How did you start there and what did you do at the beginning of your NASA years?

 

VOGT:  Okay, well, at that time at Martin Marietta, it was sort of a, kind of a shaky time because they were not really producing that many aircraft.  Mainly what they were doing was overhaul of seaplanes, the P5-M, the P6-M.  They were hoping to get more active into the space program because that was starting to take off, the Russian activity and so on.  So one day the Sunday paper there was a big ad that NASA had about recruiting, looking to recruit, engineers for Johnson Space Center, that they were going to be opening up.  So I applied.  In the meantime, it was several months that I didn't hear anything.  I sort of felt like they were not interested in my experience.  So by that time, we were renting a house and we had to get out of the house and decided, well, we’re going to go ahead and buy a house.  We bought a house and it was shortly after that, a few months later, that we got a call from NASA asking if I was still interested.  So, from the long haul that looked quite the right thing to do; short term it probably seemed pretty ridiculous to a lot of people.

 

WEST:  About when was that?

 

VOGT:  That was in 1960 or 1963.  1963, right? [Mrs. Vogt confirms]

 

WEST:  What was your first big project at NASA?

 

VOGT:  Well, I guess it depends on what you refer to as big projects.  I think that a big, center project was the lunar Apollo program.  But, my big project, I guess, was really developing the analysis tools, new analysis tools, to be able to do that and do other space missions.

 

WEST:  And how did those analysis tools work?  What did they do?

 

VOGT:  Okay, well, the area that I sort of specialized in was in thermal radiation and that's important in outer space to have good programs that will do that.  On Earth and so on, we have a lot of experience.  We work with convection and conduction, heat transfer, but there really wasn't a whole lot of analysis tools for radiation.  They were very small and a lot of times you sort of look up on charts and so on, pick out graphs, and pick out the factors that you're looking for.  Where this would not be practical at all when you're looking at a large space craft with different orientations to the Sun or the Earth.  Depending on the coating that it has, it can reach temperatures from plus two-fifty to minus two hundred-fifty degrees Fahrenheit.  So, these programs had to look at the orientation with respect to the Sun or the Earth or the Moon.  It also had to look at where it was when it was going into the shadow of the Earth, whether it was coming out, you know, looking directly at the Sun.  It also had to consider, you know, you could have one surface over here that sees the Sun that this other surface doesn't, but by reflection it can receive it.  So there's very high, intensive computations that had to be used for that analysis and this was really pushing the state of the art of computers.

 

When I first started, a computer, the very first one I worked with, had only sixteen thousand kilobytes of memory and your PCs now have a lot more than that.  So, that was a real challenge to try to use these tools.  But, I think that as the computer grew larger and larger and had greater and greater capabilities, the programs, we were able to do a lot more things that we really wanting to do, but were limited to prior to that.  So, there was an on-going process.  It wasn't something like "Okay we need the tools let's develop them," and you do that.  A year later you have the tools and you keep them.  It was always, [there were] always bigger and bigger demands on it where you find something else that you need to do that you couldn't do with the existing tools and you had to add that capability into it.  And hopefully the computational capability of these machines were able to do that now at that stage.

 

WEST:  So, what kind of things do you think developed out of those tools that you created in the early days, in the early sixties, well, even throughout the sixties?  What kind of kind of application do you think they may have made in our present lives?

 

VOGT:  Certainly there’s one program back in the, I guess, early seventies I think it was,  that we referred to as TRASYS, which is Thermal Radiation Analyzer System.  That program, I had followed through.  We had a contractor develop that program for us, but we, basically, defined the requirements for that program and did the check out and all that sort of thing.

 

I was project manager for that program, developed another program.  It had like anywhere from two to four programmers or engineers working on that at the contractor place at one time.  And that tool became a point of pride is that later on, like for example, on the Shuttle program and then even the Space Station, that it became where it was a requirement that NASA placed on the contractors that they had to be able to use that tool because it was known that that was the only tool that really provide the functionality.

 

So, in that narrow scope, I think that this program provided years and years.  This is the nineties now that they were using a program that was developed in the seventies initially.  Of course, like I said it grew, it grew as time went on, but it was kind of rewarding to see what you had, start what you had started, and to see it evolve into that.

 

But I guess, maybe to answer some of your, I think what you're looking about is how does it benefit mankind now.  Getting the astronauts there and back safely and, certainly, if you don't have proper thermal control and all that, equipment can malfunction.  So, I feel that I had a part in that.  I also feel like the things that the overall program, the benefits that it provided, I had a part in seeing that that was successful is still being done today.  We’re sending people up there learning more about space and all kinds of things.

 

WEST:  When you're working on your projects and you're working on, planning and developing them, do you ever find that you have one that you developed through the planning stage, you start actually working on it, and it just doesn't seem to be going where you want it to go?  Have you experienced that and then what do you do about that, if you do?

 

VOGT:  Well, I guess, that I don't recall any specific examples.  In other words, I think that, yeah, things may not be working out just right.  I think NASA, certainly back in the time when I was there, particularly the early times, you just knew that you had to make it work and so if it didn't go exactly as you wanted, you found a way to do that.  Also, I think that in being honest about it all, I think that back in those days there was a lot more public support and a lot more funding that we had, so we were able to spend more money than what they are able to do now days relatively speaking.  They’re working with a tighter and tighter budget than what we had.  There was more of a commitment back then.

 

WEST:  Do you think that the Cold War affected that attitude?  The commitment of the American people?  Pride?

 

VOGT:  Very definitely, yes.

 

WEST:  In what ways?

 

VOGT:  I think that one is that there was a fear – Russia what their technology might be able to do someday to our freedom.  So I think that was certainly a big part.  But I think that in aviation and so on, we had always been a leader and now we were not taking that lead.  And I think that people really wanted to take pride in our country to make sure that we were a leader in that.  So, I think that it was a lot of pride later, too, that you see in our country's reputation.

 

WEST:  Yeah.  How did, in your opinion, NASA employees develop their cohesiveness?

 

VOGT:  Well, I think that, again, a lot of it was pride.  I think it was also it was also focus on the objectives.  It was very clear what we had to do.  Our goal back then was to go to the Moon and there were a lot of things that had to be, you know, be identified, you know, what things you need to do prior to be able to do that.  We had some setbacks, like the Apollo [1]  fire and so on.  These were real tragedies.  They set the program back.  But when you look back at it and it was probably in some ways fortunate because it I think we were a lot wiser of things that we needed to do before we took the next step.

 

WEST:  Do you think that the setbacks that were unfortunate tragedies caused a lot of policy changes, perhaps, or was it engineering changes in design and implementation?

 

VOGT:  I think that there was just a better checks and balances that were done.  I guess now days, in trying to economize somewhat, I think that we've swung to somewhat to the other extreme.  And I guess, myself and some of the other old timers, we kind of regret that.  But, you know I was really schooled, I guess to, you know, when you had doubt, you did a lot more checking.  I think that things like the Apollo fire and so on brought a lot of that home.  Back then in the thermal area, we did a lot of thermal vacuum tests where we tried to simulate what occurred up there in space. 

 

They built large vacuum chambers and equipped those with solar simulators and so on.  Just to be able to do some checking and they actually put some men in those vehicles, in the chamber, and ran through mission sequences and stuff like that.  And we did all this analysis, but people still said "Hey, we can't really be certain."  There are some things in analysis that you can't tell exactly.  For example, you talk about contact conductance, the conduction that goes between two different plates and different materials, and, really, [it is] very hard to predict what kind of contact surface you have.  So really, experimentally, by testing and so on, it's really the only way you know for certain.  And so, there was a lot more testing done back then.  Where now days you look at it and you really need to tell me why you need to test.  Of course, that was similar to that, certainly before.  It wasn't as if you could do anything that you wanted to do.  But now is a lot, it's more like, "Well, we're not going to test unless you can tell me for certain why we have to do that."  But I understand where they're coming from, too, to some extent.

 

WEST:  I see on your biography sheet, here, that you have some very long titles.  Can you give me those titles again on tape and can you tell me what they mean?

 

VOGT:  Well, the first title I had was, like I said, I was primarily working on analysis programs and so on and thermal technology.  In my later years, I guess probably the last fifteen or something like that, years of my career, I had become the Space Station Freedom Passive Thermal Control System Development manager.  What that means is that I was the primary person with responsibility, engineering person, responsibility for passive thermal control.  I guess I need to explain passive thermal control.  Our branch or our division was not responsible for the cabin control where the crew would reside, so we weren't concerned with the convection inside a cabin and circulation and all that and the radiators that they used to reject the cabin load.  But we were responsible for keeping the equipment within the temperature limits and the structure within the temperature limits where there was no, what we call active coolant.  There was no pumping or fluids or anything like that.  It was strictly done in a passive way. 

 

The tools that we have in passive thermal control and how we achieve that is, one, is coatings.  Like for example, in your automobile, you probably were aware that if you have a black automobile it’s going to get a lot warmer in there than it will if you have a lot lighter one.  And here we also have the benefit of convection.  So it's not as pronounced as it is in space.  In space the difference between a white coating and a black coating – in a white coating you could probably, depending on the grade of coating and so on, you might be able to control a temperature to within probably ninety to a hundred degrees looking directly at the Sun, but if that was a black coating you could be in excess of two hundred-fifty degrees.  The range there is much wider in space.  So the coating is one way of keeping passive thermal control. 

 

Another way is, you may have seen on TV where they roll the spacecraft in [a] continually slow roll.  We used to call that barbecuing.  The way that is, so that you're not, so that you don't have any one surface constantly looking at the Sun or having a very good view of the Sun.  In other words, it'll roll towards the Sun and then keep rolling and then look at deep space and in deep space, it'd cool off and go back around and so on to do this.  So that's one, another way. 

Of course, insulation, we used.  One of the things, you know, I think that that the space program brought forward is multi-layered insulation.  We used that because that is acts as an inch layer of insulation in each sheet of aluminized mylar or capton, material is used.  It acts as a shield, so it bounces the radiation right out and prevents it from penetrating into the area that you're trying to protect [from the] temperature.

 

Those are probably the three major ways.  There are a lot of other ways of doing it now days.  They have, like, small passive radiators and so on, that you can add for electronic equipment.  I guess that explains.  In the Space Station then, we had probably, in the passive thermal control area, I don't recall exact numbers, but there were probably somewhere like maybe ten, ten, twelve people on the contractor’s site.  We would go out there for program reviews to see what their progress was.  And then back at JSC, I had about five, six, depending on the time, that also supported me and were according to the follow-up on specific area on the passive thermal control and certain modules and so on. 

 

I did that, I guess I would estimate, I did that for like four or five years and did that with the Space Station Freedom.  And then they discontinued that program and reorganized and went under a different system.  That's when I left the Space Station program.

 

After that, I was the Shuttle Purge, Vent and Drain subsystems manager.  In the Shuttle program they call them subsystem manager and then in the Space Station, at that time, they call them system development managers.  But it’s basically the same responsibility as far as what I was required to do.  I took that position over from another man that had taken it over from the very beginning of the Shuttle program and he retired.  And so, I did that for about three years just prior to my leaving NASA.

 

One is that you’ve got a lot of hydrogen and oxygen load on that Shuttle sitting there on the pad and you’ve got things that could, sources that could ignite that very highly flammable thing.  So you need to flow air and nitrogen through the vehicle.  So that was part of the design of the system that will distribute the flow and get sufficient flow through the Shuttle in all the areas that were critical.  And then when you lift off, you have this pressurized vehicle and out in space, you have a vacuum, so the Shuttle doesn’t explode on out with this all this air inside, with this big pressure differential, you had to relieve the pressure so that inside you would release the atmosphere, the air, and the nitrogen and so on that were used for purging.  So, that [when] we got out as it lifted up, it had to be done rather rapidly since the Shuttle lifted off rather rapidly.