What did Yvonne Y. Clark, or Y.Y., really do as a mechanical engineer? This episode is in regards to the work itself—particularly, the work Y.Y. did at NASA on the Saturn V rocket and the design of the “moon rock field” for transporting lunar samples again to Earth. And we take a deep dive into the historical past of the American area program, the mechanics of a rocket and the way Y.Y. introduced her troubleshooter’s thoughts to an issue that was plaguing a number of the nation’s high scientists.
This podcast is distributed by PRX and revealed in partnership with Scientific American.
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[Have you listened to the previous episodes? No? You can find Episode One here and Episode Two here.]
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NASA, Rocket Engines, and the Moon Rock Field
ARCHIVAL TAPE: 1957, 12 months of area and Sputnik canines… Laika, first area traveler, was prepared for the takeoff…
KATIE HAFNER: Because the Chilly Warfare heated up, america and the Soviet Union had been in a race to realize breakthroughs in area exploration.
ARCHIVAL TAPE: The USA area program superior because the Saturn V rocket was rolled out to…
KATIE HAFNER: The U.S. set its sights on sending people to the moon…
JOHN F. KENNEDY: We select to go to the moon. We select to go to the moon…
KATIE HAFNER: Mission Apollo was a very unprecedented endeavor, and to make it occur, NASA employed exterior contractors.
YVONNE CLARK: My task was to, um, assist design the field that brings the samples – the rocks – again from the moon.
KATIE HAFNER: A type of contractors was Yvonne Younger Clark.
KATIE HAFNER: I’m Katie Hafner…
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: And I’m Carol Sutton Lewis…
KATIE HAFNER: And that is Misplaced Ladies of Science. On this episode, we’re diving into the work – what Yvonne Younger Clark…
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: …often called YY…
KATIE HAFNER: …often called YY – really did as a mechanical engineer. We’ll take a look at two designs that YY labored on whereas she was at NASA: the F-1 engine of the Saturn V rocket – that’s the rocket that received us to the moon – and the Moon Rock Field, which was used to gather lunar samples.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: We began trying into YY’s work at NASA to study what precisely she did there.
However investigating her time at NASA additionally opened our eyes to the essential and sophisticated historical past of the area program…
KATIE HAFNER: So earlier than we will get into YY’s work with rocketry and supplies science, we need to take you again to the early days of NASA…
ARCHIVAL TAPE: Huntsville, Alabama, based in 18 hundred and 5. Only a few years in the past, Huntsville was a quiet city. However at the moment, the sound of trade and progress on this group is the bellow of a rocket motor.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: The U.S. military had a publish simply exterior Huntsville, the place civilians and armed forces personnel labored on missiles, munitions and rocket design.
ARCHIVAL TAPE: Quiet not, Huntsville now could be rocket metropolis USA.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Huntsville turned rocket metropolis in a fairly stunning manner…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Huntsville, Alabama, it is price noting, is that this attention-grabbing case…
KATIE HAFNER: Dr. Teasel Muir-Concord is curator of the Apollo Assortment on the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Air and Area Museum. We talked to her about NASA’s historical past.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: The large determine head there’s Wernher Von Braun a former Nazi SS officer. And he got here to Huntsville with a bunch of German Nazi engineers.
KATIE HAFNER: You heard that proper: Nazi engineers. As World Warfare II ended and the Chilly Warfare started, america began bringing in German scientists to work for the federal government as a part of a top-secret intelligence program referred to as “Operation Paperclip.” The U.S. wished to capitalize on Nazi weapons expertise and hold these scientists out of the arms of the Soviet Union. Wernher von Braun, whose experience was rockets, was one of many first to reach, in September, 1945. Finally, greater than 1,600 German scientists got here to the U.S.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And so Huntsville, Alabama is vastly influenced culturally by all these ex-Nazi engineers who labored on the V2 rocket program in Germany throughout World Warfare II.
KATIE HAFNER: Through the conflict, it was Germany that had probably the most superior rocket expertise – that nation’s V2 rocket was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The development was overwhelmingly carried out utilizing compelled labor, by focus camp prisoners. Within the U.S., von Braun and his staff began constructing on the design for the V2, increasing its vary even farther…
This work was the idea for the U.S. area program.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: The area age actually started in 1957 with the launch of the primary synthetic satellite tv for pc, uh, by the Soviet Union in October of 1957. And that’s Sputnik.
KATIE HAFNER: Only a decade or so earlier, the US and the us had been allies through the second world conflict. However rising tensions led to the Chilly Warfare. The profitable launch of Sputnik meant that now, it was the Soviets that had extra superior expertise than the People.
In 1958, NASA – the Nationwide Aeronautics and Area Administration – was created.
ARCHIVAL TAPE (JOHN F. KENNEDY): I consider that this nation ought to commit itself to attaining the purpose, earlier than this decade is out, of touchdown a person on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
KATIE HAFNER: On Might twenty fifth, 1961, President John F. Kennedy introduced Mission Apollo and the target of a lunar touchdown with a human crew to a joint session of Congress and the general public.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: It was a very daring and bold purpose. When he did that, america solely had quarter-hour of human area flight expertise.
KATIE HAFNER: Astronaut Alan Shepard had efficiently gone to area and again – however he wasn’t the primary human to do this. The us had despatched Yuri Gagarin to area a month earlier. So for Kennedy, Mission Apollo wasn’t nearly going to area…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Kennedy wasn’t an area fanatic. He did not assist Apollo as a result of he dreamed of area flight. However he noticed type of the, the essential political potential.
KATIE HAFNER: In her e-book, Operation Moonglow, Teasel explains the political historical past of Mission Apollo. Touchdown on the moon might assist shore up U.S. worldwide affect.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Kennedy thought that this was the kind of program that would win the hearts and minds of the world public, um, which he noticed was going to be essential to U.S. nationwide energy in that very specific Chilly Warfare second.
KATIE HAFNER: And a part of that technique, in line with Teasel, included utilizing the area program to develop civil rights domestically.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Additionally there’s a type of an essential thread, this concept that the area program might assist advance U.S. civil rights and that it might be a method for serving to to combine the South, um, and offering job alternatives for African People.
KATIE HAFNER: For context, simply days earlier than Apollo was introduced, the Freedom Riders, a bunch of demonstrators protesting segregation within the South, had been attacked by a white mob in Montgomery, Alabama.
Mission Apollo provided a chance to each current a unique picture of america and to actively promote integration within the South.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And so there have been specific recruitment efforts by NASA to assist recruit African American engineers.
KATIE HAFNER: However Teasel Muir-Concord says the numbers weren’t enormous.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: For African People within the Apollo program, I feel it was 1.5 to 3 % of the NASA workforce. And ladies had been two to 3. So you possibly can think about how small the numbers are for African American girls.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: It’s fairly clear YY was one of many very, only a few.
KATIE HAFNER: However that doesn’t imply she was alone. A number of efforts are underway now to spotlight the work of the various scientists, engineers, mathematicians and technicians who contributed to the area program. A few of their tales have been advised within the e-book and the film Hidden Figures.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: And a few of them, like YY’s, are solely now being advised…
At this level, YY was educating mechanical engineering at Tennessee State College. That meant she had summer time breaks, and he or she was obtainable to do different work…
In 1962, YY headed to Huntsville to begin a job at Redstone Arsenal, a garrison for varied authorities departments. Redstone was the place the military was doing its rocket analysis.
YVONNE CLARK: Oh, wow. That was a tough one which summer time.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: She labored as a mechanical engineer within the Dynamic Evaluation Department.
YVONNE CLARK: That they had me doing six levels of freedom.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: We talked about this within the final episode. The six levels are all of the methods an object can transfer by way of area. YY was now making use of that precept to missiles and rockets, calculating their potential actions.
YVONNE CLARK: And that was my first encounter with the federal government at that degree.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: It additionally meant that YY had damaged her third and final “by no means”: by no means work for the federal government.
However breaking that final by no means opened up extra alternatives.
The following summer time, in 1963, YY was employed on the recently-established George C. Marshall Area Flight Heart, additionally primarily based close to Huntsville. She’d already been engaged on missiles and rockets in her earlier posting, so she was in her ingredient. And unsurprisingly, she was requested to troubleshoot…
YVONNE CLARK: We had been having hotspots. So my task was to seek out out what causes the hotspots.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: A scorching spot is precisely what it seems like: a bit of a rocket or engine that will get too scorching. The rocket YY was engaged on was the Saturn V, nonetheless the biggest rocket ever constructed.
However what precisely did work on these “scorching spots” entail? And the way did the new spot drawback match into the larger image of Mission Apollo?
COLLEEN ANDERSON: I used to be attempting to determine precisely the work that she did with NASA. I used to be involved with the NASA archives down in Huntsville, the place she labored on the Saturn V rocket…
KATIE HAFNER: Dr. Colleen Anderson is a colleague of Teasel Muir-Concord’s. She’s the curator for rockets and missiles after 1945 on the Nationwide Air and Area Museum.
COLLEEN ANDERSON: …they usually have no documentation saved in regards to the work that she, she did with them.
KATIE HAFNER: Which suggests we’ve needed to piece a number of this collectively from YY’s personal recollections. As Colleen tells us…
COLLEEN ANDERSON: I feel there’s lots that was written that was fairly good about, you realize, the technical historical past of what issues are and the way they had been constructed, however who constructed them, why they constructed them, uh, has sort of been ignored.
KATIE HAFNER: It’s additionally essential to do not forget that YY was one contractor amongst many. So, to determine what she was doing, we’ve needed to put it into context…
COLLEEN ANDERSON: So it looks like given the timing of when, uh, she was at Huntsville engaged on this drawback on the hotspots, this is similar time that engineers and I feel it is a staff of many, many, engineers, had been attempting to determine the issue of the instability, the combustion instability.
KATIE HAFNER: On condition that YY joined the mission in 1963, it’s possible that her scorching spot task was one small a part of a a lot greater drawback. And that massive drawback was combustion instability.
Rockets – and missiles, for that matter – work by utilizing combustion reactions.
The gas, which might be kerosene or hydrogen or another hydrocarbon, is ignited within the chamber of the engine. It reacts with oxygen and burns. That’s what a combustion response is.
However combustion alone wouldn’t get your rocket to area, and even very far off the bottom. The actual energy comes from the byproduct of combustion – the tremendous scorching gases it creates – and the way these gases are harnessed by the rocket’s design to propel it ahead.
When combustion occurs in a small area, just like the chamber of a rocket engine, the new gasoline expands quickly. This builds up a complete lot of strain that has to go someplace. In a rocket, it’s compelled out by way of a small nozzle. That is what produces thrust, the power that propels the rocket ahead.
The issue NASA was having with the Saturn V was that the combustion response within the engine was principally getting out of hand.
COLLEEN ANDERSON: When the kerosene and the liquid oxygen had been reacting in the principle chamber, it was creating these strain waves.
KATIE HAFNER: When scientists use combustion to energy a rocket, they want to provide warmth for energy. However NASA was now dealing with an issue the place the gas was getting so scorching and producing so a lot strain, it was really creating strain modifications that precipitated violent vibrations…
COLLEEN ANDERSON: These strain modifications would periodically transfer by way of the engine.
KATIE HAFNER: In smaller rockets, this wouldn’t have been that massive of a difficulty – the strain waves couldn’t construct up, or the engine ran out of gas earlier than any actual harm might happen. However the scale on this mission was unprecedented. The Saturn V was an enormous rocket. And it used some extremely highly effective engines…
COLLEEN ANDERSON: One of many engines used on the Saturn I is known as the F1.
KATIE HAFNER: The F1 was probably the most highly effective engine of its variety.
COLLEEN ANDERSON: The preliminary concept was that it will have one million kilos of thrust…
KATIE HAFNER: And the plan was to make use of 5 of those engines. All collectively, that was an unbelievable quantity of energy.
COLLEEN ANDERSON: The ability of the F1s was about 80 Hoover dams.
KATIE HAFNER: With the dimensions of the large F-1s within the Saturn V, combustion instability was an enormous drawback. When NASA examined the engine, violent vibrations would construct up within the chamber…
COLLEEN ANDERSON: These might be extremely harmful inside lower than a second. It might burn by way of the thrust chamber.
KATIE HAFNER: By 1963, when YY was again in Huntsville, NASA had already misplaced three F1 engines throughout testing due to combustion instability. That could be a lot of labor and cash straight down the drain.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Combustion instability was a grave concern at NASA. And the reason for it was sophisticated. There have been so many variables – the kind of gas, the strain contained in the chamber, the physique and design of the rocket. And the incidence of combustion instability was troublesome to foretell in any significant manner. NASA feared the F1 engine, with its large dimension and extraordinary energy, would by no means get off the bottom. They turned to a number of authorities contractors to research the difficulty.
MILTON CLARK: Once they initially take a look at fired on the F1 engine, um, they had been getting scorching spots, and the priority was burn by way of, the steel fatiguing…
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: That’s Milton Clark, YY’s son. He’s executed some analysis on his mom’s work at NASA.
So NASA wished to repair these scorching spots within the F1 engine. And that’s the place YY got here in.
MILTON CLARK: So her popularity in trade was that of a troubleshooter, which was why she was on condition that task.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: In response to accounts from each YY and Milton, engineers had observed that elements of the engine appeared to be overheating.
MILTON CLARK: Her job was to determine why they had been getting these readings.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: They had been getting these temperature readings utilizing thermocouple sensors. All you should learn about thermocouple sensors is that they’re a sort of thermometer, they usually use steel wires to take the readings.
YY was instructed to determine what was improper with the F1 design – why it was producing these scorching spots.
YVONNE CLARK: So I went by way of all of this arithmetic, all of those designs, every thing. I stated, I can not discover something improper with the design.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: And that is the place YY’s troubleshooting actually comes into play.
Bear in mind within the final episode when she determined to zoom in on the plans for the canon at Frankford Arsenal? By the point she had gotten a transparent image of the firing mechanism – which nobody else had bothered to do – she had solved the issue. YY used the identical logic now: if an issue appeared inconceivable to resolve, somebody wasn’t taking a look at it proper.
She referred to as the staff in Florida that was operating the exams.
YVONNE CLARK: I requested them particular questions and received some particular solutions.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: And she or he came upon…
YVONNE CLARK: The man within the discipline had forgotten to place the covers and tighten them on the wires.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: This meant that the steel wires that had been supposed to be measuring the floor temperature of the physique of the engine had been as a substitute…
YVONNE CLARK: …absorbing the warmth from the ignition. And that was giving us the hotspots.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Mainly, the issue was not within the rocket. YY concluded that the elevated temperature readings weren’t because of the existence of scorching spots, however because of the manner the sensor itself had been put in.
YY had a present for decreasing seemingly advanced issues to their essence.
KATIE HAFNER: To YY, the fitting reply needed to begin with the fitting query. She didn’t resolve the drawback, she solved the query.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: So YY began by getting the entire image.
KATIE HAFNER: She prioritized determining what was actually occurring. And sometimes, when she did this, the answer was staring proper again at her.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: It took a number of extra years to resolve the combustion instability drawback with the F1 engine. Finally, NASA put in “baffles,” copper dividers that will soak up the vibrations and stabilize the engine. By 1966, the F1 engine handed inspection, and NASA was prepared to maneuver ahead with take a look at launching the Saturn V.
MILTON CLARK: The one time I, quote, missed my mom had been through the summers.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: That’s Milton once more.
MILTON CLARK: As a result of she would stand up at 4 within the morning on Monday morning, drive to Huntsville, be there all week after which come again on Friday evening, round 7:30.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: He was about six years previous when his mother began working with NASA in Huntsville.
MILTON CLARK: And so through the summers, it was simply dad and me.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Milton would quickly study what his mother was as much as whereas he and his dad had been at dwelling.…
MILTON CLARK: Mother introduced again a mannequin of the Saturn V earlier than it was technically unveiled from Huntsville. So I used to be simply thrilled that we had been concerned with it.
KATIE HAFNER: Developing, YY’s work takes flight.
MILTON CLARK: We watched each single launch. When that engine ignited, it was like trying on the solar.
[AD BREAK]
ARCHIVAL TAPE: 1967 marked the tip of the primary decade since Sputnik. It was an eventful 12 months in area, a 12 months when this nation’s largest rocket was flown for the primary time…
KATIE HAFNER: In November of 1967, NASA launched the primary Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy – now the Kennedy Area Heart – in Florida.
With confidence within the Saturn V design, the U.S. moved on to its subsequent purpose: utilizing the rocket to land on the moon.
This time, they’d need to do extra than simply get off the bottom – they’d have to move human beings to the moon and again, conduct analysis, gather samples…
YVONNE CLARK: My task was to, um, assist design the field that brings the samples again from the moon.
KATIE HAFNER: In 1966, YY joined a staff in Houston to work on the Apollo Lunar Pattern Return Container. AKA: the rock field.
Gathering samples was a serious a part of what the U.S. hoped to perform with the moon touchdown. And NASA wanted a container that would safely transport these samples again to Earth.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: So, the rock field…
KATIE HAFNER: That’s Teasel Muir-Concord once more. I requested her to explain the field.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: It appears lots like a suitcase. It is in regards to the dimension of a suitcase, fabricated from aluminum and metal, primarily…
KATIE HAFNER: A keep on? Or a…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: A keep on. I feel it is about, um, 19 inches by 11 inches by eight inches. Round that.
KATIE HAFNER: The field itself appears fairly simple – it is an aluminum case. However the design needed to account for lots…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: A part of the engineering data that had to enter this design, um, is knowing, temperature fluctuation and, um, supplies science.
KATIE HAFNER: YY and the remainder of the design staff wanted to know lots about how completely different supplies would deal with the journey to and from the moon. One massive issue was dramatic temperature modifications.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: If you’re within the solar on the moon, it could get fairly scorching. If you’re within the shadow, it could get actually fairly chilly.
KATIE HAFNER: The earth’s ambiance evens out the distinction between daylight and shadow. However the moon has nearly no ambiance. Temperatures vary from as little as -410 levels Fahrenheit to a scorching 250 levels Fahrenheit.
The design staff had to determine how one can hold temperatures secure within the rock field.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And they also made these rock containers reflective.
KATIE HAFNER: That is just like the precept behind these shiny emergency blankets that they use to lure warmth. To cope with the chilly, they determined to make use of a extremely polished aluminum floor. However regulating temperature was just one facet of the design drawback…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: One of the crucial troublesome, uh, design options in it was making certain that it will, that there can be a vacuum contained in the, the rock field.
KATIE HAFNER: A vacuum is an area devoid of any matter – there’s nothing there. And that was essential for the rock field due to all of the completely different circumstances the field must deal with.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: They wished to guarantee that they might vacuum seal it earlier than it left earth. ‘Trigger they wished to verify it would not get contaminated on the best way to the moon on the launch pad.
KATIE HAFNER: And “contaminated” doesn’t simply imply by strong particles…If air received into the field on earth, it will all of a sudden be launched when astronauts tried to open the field on the moon. Take into consideration opening a can of soda and listening to that hiss – that’s a gentle model of what would occur. NASA didn’t need to take that threat. They wished to regulate as many circumstances as they might. A vacuum seal would scale back the strain distinction between the within and the surface of the field, so the astronauts might open it with out incident.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: After which that they had to make sure that it might be vacuum sealed on the lunar floor and would stay so all the best way again to the Earth.
KATIE HAFNER: Because the astronauts additionally wanted to have the ability to reseal the field on the moon, the engineers got here up with a 3 half system for the seal…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: There are two O-rings.
KATIE HAFNER: These are gaskets that seem like the type which are normally used to seal a water bottle. So there have been two of those O-rings within the seal – these ensured the field stayed vacuum sealed on the best way to the moon.
For the journey again, the astronauts needed to reseal the field – and on the moon, they might have restricted dexterity. So the design staff needed to give you a manner the astronauts might vacuum seal the field by merely closing it. For this, they created what’s referred to as a knife’s edge seal.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: A really intelligent design that was made with a steel blade which cuts right into a delicate steel.
KATIE HAFNER: When the astronauts closed the field, the inflexible blade would slice into the softer steel…sort of like a knife embedded in a stick of butter.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And that would supply one other seal.
KATIE HAFNER: To soundly retailer the samples, the field was lined with packing materials, fabricated from…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: …aluminum mesh to, to make sure that, um, the rocks do not get damaged up as a result of one other issue they needed to think about was vibration, they usually did not need the rocks to interrupt aside on the best way again to Earth.
KATIE HAFNER: If the astronauts did it proper, the hope was that once they arrived again on Earth, the samples can be in about the identical circumstances that they had been in on the moon.
From 1969 to 1972, over six missions, Apollo crews returned 2,200 samples from six touchdown websites on the moon. That’s practically 850 kilos of rocks, mud, pebbles, core samples, and soil. The containers that had been constructed to hold all that had been partially designed by YY Clark.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Milton tells me that the Clarks had a rocket launch ritual.
MILTON CLARK: What was sort of neat is that these had been bonding moments for the household, as a result of we knew that we had pores and skin within the recreation
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: The Clarks had been watching YY’s work in motion – the F1s that she labored on powered the rocket, which carried the rock containers that she helped design.
Each time a launch was occurring, Milton says he received to remain dwelling from faculty, or get picked up early. Carol hadn’t been born at this level, so it was simply Milton and his mother and father. Milton was in command of getting ready TV dinners for the household. After which everybody would publish up in entrance of the tv for the launch….
MILTON CLARK: We had a, a chair, a deep cushion chair, straight in entrance of the TV. Then we had a settee that was in opposition to one wall.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Milton remembers one launch specifically. He doesn’t keep in mind which one it was, however for no matter cause, today stood out to him.
MILTON CLARK: Often dad sat within the chair, however on this specific event, mother wished to take a seat within the chair and pa stated, positive, go forward. As they might do the countdown…
ARCHIVAL TAPE: 30 seconds and counting…
MILTON CLARK: …there was that sense of anticipation.
ARCHIVAL TAPE: Astronauts report it feels good. T-minus 25 seconds…
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: The launch consisted of a number of phases, with completely different engines. The primary stage was getting the rocket off the bottom. This required probably the most thrust – it needed to get the rocket and all of its engines from the launch pad to a top of about 40 miles. And that’s the stage that used the F1s – the engines YY had labored on.
ARCHIVAL TAPE: 12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence begins, six, 5, 4, three, two, one, zero…
MILTON CLARK: As soon as it ignited and received off the pad, there was all the time what I referred to as this, this Tiger Woods sort of “sure.”
ARCHIVAL TAPE: Elevate off! We’ve got a carry off.
MILTON CLARK: And the one factor that is superb about that engine is it by no means had an operational failure.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: The F1 engines efficiently powered six missions to the moon. On every mission, the astronauts carried two rock containers to gather samples.
MILTON CLARK: It’s a little thoughts boggling that this girl who has executed a lot is simply my mother. , there’s nonetheless that, for lack of a greater phrase, little boy in me that’s marveling that I received to stay with a history-making girl.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Watching these launches, YY was seeing her personal work realized. And that work continues to affect the area program at the moment.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: I get calls from folks engaged on the Artemis program at the moment, uh, asking questions in regards to the Apollo program.
KATIE HAFNER: That’s Teasel once more.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And, um, they’re studying classes from the Apollo program, nonetheless.
KATIE HAFNER: NASA’s Artemis Program goals to land the primary people on the moon since Apollo.
We’re recording this podcast in early September, and the scheduled launch of Artemis I, the primary of three rockets, has been delayed twice – most not too long ago, resulting from a gas leak. NASA is at the moment within the technique of troubleshooting the issue. It’s a reminder that area journey stays terribly troublesome and delicate.
Teasel will get calls from folks engaged on Artemis at the moment as a result of Apollo was such an outstanding success.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: It was an enormous nationwide mobilization on the size of a conflict besides aimed on the moon. By the mid Nineteen Sixties, 400,000 folks had been engaged on that mission.
KATIE HAFNER: However the precise employees at NASA was comparatively small as a result of…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Round 94% of these folks labored in trade and at universities.
KATIE HAFNER: …so in a roundabout way for NASA. And this made Apollo…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: The most important civilian technological program in historical past.
KATIE HAFNER: The associated fee was additionally enormous.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: On the time it was estimated to be about $25 billion. At this time, there’s, there’s current evaluation that means the lunar effort can be roughly $280 billion.
KATIE HAFNER: …and given the value tag…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Lower than half the nation supported the Apollo program. It was solely across the first lunar touchdown mission that you simply recover from 50% of People assume that the nation must be investing in lunar exploration.
KATIE HAFNER: This was the late Nineteen Sixties, and the U.S. was entangled in one thing else expensive and controversial: the Vietnam Warfare. In the meantime, the federal government was seen as neglecting obvious issues proper at dwelling; many People couldn’t afford to pay for primary wants. Civil rights activists noticed connections between racism, militarism, and financial injustice. They mobilized to combat poverty, organizing the Poor Folks’s Marketing campaign.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: Through the lead as much as the launch of the primary lunar touchdown mission, Apollo 11, in the summertime of 1969, the Poor Folks’s Marketing campaign led a protest to shed some mild on a number of the points that individuals had been experiencing.
KATIE HAFNER: They wished the federal government to prioritize urgent social points. So greater than 100 protesters arrived at Kennedy Area Heart the day earlier than the launch. They marched to the gates, holding indicators that learn: “12 {dollars} a day to feed an astronaut. We might feed a ravenous youngster for 8.”
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: One of many critiques was that the nation actually must be investing in issues like housing and civil rights and training.
KATIE HAFNER: The protestors really ended up assembly with the administrator of NASA, who advised them:
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: If I did not push the button uh, to ship this rocket to the moon and it will resolve Earth’s issues, you realize, I would not push it, however, um, it will not do this.
KATIE HAFNER: To point out he was critical a few partnership on earth, he invited the protestors to view the launch… they usually did.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: The profitable touchdown did finally shift some public opinion. However for many folks, this shining instance of what america and liberal democracy might obtain was only a obvious reminder of every thing the nation selected to disregard.
The protest by the Poor Folks’s Marketing campaign is not normally a part of the story we get about Mission Apollo.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: And it actually illustrates that the Apollo program didn’t occur in a vacuum.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: We don’t know YY’s ideas on the price of Apollo. However her work at NASA was most likely the surest manner for her to maintain one foot in trade. And for therefore many Black scientists working within the 60s and 70s, NASA opened alternatives. To some politicians and coverage makers, together with President Lyndon B. Johnson, this was a part of the mission. Teasel says Johnson considered the area program as…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: The launchpad for an amazing society and he noticed the Apollo program and this funding, this main funding of federal {dollars} as one thing that will, um, assist carry up the nation, assist result in enchancment.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Within the coming years, NASA would really deliver classes from area dwelling.
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: There are a selection of ways in which NASA expertise was utilized to city circumstances. One of many notable ones was water filtration.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: With out entry to water in area, the astronauts wanted new methods to recycle and purify water. Water filtration and different quote “spinoff” applied sciences had been seen as methods to enhance life right here on Earth.
However Teasel tells us…
TEASEL MUIR-HARMONY: On the subject of the appliance of these applied sciences to resolve city issues, I feel it was fairly restricted.
And though there have been these efforts, um, made, within the Seventies, I do not assume they led to widespread change or actually impacted the dwelling circumstances of many individuals in any substantial manner.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Maybe extra important was the usage of administration methods. Mission Apollo had been an enormous endeavor, accomplished forward of schedule. What if the federal government might tackle the issues of housing and training in the identical manner?
In 1967, YY was on the case. That summer time, she labored with a staff of engineers and social scientists on a “trendy city neighborhood program.”
So YY was making use of engineering methods born of the Apollo program to the design of cities, not simply the design of machines…
YY’s daughter Carol was born in 1968, and in YY’s phrases, this “grounded” her. When Carol was little, YY determined she would solely tackle extra work inside Nashville – so she did some summer time educating at Tennessee State.
MILTON CLARK: I’ll use her phrases, trade is her past love. However with the need to have a household and the practicalities that advanced round that, she wanted to have the steadiness that educating offered.
By the Seventies YY was not spending summers at NASA. However she did not precisely name it quits with the federal government. As a substitute, she turned the director of a program at Tennessee State to sponsor scholar fellows at NASA on summer time internships. And, proper round this time, she accepted a place as division head at TSU.
YVONNE CLARK: I used to be taking condolences in addition to congratulations.
KATIE HAFNER: Subsequent time, within the closing episode of Season 3, “The First Woman of Engineering,” we head to Tennessee State College, the place YY taught and advocated for the following technology of Black scientists – and we meet a number of the folks persevering with that work at HBCUs at the moment.
[CREDITS]
KATIE HAFNER: This has been Misplaced Ladies of Science. Because of everybody who made this initiative occur, together with our co-executive producer Amy Scharf, producer Ashraya Gupta, senior editor Nora Mathison, affiliate producer Sinduja Srinivasan, composer Elizabeth Younan, and the engineers at Studio D Podcast Manufacturing.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Thanks to Milton H. Clark, Sr. A lot of this story comes from his e-book, Six Levels of Freedom.
KATIE HAFNER: We’re grateful to Mike Fung, Cathie Bennett Warner, Dominique Guilford, Jeff DelViscio, Maria Klawe, Michelle Nijhuis, Susan Kare, Jeannie Stivers, Carol Lawson, and our interns, Hilda Gitchell and Hannah Carroll. Thanks additionally to Paula Goodwin, Nicole Searing and the remainder of the authorized staff at Perkins Coie. Many due to Barnard School, a pacesetter in empowering younger girls to pursue their ardour in STEM.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: Thanks to Tennessee State College, the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Air and Area Museum, the College of Louisville, and the College of Alabama in Huntsville for serving to us with our search.
And a particular shout out to Gotham Manufacturing Studios…
KATIE HAFNER: …and…my closet, the place this podcast was recorded.
Misplaced Ladies of Science is funded partially by the Gordon and Betty Moore Basis and the John Templeton Basis, which catalyzes conversations about dwelling purposeful and significant lives.
This podcast is distributed by PRX and revealed in partnership with Scientific American.
You possibly can study extra about our initiative at misplaced girls of science dot org or observe us on Twitter and Instagram. Discover us @lostwomenofsci. That’s misplaced girls of S C I.
Thanks a lot for listening.
CAROL SUTTON LEWIS: I’m Carol Sutton Lewis.
KATIE HAFNER: And I’m Katie Hafner.
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