NASA – Too Cold

During the last few days after the “storm of 2024”, with the whole area around here without power, I spent much time just sitting and thinking. My generator powers my entire house, so I had electricity; however, Comcast was out until yesterday afternoon, so I had no internet or TV. After cleaning up the limbs and debris I was too tired to do more outside in the heat.

I remembered a tornado that hit part of North Houston and came through our subdivision. That was back in the early 1970s and did a lot of damage, but most of the path was less populated then. I started thinking about my experiences at NASA because that was where I was working when we built our first home.

I could write a whole chapter in a book about the years I worked at NASA, but this story is weather-related. I worked there from 1964 to 1966, primarily during the Gemini Program. Back in the 1960s, there was no internet or other electronic method to send data. Some satellites were used for weather and some early forms of transmitting data; however, that was mostly government use. Those satellites were used for tracking airplanes and spacecraft. Telephone calls were made using a series of connected phone lines that used analog technology.

Several locations and companies were involved with the development of space travel and the operational aspects of space flights. The Johnson Space Center (previously named Manned Space Center) was the control center for all space-related projects, but tracking was done from multiple locations. Many computer centers were involved in various processes while the space flights and simulations were all handled from Houston. Multiple computer centers in different buildings at JSC were used for various functions, but only two computer centers in Building 30 were involved with the space flights.

RTCC (Real Time Computing Center) was on the first floor of Building 30 and there were four IBM 7094-II and two IBM 1460s in that computer room. That was before the first IBM-360 was installed anywhere in the world. The IBM 7094 model II was a scientific computer, the most powerful at that time. Tape drives were used for input, output, and working storage. The IBM 1460s were used for loading input data on a tape to be processed on the 7094 and the output was written to a tape on the 7094 that the 1460 would read and print on one of the highspeed printers.

On the third floor of Building 30 was another computer room used for Mission Support with another IBM 7094, IBM 1401, and a Univac 1004. This center was used by different engineers who created and supported other programs that ran parallel to those in RTCC. Think of this as a double-check of assumptions. During the space flights that involved the docking of two spacecraft, RTCC would handle the re-entry of one spacecraft and Mission Support the other. I was the Data Center Manager of this center during the last 18 months I worked at NASA.

Every space flight requires many simulations before the actual liftoff. Each phase is part of the simulation process and if anything, unexpected occurs, the simulation is scrubbed, and the analysis begins to determine what went wrong. The more complicated the mission is, the more simulations are required. This is where the term 24/7 had meaning. The 7094 I was responsible for managing was originally a 7090 that had been installed in Langley Virginia CIA Office. The spacecraft onboard computer testing program was originally written in a language that only one computer could run, and it required some special manual changes at key points to the instructions in memory to get the results. I was that key person and at one point had worked three months without a day off.

Back then, JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) was a source of input data for rocket engine calculations and the smaller rocket engines used to guide the spacecraft in space and to position for re-entry burns. Those data tapes would be processed on nights and weekends when no missions or simulations were scheduled. One tape could contain enough data for the 7094 to process upwards of 50-60 hours or more. There were processes that operations could use to create re-start points every two hours so all would not be lost if something like a tape error caused the processing to abnormally end.

JPL is in California, the only way the tapes could be sent was by airplane. Because the data was considered secret, special handling was required. Due to changes made to the rocket engine, there was a need to get a data tape to Houston overnight. One of the astronauts was in California getting his flying time in and was returning to Ellington that night. He was flying one of NASA’s training jet planes. When we received the tape it could not be read on any tape drive. They had put the tape in the compartment in the nose of the plane and it had frozen in a temperature well below anything workable for magnetic tape.

I had men in suits (above my pay grade) expecting me to “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” (expecting me to get a computer to read a tape that could not be read). JPL sent a new tape by a special flight with the tape in the possession of a man at normal temperatures. Lessons learned.