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So welcome to the 2015 Nasa ames Summer Series
When We think of Saturn Apollo?
We think of Those Missions in That Time?
We think of A great Time for Rocketry and Space Exploration?
We also look at it as an Error Where we could do and We do at this point have a lot of Lessons learned fun
Complex Machines Were built to get us Into Space and Have humans go to places as far as the Moon
Today's Talk Entitled
Destroy Saturn Five and other Apollo Topics
Will Be given by Bill Colburn
He's actually Quite, interesting the Career of Bill Bill's Career
he Thought of and Looked at science Fiction at age of Eleven and Said wow I
want to go Into that Area
Drive Science Fiction to Reality Make it real
he Enlisted in the us air Force in
1954
Still with the interest of
Following That dream
he Worked for Three and a half Years in
Nsa serving The ussr development in Rocketry
Then After That went to Livermore and Then Ted Parker
Brought Him Over to the test range in China Lake
He, was A staff Engineer for Space Ordnance Systems?
he has Worked and designed The Developed as Part of the Saturn 5 the Propellant Dispersions
System and
They an
Air Abort launch what is Really Interesting Is?
he has Made Major Contributions to Complex Systems
Started as A Kid Thinking About the Approach and
Went Through They're
Going to a Mission Without the formal Education that you Would think Somebody like that will have in A normal System
so Following the dream is Really Important and you Could Contribute to the Complexity of Missions like Sata and Apollo and Make History
So please Join Me in Welcoming Bill Coburn
Thank You dr. Cohen
Before Any Talk on Apollo, We Really have to, Honor the the five?
Man who gave Their life Three of Which Actually gave Their life on A mission Related
TasKs and That's Grissom Chaffee and White so my heart to them and Their Heroic life's
Well Destroy Saturn five, well if Saturn five were this size you'd Use A
Black Cat Firecracker you Could blow that up Easily how About One This Size you could use two Cherry bombs
But they Would not like me to do that so how about the Huge thing Look at this
But but Let me give you them
Here I am dr.. Cohen Interim Aide A very Nice Introduction but
Here I am on the apollo Walk of fame A titusville Florida
I'm the Third Name on the first on the first
Trident There and
Looking at that I thought Boy that's Really a great, Honor until I realized, oh it's in Alphabetical order
Well here it Is
Saturn 1c so blaine Comes to Us
When, We were General Precision We started as Precision Technology and Livermore With some very Heavy from Lawrence lab who Started
The Company
Well Boring Comes with Us and Said, We want to Destroy this thing Which IS 33 feet in Diameter?
The Entire Vehicle of Course
360 feet Long
Four Million Eight Hundred and Eighty Thousand Pounds of Propellant in The complete Vehicle
How do you do that Without Say Taking out the entire Cape
Taking out Cuba Which happens to be in the launch Area 44 degrees To 110 degrees
Cuba's Right in There and so are the Bahama as, well you
Don't want to do that even Though Jfk might have thought hey, it's alright to take out Cuba yeah but so what do you?
Do With With That Four Hundred and eighty eight
Thousand Pounds
Four Million Eight Hundred Eighty eight Thousand Pounds that's The equivalent of One inch of?
Propellant Across 36, Football Fields That's A lot of Propellant
Okay, now what happens if if that ignites in the air
Four and a Half Million pounds what happens
Thirty Two Football Fields Equivalent of Four Hundred Thousand Pounds of tnt
What Is that Like There We are?
Really Not Quite more like This One
so
Outside of Protecting the Any Cities that you might Be in There in the range you want to get Rid of Everything before
It has a Possibility of Going
350 Miles to Cuba nine Hundred and TWenty-Eight Miles to the Bahamas
960 Miles to New York City so let's get Rid of it before it even has an Opportunity to do that well
of Course They have the Radar and
If Braids are Detects Any Abnormality and The flight Path They Can start A flight Abort Sequence
They, also use A very interesting
Technique Which Had Been Used for tracking B-2s at
The White Sands and that was a Wireframe
And the wireframe Had Two wires at an Angle and then the optimum Trajectory wire down the Center so the Guy
Optically Watched The Vehicle if It went Outside of Those
Wire
Defined Areas Then That Would Initiate an Abort Sequence
Well who?
Was in Charge of the Abort Sequence of I've Read in Some Places that it was Totally Automatic no it was not?
Automatic in All Cases it Would be Automatic if the wire
While you're Running Down the length of the Saturn five Here and Here if Those wires ever Lost Continuity
Abort Sequence Would Be Automatic Because That Indicates a major
Rupture in A tank
Otherwise The Abort Sequence was
Partially Manual and
Was manual on the Part of the of the range Safety Officer and on the Command Module?
Commander
so what happens and how, do you do This
Well This is what We came up With With boeing?
It took
Five Pounds of High Explosive To Destroy the V2
and the Saturn Five
We use nine Pounds of Explosive to Destroy the entire S1c Stage and how
Is that done Two runs of?
175 Grains per Foot
Flexible Linear Shaped Charge Which I'll show you how that worked in A moment and
There Were 40 foot 40 Foot Lengths on each Side of the Saturn Five on this Model They
Would be About About half the Size of a Paperclip in
Cross-Section Running
40 feet Here and 40 feet here the Reason They were on Opposite Sides is when They?
When They did The Ballistic Calculations it
If The propellants Had Mixed then you Would have had that Sub Nuclear Explosion by
Ejecting The Lox on One Side and the Rp. One out the other Side you'd have less mixing and A much lesser Explosion
Well
and that Those Two Fl Sc lines
Shown Here on Their aluminum Carrier the rectangle on the Outside that's the
Channel That Ran up again as I said that's
About The Size of a half of a half of a Paperclip it Would run up the side here that, was two inches by
One inch
Just to give you an Idea of the Scale and
Inside of that was in the aluminum Carrier that Had that Shape and the red Parts or the Fl Sc that we're Bond
In Place There now This Is an Interesting Assembly because everything
Was done With adhesives There not a single mechanical Joint in That
Propellant Dispersion System Which Is extremely Interesting even The skunk Works I
Understand When They used adhesive they, always put in What They Call Chicken rivet
Just to Make sure that Their adhesive doesn't Fail this entire Thing, was Held together With Adhesive it was a urethane that
Was qualified To - 280 degrees for the Lox tank
so what happens
Well when We Initiate that this Is what happens it Cuts a one-inch wide gap in The 2019
Aluminum Tank Structure if You See the little Ribs in That Tank that's an Amazing Thing
We may not be able to Make a tank like that right now
That was Made by taking Enormous Sheets of 2019 Aluminum and Then Milling A pattern
To Reduce the Wall Thickness but but Retain the Ribs for Stiffening
That was About Roughly a Quarter of an inch in the thin Section and a half an inch on the Ribs and
Then They Would Roll that and Weld that Into These Enormous tank that Were 33 feet in Diameter?
Incredible Technology
Now
So now, We have We have that happening, We have the Propellant?
Squirting out each Side of the Vehicle but Wait a minute we Forgot the astronauts in the Command Module?
We can blow up?
We can blow up the S1 See and and the Upper Stages that's fine?
But How About These Guys Up here we've got to get Them out of the way, well Already?
They Had The Escape tower in The Scape Rocket
Designed and built for
Emergency
Abort From the Pad Now They Wanted to Determine if We could if They Could
Also use that in Various Stages of Altitude and Velocity
Incidentally The Saturn Manual Calls Saturn Five man who calls This a small Rocket
This Rocket Had a Hundred and Forty seven Thousand Pounds of Thrust for Four Seconds I
Don't Call that a *** that's Three Times the Threats of The V-2
And that Burned for as I said for Four Seconds and that Would from A
From A standing start that Would
Take The Command Module to 40 100 feet in 11 Seconds so they determined that
With the manual even With a, manual Abort they Could get the Command Module far Enough away that the
Ignition of the RP1 and Locs Would not
Affect it Detrimental e so then what happens well
Canards Pop Out if it's the low Altitude
Abort Canards Pop out and The Canards Fear the Command Module away from the direct Trajectory of the of
The Vehicle if it did High Altitude There's A
Pitch Motor A small Solid Propellant Pitch Motor so if it's at 280 Thousand feet Which is the Maximum
Feed for an Abort the
The Pitch Motor Would Tilt the the Command Module and get it out of the Way
Then They Would fire the bolts That Held the
Lot of the Rocket tower to the Command Module and That Would Pull off The ablative Heat Shield There was an ablative heat Shield
Over The Forward Heat Shield Pull that off
Then They Had to get Rid of the Forward Heat Shield because I was Covering up the Parachutes
So let's use the Parachutes next all right that's A very Good
Idea then The drove Mortgage Would fire the drugs have got Reef and line Cutters Would
Open The Drugs and then the Drugs Would pull out the Mains and you'd have a recovery now Boy how
Did They Know that was going to happen, well this is the Cdf Carrier Incidentally this Is A
Cdf That Confined Detonating Fuse
It's a two grains per Foot it looks like solder Looks Just like a little
Lead Solder and
Two Grains Per Foot that was inside of A of A
Polymer Coating and Then The Polymer Had Fiberglass Tubing
Over That and Then Another Polymer Coding and Then Another layer of Fiberglass so when the
Confined Detonating Fuse Detonated and That's Detonation Enough Extremely Rapid
Process
The The Detonation Would be Completely Confined and wouldn't
Wouldn't disrupt Any of the mechanical or Electronic Components Nearby?
the
The Cdf. Is What Started Most of the Processes on?
Board The Saturn Five and Aboard Paulo Because it was Virtually Instantaneous at
8,000 Meters Per Second That's That's Pretty fast so
The and the CdF in All Cases was Initiated by what's called an E
Bw Detonator That's Exploding Bridgewire Detonators and The Reason A is Exploding Bridgewire Detonators
Is Completely insensitive to electrostatic Discharge
Completely Insensitive To low current
in fact you could Take an e Bw Detonator and Plug it in in the Wall and it Would not Initiate it Would Fizzle and
Burn but it Would not Detonate so they use dBW Detonated the safest possible Way to Initiate
the CDF and Initiate all of the Various Functions
That Had To happen in the Set of the State Separation the Command Module Separation
The Docking Ring Separation was also done With with Detonating Cord?
so
So here, We are we've Protected the astronauts we've Dumped the propellant, we're Pretty Safe
This is the Crossover, We're Talking about the CDF and you notice the Manifold Paths
We have two Cdf Lines Coming in?
Simple Redundancy
But each line Has A crossover so we have double Redundancy in This Connector We have two f lse runs?
Pretty Much A
very High Reliable System Because if Any One of These
Paths Failed you'd Still Initiate Both of the lSC
Lines and you'd Still cut the tank
And That's extremely Important Because one Flac line Would not Open The tank
It Would Just Make a slip and it Would Dribble out over Time but it Would not not be a true Abort
That's A Cdf Connector
That Has a Curious Thing it's A it's a spring-Loaded lock if You see the Grooves on There and that was
As far as I know that's peculiar only to to Cdf Connectors I haven't seen it on a hydraulic system for Instance
Now this Is
Getting
Moving Over to the rest of the apollo Pyrotechnic systems this is the basic Standard for
Initiating Nearly all of the
Pyrotechnic Systems Outside of the Ebw
And that's Called the nasa Standard Initiator
The Last I checked this has a reliability of five nines five at A 95% Confidence Level
Which is Astounding Astounding and so that that May be the most reliable
Component in The Entire Except Maybe A few Resistors yes so
So here's How we've Determined if That?
Escape System is Going to Work at Altitude and it Velocity the little Joe
There's The Little Joe you can't Quite See it but in This
Mock-Up in A
In A rocket Graveyard the Nozzles Are put in Upside Down
But There, We are so that's the little Joe?
That was eighty Six feet tall eight and a half feet in Diameter and Look
176 Thousand Pounds
Pretty Big Rocket
It Had A couple of Algal Motors and
Then I believe it Had Different Combinations Depending upon what the Mission Called for?
Having Some for all of you
Model Rocketry People This is the World's largest Clustered High Power Rocket
and
There it Goes Now
At Altitude What Would happen Is
They Would go Through all of the Abort Functions at a Different Altitude and Different Velocity in Every case the Command Module
Was recovered Safely in fact in One Case the little Joe due To an A
Problem in The Flight Computer the Little Joe
Exploded and so they Had A real Emergency and the Command Module
Safely Recovered Even in A real Emergency so they counted that as sort of A
an
Unexpected
Unexpected Wind
Now the little Joe Up we mentioned the drug Martyrs The drill Mortars so what I'm going Through Is in my personal History so?
It might be a little Disconnected to you but the real murders Had
Briefing Line Cutters The Reefing Line what the Reefing line Would do it Would hold the the Drogue Closed
for eight Seconds
Until
Until Everything Became Stable then the Reaping line Would cut the
The Reefing Line The Reefing Line Cutter Would cut The line and The Drogue Could open Fully and then
After That Point at the Proper Altitude the drones Would Pull the Mains out the Three Main Chutes
Now to Remove That Forward Heat Shield
We designed this the type six Pressure Cartridge now High Shear Had Tried this Is an
Amazing Cartridge Because it Produces
Up to 20,000 Psi in A in a Plenum
There Are Two half inch Stainless Steel Tubes That run off to muck to
Essentially Pyro Pistons and Those Pistons Force The Heat Shield Off At 80, feet per Second That's A 280-Pound
Heat Shield so that's A lot of Force
If Any if Any Two of These Cartridges Fired the heat Shield Would be Ejected Safely and the Reason you wanted to get that
Velocity is you Didn't want that for Heat Shield 280 Pounds to come back and hit the Command Module and Perhaps
Injured in Some Way like the heat Shield huh it's on Heat Shield
So There were Four of Those for Those and Four
Pistons That Ejected The Command Module blower Heat Shield
and the tight six Pressure Cartridge had it had A
Tint it was so unusual it had to Produce
That
20,000 Psi and A few Milliseconds so it was Lovely we Call Brasada it was A very?
Rapidly Operating Cartridge so high Burning Rate the Burning Rate of the Propellant
We used at this Pressure was 1600 inches per Second That's Unheard of in Solid Propellant?
But, We use permeable Burning to get that rate?
And we're Talking A 5-inch Long grain that five inch Long grain Would Burn in A couple of milliseconds
Amazing and
In order to ignite it since it had A very high
It's called Burning rate Core the Burning rate Exponent Burning Rate exponent of
A good propellant Would be Around Point two five Point Three Point four means that's its Sensitivities of Pressure
This Propellant, Had A Burning rate Exponent of Point eight Three means it is Highly Sensitive to pressure so because of that
It was Prone to what We Call A?
Dp/dt Failure That's the the Rate of Pressure Drop if You had a high rate of Pressure drop This Propellant Could Quench
Because of its High
High Burning Rate Exponent
Certainly Did To ignite it
Satisfactorily Is We had A two phase Opening of the Closure and that's a chemically mill closure Which
Was A first at that Time so the
The Light gray Area Would Would Open First
We're Talking milliseconds Talk to light great Area Would Open First then Bernie Would be established?
While the other Pedals, were Still There and Then They Would open and you'd have
the
Continued Burning of That Grain
Type Six Pressure Cartridge
So the docking ring Had to be Beefed up for the
The Docking Ring Had to be Beefed up for the
To separate The lemon what
It wasn't Strong Enough so Just before?
The The first before Apollo eight
and they Had an Emergency
Development to Develop A long reach Detonator to
To fit in the New Docking ring, well we did That and
very Simple
We just Added an Extension that that Extension Couldn't be Filled With explosive Because then it Would be too much explosive Than it Would Have
Distorted The Ring not A good idea
so
That's A long reach Detonator so it Had Essentially what, we call a flash Tube?
From the Nsi to the explosive it was Just an empty Tube
and
Then The
Two Bulkhead Escape Motor at that yes, okay
the
for Maximum Reliability
We decided not to use a glass seal or a ceramic seal Although They Work Perfectly
Well in Most rocket Motors this, was a metal to metal seal so There were no?
There were no
Everything in That Rocket Motor, was Metal to metal sealed and This Is how that Works if You See
The Upper Part of This Drawing Is where the CdF Connector attached and that's he D F initiated the first little Red
Zone that's A that's a Ptm
Explosive The Shockwave Would go Across the Little Bulkhead and That Shock wave
Would Initiate the Second Ptm Charge and Then that Would Initiate the Output charge which is Would start the rocket Motor
and that's A
Through Bulkhead Igniter and
I think, we're Going to have a lot of Time for Questions Here
Dr.. Cohen
Thank you very much
So, We have Time for Questions if You have a question please raise your Hand and Wait for your Mic the Microphone to get to
Get to you?
How much Is this did you design Yourself
These Devices I'm sorry okay Can you i Can Repeat
and Yourself all of them
Excepting for the Nsi I, did not design the nside but everything you saw Here I designed yes and
Follow Through Production in Some Cases Hand Delivered
Hand Delivered to White sands in Time for the little Joe to test
We Hand Delivered The first Fl Sc to to the cape not to the Cape
that was the
F-Series The 500 Series which, was A fit Up i assume F stamp roof it Up and we
Delivered the
the
Propellant Dispersion System to Them for fit Up
Incidentally that that 2 inch By 1 inch aluminum A
Rectangular Tube
That was Slotted at intervals to Take Care of the
Contraction as the Lox Tank
Was filled the Tube of Course Would Contract A couple of inches and so those Slots Would Aid in?
in That Contraction, well They Forgot to
To
Take the
When They Mail Through they Didn't Bieber the interior of the Slots
so when we tried to insert the Fl Sc Carrier in It got Halfway in and
Well Good good thing they, did was set up tests first
So after they Clean Those all out, We were fine but, we, also had the Specification was for?
220 Pound Pull
And we had to Make Connectors like this that Would Take 220 Pounds to connect each 4-Foot length so we'd have ten Four-Foot links?
Connected Like This
220 Pounds was not enough even Though that was a specification so we changed that, We put a single?
Bar of A 286 Steel with a i at one end and the Hook the other end and that
Had A Probably a, Breaking Strength of Maybe Two three Thousand Pounds Force I hope that answers your Question
I
Understand That before The Shuttle Project, was Started?
the the goal is to have no Pyrotechnic Devices on the Shuttle and it Ended up Having over 300 I
Was wondering it Seems to me That Pyrotechnic Devices Are?
The Have the highest Specific power out of Any
Way you Can actuate or ignite and
and also the Reliability Is extremely high why, Would one not use Pyrotechnics
It Seems like A good Approach to Probably Because of Their of the Regulatory the Regulatory ProbleMs and the fact that
When you arm
Pyrotechnics on on A launch site then everybody Else has to clear away
And so when the Pyrotechnic is Armed that's A that's A?
Specific Safety Condition
That and you have to Observe That Condition so if you don't have them
Maybe it's a little Better
Maybe
But You're Right Reliability is incredible
I
Thank you very Interesting Talk did North American
Design The first Stage and how Many Detonation tests, Were run and was any Type of Stress Analysis Done
During The development Or, was it more of A trial and Error Process
Did North American Build the first Stage
How Many
Detonation Tests Were Done and was any Stress Analysis done in The development or was it more of A trial and Error I
Process so did North American built the first Stage how Many Detonation Devices Were used in was Any Stress Analysis done, oh?
Well if You Look at the S
the Nasa Sp Is of that Era all my heaven Vs Stress analyses were done
There There's an Sp for Almost
Every Type of Structure you know Conical Cylindrical
Whatever
So yes I'm Sure
Stress analyses Were Done There's, also Pyro Shock and Pyro Shock, was A
Major Problem in Fact it's been A problem in Some of the I believe on a maybe on the Mars?
Observant Possibly and
So a lot of Studies were done on Pyro Shop and Larry bement, was at. Langley and Larry Beeman was?
Responsible for
for Really
Bringing Pyro The Pyro Black Art Down To a science and
If you Look at some of Larry beeman's Publications you see that that he, did an excellent Job in That Arena
Hi Bill I know Bill he's a great Guy and I've Been Down to his Shop in Hollister and my Question Is
You've Worked on A lot of These Projects for
This Program But Currently, you're Still Designing
Various Rocketry
Programs at your Offices in Hollister Can You Just Give Us a real Quick Brief Description of what you're doing down There now, okay
Do you want to Check or money order?
Well Thank you charlie yeah Charlie has Been To our yeah what we're Doing in Holly Were Working on Hybrid Propulsion systems and
In 1951
This Little Rocketry Group, We Had in Watsonville California?
Fired A hypergolic Hybrid Probably The First One Ever and We used
Used a A
German
Oxidizer Which Is
90% Nitric Acid 10% Sulfuric acid since it Had Sulfuric Acid
We knew that it Would react With Potassium Chlorate so, We put a little Potassium Chloride in The asphalt and
We had A hypergolic hybrid?
So what, we're Doing Is We want since Hybrids Are?
Incredibly Safe until They're loaded as our by liquids, do
They
They represent A
an
Arena Between an Area Between
Solids and Liquids and They Have about Half the Complexity of Liquid so they're Kind of
Kind of Attracted from That Viewpoint
Isps my Partner Is a Harvard chemist
Ron Winston and he Has Developed several Propellant additives Which
Boosted Right Over 300 Seconds, isp at sea Level so
That's Pretty Incredible and That's what, we're Working that's what, we're Working Towards Is very high isp Hybrids?
Hello
How'd you Guys Validate the
Analysis for The Prior Techniques on This Stages For That Knitting Stage on Abort
Whoops I Didn't have that one I'm
Analysis of Coordinating the Time The Pyrotechnics, allah Says Stages
Well That's Larry Beeman's Favorite Subject Because Larry Larry Called what, We did Black Art as I mentioned before and?
We did
What we would do?
Instead of Approaching it Analytically, We Would do off limits testing?
Qualification Testing
So that's
Primarily How
How the Pyro Systems Developed
So off limits Testing Would be We would Change the Loading?
until it Didn't Work on one end and it Worked too, well on the other end and
That's The extent of it very very Little Analysis on
Now it's Quite Different since Larry Attacked problem some
25 Years ago
Appreciate the Discussions
Your
Comments on Little Joe Connery might be A long Time Ago weird little Joe and I associated Whoever Called
Little John
Was going to be Used?
Not for Space but Actually do A very
Multiple Numbers of Little Children Little John's to Actually Thrust as I changed the
Rotation of The Earth in an Event of A declare Exchange give Any Comments on that Or Remember that at all
oh
And the realm of my interest but Way Outside of my Expertise, sorry
So I have I have a question
I don't know if my mic is up now so
The Question Is in Terms of Risk Culture so you know when you look at the Era of Saturn Apollo you see that There were
Accidents That occurred Both With Humans and Without Humans
But you saw a Progression of the Rockets design the systems with it and so on your Stage of Engineering
How is the Culture of Risk Then in Terms of the Ability of Taking Risk to develop New Technologies to move Forward
Versus Now as a culture that is whether it's Within nasa or the Industry that you're Working on in Terms of that are They the?
Same or Different between Those Two quite Different Doctor the
We had?
We had A whole Section of Designers and?
The Designers Were Familiar With mil Specs for Instance that
We didn't have to bother with so if We Wanted to Use a certain bolt they'd, no no?
No you can't use that bolt you had to use this bolt and
So, we were Had that kind of support, We?
Had A secretarial Pool
And so that took another load off of Us so, we, were free Pretty much to
To Imagineer our
Projects
The Advent of the Computer Changed all of that and
Now
Each Engineer Is his Own Draftsman
Drawing Guy Secretary you know so yeah it's Considerably Considerably Different I think That an Engineer Now
Needs to Have more skills than
We have we were A lot more Focused Stone, We were I think far more Focused on the Job?
Then You Can be now Because you have to have this wide
Panorama of Skills so that Would be my answer
Okay so please Join, Me in Thanking will Coburn for an excellent Seminar
you