Ramo, the chief architect of America's intercontinental ballistic missile system and an aerospace pioneer who helped shape Southern California into the nation's center for high-tech weapons research, died Monday of natural causes in his sleep at his home in Santa Monica, said his son, Jim Ramo. He was 103.
Throughout all his accomplishments, Ramo kept a biting sense of humor. It was during the ICBM’s development in the late 1950s that he became legendary for capsulizing complex ideas into off-the-cuff witticisms. When the United States’ first ballistic missile rose about 6 inches above the launch pad before toppling over and exploding, Ramo turned to an Air Force general and said: “Well, Benny, now that we know the thing can fly, all we have to do is improve its range a bit.”
Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder shaped California aerospaceLA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-simon-ramo-20160628-snap-story.htmlQuoteRamo, the chief architect of America's intercontinental ballistic missile system and an aerospace pioneer who helped shape Southern California into the nation's center for high-tech weapons research, died Monday of natural causes in his sleep at his home in Santa Monica, said his son, Jim Ramo. He was 103.QuoteThroughout all his accomplishments, Ramo kept a biting sense of humor. It was during the ICBM’s development in the late 1950s that he became legendary for capsulizing complex ideas into off-the-cuff witticisms. When the United States’ first ballistic missile rose about 6 inches above the launch pad before toppling over and exploding, Ramo turned to an Air Force general and said: “Well, Benny, now that we know the thing can fly, all we have to do is improve its range a bit.”
The personal relationships and how that interacted with the military people at the time is an interesting side to this story. Schriever believed that the ICBM needed civilian technical support. Not just a contractor, but a whole level of technical support from people who did not actually build the missiles. That's where Ramo-Wooldridge came in. Schriever and his cardinals had a lot of faith in them and their company. But it kind of bothered a lot of other Air Force personnel. They thought that the expertise should be in-house, inside the Air Force, not a group of arrogant egghead contractors.You can see reverberations of this in the early military space program. For instance, the guy who established the first military weather satellite (before it was called DMSP) really disliked the Ramo-Wooldridge setup. He did not want outsiders sticking their nose in his business, and he thought that he had enough smart Air Force officers to run the program. Keep in mind that this was a highly classified program. He kept Ramo-Wooldridge out (it may have been Aerospace Corp by that time) and used the classification level to keep other people out as well. He ran it as a small, tight program. But that was in direct response to what he hated about the Schriever/Western Development Division/Ramo-Wooldridge arrangement.That's just one example, but this kind of stuff reverberated a lot, particularly during the establishment of the NRO. The Air Force side wanted to use outside technical support (from TRW by then), but the CIA went in the opposite direction and they built that technical support in-house, inside the CIA. Lots of friction ensued.
The Air Force looked at what NASA was tasked to do, and looked at the management structure then in place. This is why it's important to note just how early-on NASA was in organizing itself to accomplish the "manned satellite program," because this resonated with the early struggles the AF had in organizing and managing their ICBM programs.With all of this in mind, the Air Force told STG that they, the AF, had decided to place the project management and quality control management functions for their ICBM programs into an outside group, Space Technology Laboratories -- later to become TRW. The AF further told STG that they, the STG, were trying to take on these same functions themselves, and tried to provide some of the rationale as to why the AF decided to sub-contract these functions.Later, of course, during Gemini and Apollo, STG did contract out a completely separate inspection and quality control function, though still under the control of an MSC program office, so the advice from the AF did not go unheard.
As for designing and building spacecraft in-house, NASA does this in part to stay as a "smart buyer."
QuoteAs for designing and building spacecraft in-house, NASA does this in part to stay as a "smart buyer." They tried once to move construction of a space probe from JPL to contractors to "save money " and "cut costs" - that was Mariner 10. Well, Mariner 10 got all kind of hair-raising glitches on his way to Mercury, so much that they didn't tried it again, at least not imediately.
IIRC, the first probe NASA just contracted out, in re construction, was Lunar Orbiter, built by Boeing based on a competitive bid -- again, IIRC. But it was operated by JPL, wasn't it?
Quote from: the_other_Doug on 07/06/2016 07:20 pmIIRC, the first probe NASA just contracted out, in re construction, was Lunar Orbiter, built by Boeing based on a competitive bid -- again, IIRC. But it was operated by JPL, wasn't it?I believe it was NASA Langley.