Author Topic: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder  (Read 4464 times)

Offline catdlr

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Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« on: 06/29/2016 10:08 pm »
Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder shaped California aerospace

LA Times:  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-simon-ramo-20160628-snap-story.html

Quote
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.

Quote
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.”

« Last Edit: 06/29/2016 10:10 pm by catdlr »
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Offline Archibald

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #1 on: 06/30/2016 08:53 am »
WOW - 103 years ? I didn't knew he was still alive.

What a lengthy and productive life he had.
Together with General Bernard Schriever they grew up the ICBM program from zero, into a very impressive force of Polaris and Minuteman.

For the anecdote, Ramo was proposed the job of NASA administrator in 1969, when the Nixon admnistration sought to replace Tom Paine (a democrat lost in a republican admnistration). They also asked Schriever. Both man refused - post-Apollo 11 planning was a hot potato if not a quagmire that ultimately burned Tom Paine himself.

May he rest in peace.
« Last Edit: 06/30/2016 08:58 am by Archibald »
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Offline edkyle99

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #3 on: 07/01/2016 11:36 pm »
The following, excellent web site (filled with endless gems if you keep digging)
http://www.sdfo.org/stl/
offers a little taste of what Ramo and associates were doing during the very earliest days of the Space Age (even before there was a NASA).  Space Technology Laboratories, created by Ramo-Wooldridge Corp., developed the early Pioneer satellites that made the first U.S. lunar attempts, Explorer 6, which made the first image of Earth from space, and the like.  These tiny satellites were seriously advanced for their time.  Too advanced as it turned out in some instances.  For years I thought that those Pioneers were merely trying to fly near the Moon.  It turns out they were attempting to orbit the Moon with at least some of them - in 1959!

Most of the new Aerospace Corporation's staff came from STL when the former was created in 1960.  The intersection of El Segundo Blvd and Douglas Street is still, in my mind, the Times Square of the U.S. missile and space programs.

 - Ed Kyle   
« Last Edit: 07/01/2016 11:41 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #4 on: 07/01/2016 11:51 pm »
A gentleman at the forefront of spaceflight, thank you for your many contributions. May you rest in peace...
"The laws of physics are unforgiving"
~Rob: Physics instructor, Aviator

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #5 on: 07/05/2016 03:01 pm »
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.
« Last Edit: 07/05/2016 03:54 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #6 on: 07/05/2016 06:21 pm »
Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder shaped California aerospace

LA Times:  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-simon-ramo-20160628-snap-story.html

Quote
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.

Quote
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.”



I'm too lazy to do it, but I think that LA Times article has a bunch of problems/mistakes. Off the top of my head:

-it was General Schriever, not Eisenhower, who approached Ramo-Wooldridge (note that Schriever is never mentioned in the article, which is a major oversight)
-they set up shop in a former Catholic school, not a church. Now there was possibly a church attached to the school, but they needed offices, not a big room with a lot of pews
-I think it was Schriever who made the comment about the first missile failure, not Ramo


Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #7 on: 07/05/2016 07:36 pm »
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.

There is a very good example of this in NASA's official history of Project Mercury, "This New Ocean."  In 1959, as the Air Force began to work with a fledgling NASA to define what it meant to "man-rate" an Atlas launch vehicle, Schriever and his team made a very serious presentation to NASA's Space Task Group (STG), which would later become the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, but which at the time was still Bob Gilruth's PARD grown large, administratively set up as a part of the new Goddard Space Center but still operating out of facilities sited at Langley in Virginia.

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.  To accomplish Mercury, though, under the budget they were given, they had to keep these functions in-house, and never actually moved project administration functions for any of their manned spaceflight programs outside of NASA.  (I will add the caveat that NASA worked with the Bell Telephone Company to "encourage" the creation of Bellcomm, a company that basically existed solely to provide NASA a wide variety of outside support, from science planning to mission planning to investigations of various technology breakthroughs that might be applicable to NASA HSF programs. As more of a catch-all contractor, though, Bellcomm never served the same kind of function to NASA that STL did for the AF's ICBM programs.)

The fact that the Air Force made these kinds of recommendations to the STG, based on their own positive experience with Ramo-Woolridge, was impressive, though, and a testimony to just how important STL was to the Air Force in their Atlas development program.  And a testament to an individual who stepped up and provided a needed helping hand to an important program at a crucial moment in history.

Godspeed, sir.  Godspeed.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #8 on: 07/05/2016 08:32 pm »
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. 

A key thing to keep in mind is that NASA and the Air Force were civilian and military agencies, respectively, and that affected their hiring and personnel retention policies. One of the things that drove Schriever to go to Ramo-Wooldridge in the first place is the fact that the uniformed military transfers people out of jobs just as they start to learn how to do them effectively. (I've said this to Air Force officers who have laughed in agreement, noting that they finally figured out how to do their job just as their transfer orders came in.)

Schriever figured that the ICBM task (and later the space mission) was so complex that there was no way that uniformed officers would become as knowledgeable about it as they needed to be. One result would be that the contractors building the hardware could lie to the Air Force officers and nobody would know it. So Schriever needed a support contractor full of smart people who would stay in their jobs a long time. Some Air Force officers were insulted by this, believing that they were smart enough to oversee these programs. And some of them were. But the average Air Force officer did not have an engineering degree or an advanced management degree and was not capable of doing it.

NASA was a young agency, but it did have the possibility of hiring people and keeping them in their jobs for 5-10-15 years so that they gained experience and knowledge and would be able to understand the hardware that they were buying. (More on that in the next post.)


Offline Blackstar

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #9 on: 07/05/2016 08:39 pm »
Something that a lot of people on this forum seem oblivious about is the reason why NASA occasionally builds spacecraft--and even designs rockets--in house. Part of that could be traced to tradition (for want of a better word)--NASA does this because they have always done this. They essentially did the preliminary engineering work on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Saturn and shuttle in-house, so they think that they are capable of and need to do that for SLS/Orion. I don't want to debate the merits of that, but it does stem from these issues I brought up above, and the early formation of the agency.

As for designing and building spacecraft in-house, NASA does this in part to stay as a "smart buyer." What this means is that although a lot of spacecraft can be built by contractors with NASA overseeing the contracts, the agency leadership (and center leadership) believes that in order for NASA to effectively oversee contractors, they have to have their own skills at building spacecraft. So some spacecraft and many instruments are built at NASA centers (primarily Goddard). The result is that when it comes to buying stuff, if a contractor comes in and tries to spin what is going on, the NASA procurement officer can call up a NASA civil servant and say "Look at these design specs and tell me if they make sense to you." That gives NASA a powerful experience base for dealing with contractors. I know some ex-NASA and ex-contractor people who think that it works very well for the agency. So when people say that NASA should "simply contract out for everything" they are usually unaware of this issue.
« Last Edit: 07/05/2016 08:39 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Archibald

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #10 on: 07/06/2016 09:35 am »
Quote
As 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.
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Offline Blackstar

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #11 on: 07/06/2016 12:42 pm »
Quote
As 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.

JPL is a special case because they can essentially act like a government entity for many things, but they are CalTech. They also do contract out a lot of stuff. Is InSight a JPL project or a contractor?

I have heard current and former NASA officials talk about this "smart buyer" thing and concede that building a spacecraft in-house can cost more money, but that it's necessary to do because it gives the government skills that are useful in dealing with contractors.

Now an interesting question is how does this compare to the military? The military does have some of this capability. I think that in particular the Navy has long had an in-house manufacturing capability for certain things. For instance, naval guns. And the NRL used to build prototype satellites. However, they have much less of that capability than in the past. And there are some areas where they have never had it. Whereas NASA Goddard can build a satellite, the Air Force does not build an airplane.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #12 on: 07/06/2016 07:20 pm »
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?
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline Jim

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #13 on: 07/06/2016 07:36 pm »
Pioneer, OGO and some Explorers were done by TRW, TIROS - RCA, Syncom - Hughes, before LO

Offline Proponent

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #14 on: 07/06/2016 08:41 pm »
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?

I  believe it was NASA Langley.

Offline Jim

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #15 on: 07/06/2016 11:30 pm »
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?

I  believe it was NASA Langley.

Langley procured the spacecraft and ran the program but JPL operated them

Offline Coastal Ron

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Re: Simon Ramo dies at 103; TRW co-founder
« Reply #16 on: 07/06/2016 11:44 pm »
As a kid if we drove by the TRW building in LA my dad would mention that he had known one of the founders.  From the bio of Simon Ramo (specifically fire-control systems), he was probably the one that my dad knew, since my dad has also been at Hughes Aircraft at that time.

That must have been quite a time to be in aerospace, with all the projects requiring such advanced capabilities.  And TRW certainly played a big part in all of that.

Quite a legacy for Mr. Ramo.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

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