Author Topic: Running across old Apollo engineers  (Read 1875 times)

Offline the_other_Doug

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Running across old Apollo engineers
« on: 06/29/2015 08:28 pm »
So, as I've noted before, I do phone support for a big, national company.  That means I occasionally run across people who are famous, or more importantly, people who are famous to me.

Today I spoke with the daughter of John Healey, the guy who became Mr. Spacecraft 101 after the Apollo 1 fire.  I talked with his daughter for a few minutes about it.  Healey himself is in his 90s, and plays a round of golf a couple of times a week.

Gotta tell you, I was really geeked out...
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline Moskit

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Re: Running across old Apollo engineers
« Reply #1 on: 06/30/2015 08:11 am »
It must have been a nice feeling of excitement :-)

Offline rocketguy101

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Re: Running across old Apollo engineers
« Reply #2 on: 06/30/2015 11:28 pm »
Our rocket club had a demo booth setup at a local crafter fair...my 1/100th Saturn V was on display.  An older gentleman walked up and said "I worked on those".  Turns out he worked for IBM on the IU.  We geeked out and asked him to pose with the rocket.  To protect his privacy, I don't show his face, but here he is pointing to "his part"... I think he got a kick out of his "rock star" moment :)

Offline styler

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Re: Running across old Apollo engineers
« Reply #3 on: 07/01/2015 01:33 am »
Very cool.

Doing interviews for one of the censuses in a community in the Northeast I met a man who had worked at KSC during the entire Apollo Project. I can't recall at this moment if he worked on capsules or rockets, but it was humbling to meet someone who had hands on vehicles in each mission.
STS-2, STS-131, ...

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Running across old Apollo engineers
« Reply #4 on: 07/01/2015 02:10 am »
Yeah.  I was impressed at even this glancing contact, because Healey was the managing engineer for CSM-101 after the Fire.  He not only had his hands on that vehicle, he spent hundreds of hours inside of it as it was torn apart and then rebuilt.  That leaves me in extreme awe.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline Ronpur50

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Re: Running across old Apollo engineers
« Reply #5 on: 07/01/2015 01:00 pm »
I had an instructor at my community college in Illinois by the name of John W. Costello.  One day, he drew a rocket stage on the white board and wrote "RP-1" and "LOX" in the tanks.  I asked if that was an S-1C and he said he had worked on the S-1C stage at one time.  He had worked for Boeing.   I never really got a chance to talk to him much about it, and unfortunately, he passed away in 2011. I suppose it is a long shot that anyone around here knew him.

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