1
00:00:06,569 --> 00:00:13,569
Allen Louviere started life as an airplane
designer, went to Lamar University in Texas

2
00:00:15,089 --> 00:00:20,579
and then worked at General Dynamics in Fort
Worth.

3
00:00:20,579 --> 00:00:23,289
You told me about the YB-57.

4
00:00:23,289 --> 00:00:30,289
I don't know what other planes you worked
on up there, but -- Oh, B-58s, B-36s, F16s,

5
00:00:33,850 --> 00:00:34,580
F111s and B-57Fs.

6
00:00:34,580 --> 00:00:40,100
Then they wanted to send him all around the
world and had a young family.

7
00:00:40,100 --> 00:00:45,860
And that was about the time that Johnson Space
Center, which at that time was called the

8
00:00:45,860 --> 00:00:50,370
Manned Space Flight Center, was getting started
in Houston in 1962.

9
00:00:50,370 --> 00:00:51,840
So, Allen came to work.

10
00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:57,539
And his specialty is mechanical systems.

11
00:00:57,539 --> 00:01:03,109
We had a little discussion last night about
some of the things that he has designed, but

12
00:01:03,109 --> 00:01:08,160
for me one of the most amazing is the landing
gear on the Lunar Module.

13
00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:15,160
I mean when you think that you can actually
design the first piece of the hardware that

14
00:01:15,439 --> 00:01:19,009
touches down on another planet that's pretty
exciting.

15
00:01:19,009 --> 00:01:25,880
And, like most of the people who have been
lecturing, he went onto work in similar systems

16
00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:26,450
for the Shuttle.

17
00:01:26,450 --> 00:01:29,289
So, he also worked on the landing gear.

18
00:01:29,289 --> 00:01:31,450
You can see a piece of tire here.

19
00:01:31,450 --> 00:01:38,360
We'll talk about that landing gear, payload
bay doors, and robotic arms.

20
00:01:38,360 --> 00:01:44,320
And so he's going to share with us some of
the experiences, both from the subsystem design

21
00:01:44,320 --> 00:01:47,810
point of view and then from the bigger systems
engineering picture.

22
00:01:47,810 --> 00:01:49,229
So, Allen, it is all yours.

23
00:01:49,229 --> 00:01:49,479
Thank you.

24
00:01:49,399 --> 00:01:54,250
The Lunar landing was sort of interesting.

25
00:01:54,250 --> 00:02:00,350
The big problem was we didn't know what the
lunar surface was like so you didn't know

26
00:02:00,350 --> 00:02:04,030
how to size the pad, which is always interesting.

27
00:02:04,030 --> 00:02:09,780
The landing gear, we are going to talk about
today, was much easier and it will do.

28
00:02:09,780 --> 00:02:12,750
We're just going to talk about just mechanical
systems.

29
00:02:12,750 --> 00:02:18,230
It's not as romantic or ingratiating, but
you've got to have them.

30
00:02:18,230 --> 00:02:21,359
So, some of the avionics and other systems
that you will see.

31
00:02:21,359 --> 00:02:25,579
Actually, I should say one thing.

32
00:02:25,579 --> 00:02:29,540
From the point of view of space engineering
in general.

33
00:02:29,540 --> 00:02:34,510
When you're building satellites or other space
systems, the one thing that you try to avoid

34
00:02:34,510 --> 00:02:38,889
at all costs, I think this is far to say,
is any mechanisms.

35
00:02:38,889 --> 00:02:45,859
Because you send a mechanism into space and
they fail.

36
00:02:45,859 --> 00:02:49,199
They get too cold, they get too hot, they
get vacuum welded.

37
00:02:49,199 --> 00:02:54,370
Now, sometimes when you have people on a mission
they can fix it.

38
00:02:54,370 --> 00:03:00,560
I mean if you remember Apollo 16, the Lunar
Rover, one of the fenders broke off.

39
00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:06,419
And so they actually had to make another fender
out of their checklist so that the dust didn't

40
00:03:06,419 --> 00:03:07,560
get all over them.

41
00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:12,870
But basically that is the fear that all mechanical
designers live in is that you're designing

42
00:03:12,870 --> 00:03:15,880
these things to work in an incredible environment.

43
00:03:15,880 --> 00:03:18,440
And I'm sure you will talk about the landing
gear.

44
00:03:18,440 --> 00:03:18,690
That is one thing.

45
00:03:18,630 --> 00:03:22,650
We know how to build landing gear for airplanes,
but how do you keep them alive for two weeks

46
00:03:22,650 --> 00:03:25,630
in space in a rather unfriendly environment?

47
00:03:25,630 --> 00:03:27,570
Well, the professor is right.

48
00:03:27,570 --> 00:03:32,010
The problem you have is when you get these
mechanical systems, if you have a lot of linkages,

49
00:03:32,010 --> 00:03:33,850
you're afraid they're going to weld themselves
together.

50
00:03:33,850 --> 00:03:39,970
And we've never had that happen but it certainly
could.

51
00:03:39,970 --> 00:03:44,728
The division I was in had all of these pieces.

52
00:03:44,728 --> 00:03:47,130
The landing gear.

53
00:03:47,130 --> 00:03:48,340
We had all the doors on Orbiter.

54
00:03:48,340 --> 00:03:54,228
I think there were 25 or 35 doors on Orbiter
that had to have mechanisms that had to open

55
00:03:54,228 --> 00:03:56,000
and close.

56
00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:57,160
We built the repair tools.

57
00:03:57,160 --> 00:04:00,359
We had a set of tools for these fellows to
us.

58
00:04:00,359 --> 00:04:06,220
And if that payload door didn't close that
was really a bad day.

59
00:04:06,220 --> 00:04:13,220
We put some tools onboard, a little wrench
and a lot of cutting tools, and you will see

60
00:04:13,880 --> 00:04:15,630
some of that.

61
00:04:15,630 --> 00:04:19,899
The manipulator, these are pretty well things
that had been done before.

62
00:04:19,899 --> 00:04:22,680
We had never done one of these before.

63
00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:25,660
That's a whole different animal.

64
00:04:25,660 --> 00:04:29,290
The separation system was for the separation
system for the external tank.

65
00:04:29,290 --> 00:04:31,790
There were three big separation systems.

66
00:04:31,790 --> 00:04:37,630
It was not only a mechanical system but it
was a pyro-system, it was an explosive-type

67
00:04:37,630 --> 00:04:37,880
system.
Believe or not, we had the ejection seats
on about the first four or five flights.

68
00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:48,790
We used the SR-71 Blackbird seats.

69
00:04:48,790 --> 00:04:51,310
And we never had to use them, thank goodness.

70
00:04:51,310 --> 00:04:54,250
We also had the docking system.

71
00:04:54,250 --> 00:04:56,460
We had the Apollo system.

72
00:04:56,460 --> 00:04:57,600
We had the Apollo-Soyuz.

73
00:04:57,600 --> 00:05:04,020
And, if you look at the Orbiter, it is very
close to Apollo-Soyuz with a little bit of

74
00:05:04,020 --> 00:05:05,600
modification to it.

75
00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:06,820
That's the whole system.

76
00:05:06,820 --> 00:05:11,460
But, fear not, we're not going to talk about
all of those because that's just too many

77
00:05:11,460 --> 00:05:12,220
to talk about.

78
00:05:12,220 --> 00:05:13,110
We're going to talk about two.

79
00:05:13,110 --> 00:05:19,630
We're going to talk about the landing gear,
wheels, brakes and tires.

80
00:05:19,630 --> 00:05:25,440
And we've been building these for a long time.

81
00:05:25,440 --> 00:05:30,380
It's more empirical design than I ever realized
when we got into it.

82
00:05:30,380 --> 00:05:32,880
We had never built a manipulator before.

83
00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:39,880
And we started this as a technology study,
and it ended up being the main cargo handling

84
00:05:39,980 --> 00:05:43,280
piece on the Orbiter.

85
00:05:43,280 --> 00:05:46,630
Also, we did a lot of coordination and integration.

86
00:05:46,630 --> 00:05:49,700
All mechanical systems depend a lot on other
people.

87
00:05:49,700 --> 00:05:56,630
He tells me that he wants to emphasize systems
engineering, and I would like to second that

88
00:05:56,630 --> 00:06:00,060
because it's very important that you know
that.

89
00:06:00,060 --> 00:06:04,070
When you look at the systems engineering -- By
the way, you don't have to be silent.

90
00:06:04,070 --> 00:06:06,360
If you want to speak, now is the time.

91
00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:08,360
I'm just here for a day.

92
00:06:08,360 --> 00:06:15,360
I'm going to talk about this.

93
00:06:16,190 --> 00:06:18,620
All engineers love the design part.

94
00:06:18,620 --> 00:06:19,750
I did.

95
00:06:19,750 --> 00:06:24,060
I found out that there was a little more to
it than I first suspected.

96
00:06:24,060 --> 00:06:30,630
If you look at requirements, schedules, cost
and weight, most of the engineering work you

97
00:06:30,630 --> 00:06:32,450
think would be here in the requirements.

98
00:06:32,450 --> 00:06:38,490
Once they are set, sometimes they're very
difficult to change.

99
00:06:38,490 --> 00:06:41,630
On Orbiter they were very difficult to change.

100
00:06:41,630 --> 00:06:47,100
And we may have gotten some requirements that
maybe we could have done a little better with

101
00:06:47,100 --> 00:06:48,070
had we changed them early.

102
00:06:48,070 --> 00:06:52,760
And you will see the results of that, particularly
on the landing gear.

103
00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:56,120
That is probably the number one thing that
we worry about at Johnson.

104
00:06:56,120 --> 00:06:58,870
We like to keep these guys where they come
back.

105
00:06:58,870 --> 00:07:05,870
Now, these pieces right here are really engineering
sort of things.

106
00:07:09,050 --> 00:07:13,110
They relate to physics and maybe even Newtonian
mechanics.

107
00:07:13,110 --> 00:07:15,150
These don't.

108
00:07:15,150 --> 00:07:19,060
Those are really estimates that somebody makes
early.

109
00:07:19,060 --> 00:07:24,240
And what they end being is a refinement process.

110
00:07:24,240 --> 00:07:29,480
Most of these equations these fellows use
from here are really empirically developed

111
00:07:29,480 --> 00:07:31,290
over many years.

112
00:07:31,290 --> 00:07:34,050
They say here is the way this goes.

113
00:07:34,050 --> 00:07:38,230
But all of these end up being estimates.

114
00:07:38,230 --> 00:07:43,180
You think you're going to work there, but
these three right here, schedule, cost and

115
00:07:43,180 --> 00:07:49,110
particularly for us in the aerospace weight
turns out to be a big, big driver.

116
00:07:49,110 --> 00:07:56,110
In fact, it will tell you what you're going
to have to do in many cases.

117
00:07:56,290 --> 00:07:57,590
Well, we're going to talk a lot about that.

118
00:07:57,590 --> 00:08:01,680
We'll talk a little bit about test.

119
00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:07,639
I presume you all, in your labs, do a little
testing of some sort.

120
00:08:07,639 --> 00:08:09,639
But we do a lot.

121
00:08:09,639 --> 00:08:13,050
We do development testing early on.

122
00:08:13,050 --> 00:08:15,949
For the manipulator, we did a little bit more
than that.

123
00:08:15,949 --> 00:08:20,570
We do qualification testing which is I'm going
to go test this thing and see if it meets

124
00:08:20,570 --> 00:08:25,330
all the specifications that somebody has designed
for it or the requirements.

125
00:08:25,330 --> 00:08:29,949
And last but not least, after all of that
is done, you do what is called a verification

126
00:08:29,949 --> 00:08:31,699
and certification test.

127
00:08:31,699 --> 00:08:34,799
And it should be ready for flight.

128
00:08:34,799 --> 00:08:39,309
I don't know what industries you're going
to work on, but even in avionics, if all of

129
00:08:39,309 --> 00:08:44,820
your avionics people, there's a mechanical
guy.

130
00:08:44,820 --> 00:08:51,500
Even in avionics you'll have some sort of
validation and certification test.

131
00:08:51,500 --> 00:08:56,490
And these will drive you, too.

132
00:08:56,490 --> 00:09:00,020
After all this is done, we did a flight test
program.

133
00:09:00,020 --> 00:09:04,589
And the initial test that came back from there
made us do some changes on this.

134
00:09:04,589 --> 00:09:09,110
And then you always get this.

135
00:09:09,110 --> 00:09:13,020
Engineers are never satisfied with just making
it good.

136
00:09:13,020 --> 00:09:14,810
Better is what they want.

137
00:09:14,810 --> 00:09:16,790
And program managers, where is Aaron?

138
00:09:16,790 --> 00:09:18,540
He is not here today so I don't have to worry
about him.

139
00:09:18,540 --> 00:09:24,310
Program managers don't like that because what
happens is this goes up and this goes up and

140
00:09:24,310 --> 00:09:29,750
that slows down, and that's not what they
want to do so we have to go back and do that.

141
00:09:29,750 --> 00:09:35,920
Enough of the intro.

142
00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:41,710
These were essentially the first requirements
that I could conjure up after all these years.

143
00:09:41,710 --> 00:09:44,940
You've got to remember, this was 30 years
ago.

144
00:09:44,940 --> 00:09:51,940
Some of these may be a little off but they
are about right.

145
00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:55,150
It was going to be a freefall gear.

146
00:09:55,150 --> 00:10:01,490
We're just going to get it started, open the
doors and let the aerodynamics and just the

147
00:10:01,490 --> 00:10:06,750
weight of it drop that gear down and lock
it in place.

148
00:10:06,750 --> 00:10:09,750
The gear extension time was nominally ten
seconds.

149
00:10:09,750 --> 00:10:11,690
That was the max that we ever wanted it.

150
00:10:11,690 --> 00:10:16,080
It would probably go down at about six or
seven.

151
00:10:16,080 --> 00:10:21,990
And we normally said the landing velocity,
we don't want to drop that gear.

152
00:10:21,990 --> 00:10:26,020
Once the gear is down, we don't want to go
more than 225 knots.

153
00:10:26,020 --> 00:10:31,380
Remember, this is in the early `70s and we're
still trying to figure out what we're going

154
00:10:31,380 --> 00:10:31,630
to do.

155
00:10:31,570 --> 00:10:35,810
But you've got to have some requirements to
start with and these were the ones you started

156
00:10:35,810 --> 00:10:36,850
with.

157
00:10:36,850 --> 00:10:37,649
We had a runway.

158
00:10:37,649 --> 00:10:40,680
And we said the runway is going to be 12,500
feet.

159
00:10:40,680 --> 00:10:47,680
We would like 15,000 feet, but because of
the flight that the Orbiter took there were

160
00:10:49,149 --> 00:10:54,460
landing sites all over the world so we had
to be sure that we'd get the landing sites

161
00:10:54,460 --> 00:10:57,620
with the 12,500 feet at least.

162
00:10:57,620 --> 00:11:00,460
Cross-winds.

163
00:11:00,460 --> 00:11:06,370
When you're coming in for a landing, if you
have a cross-wind, 15 knots was about it.

164
00:11:06,370 --> 00:11:08,760
We'll chat a little bit about that.

165
00:11:08,760 --> 00:11:14,690
The deceleration, that was just for the brakes.

166
00:11:14,690 --> 00:11:18,500
We had three hydraulic sources that we could
use.

167
00:11:18,500 --> 00:11:23,250
There were some auxiliary power units in the
back that powered up the hydraulic system,

168
00:11:23,250 --> 00:11:25,899
and we had about three sources.

169
00:11:25,899 --> 00:11:29,190
Most air craft just have two and a pneumonic
system.

170
00:11:29,190 --> 00:11:31,480
We did not have a pneumatic system.

171
00:11:31,480 --> 00:11:35,020
But that worked very well, by the way.

172
00:11:35,020 --> 00:11:37,290
The steering is nose gear steering.

173
00:11:37,290 --> 00:11:43,649
And the hand controllers you could steer the
front nose gear.

174
00:11:43,649 --> 00:11:46,120
And it would go plus or minus nine degrees.

175
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:51,480
The turnover angle, if you just took two wheels
and turned it over, the max that you could

176
00:11:51,480 --> 00:11:54,550
ever get out of that was about 63 degrees.

177
00:11:54,550 --> 00:11:57,640
This set of requirements is about what we
started with.

178
00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:04,640
And, not to stop you, here are some more.

179
00:12:05,970 --> 00:12:10,360
These turn out to be really pretty critical.

180
00:12:10,360 --> 00:12:17,360
We will call them critical conditions that
the Orbiter has to meet.

181
00:12:19,240 --> 00:12:23,300
And this is landing weights.

182
00:12:23,300 --> 00:12:26,000
And that is just how fast you're coming in
when you hit the runway.

183
00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:33,000
At 214,000 pounds, we were going to say we
can take a sink rate of 9.6 feet per second,

184
00:12:34,500 --> 00:12:37,490
which is pretty fast.

185
00:12:37,490 --> 00:12:38,290
And this is nominal.

186
00:12:38,290 --> 00:12:43,050
If you go to Orbit and you come back and you
make a nominal landing.

187
00:12:43,050 --> 00:12:47,089
If it's 230,000 pounds, it's about six feet
per second.

188
00:12:47,089 --> 00:12:49,580
I came in yesterday on an 880.

189
00:12:49,580 --> 00:12:56,580
I asked the pilot what he landed at, and it
was 130 knots.

190
00:12:58,080 --> 00:13:03,240
And I think the weight of that thing is about
150,000 to 170,000 pounds.

191
00:13:03,240 --> 00:13:08,830
We're coming in with no engines so we're coming
in pretty fast to be able to do that and set

192
00:13:08,830 --> 00:13:13,339
down.

193
00:13:13,339 --> 00:13:14,709
This is an abort condition.

194
00:13:14,709 --> 00:13:19,209
If we're on a mission and the controller is
calling abort, you take off, turn around and

195
00:13:19,209 --> 00:13:22,630
come back and come back to the Cape.

196
00:13:22,630 --> 00:13:27,160
In that case, we have a payload onboard so
the weight is going to be a little heavier.

197
00:13:27,160 --> 00:13:31,209
Now, the pilot has to be a little better here
because he's got to have a little lower sink

198
00:13:31,209 --> 00:13:35,820
rate because we don't want to take all that
load in the gear.

199
00:13:35,820 --> 00:13:41,000
In fact, the transatlantic landing, when was
working, there were only two sites.

200
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:48,000
One was at Dakar across the Atlantic and the
other was at Rota, Spain.

201
00:13:51,430 --> 00:13:58,430
I think Newfoundland now is one for the high
inclination ones.

202
00:13:59,200 --> 00:14:01,800
And AOA was once around.

203
00:14:01,800 --> 00:14:05,769
You'd go up to orbit and you'd come right
back down the next time around so you'd get

204
00:14:05,769 --> 00:14:07,000
back to the Cape.

205
00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:10,730
That was essentially what we had.

206
00:14:10,730 --> 00:14:17,730
This particular one was a driver also because,
in the early days, the Air Force wanted to

207
00:14:17,870 --> 00:14:23,980
have a mission like this where you'd go up
once, you deploy a satellite and you come

208
00:14:23,980 --> 00:14:24,740
back around.

209
00:14:24,740 --> 00:14:27,459
And they were only one single orbit and you'd
come back around.

210
00:14:27,459 --> 00:14:33,290
Now, getting those payload bay doors open
and getting the satellite out was, to say

211
00:14:33,290 --> 00:14:37,120
the least, an interesting design problem to
do that.

212
00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:38,250
You don't have a lot of time.

213
00:14:38,250 --> 00:14:41,800
Anyway, these were the other drivers that
you had to do.

214
00:14:41,800 --> 00:14:46,560
These were the ones that really drive you
because they'll tell you what the loads are

215
00:14:46,560 --> 00:14:51,430
in the system.

216
00:14:51,430 --> 00:14:58,430
And this just tells you that all NASA guys
have these acronyms.

217
00:14:59,180 --> 00:15:06,180
This is a set of circumstances that says we
want fail operational, fail operation, fail

218
00:15:07,149 --> 00:15:07,910
safe.

219
00:15:07,910 --> 00:15:13,910
So, if it fails first you can still operate
it, if it fails again at least you're fail

220
00:15:13,910 --> 00:15:16,490
safe and you at least preserve the crew.

221
00:15:16,490 --> 00:15:19,870
We usually use fail op, fail op, fail safe.

222
00:15:19,870 --> 00:15:22,980
In this case, in the landing gear, we only
had two.

223
00:15:22,980 --> 00:15:27,779
But we had a whole lot of ways to get this
gear down.

224
00:15:27,779 --> 00:15:29,140
And I'll show you.

225
00:15:29,140 --> 00:15:36,140
It's kind of complicated to take a look at
but if you release the gear it starts to fall

226
00:15:37,140 --> 00:15:42,990
just by gravity, but then we have a little
hydraulic assist and then we have a pyro backup.

227
00:15:42,990 --> 00:15:46,610
Whether you want that pyro to fire or not,
it's going to fire every time you drop the

228
00:15:46,610 --> 00:15:47,490
gear.

229
00:15:47,490 --> 00:15:50,970
So when the gear comes out, it comes out backwards.

230
00:15:50,970 --> 00:15:56,459
And the airflow is this way which drops the
gear down and locks it into place.

231
00:15:56,459 --> 00:15:58,829
That gear is not a light gear.

232
00:15:58,829 --> 00:16:00,209
I mean it's pretty heavy.

233
00:16:00,209 --> 00:16:02,430
You're talking about 400 or 500 pounds coming
down.

234
00:16:02,430 --> 00:16:04,600
And that's just the nose.

235
00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:06,790
The main gears are larger.

236
00:16:06,790 --> 00:16:11,800
And then the mains operate about the same
way.

237
00:16:11,800 --> 00:16:13,560
And I'll show you where all this stuff is.

238
00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:17,370
I have a little drawing here that will get
you going.

239
00:16:17,370 --> 00:16:23,320
The professor and I talked a little bit about
design.

240
00:16:23,320 --> 00:16:26,290
Yes.

241
00:16:26,290 --> 00:16:32,620
You only drop the landing gear a few seconds
before landing.

242
00:16:32,620 --> 00:16:37,860
If one fails you still have time to do all
the others?

243
00:16:37,860 --> 00:16:38,399
I'm sorry?

244
00:16:38,399 --> 00:16:40,480
You only drop the landing gear a few seconds
before touchdown.

245
00:16:40,480 --> 00:16:40,730
Yeah.

246
00:16:40,640 --> 00:16:44,950
If one method fails, did you still have enough
time to try one of the others?

247
00:16:44,950 --> 00:16:48,920
We decided that all three of these were going
to be in play every time.

248
00:16:48,920 --> 00:16:52,079
We made sure that we got that gear down.

249
00:16:52,079 --> 00:16:55,899
That's truly a bad day if that gear is not
down.

250
00:16:55,899 --> 00:17:01,240
All you do from the cockpit is just put down
the gear handle, and then everything works

251
00:17:01,240 --> 00:17:01,920
at once.

252
00:17:01,920 --> 00:17:03,450
Everything works at once.

253
00:17:03,450 --> 00:17:08,019
You don't have to decide has the gear gone
down and, if not, do something else.

254
00:17:08,019 --> 00:17:11,769
It just all works.

255
00:17:11,769 --> 00:17:18,638
I think you'll find that we tend, at Johnson
Space Center, to overdesign on the side of

256
00:17:18,638 --> 00:17:19,569
safety.

257
00:17:19,569 --> 00:17:22,230
And it really didn't matter to us anyway.

258
00:17:22,230 --> 00:17:29,230
We really want that gear to go down and lock
in place, and that's what this is all about.

259
00:17:30,049 --> 00:17:35,590
The other things that we worried about, and
probably where the requirements on this particular

260
00:17:35,590 --> 00:17:42,090
vehicle were the weakest, we said we could
turn this thing around in 30 to 60 days at

261
00:17:42,090 --> 00:17:44,039
the Cape after every flight.

262
00:17:44,039 --> 00:17:48,559
Well, that really didn't work out that way.

263
00:17:48,559 --> 00:17:53,539
When you have that many systems onboard and
there is so much to take a look at after you've

264
00:17:53,539 --> 00:17:58,399
gone to a flight, just the post flight operations
is a long time.

265
00:17:58,399 --> 00:18:00,519
And I'm not sure we ever made 30 days ever.

266
00:18:00,519 --> 00:18:05,440
We may have made 60 once, I think, but I'm
not sure.

267
00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:09,619
And the other thing was the pad stay time.

268
00:18:09,619 --> 00:18:14,289
First flight, as I recall, was on the pad
for about four to six months.

269
00:18:14,289 --> 00:18:18,809
And now you've got to make all your systems
work.

270
00:18:18,809 --> 00:18:21,320
It's like having shelf-life on this thing.

271
00:18:21,320 --> 00:18:22,999
You've got to make this thing work.

272
00:18:22,999 --> 00:18:25,629
It's got to function.

273
00:18:25,629 --> 00:18:30,100
That was the other one and that was a big
problem for us, particularly from tires.

274
00:18:30,100 --> 00:18:31,840
They leak.

275
00:18:31,840 --> 00:18:38,840
You sure don't want to have those tires leaking
in about four to six months.

276
00:18:39,210 --> 00:18:43,029
We had no landing propulsion system.

277
00:18:43,029 --> 00:18:49,480
Once those guys came in, it was all energy
management from an altitude all the way.

278
00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:55,289
And the landing velocities were rather high,
the weights were rather high.

279
00:18:55,289 --> 00:18:56,039
Probably some of you fly.

280
00:18:56,039 --> 00:18:56,379
Let's see.

281
00:18:56,379 --> 00:19:01,879
A 737 weighs about, I'd say, 160,000 to 170,000
pounds.

282
00:19:01,879 --> 00:19:08,489
And they come in just right at about a maximum
of 175 miles an hour, but we're coming in

283
00:19:08,489 --> 00:19:14,169
with no engines at about 200.

284
00:19:14,169 --> 00:19:20,859
The runway touchdown point, I've got a little
drawing of a runway and I'll show you what

285
00:19:20,859 --> 00:19:24,600
that is, that turned out to be a real key
issue.

286
00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:31,169
When we started out that 12,500 feet I showed
you was actually 10,000.

287
00:19:31,169 --> 00:19:36,320
And after a while we decided without engines
and then without reverse thrusters we really

288
00:19:36,320 --> 00:19:36,999
couldn't do that.

289
00:19:36,999 --> 00:19:43,070
While that not only affected the Cape design
but it affected where in the world we could

290
00:19:43,070 --> 00:19:47,359
land this thing, I think Guam was the other
place.

291
00:19:47,359 --> 00:19:50,409
We could go to Anderson Air Force Base on
Guam, right?

292
00:19:50,409 --> 00:19:52,739
Yeah.

293
00:19:52,739 --> 00:19:59,739
And here is what frightens all mechanical
engineers, limited testing, where we're only

294
00:20:00,049 --> 00:20:01,480
going to have about three or four flights.

295
00:20:01,480 --> 00:20:03,019
We were going to have five.

296
00:20:03,019 --> 00:20:05,309
It worked so well that they decided to go
with four.

297
00:20:05,309 --> 00:20:11,509
And everybody gritted their teeth on that
one because we really wanted one more flight.

298
00:20:11,509 --> 00:20:18,509
These are some more requirements of sorts,
but these were outside requirements that you

299
00:20:18,830 --> 00:20:20,009
have to take what you get.

300
00:20:20,009 --> 00:20:24,889
And so, when you do design work or whatever
field you're going to work in, you're going

301
00:20:24,889 --> 00:20:28,320
to find you're not always your own boss on
this.

302
00:20:28,320 --> 00:20:30,489
You have to go with what you've got.

303
00:20:30,489 --> 00:20:33,269
And I think that's part of the system of engineering.

304
00:20:33,269 --> 00:20:39,220
We were told that the idea of moving the Orbiter
with the 747 wasn't brought up immediately

305
00:20:39,220 --> 00:20:46,220
and that it was going to tried to be move
with like strap-on engines.

306
00:20:48,509 --> 00:20:52,909
So this part about no end-flight retraction
[OVERLAPPING VOICES]?

307
00:20:52,909 --> 00:20:59,899
The first design of the Orbiter, actually,
the early designs had jet engines, but the

308
00:20:59,899 --> 00:21:01,940
weight -- Remember we talked about the weight
earlier?

309
00:21:01,940 --> 00:21:03,479
The weight just drove that out.

310
00:21:03,479 --> 00:21:05,289
We couldn't do that.

311
00:21:05,289 --> 00:21:10,179
Plus, when you reentered with those engines,
you've got another problem with all the heating.

312
00:21:10,179 --> 00:21:16,609
And you probably have the fuel that you have
to worry about so you've got a lot of problems.

313
00:21:16,609 --> 00:21:17,989
[UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]

314
00:21:17,989 --> 00:21:24,879
Would that have been a real big problem [UNINTELLIGIBLE
PHRASE]?

315
00:21:24,879 --> 00:21:27,919
Yeah, it would cost you money and weight.

316
00:21:27,919 --> 00:21:29,409
Remember those two things I told you up there?

317
00:21:29,409 --> 00:21:30,879
It would cost you money and weight.

318
00:21:30,879 --> 00:21:34,769
Remember now, Congress is a finicky bunch.

319
00:21:34,769 --> 00:21:38,049
You don't go back to them unless you really
have to, to get the money.

320
00:21:38,049 --> 00:21:40,899
If Aaron is here, he could probably give you
a lecture on that.

321
00:21:40,899 --> 00:21:47,899
He used to lecture me on that, as a matter
of fact.

322
00:21:48,859 --> 00:21:53,499
The Carrier Aircraft or ferry, one of the
guys in our division, a gentleman who just

323
00:21:53,499 --> 00:22:00,080
passed away recently, named John Kyker had
been a B-24 pilot.

324
00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:06,850
Actually, he and another fellow named Owen
Morris built a little model of the 747 and

325
00:22:06,850 --> 00:22:09,970
a model of the Orbiter.

326
00:22:09,970 --> 00:22:11,649
And they actually flew it.

327
00:22:11,649 --> 00:22:15,090
The wingspan was about like that.

328
00:22:15,090 --> 00:22:19,710
And they actually flew it to see if it would
be all right to put that Orbiter on top of

329
00:22:19,710 --> 00:22:20,249
that model.

330
00:22:20,249 --> 00:22:24,200
And, by golly, surprise, it worked like a
charm.

331
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:31,200
Also, when they flew that model, they found
that they had, on entry, a different setting

332
00:22:32,529 --> 00:22:36,149
on their elevon than what was being projected.

333
00:22:36,149 --> 00:22:42,989
And, low and behold, they went back and they
found, yes, they did and they changed it.

334
00:22:42,989 --> 00:22:46,460
We don't have any in-flight retraction for
what you were talking about.

335
00:22:46,460 --> 00:22:50,269
We would get the gear stored on the pad and
ready to go.

336
00:22:50,269 --> 00:22:55,450
And, as I said, we want to be sure it comes
down when we tell it to come down.

337
00:22:55,450 --> 00:23:02,450
Actually, in the hanger the Orbiter is up
on jacks.

338
00:23:03,059 --> 00:23:08,940
And one of the last things they do before
they wheel in a carrier mechanism that will

339
00:23:08,940 --> 00:23:14,399
take the Orbiter out over to the vehicle assembly
building, you have to push the gear up manually.

340
00:23:14,399 --> 00:23:20,210
And, actually, the final stage because it
has to actually go in and lock inside the

341
00:23:20,210 --> 00:23:25,729
locking mechanism, someone is up there basically
with a big pole and just push it up until

342
00:23:25,729 --> 00:23:29,149
you get it to click into place.

343
00:23:29,149 --> 00:23:29,840
And that's terrible.

344
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:32,090
There is no hydraulic system to reconnect
it.

345
00:23:32,090 --> 00:23:35,259
Well, we get a little bit of hydraulic help
but it's not enough.

346
00:23:35,259 --> 00:23:37,769
You have to get manual labor.

347
00:23:37,769 --> 00:23:42,659
But it's all because of the weight and cost
that we were talking about.

348
00:23:42,659 --> 00:23:45,840
And weight was really one of the big issues.

349
00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:50,859
When you go to work, you're going to find
out that all of those empirical things, not

350
00:23:50,859 --> 00:23:54,389
the design problems, not the Newtonian physics,
is what really gets you.

351
00:23:54,389 --> 00:24:01,389
Did they have any sort of like emergency barricades
at landing sites if a tire went?

352
00:24:02,090 --> 00:24:03,529
Yes, they did.

353
00:24:03,529 --> 00:24:08,859
At Dakar we put up a net at the end of it.

354
00:24:08,859 --> 00:24:13,440
And I think Dakar was one of the shorter runways.

355
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:17,340
I think we were worried that when we came
in at Dakar with the kind of peddles we were

356
00:24:17,340 --> 00:24:19,470
carrying that the Orbiter was going to be
very heavy.

357
00:24:19,470 --> 00:24:22,599
It would be this 256,000 pound thing.

358
00:24:22,599 --> 00:24:25,119
And that's a big thing with no engines.

359
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:28,059
And we'll talk about the brakes here a little
bit.

360
00:24:28,059 --> 00:24:33,419
The brakes were not really qualified for a
short stop on a heavy vehicle.

361
00:24:33,419 --> 00:24:38,349
Remember, in the early days we had no drag
shoot?

362
00:24:38,349 --> 00:24:39,149
No drag shoot.

363
00:24:39,149 --> 00:24:40,849
Well, we're going to talk about that, too.

364
00:24:40,849 --> 00:24:46,379
I'm going to try to talk about all this stuff
until you guys go to sleep or something.

365
00:24:46,379 --> 00:24:47,590
[LAUGHTER]

366
00:24:47,590 --> 00:24:52,450
Well, enough of that.

367
00:24:52,450 --> 00:24:52,989
One last thing.

368
00:24:52,989 --> 00:24:56,690
You will see that I'm worrying you to death
on requirements.

369
00:24:56,690 --> 00:25:02,149
Whether you like it or not, when you go into
engineering you're going to find that if you

370
00:25:02,149 --> 00:25:05,029
get the requirements right you'll probably
get the design right.

371
00:25:05,029 --> 00:25:09,340
If they are not right you're going to have
lots of trouble.

372
00:25:09,340 --> 00:25:10,859
We didn't get them all right.

373
00:25:10,859 --> 00:25:17,859
We didn't get them all right but it was good
engineering work.

374
00:25:19,289 --> 00:25:25,669
The tire pressure, we had to start somewhere
so we said here is what we're going to do.

375
00:25:25,669 --> 00:25:29,259
We're going to do some sizing on these tires.

376
00:25:29,259 --> 00:25:36,259
And, on the landing gear, we did this before
we even had a contractor, our first pressure

377
00:25:38,299 --> 00:25:40,259
was about 340.

378
00:25:40,259 --> 00:25:44,509
I think the tires on your car are around 35
psi or something like that, if you're lucky

379
00:25:44,509 --> 00:25:47,489
on a good day and they're not leaking.

380
00:25:47,489 --> 00:25:50,809
And the upgrade now is about 380.

381
00:25:50,809 --> 00:25:55,179
I think they want to go to 410.

382
00:25:55,179 --> 00:25:56,029
The wheel is aluminum.

383
00:25:56,029 --> 00:25:57,519
The axel is aluminum.

384
00:25:57,519 --> 00:25:59,299
We've actually bent the axel before.

385
00:25:59,299 --> 00:26:00,549
We've landed that thing.

386
00:26:00,549 --> 00:26:03,580
The first axel we had, we bent the axel.

387
00:26:03,580 --> 00:26:07,080
It deflected a little bit and took the brakes
out.

388
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:10,049
That was another one of those things so we
had to up that.

389
00:26:10,049 --> 00:26:12,899
It was sealed with two O rings.

390
00:26:12,899 --> 00:26:14,149
That was a good one.

391
00:26:14,149 --> 00:26:15,279
That was good to start with.

392
00:26:15,279 --> 00:26:19,960
The initial design, as a matter of fact, was
great because that four months we had to stay

393
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:26,960
on the pad for the first flight we got no
leakage, which was good.

394
00:26:27,389 --> 00:26:31,989
The initial brake pads were beryllium.

395
00:26:31,989 --> 00:26:36,830
Now, beryllium has one great feature that
everybody liked.

396
00:26:36,830 --> 00:26:41,119
The Langley Research Center had been working
on brakes and they were using beryllium.

397
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:45,419
Goodrich had been working with the beryllium.

398
00:26:45,419 --> 00:26:51,549
And it turns out that it has a great heat
transfer capability, and we thought that was

399
00:26:51,549 --> 00:26:53,080
really going to be good.

400
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,429
And what do you say in your jargon?

401
00:26:56,429 --> 00:26:56,849
Wrong.

402
00:26:56,849 --> 00:26:59,070
It was wrong.

403
00:26:59,070 --> 00:27:03,649
It did not work out right.

404
00:27:03,649 --> 00:27:05,139
We had four rotors to start with.

405
00:27:05,139 --> 00:27:05,989
We have five now.

406
00:27:05,989 --> 00:27:12,989
If you're going to look at your brakes, I've
got a picture up here, just like the front

407
00:27:14,190 --> 00:27:18,220
wheel brakes on your car, they have a caliper
and you just put a pad on it.

408
00:27:18,220 --> 00:27:23,970
But we have more pads than you do.

409
00:27:23,970 --> 00:27:26,429
You will see some more about this.

410
00:27:26,429 --> 00:27:27,239
This really got us.

411
00:27:27,239 --> 00:27:31,099
A negative angle of attack, if you ever looked
at the Orbiter when it was sitting on the

412
00:27:31,099 --> 00:27:33,219
runway, it sits nose down.

413
00:27:33,219 --> 00:27:38,639
And when you come in and you drop that nose
down it's going to load up that main gear.

414
00:27:38,639 --> 00:27:45,369
And you will see what that does.

415
00:27:45,369 --> 00:27:49,340
That might be all of the requirements that
I have to start with.

416
00:27:49,340 --> 00:27:56,340
Here is what the wheel looks like.

417
00:27:57,739 --> 00:28:04,479
This particular drawing or graph is really
what we started with.

418
00:28:04,479 --> 00:28:08,059
And these are the summary things that we began
with.

419
00:28:08,059 --> 00:28:12,159
And this is the nose gear.

420
00:28:12,159 --> 00:28:16,070
There are probably two or three things over
here that are really important that we had

421
00:28:16,070 --> 00:28:16,580
to worry about.

422
00:28:16,580 --> 00:28:21,619
One was a static load and the other was the
weight for this thing.

423
00:28:21,619 --> 00:28:23,169
This is all aluminum.

424
00:28:23,169 --> 00:28:26,929
And we didn't want those going up.

425
00:28:26,929 --> 00:28:33,809
At the time, inflation pressure for the nose
was 300.

426
00:28:33,809 --> 00:28:36,679
I think it's still a little more than that.

427
00:28:36,679 --> 00:28:43,679
But the rest of this is just spec sort of
things.

428
00:28:44,179 --> 00:28:46,710
Now, when we did this, we had to start with
something.

429
00:28:46,710 --> 00:28:49,359
We did not have all this data.

430
00:28:49,359 --> 00:28:56,359
What we did is we had a chart similar to this,
in conjunction with Rockwell, and we worked

431
00:28:57,499 --> 00:28:58,869
back and forth.

432
00:28:58,869 --> 00:29:00,729
That's another one of the interfaces that
you had.

433
00:29:00,729 --> 00:29:02,710
You always have a contractor.

434
00:29:02,710 --> 00:29:09,710
And, of course, Rockwell had several contractors,
I think, ten or twelve on this gear.

435
00:29:09,729 --> 00:29:14,039
Getting this particular chart straight was
very, very important to us.

436
00:29:14,039 --> 00:29:21,039
Maybe some of the features, there is the inflation
valve, the diameter here is about, I think

437
00:29:24,739 --> 00:29:29,840
this one was about 32 inches, 34.

438
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:36,840
And one of the design problems you get is
how big a tire can I put in the wing or how

439
00:29:37,570 --> 00:29:39,879
big a tire can I put in the nose?

440
00:29:39,879 --> 00:29:43,200
Now, the Orbiter wing is pretty good.

441
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:44,080
It's kind of deep.

442
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:51,080
The nose is not that roomy, but the nose gear
is a smaller wheel.

443
00:29:55,539 --> 00:30:02,539
It doesn't take the load.

444
00:30:08,029 --> 00:30:09,700
That is low right now.

445
00:30:09,700 --> 00:30:11,129
I think that's a little higher.

446
00:30:11,129 --> 00:30:16,940
Here is the tire that goes with that.

447
00:30:16,940 --> 00:30:20,279
The same sort of thing.

448
00:30:20,279 --> 00:30:27,279
We start out with a sheet similar to this,
not this neat and not this accurate, but now

449
00:30:28,059 --> 00:30:32,080
you'll notice that the tire weight is about
50 pounds.

450
00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:38,210
Now we're about 100 pounds of tire just for
one wheel and tire on the nose gear.

451
00:30:38,210 --> 00:30:42,109
And there are two so now we're at 200 pounds.

452
00:30:42,109 --> 00:30:46,729
I will tell you for sure, program managers
will ask you what those weights are.

453
00:30:46,729 --> 00:30:48,539
If Aaron were here he'd be fussing.

454
00:30:48,539 --> 00:30:50,919
He'd say, yeah, you let that get away from
you.

455
00:30:50,919 --> 00:30:54,479
But that was the other one.

456
00:30:54,479 --> 00:30:59,590
This is not terribly dramatic.

457
00:30:59,590 --> 00:31:06,590
But I think the other thing is, see this thing,
the design tire life was just for two landings.

458
00:31:08,450 --> 00:31:12,239
I'm not sure we've ever done two landings
on a nose gear.

459
00:31:12,239 --> 00:31:15,249
I think after every flight we will take them
off.

460
00:31:15,249 --> 00:31:22,249
And, because of the way the runway is built,
I will show you a little bit about the runway.

461
00:31:24,009 --> 00:31:28,149
Here is a tire.

462
00:31:28,149 --> 00:31:32,359
This is ALT-1 which is approach and landing
test one.

463
00:31:32,359 --> 00:31:32,669
If you can lift it.

464
00:31:32,669 --> 00:31:34,299
I am going to pass it around for you.

465
00:31:34,299 --> 00:31:37,769
This is ALT-1.

466
00:31:37,769 --> 00:31:42,019
Here you will see that we've got 20 plies
which is all this stuff here.

467
00:31:42,019 --> 00:31:43,320
And that is what we used.

468
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:46,249
I think it is 28 now.

469
00:31:46,249 --> 00:31:53,249
And you will see that at the top here is real
rubber which is great, but synthetic rubber

470
00:31:54,929 --> 00:31:55,489
is better.

471
00:31:55,489 --> 00:31:59,639
The tire we have now is synthetic rubber and
is much better than what we have.

472
00:31:59,639 --> 00:32:01,549
And you will see we have these beads in here.

473
00:32:01,549 --> 00:32:08,549
Now, when you go back to the other piece here,
we've got to realize that
if you've ever tried to change a tire and

474
00:32:19,460 --> 00:32:22,629
you put the tire, all of you have bicycles.

475
00:32:22,629 --> 00:32:24,559
Everybody in this town has got a bicycle,
I think.

476
00:32:24,559 --> 00:32:25,440
[LAUGHTER]

477
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:27,200
Even him.

478
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:30,899
Anyway, when you try to change a tire, you
can put one side in.

479
00:32:30,899 --> 00:32:33,440
But getting this on would be really tough.

480
00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:36,999
See, if you try to change this tire out it
would be pretty hard.

481
00:32:36,999 --> 00:32:43,479
You have to split the wheel so you can get
that thing, and you put it in and then you

482
00:32:43,479 --> 00:32:47,749
put the wheel around the tire instead of putting
the tire around the wheel.

483
00:32:47,749 --> 00:32:50,719
And, when you see this thing, you will understand
why.

484
00:32:50,719 --> 00:32:53,049
I will pass this around for you and you can
take a look.

485
00:32:53,049 --> 00:32:55,169
It is heavy.

486
00:32:55,169 --> 00:32:58,039
And those beads are really interesting.

487
00:32:58,039 --> 00:33:00,849
They mean business.

488
00:33:00,849 --> 00:33:01,389
They are tough.

489
00:33:01,389 --> 00:33:08,389
They are steel.

490
00:33:09,309 --> 00:33:14,419
Here is a nose gear.

491
00:33:14,419 --> 00:33:16,169
This is STS-95.

492
00:33:16,169 --> 00:33:18,460
Where you on 95?

493
00:33:18,460 --> 00:33:19,580
Oh, I've got yours in here.

494
00:33:19,580 --> 00:33:21,789
I've got yours.

495
00:33:21,789 --> 00:33:28,789
Well, I'm going to let you tell it.

496
00:33:32,159 --> 00:33:34,279
This hit pretty hard.

497
00:33:34,279 --> 00:33:39,309
And if you take a look, you can barely see
it right there, but a chunk of rubber came

498
00:33:39,309 --> 00:33:39,729
off.

499
00:33:39,729 --> 00:33:42,469
And it's that good rubber that I was telling
you about.

500
00:33:42,469 --> 00:33:44,580
It's the natural rubber.

501
00:33:44,580 --> 00:33:46,179
The ones we have now are better.

502
00:33:46,179 --> 00:33:53,179
And when these tires hit, I think this particular
one, they dropped the nose gear on rotation

503
00:33:54,859 --> 00:33:55,440
early.

504
00:33:55,440 --> 00:34:02,320
And I think, when they did, they hit the tough
part of the concrete at the Cape.

505
00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:04,359
And you just get rubber everywhere.

506
00:34:04,359 --> 00:34:09,520
Smoke and rubber and all kinds of stuff.

507
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:15,159
I think these are 32 or 34.

508
00:34:15,159 --> 00:34:19,399
These are things that you really have to go
and handle with care.

509
00:34:19,399 --> 00:34:20,290
They are big.

510
00:34:20,290 --> 00:34:23,630
You'll note there are no brakes on these front
tires.

511
00:34:23,630 --> 00:34:25,730
We will get that in a little bit.

512
00:34:25,730 --> 00:34:32,730
Just to comment.

513
00:34:35,630 --> 00:34:41,210
Last time we talked a little bit about what
goes on when you actually land, but what Allen

514
00:34:41,210 --> 00:34:48,210
was saying is you flare out and then the pilot
has to stay on the rear gear and hold the

515
00:34:51,210 --> 00:34:53,918
nose up for just the right amount of time.

516
00:34:53,918 --> 00:34:59,640
If you hold it up for too long then you're
going to lose the lift.

517
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:06,490
And, in the end, the nose gear is going to
fall down too fast and you run the risk of

518
00:35:06,490 --> 00:35:08,640
busting your nose tire.

519
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:14,370
On the other hand, when you come down because
of the negative angle, you actually, as Allen

520
00:35:14,370 --> 00:35:20,040
said, when you get down below horizontal,
now you're putting more weight on the rear

521
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:20,510
wheels.

522
00:35:20,510 --> 00:35:26,060
And so, if you come down too early, now you
run the risk of blowing your rear tires.

523
00:35:26,060 --> 00:35:28,030
And so it's really a critical maneuver.

524
00:35:28,030 --> 00:35:35,030
You have to hold it up just the right amount
of time and then bring it down real slowly.

525
00:35:36,290 --> 00:35:39,050
I think Lousma was a Marine, wasn't he?

526
00:35:39,050 --> 00:35:40,120
Yeah.

527
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:44,500
Astronaut Lousma came in.

528
00:35:44,500 --> 00:35:48,700
We didn't like him to fly too much because
I think he did carrier landings or something.

529
00:35:48,700 --> 00:35:50,280
I'm not sure what the guy did.

530
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:56,410
He'd come in and drop that gear down pretty
hard and we'd all cringe thinking those tires

531
00:35:56,410 --> 00:36:01,110
were going to go.

532
00:36:01,110 --> 00:36:02,140
Now, we saw the nose gear.

533
00:36:02,140 --> 00:36:09,000
This is a repeat performance, except now we've
got to make this wheel so we can put the brakes

534
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:10,970
on it.

535
00:36:10,970 --> 00:36:13,630
We've got to put the wheels on.

536
00:36:13,630 --> 00:36:16,320
And now the same thing.

537
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:22,350
Now I'm going to tell you a little bit about
integration with other people.

538
00:36:22,350 --> 00:36:27,810
In the landing gear world, we were at the
mercy of the structure's people.

539
00:36:27,810 --> 00:36:31,830
You really wanted to be friends with them
because they told you what the loads were.

540
00:36:31,830 --> 00:36:36,410
And coordination with those people was really
critical.

541
00:36:36,410 --> 00:36:39,120
And I'm sure you're going to find that.

542
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:46,120
If you're in any kind of construction whatsoever,
all the structures folks, you want to get

543
00:36:46,130 --> 00:36:47,330
them early on.

544
00:36:47,330 --> 00:36:50,790
And the other people you want in there early
are the operations people.

545
00:36:50,790 --> 00:36:53,510
Those two people are the ones you want very,
very early.

546
00:36:53,510 --> 00:36:58,540
Here is the right load now.

547
00:36:58,540 --> 00:37:04,220
If you just multiply that by four, you'd get
about 250,000 pounds, 270,000 pounds that

548
00:37:04,220 --> 00:37:05,220
we could take.

549
00:37:05,220 --> 00:37:08,200
And that is about what you're going to get
on that back gear.

550
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:11,310
When you come down, you will get a little
less than that.

551
00:37:11,310 --> 00:37:16,760
We have about 20% to 30% margin empirically
designed.

552
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:20,580
And we tested it at Wright-Patterson.

553
00:37:20,580 --> 00:37:21,690
We tested this wheel.

554
00:37:21,690 --> 00:37:25,860
This is a single O ring wheel.

555
00:37:25,860 --> 00:37:28,630
The O ring is about right there.

556
00:37:28,630 --> 00:37:34,450
And we tested this at Wright-Patterson with
a side load on it, like on the flight he was

557
00:37:34,450 --> 00:37:35,400
on.

558
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:41,890
And I had to tell Aaron Cohen that every piece
of the wheel came apart, which is not what

559
00:37:41,890 --> 00:37:46,410
you want to do with the program manager, but
we had to start over.

560
00:37:46,410 --> 00:37:48,330
So, we did.

561
00:37:48,330 --> 00:37:53,060
And we beefed up the wheel, we beefed up the
bolts.

562
00:37:53,060 --> 00:37:59,630
We found that the two O rings we liked because
they were good for leakage, but we also found

563
00:37:59,630 --> 00:38:05,060
that when you put them on that the wheel failed
because of the O rings.

564
00:38:05,060 --> 00:38:11,820
Also they failed because we were putting the
wrong lubricant on those bolts, and that took

565
00:38:11,820 --> 00:38:12,280
a while.

566
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:16,200
And that particular failure, I just talked
to you about, had both those problems.

567
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:21,360
How did the lubricant cause the wheel to come
apart?

568
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:25,500
They couldn't get the right torque on the
bolts.

569
00:38:25,500 --> 00:38:31,350
I think they put too much torque on the bolts.

570
00:38:31,350 --> 00:38:37,530
We never really found out, but we changed
lubricants and that went away.

571
00:38:37,530 --> 00:38:41,560
I told you now this is not Newtonian physics
we're talking about here.

572
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:44,010
We're talking about empirical design.

573
00:38:44,010 --> 00:38:46,730
And you had to go test this stuff.

574
00:38:46,730 --> 00:38:49,780
And we did.

575
00:38:49,780 --> 00:38:52,090
Let's see, what was the other point?

576
00:38:52,090 --> 00:38:53,610
Here is where the axel fits in here.

577
00:38:53,610 --> 00:39:00,610
I will show you where the brakes go here in
just a minute.

578
00:39:01,010 --> 00:39:08,010
I don't have a main gear tire cut like that
one, but it's much larger.

579
00:39:08,330 --> 00:39:09,370
It's about 40.

580
00:39:09,370 --> 00:39:14,400
I think this one was 42 inches.

581
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:20,330
They tell me that they want to go to 44 inches
for a little bigger wheel.

582
00:39:20,330 --> 00:39:27,330
In the beginning, again, weight and cost stopped
us from going any farther than that.

583
00:39:28,490 --> 00:39:30,890
Mainly weight in that case.

584
00:39:30,890 --> 00:39:37,570
Again, this was the critical wheel that we
had to work with the structures people.

585
00:39:37,570 --> 00:39:41,900
Our structures group worked it and Rockwell
structures group worked it, so we had two

586
00:39:41,900 --> 00:39:46,520
structures groups that were working together
and we had to wait until they gave us a load.

587
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:52,310
But when you have a design you cannot really
wait until all the loads are in.

588
00:39:52,310 --> 00:39:59,310
You have to start with something, so we started
with a design that we thought was conservative.

589
00:39:59,530 --> 00:40:00,440
It was not.

590
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:04,560
But we started with one that we thought was
conservative and it did not do it.

591
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:11,560
You can see that the max load was 142,000
pounds per wheel which gave us a nice margin.

592
00:40:11,940 --> 00:40:15,910
Of course, those are the aft wheels, the main
gear.

593
00:40:15,910 --> 00:40:18,230
And we liked that margin on there.

594
00:40:18,230 --> 00:40:25,230
And the inflation pressure is about 370 on
that.

595
00:40:25,860 --> 00:40:28,320
This thing is like a stick of dynamite.

596
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:32,820
If it blows you have really got some problems.

597
00:40:32,820 --> 00:40:34,680
I mean you have shrapnel everywhere.

598
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:41,560
But when you do the test it is always behind
the cage or something where you can do it.

599
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:42,760
Again, safety was our problem.

600
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:49,760
When I saw that last orbiter come in, I thought
for sure that something had happened to the

601
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:56,780
wheel well and that the explosion was in the
wheel well.

602
00:40:56,780 --> 00:40:58,120
It terrified me.

603
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:01,320
Partially it was not the wheels that went.

604
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:08,320
They went eventually, but if you blow four
of those wheels, two on each side, that's

605
00:41:08,550 --> 00:41:11,530
not a good day at all.

606
00:41:11,530 --> 00:41:15,120
The Orbiter is about the same size as a 737.

607
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:22,120
Everybody flies a Boeing 737 about the same
size, but they land a little softer and not

608
00:41:23,270 --> 00:41:24,480
quite as heavy.

609
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,870
But the geometry, a planned form looks about
the same.

610
00:41:28,870 --> 00:41:35,310
They don't have the payload bay that we have,
but it is pretty close.

611
00:41:35,310 --> 00:41:37,840
And here are the big guys.

612
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,070
Now you will see the hydraulic systems.

613
00:41:40,070 --> 00:41:43,940
There are all the hydraulic systems that go
in there.

614
00:41:43,940 --> 00:41:47,770
And trying to move one of those tires by yourself
is a chore.

615
00:41:47,770 --> 00:41:50,550
It will get you in shape.

616
00:41:50,550 --> 00:41:55,080
Rolling that thing around at the Cape will
get you in shape.

617
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:56,650
And it's the same thing.

618
00:41:56,650 --> 00:41:59,320
It's a split wheel that we have.

619
00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:02,960
This one has the same problem.

620
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:04,240
You cannot see it but it is right there.

621
00:42:04,240 --> 00:42:07,060
There is a big piece gone from right there.

622
00:42:07,060 --> 00:42:09,500
And, again, it's the runway.

623
00:42:09,500 --> 00:42:16,500
If you hit the runway on the high coarseness
this is what you get.

624
00:42:19,370 --> 00:42:23,150
I'm going to show you the runway here in just
a minute, or a little sketch of it and you'll

625
00:42:23,150 --> 00:42:29,850
be able to see it, but you can see that that
is a fairly big strut.

626
00:42:29,850 --> 00:42:31,650
And we needed it.

627
00:42:31,650 --> 00:42:37,800
How much travel does the strut have?

628
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:39,360
You mean after it's down and locked?

629
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:45,140
Oh, I would say probably six inches to a foot,
just depending on which ones that Rockwell

630
00:42:45,140 --> 00:42:45,500
picked.

631
00:42:45,500 --> 00:42:46,890
I'm not sure which one they have now.

632
00:42:46,890 --> 00:42:49,690
We had a pretty stiff strut to start with.

633
00:42:49,690 --> 00:42:54,250
I think they've done a little work on that.

634
00:42:54,250 --> 00:42:55,420
That's a good question, by the way.

635
00:42:55,420 --> 00:43:02,420
That does affect it a whole lot because you
don't want to drop that gear too low because

636
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:03,580
those doors are open.

637
00:43:03,580 --> 00:43:10,520
If you drop that gear too low and that strut
goes up, you're going to get those doors,

638
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:13,090
and there goes that turnaround time we were
talking about.

639
00:43:13,090 --> 00:43:15,910
There goes the turnaround time.

640
00:43:15,910 --> 00:43:22,910
I've got another one of my goodies here.

641
00:43:23,770 --> 00:43:27,560
This is not the beryllium.

642
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:30,910
The beryllium had one big problem.

643
00:43:30,910 --> 00:43:37,130
We thought that the heat transfer was great
but the homogeneity of the heating was not

644
00:43:37,130 --> 00:43:37,700
good.

645
00:43:37,700 --> 00:43:40,370
You would get spots.

646
00:43:40,370 --> 00:43:42,350
Once you did that it would warp the brake.

647
00:43:42,350 --> 00:43:46,490
When it warped the break then it would do
all sorts of bad things.

648
00:43:46,490 --> 00:43:53,490
When you look at this, here are the stators
and here are the rotors.

649
00:43:58,050 --> 00:44:00,480
This was a stator.

650
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:04,190
And what this is is they had two sets of stators
on each of these.

651
00:44:04,190 --> 00:44:07,030
And then, of course, the rotor went all the
way around.

652
00:44:07,030 --> 00:44:09,330
But here is a brake.

653
00:44:09,330 --> 00:44:11,970
And you will see that it's only a piece of
a brake.

654
00:44:11,970 --> 00:44:14,560
And you are going to find out it is very,
very heavy.

655
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:21,560
And there is really not much I could tell
you about these, except that the one good

656
00:44:22,910 --> 00:44:29,910
thing we did was we insisted that Rockwell
leave enough room in here for five stators

657
00:44:30,770 --> 00:44:32,200
and rotors.

658
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:35,550
We started with four and right now we have
five.

659
00:44:35,550 --> 00:44:42,550
And so we did it partially right anyway to
start with.

660
00:44:44,420 --> 00:44:48,670
Here is the axel, and this will fit on all
of these.

661
00:44:48,670 --> 00:44:55,670
And we thought we did about 25 stops with
this thing, but I think we probably end up

662
00:44:55,950 --> 00:44:58,760
somewhere between four and ten.

663
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:00,200
Again, that's just money.

664
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:02,820
And, again, that's the turnaround time we
were talking about.

665
00:45:02,820 --> 00:45:08,900
So, all of the things we thought we could
do, systems engineering things, did not work

666
00:45:08,900 --> 00:45:09,630
out quite right.

667
00:45:09,630 --> 00:45:16,630
So the stators had to pass?

668
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:21,890
Yeah.

669
00:45:21,890 --> 00:45:23,310
The caliber just pushes against it?

670
00:45:23,310 --> 00:45:24,430
Just pushes, yeah.

671
00:45:24,430 --> 00:45:26,870
It just shoves it.

672
00:45:26,870 --> 00:45:32,030
There is the caliber so you just close that
thing up and you just squeeze those guys together

673
00:45:32,030 --> 00:45:33,720
and you watch the smoke come out.

674
00:45:33,720 --> 00:45:40,720
Did the caliber float at all like on a modern
one?

675
00:45:41,430 --> 00:45:48,430
We found that we had to do an orphus hydraulic
system.

676
00:45:49,270 --> 00:45:55,760
We found out the problem you're talking about,
they had a funny name for it, but it was the

677
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:56,560
one you're getting at.

678
00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:02,620
And what was happening is that the brake was
cycling because it was not orphused.

679
00:46:02,620 --> 00:46:05,990
Once we orphused that thing it worked very,
very smooth.

680
00:46:05,990 --> 00:46:11,150
And, just like your front wheels, it just
doesn't look much different than your front

681
00:46:11,150 --> 00:46:12,810
wheels, except they are a lot bigger.

682
00:46:12,810 --> 00:46:16,060
And how would you like to have that pad on
your car?

683
00:46:16,060 --> 00:46:23,060
You would never have to have them replaced.

684
00:46:23,070 --> 00:46:27,320
[LAUGHTER]

685
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:30,200
Here you go.

686
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:32,330
This is a mechanical engineers' dream.

687
00:46:32,330 --> 00:46:36,320
Here are more linkages than you could ever
want.

688
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:42,300
You can have all sorts of fun with this kind
of linkage.

689
00:46:42,300 --> 00:46:43,700
This is the forward part of the Orbiter.

690
00:46:43,700 --> 00:46:46,580
The nose comes around kind of like that.

691
00:46:46,580 --> 00:46:49,580
And you can see that we've got that gear stuffed
in there pretty good.

692
00:46:49,580 --> 00:46:55,860
And some of the things that are on the door
are sliced out, so when you look at the door

693
00:46:55,860 --> 00:46:58,770
in there you have just a whole lot of things
in there.

694
00:46:58,770 --> 00:47:04,660
And what happens is, remember I said the first
thing is we have a little hydraulic actuator

695
00:47:04,660 --> 00:47:06,630
that starts this thing?

696
00:47:06,630 --> 00:47:09,550
And, whether you want to or not, it opens
those doors.

697
00:47:09,550 --> 00:47:11,820
And we will fire this bungee right here.

698
00:47:11,820 --> 00:47:13,330
This is a pyrotechnic thing.

699
00:47:13,330 --> 00:47:17,890
And no matter what, we are going to fire that
thing to be sure that if the hydraulic system

700
00:47:17,890 --> 00:47:20,930
isn't going to that, we are going to drop
that thing with a pyro.

701
00:47:20,930 --> 00:47:22,300
So, it opens the doors.

702
00:47:22,300 --> 00:47:28,340
Once it opens and you start that gear down,
remember, you've got about 200 something knots

703
00:47:28,340 --> 00:47:31,010
of wind that is going to drop.

704
00:47:31,010 --> 00:47:31,770
So, this is going to help you.

705
00:47:31,770 --> 00:47:38,220
It comes down, it folds down that way.

706
00:47:38,220 --> 00:47:43,920
Our only comment to Rockwell was that we didn't
like all this.

707
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:50,920
The leakages were even more than that when
we started, and we had to reduce those down.

708
00:47:58,450 --> 00:48:03,140
There is a little fitting right up here that
you can get a little bit of help to get the

709
00:48:03,140 --> 00:48:03,620
thing back up.

710
00:48:03,620 --> 00:48:10,620
But you do need the guys with their polls
shoving it back up.

711
00:48:20,860 --> 00:48:23,860
There is the wheel.

712
00:48:23,860 --> 00:48:29,420
And once it's down, there is no brake on that
one.

713
00:48:29,420 --> 00:48:31,650
This is the forward one.

714
00:48:31,650 --> 00:48:34,310
This will give you a little better idea.

715
00:48:34,310 --> 00:48:37,660
This doesn't look too much different.

716
00:48:37,660 --> 00:48:39,690
Forward is this way.

717
00:48:39,690 --> 00:48:43,570
If you go that way, you see the gear has come
down and is now locked into place.

718
00:48:43,570 --> 00:48:50,570
In the other picture you couldn't see these
little yokes, but when the strut comes up

719
00:48:53,610 --> 00:48:58,450
those yokes come up and grab it.

720
00:48:58,450 --> 00:48:59,230
There is the extender strut.

721
00:48:59,230 --> 00:49:05,290
Essentially, the drag shut, it's a solid piece.

722
00:49:05,290 --> 00:49:11,050
I'm not sure what you could say other than
the fact that that right there is the booster

723
00:49:11,050 --> 00:49:13,380
actuator that I was talking about, the pyro
actuator.

724
00:49:13,380 --> 00:49:15,950
And it is going to fire every time no matter
what.

725
00:49:15,950 --> 00:49:22,950
The same thing for the mains, except they
are bigger.

726
00:49:27,410 --> 00:49:32,920
One problem we had with this particular one
was these doors.

727
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:34,630
Those are big doors.

728
00:49:34,630 --> 00:49:37,560
They are bigger than probably two of these
tables.

729
00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:41,300
Maybe like that and wider so they are big.

730
00:49:41,300 --> 00:49:44,200
And the problem is sealing them.

731
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:48,320
When you're coming in and you're going to
re-enter, you've got to get a seal on there

732
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:49,860
that is going to work.

733
00:49:49,860 --> 00:49:51,750
Most of these were bolt seals.

734
00:49:51,750 --> 00:49:55,650
You just put the Freon and they squeezed closed.

735
00:49:55,650 --> 00:49:57,010
There is no seal sticking out.

736
00:49:57,010 --> 00:50:01,300
Of course, it has got the re-entry material
on it.

737
00:50:01,300 --> 00:50:07,620
But, again, these were part of our problem.

738
00:50:07,620 --> 00:50:13,870
And those seals were probably the trickiest
things that we had.

739
00:50:13,870 --> 00:50:20,870
And here professor is at extend/retract actuator,
but it still won't do it all.

740
00:50:21,270 --> 00:50:26,480
You could hook up a hydraulic system to get
this gear back up.

741
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:29,550
Forward is that way.

742
00:50:29,550 --> 00:50:35,930
But you need a lot of help.

743
00:50:35,930 --> 00:50:36,730
Again, it was a weight problem.

744
00:50:36,730 --> 00:50:43,730
I am going to show you this one, but
I had to go to the Space Center Houston because
I couldn't get a picture of the Orbiter.

745
00:51:01,270 --> 00:51:02,660
So, this is a little mockup.

746
00:51:02,660 --> 00:51:04,130
And here is the gear.

747
00:51:04,130 --> 00:51:08,400
And what I really want to show you is, see
that little guy right there, that's the pyro

748
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:10,970
system that kicked that thing out.

749
00:51:10,970 --> 00:51:11,880
They call it a bungee.

750
00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:17,340
It's a Rockwell term, but it's not like a
bungee.

751
00:51:17,340 --> 00:51:20,790
It's really actually like a pyro.

752
00:51:20,790 --> 00:51:26,220
And when that strut comes back up here are
those yokes I was telling you about.

753
00:51:26,220 --> 00:51:29,030
It just clamps around that strut and it hold
it up.

754
00:51:29,030 --> 00:51:36,030
That's probably the only thing you can see
that is worthwhile on this picture.

755
00:51:37,390 --> 00:51:44,390
Now we're going to talk a little bit about
integration, an interesting problem.

756
00:51:46,770 --> 00:51:49,640
Rockwell was our prime integrator.

757
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:53,460
They integrated everything.

758
00:51:53,460 --> 00:52:00,460
We helped them, but they had all these people
as contractors.

759
00:52:01,630 --> 00:52:04,430
Not only did Rockwell have to deal with us.

760
00:52:04,430 --> 00:52:08,090
Rockwell had to deal with all these contractors
that they had.

761
00:52:08,090 --> 00:52:09,980
The wheels were made by BF Goodrich.

762
00:52:09,980 --> 00:52:15,360
Not Goodyear, Goodrich, which is now Michelin,
I think.

763
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:21,690
And they flew it on the F-14 and C-5a which
is a pretty big airplane.

764
00:52:21,690 --> 00:52:28,340
We didn't have a four-wheel truck like the
big aircraft did like a 747.

765
00:52:28,340 --> 00:52:32,670
We thought that would be a great idea, but
we didn't have the room in there to put the

766
00:52:32,670 --> 00:52:35,080
whole thing in.

767
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:37,340
The brakes were BF Goodrich, the same ones.

768
00:52:37,340 --> 00:52:41,460
They were the ones that really wanted to go
with a beryllium.

769
00:52:41,460 --> 00:52:48,450
It turned out that they passed all of the
initial tests for the beryllium, but the beryllium

770
00:52:48,450 --> 00:52:52,070
had no life, so we never really had a test
failure.

771
00:52:52,070 --> 00:52:57,930
But we had a test of things we really didn't
like the way it was going so we changed.

772
00:52:57,930 --> 00:53:03,940
They changed, I think, in 1990 or 1985 to
the carbon brake that I was showing you just

773
00:53:03,940 --> 00:53:05,740
a minute ago.

774
00:53:05,740 --> 00:53:12,140
The nose gear steering is a bi-steeror.

775
00:53:12,140 --> 00:53:18,950
Nose gear steering is after you land and you
get the nose gear down you can steer.

776
00:53:18,950 --> 00:53:25,630
It turns out that the astronauts did not like
to use the nose gear steering, so what they

777
00:53:25,630 --> 00:53:27,860
would do is get on the brakes.

778
00:53:27,860 --> 00:53:30,290
They would do the brakes like this.

779
00:53:30,290 --> 00:53:31,810
And they'd steer that way.

780
00:53:31,810 --> 00:53:36,580
When you do that you heat those brakes up
pretty good.

781
00:53:36,580 --> 00:53:38,190
You heat the brakes up.

782
00:53:38,190 --> 00:53:43,500
And, besides that, there was a single point
failure in that nose gear steering.

783
00:53:43,500 --> 00:53:48,240
If that thing failed, and it failed in a bad
position, it might be nine degrees off, and

784
00:53:48,240 --> 00:53:50,480
so you're going to run the Orbiter off there.

785
00:53:50,480 --> 00:53:54,260
I had to agree with the astronauts that probably
the right thing to do was just get on those

786
00:53:54,260 --> 00:53:57,210
brakes and steer with those guys.

787
00:53:57,210 --> 00:54:00,500
Menasco, they built struts for almost everybody.

788
00:54:00,500 --> 00:54:05,210
HydroAir, they had all kinds of actuators.

789
00:54:05,210 --> 00:54:10,470
And Rockwell did all the bar linkages that
I was showing you about.

790
00:54:10,470 --> 00:54:17,470
The antiskid system was another one of those
important things.

791
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:21,060
What is it on your cars these days?

792
00:54:21,060 --> 00:54:22,810
The ABS system.

793
00:54:22,810 --> 00:54:24,620
This is our ABS system right here.

794
00:54:24,620 --> 00:54:27,140
And we had one.

795
00:54:27,140 --> 00:54:28,970
And we had nose gear steering.

796
00:54:28,970 --> 00:54:31,130
We had all that good stuff.

797
00:54:31,130 --> 00:54:37,070
You've got to remember now this is 30 years
ago so it's a little different.

798
00:54:37,070 --> 00:54:38,320
There we go.

799
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:39,700
I had to put that in there.

800
00:54:39,700 --> 00:54:40,510
I like this picture.

801
00:54:40,510 --> 00:54:46,040
There is nothing technical about it but I
like it.

802
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:47,700
Isn't that neat?

803
00:54:47,700 --> 00:54:52,230
Look at those little skinny wheels on that
big vehicle.

804
00:54:52,230 --> 00:54:54,650
Isn't that something?

805
00:54:54,650 --> 00:54:55,140
[LAUGHTER]

806
00:54:55,140 --> 00:54:59,020
It looks like somebody made a mistake.

807
00:54:59,020 --> 00:55:01,400
Anyway, it's coming in there.

808
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:05,119
You will note there are no drag shoots.

809
00:55:05,119 --> 00:55:06,930
The initial design actually had a drag shoot.

810
00:55:06,930 --> 00:55:13,810
One of the guys in our division decided that
we didn't need a drag shoot so he put in an

811
00:55:13,810 --> 00:55:17,360
improvement which reduced the cost.

812
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:20,430
That was a mistake again, so we took the drag
shoot off.

813
00:55:20,430 --> 00:55:23,560
And I eventually had to put it back on anyway.

814
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:28,090
All engineers are not exactly right, but this
thing flew well.

815
00:55:28,090 --> 00:55:30,560
The gears really worked out real well.

816
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:35,560
We were tickled pink whenever we would see
that thing fly.

817
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:37,040
I may have already told you.

818
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:38,210
I had to put that in there.

819
00:55:38,210 --> 00:55:45,210
I like that picture.

820
00:55:46,950 --> 00:55:48,750
This was a dilemma.

821
00:55:48,750 --> 00:55:53,430
The tires never really failed to the spec
that we gave them.

822
00:55:53,430 --> 00:55:56,930
We didn't like it because we didn't think
we would get the life that we wanted out of

823
00:55:56,930 --> 00:55:57,750
it.

824
00:55:57,750 --> 00:56:02,300
And so we had running discussions.

825
00:56:02,300 --> 00:56:08,950
Maybe not battles, but certainly running discussions
with Goodrich on that tire.

826
00:56:08,950 --> 00:56:15,950
We got excessive testing tire damage with
a dynamometer test where you do all the testing

827
00:56:17,050 --> 00:56:19,150
and we put the side loads on.

828
00:56:19,150 --> 00:56:22,340
And we just didn't like what was happening.

829
00:56:22,340 --> 00:56:26,340
Even though it passed this we went to, say,
20% over.

830
00:56:26,340 --> 00:56:30,800
We were really getting failures that we really
didn't like.

831
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:35,240
And we knew, from the very beginning after
the test, that we were not going to get the

832
00:56:35,240 --> 00:56:39,250
five or six landings that we thought with
every tire set.

833
00:56:39,250 --> 00:56:43,490
On the mains you'd get one landing and that's
it.

834
00:56:43,490 --> 00:56:46,970
And you can see why you would get these big
hunks.

835
00:56:46,970 --> 00:56:52,020
I think they are better with the new runway
or with the way they fix the runway.

836
00:56:52,020 --> 00:56:52,930
I talked about the wheel.

837
00:56:52,930 --> 00:56:54,500
The wheel cracked.

838
00:56:54,500 --> 00:56:58,050
We had a wheel crack with a load.

839
00:56:58,050 --> 00:56:59,990
The bolt lubricant did not work.

840
00:56:59,990 --> 00:57:03,720
We couldn't get the right torque.

841
00:57:03,720 --> 00:57:10,210
The two O rings caused a failure in the split
wheel.

842
00:57:10,210 --> 00:57:14,030
The bolts broke and we failed the 1,000 mile
test.

843
00:57:14,030 --> 00:57:15,140
That doesn't sound great, does it?

844
00:57:15,140 --> 00:57:19,090
But it really was because this was an empirical
design.

845
00:57:19,090 --> 00:57:24,850
It worked fine because it met the spec that
we had.

846
00:57:24,850 --> 00:57:31,200
And what drives you, as engineers you might
not like it, but program managers have their

847
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:32,030
problems, too.

848
00:57:32,030 --> 00:57:35,640
They have costs they have to worry about,
they've got schedules they have got to worry

849
00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:39,720
about, and they get you to do things that
will work every time.

850
00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:42,670
And then later on you can make the improvements.

851
00:57:42,670 --> 00:57:49,610
The beryllium brakes, we had cracked hot spots
on the pad, we had thermal expansion and some

852
00:57:49,610 --> 00:57:54,590
melting.

853
00:57:54,590 --> 00:57:58,510
Goodrich kept telling us that those cracks
did not matter for flight, but we didn't like

854
00:57:58,510 --> 00:58:00,660
it and we fussed with them a lot.

855
00:58:00,660 --> 00:58:03,540
And we fussed with Rockwell a lot.

856
00:58:03,540 --> 00:58:08,440
And after maybe ten years they finally changed
them.

857
00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:10,869
The entry displacement was lower than expected.

858
00:58:10,869 --> 00:58:17,869
We thought sure that the beryllium would be
a great way to do it, and it didn't work out.

859
00:58:18,020 --> 00:58:23,760
And I talked to you a little bit about the
hydraulic system causing that wobble.

860
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:26,369
That was the test results on our outline.

861
00:58:26,369 --> 00:58:33,170
Let's talk a little bit about the runway.

862
00:58:33,170 --> 00:58:36,840
I have more goodies for you.

863
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:40,820
The runway was about 15,000 feet at the Cape.

864
00:58:40,820 --> 00:58:47,820
Before the flight test, how do you actual
simulate flight conditions, especially with

865
00:58:49,740 --> 00:58:53,670
the wings to simulate heat dissipation?

866
00:58:53,670 --> 00:58:54,930
You mean dropping the gear?

867
00:58:54,930 --> 00:58:56,400
Yeah.

868
00:58:56,400 --> 00:58:58,000
I don't think we ever really did.

869
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:00,410
I don't think we ever had a wind load on it.

870
00:59:00,410 --> 00:59:02,040
But we tested that gear.

871
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:08,460
One time we did it with a lower pressure just
to see if the hydraulic pressure would work.

872
00:59:08,460 --> 00:59:12,060
And that may give us a little bit of something,
but that's all we ever did.

873
00:59:12,060 --> 00:59:15,570
We had high confidence in that pyro.

874
00:59:15,570 --> 00:59:16,570
If you ever heard it go off.

875
00:59:16,570 --> 00:59:23,570
But you rely on the wing load to dissipate
the heat, right?

876
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:25,790
One of the things, yeah.

877
00:59:25,790 --> 00:59:26,660
And gravity, of course.

878
00:59:26,660 --> 00:59:29,330
You're getting a gravity down, too, on the
thing.

879
00:59:29,330 --> 00:59:32,470
So, you're getting wind, you're getting gravity,
you're getting pyro, you're getting hydraulic.

880
00:59:32,470 --> 00:59:34,990
No, to dissipate the heat in the brakes.

881
00:59:34,990 --> 00:59:41,110
Not the gear, but to dissipate the heat from
the brakes you rely on the wing load.

882
00:59:41,110 --> 00:59:41,540
Oh, sure.

883
00:59:41,540 --> 00:59:45,340
But you couldn't test that on the ground?

884
00:59:45,340 --> 00:59:48,280
I don't think we ever put it in a wind tunnel
or anything.

885
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:52,130
If we did, I don't remember.

886
00:59:52,130 --> 00:59:54,500
But we did check a lot to see what the heating
was.

887
00:59:54,500 --> 00:59:59,060
And we did it on a dynamometer which is like
you do to your car tires.

888
00:59:59,060 --> 01:00:00,310
No, I don't think we ever did.

889
01:00:00,310 --> 01:00:01,170
That's a good question.

890
01:00:01,170 --> 01:00:02,740
I wonder why we didn't do that.

891
01:00:02,740 --> 01:00:05,570
I had to think about that one.

892
01:00:05,570 --> 01:00:08,700
Here is the runway.

893
01:00:08,700 --> 01:00:12,010
A lot of people in NASA have built runways
and looked at them.

894
01:00:12,010 --> 01:00:16,900
And what they did is they put these grooves
in there to get the water off, just like they

895
01:00:16,900 --> 01:00:18,740
do on the highways now.

896
01:00:18,740 --> 01:00:25,740
And you will see that is the grooved runways
right there.

897
01:00:27,220 --> 01:00:28,600
It sits in there about like that.

898
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:32,390
And I will pass this around and let you see
it.

899
01:00:32,390 --> 01:00:37,680
And you will see that it is really rough.

900
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:44,680
And you can see hitting that surface at those
speeds is not really good.

901
01:00:45,040 --> 01:00:51,950
What they have done, after I left by the way,
which is a great thing to do, is they shortened

902
01:00:51,950 --> 01:00:57,970
the high friction part of the runway and they
pinned it with like a ball pinned hammer.

903
01:00:57,970 --> 01:01:01,660
They pinned it like they do highways.

904
01:01:01,660 --> 01:01:04,940
That got our friction factor down.

905
01:01:04,940 --> 01:01:07,200
We missed the friction factor, by the way.

906
01:01:07,200 --> 01:01:09,980
And they put a thing called a corduroy on
the front.

907
01:01:09,980 --> 01:01:10,880
And here is the corduroy.

908
01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:12,740
You want to take a look at that.

909
01:01:12,740 --> 01:01:14,200
It's like that.

910
01:01:14,200 --> 01:01:17,530
And so now the runway looks like this.

911
01:01:17,530 --> 01:01:22,310
I think if we were going to fly the Orbiter
some more that probably with this runway now

912
01:01:22,310 --> 01:01:26,840
at the Cape we would probably get a little
better use out of the tires.

913
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:32,540
It turns out that trying to determine the
friction factor here was not as easy as we

914
01:01:32,540 --> 01:01:32,850
thought.

915
01:01:32,850 --> 01:01:38,000
And you will see when you see that the thing
is not a smooth surface.

916
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:41,890
It's a pitted surface and it has little things
that stick up.

917
01:01:41,890 --> 01:01:48,890
And so if you pin it down like you do like
a highway and get that it's much better.

918
01:01:56,460 --> 01:01:57,860
We've gone through the requirements.

919
01:01:57,860 --> 01:01:59,740
We've gone through some of the testing.

920
01:01:59,740 --> 01:02:03,220
Now let's talk about operational findings
that we found on this thing.

921
01:02:03,220 --> 01:02:08,050
Remember, if you're going to be an engineer,
which you are I hope, you're going to find

922
01:02:08,050 --> 01:02:11,280
out that all three of these things will be
a problem for you.

923
01:02:11,280 --> 01:02:14,270
You'll have to look at the requirements, you
will have to look at the testing, and you

924
01:02:14,270 --> 01:02:16,200
will have to look at the operations of the
thing.

925
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:21,430
If you work for a company they will put you
way ahead if you tell them we ought to go

926
01:02:21,430 --> 01:02:25,310
find out how this thing is operating with
our customers.

927
01:02:25,310 --> 01:02:27,680
Here is what we found.

928
01:02:27,680 --> 01:02:34,490
Our deployment velocity, when we dropped the
gear on landing, was 312 knots operational.

929
01:02:34,490 --> 01:02:34,920
Good.

930
01:02:34,920 --> 01:02:35,740
We were right on.

931
01:02:35,740 --> 01:02:38,020
Landing velocity was 225.

932
01:02:38,020 --> 01:02:41,410
We actually came in once at 232 or a little
higher than that.

933
01:02:41,410 --> 01:02:43,690
And that was the Marine landing.

934
01:02:43,690 --> 01:02:50,690
I'm not quite sure he was wanting to do those
carrier landings.

935
01:02:51,270 --> 01:02:52,380
The operational weight was higher.

936
01:02:52,380 --> 01:02:56,020
We designed for 214 to 230.

937
01:02:56,020 --> 01:03:01,490
We ended up with about 225 to 232 which is
not bad because we had enough margin in those

938
01:03:01,490 --> 01:03:04,109
tires and wheels to take it.

939
01:03:04,109 --> 01:03:07,450
The sink rates were not bad.

940
01:03:07,450 --> 01:03:11,160
6.7 is about what they would always land at,
which was really pretty good.

941
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:17,140
Now you can see that our design was not that
far off.

942
01:03:17,140 --> 01:03:19,430
The negative angle of attack I want to talk
about here.

943
01:03:19,430 --> 01:03:22,150
Let me show you it.

944
01:03:22,150 --> 01:03:29,150
For some reason the initial design, which
I guess we were all part of, had a negative

945
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:34,030
angle of attack if you would take this route.

946
01:03:34,030 --> 01:03:37,230
It was about four degrees down like that.

947
01:03:37,230 --> 01:03:41,869
Now, if you take a look at this, when you
come in here you will see that if you're going

948
01:03:41,869 --> 01:03:46,859
to get a load in your landing, so the elevons
are going to be up a little bit, what you're

949
01:03:46,859 --> 01:03:50,990
going to do is all those loads are going to
dump right straight into that back gear.

950
01:03:50,990 --> 01:03:52,970
And that's really not what you want.

951
01:03:52,970 --> 01:03:56,420
You ask yourself, well, why don't you just
raise this gear?

952
01:03:56,420 --> 01:03:59,990
And the answer is money [LAUGHTER]

953
01:03:59,990 --> 01:04:02,300
and weight.

954
01:04:02,300 --> 01:04:07,650
But the initial thought was we ought to have
it to look like that and do that and we will

955
01:04:07,650 --> 01:04:08,880
take the load off the brakes.

956
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:14,440
I'm not sure that was one of our better moves
but that wasn't bad.

957
01:04:14,440 --> 01:04:21,440
We talked a little bit about this [the negative
angle of attack?].

958
01:04:21,670 --> 01:04:25,670
The nose gear steering was never really used.

959
01:04:25,670 --> 01:04:27,310
I'm not sure they do it now.

960
01:04:27,310 --> 01:04:29,510
Oh, no, they fixed it.

961
01:04:29,510 --> 01:04:30,230
Have they fixed it?

962
01:04:30,230 --> 01:04:31,170
Yeah, they use it.

963
01:04:31,170 --> 01:04:32,840
In fact, it was after our flight.

964
01:04:32,840 --> 01:04:35,720
That is when they finally decided to fix it.

965
01:04:35,720 --> 01:04:38,100
We're going to talk about his flight in just
a minute here.

966
01:04:38,100 --> 01:04:44,810
I went through great lengths to get his.

967
01:04:44,810 --> 01:04:50,020
We had one tire failure on 51D.

968
01:04:50,020 --> 01:04:56,250
And, after our operations, we did find that
we could get John Young, who was chief astronaut

969
01:04:56,250 --> 01:05:02,500
at the time, to say, yes, we're going to change
how we do these elevons on landing so we will

970
01:05:02,500 --> 01:05:05,350
take some of the load off that gear.

971
01:05:05,350 --> 01:05:05,690
Let's review it.

972
01:05:05,690 --> 01:05:11,160
We had the requirements, we had the design,
we had the test results and now we've got

973
01:05:11,160 --> 01:05:13,109
the operational results.

974
01:05:13,109 --> 01:05:18,040
The whole systems engineering scheme is to
go from start to finish.

975
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:19,470
And this is what we did.

976
01:05:19,470 --> 01:05:24,359
I may have made this sound more negative than
it was.

977
01:05:24,359 --> 01:05:27,730
It was great fun and it worked really well.

978
01:05:27,730 --> 01:05:30,850
I mean it worked well.

979
01:05:30,850 --> 01:05:37,619
As an example, and what the professor was
talking about a minute ago, we did one of

980
01:05:37,619 --> 01:05:37,869
these.

981
01:05:37,750 --> 01:05:42,859
This is loads here, but we did one for heating
early on.

982
01:05:42,859 --> 01:05:48,050
And we had a little computer, which was one
of the few on the center at the time.

983
01:05:48,050 --> 01:05:49,830
It was a Wang desktop.

984
01:05:49,830 --> 01:05:53,230
They've never seen that.

985
01:05:53,230 --> 01:05:54,420
I know that.

986
01:05:54,420 --> 01:05:55,480
[LAUGHTER]

987
01:05:55,480 --> 01:05:56,470
It's a foreign word.

988
01:05:56,470 --> 01:06:00,320
It's about this big.

989
01:06:00,320 --> 01:06:06,980
And I think it had a max of about 256k and
that was it.

990
01:06:06,980 --> 01:06:13,980
We, to keep up with Rockwell, instead of loads,
did heating because we were more worried about

991
01:06:14,180 --> 01:06:16,490
the brakes than we were the tires.

992
01:06:16,490 --> 01:06:21,980
And, if you look at this curve, this one sets
that nose gear down a little early.

993
01:06:21,980 --> 01:06:24,760
You come in on the mains and you drop that
nose gear down.

994
01:06:24,760 --> 01:06:27,279
And then all of a sudden you get this spike.

995
01:06:27,279 --> 01:06:33,350
Well, you can imagine if you get this spike
here, the heating is going to be higher from

996
01:06:33,350 --> 01:06:34,500
there on.

997
01:06:34,500 --> 01:06:39,080
If you keep that nose up, like he was talking
about a minute ago, and you just wait a while

998
01:06:39,080 --> 01:06:42,730
and you get way down the runway or down the
runway some place, you get a little lower

999
01:06:42,730 --> 01:06:46,350
load and it's a little easier on those tires
and on the brakes.

1000
01:06:46,350 --> 01:06:53,060
It gives you a little longer rollout, but
that's not bad because we've got plenty of

1001
01:06:53,060 --> 01:06:53,710
room.

1002
01:06:53,710 --> 01:06:58,220
Now, some of these fellows had a problem with
this one.

1003
01:06:58,220 --> 01:07:02,410
This is 51D.

1004
01:07:02,410 --> 01:07:04,900
This is the infamous flight for the professor.

1005
01:07:04,900 --> 01:07:08,859
See that tire right there?

1006
01:07:08,859 --> 01:07:09,730
It is blown.

1007
01:07:09,730 --> 01:07:15,859
It is the only tire that we blew in the whole
of the flight test.

1008
01:07:15,859 --> 01:07:20,359
And what are we at 210 or 214 along flights,
and it is the only tire.

1009
01:07:20,359 --> 01:07:22,500
I'm sorry, 114.

1010
01:07:22,500 --> 01:07:24,160
It's the only tire that we blew.

1011
01:07:24,160 --> 01:07:26,440
And I tried to ask him last night what they
did.

1012
01:07:26,440 --> 01:07:27,160
I'll tell the story.

1013
01:07:27,160 --> 01:07:31,910
Well, I was going to tell you, he had a tremendous
side load.

1014
01:07:31,910 --> 01:07:35,750
He had a tremendous 15 knot crosswind that
they got.

1015
01:07:35,750 --> 01:07:39,029
And the gentleman who was flying was a fellow
named Bobko.

1016
01:07:39,029 --> 01:07:41,810
He's kind of fun to talk to.

1017
01:07:41,810 --> 01:07:45,220
He did a good job getting that thing in.

1018
01:07:45,220 --> 01:07:46,880
And they got pretty far down the runway.

1019
01:07:46,880 --> 01:07:50,619
I think it was only 200 feet, our guys told
me, before that tire blew.

1020
01:07:50,619 --> 01:07:51,950
And you were almost at a stop.

1021
01:07:51,950 --> 01:07:52,930
You were just going a little slow.

1022
01:07:52,930 --> 01:07:59,930
But the brakes were heating up because he
was on those brakes fighting that side load.

1023
01:08:07,850 --> 01:08:11,369
More operational findings.

1024
01:08:11,369 --> 01:08:14,820
We shot-blasted the center strip at the runway.

1025
01:08:14,820 --> 01:08:21,670
We improved the groves, like I was showing
you, and we put the corduroy in.

1026
01:08:21,670 --> 01:08:25,908
And that all happened after I was there, but
I still deal with the guys out in the center

1027
01:08:25,908 --> 01:08:27,649
and they helped me out to get this.

1028
01:08:27,649 --> 01:08:34,649
The design problem was the wing volume that
we had.

1029
01:08:35,488 --> 01:08:36,868
We started 42.

1030
01:08:36,868 --> 01:08:38,670
They tell me they are going to go to 44.

1031
01:08:38,670 --> 01:08:39,929
I don't know if they have.

1032
01:08:39,929 --> 01:08:41,948
The tire pressure was 370.

1033
01:08:41,948 --> 01:08:43,190
We could go to 410.

1034
01:08:43,190 --> 01:08:47,679
I think the new tire will have 410.

1035
01:08:47,679 --> 01:08:54,068
We talked a little bit about lengthening the
nose gear which would relieve some of that

1036
01:08:54,068 --> 01:08:55,979
problem with the nose down.

1037
01:08:55,979 --> 01:09:01,130
It turned out the proposal was prepared.

1038
01:09:01,130 --> 01:09:01,948
It was presented.

1039
01:09:01,948 --> 01:09:06,488
And they decided that they really didn't want
to do it because it would cost too much money

1040
01:09:06,488 --> 01:09:07,639
and was too much weight.

1041
01:09:07,639 --> 01:09:13,609
The Orbiter, at one time, had a CG problem.

1042
01:09:13,609 --> 01:09:18,109
And I don't think they wanted to weight up
there with that much of a moment arm on it,

1043
01:09:18,109 --> 01:09:20,509
was one of the reasons.

1044
01:09:20,509 --> 01:09:22,179
The carbon brakes were added in 1990.

1045
01:09:22,179 --> 01:09:23,769
They worked great.

1046
01:09:23,769 --> 01:09:29,318
The new synthetic tire in 1992, which is different
from that tire right there, worked very, very

1047
01:09:29,318 --> 01:09:29,839
well.

1048
01:09:29,839 --> 01:09:30,899
The drag shoot.

1049
01:09:30,899 --> 01:09:35,859
We put the drag shoot back on.

1050
01:09:35,859 --> 01:09:40,238
And this is nothing more but a [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

1051
01:09:40,238 --> 01:09:43,719
picture, but there is that drag shoot right
there.

1052
01:09:43,719 --> 01:09:46,149
We have that drag shoot on now.

1053
01:09:46,149 --> 01:09:48,389
And they tell me that helps a lot.

1054
01:09:48,389 --> 01:09:53,618
If you put that drag shoot on, you save the
brakes and you save those tires, too.

1055
01:09:53,618 --> 01:09:58,159
And it also tends to stabilize you to keep
it going straight down the runway.

1056
01:09:58,159 --> 01:10:02,550
Even with the crosswind?

1057
01:10:02,550 --> 01:10:03,639
Even with the crosswind, yeah.

1058
01:10:03,639 --> 01:10:08,960
And you have to realize that this has to be
designed not just for a landing at Kennedy

1059
01:10:08,960 --> 01:10:12,449
Space Center or at Edwards where you have
a three mile long runway.

1060
01:10:12,449 --> 01:10:18,340
Like Allen said, you've got contingency runways
around the world where you might be landing

1061
01:10:18,340 --> 01:10:21,420
with just two miles.

1062
01:10:21,420 --> 01:10:27,409
And that is when this stuff is really going
to save your bacon.

1063
01:10:27,409 --> 01:10:34,409
We were proponents of the drag shoot for a
long time mainly to save those tires and the

1064
01:10:37,119 --> 01:10:41,269
brakes and get the cost back in there.

1065
01:10:41,269 --> 01:10:43,999
It was added in 1992.

1066
01:10:43,999 --> 01:10:45,739
And so with all of that.

1067
01:10:45,739 --> 01:10:50,479
After I told you all of that, I was a little
bit negative, just to let you know, that everything

1068
01:10:50,479 --> 01:10:51,679
doesn't go smooth.

1069
01:10:51,679 --> 01:10:57,429
If it does not go smoothly when you do engineering,
I would suggest to you that you're probably

1070
01:10:57,429 --> 01:11:00,179
going to have the same kind of situations.

1071
01:11:00,179 --> 01:11:03,210
Just concluding comments.

1072
01:11:03,210 --> 01:11:08,289
The tire design on development had margins
to meet all the initial requirements, and

1073
01:11:08,289 --> 01:11:09,139
they did fine.

1074
01:11:09,139 --> 01:11:13,800
It is still flying and flies well, a good
vehicle.

1075
01:11:13,800 --> 01:11:19,340
We only had one tire failure, and the professor
was a witness there, he was there.

1076
01:11:19,340 --> 01:11:24,090
We could have had a longer life on all that,
but the clear issue was really weights and

1077
01:11:24,090 --> 01:11:24,809
money.

1078
01:11:24,809 --> 01:11:30,719
Again, it is one of those systems engineering
things where you have to trade that off.

1079
01:11:30,719 --> 01:11:33,449
The wheels performed a design.

1080
01:11:33,449 --> 01:11:40,449
Even better because we didn't have any leakage
in six months on the pad which was great for

1081
01:11:41,320 --> 01:11:41,800
us.

1082
01:11:41,800 --> 01:11:47,300
The beryllium brakes functioned but were sporadically
marginal.

1083
01:11:47,300 --> 01:11:51,820
The KSC runway had friction and rough surfaces
but that is fixed so everything is pretty

1084
01:11:51,820 --> 01:11:53,260
good now.

1085
01:11:53,260 --> 01:11:56,949
The initial design of the requirements and
improvements have continued, and I am sure

1086
01:11:56,949 --> 01:12:01,239
that they will continue until the Orbiter
doesn't fly anymore.

1087
01:12:01,239 --> 01:12:03,199
And I am going to stop right there.

1088
01:12:03,199 --> 01:12:04,510
You've had enough of me for a little bit.

1089
01:12:04,510 --> 01:12:08,019
Any questions on this stuff?

1090
01:12:08,019 --> 01:12:10,860
What did you think about that concrete?

1091
01:12:10,860 --> 01:12:12,090
Did you pass that stuff around?

1092
01:12:12,090 --> 01:12:13,670
Isn't that something?

1093
01:12:13,670 --> 01:12:15,229
It fools you, doesn't it?

1094
01:12:15,229 --> 01:12:17,179
I had never been to the Cape.

1095
01:12:17,179 --> 01:12:19,599
It is a lot rougher than you think.

1096
01:12:19,599 --> 01:12:24,340
And you see that stuff and say what were we
thinking?

1097
01:12:24,340 --> 01:12:25,929
That's no good for a big tire like that.

1098
01:12:25,929 --> 01:12:28,479
OK, gang.

1099
01:12:28,479 --> 01:12:35,380
I will just finish the story of this 51D flight
that Allen mentioned.

1100
01:12:35,380 --> 01:12:39,690
It was the sixteenth flight of the Shuttle.

1101
01:12:39,690 --> 01:12:40,940
It was my first flight.

1102
01:12:40,940 --> 01:12:43,539
And actually there were seven people onboard.

1103
01:12:43,539 --> 01:12:46,239
Six of us were rookies, so we had never been
in space before.

1104
01:12:46,239 --> 01:12:51,880
And the commander had only been in space once
and he was in charge.

1105
01:12:51,880 --> 01:12:56,920
And it was quite an exciting flight because
we had a malfunctioning satellite, we had

1106
01:12:56,920 --> 01:12:59,539
to do an unplanned spacewalk.

1107
01:12:59,539 --> 01:13:02,119
We did an unplanned rendezvous with a satellite.

1108
01:13:02,119 --> 01:13:04,369
And so lots of stuff had happened.

1109
01:13:04,369 --> 01:13:08,699
And then we came in re-entry.

1110
01:13:08,699 --> 01:13:15,699
And I just remember the deal was, as Allen
said, the nose wheel steering was built in,

1111
01:13:16,869 --> 01:13:18,610
but it was a single string system.

1112
01:13:18,610 --> 01:13:25,610
There was only one hydraulic loop in the nose
gear.

1113
01:13:26,760 --> 01:13:31,340
And if that went hard over then you will leave
the runway.

1114
01:13:31,340 --> 01:13:38,219
And so Gastros decided that until they made
that redundant we weren't going to use the

1115
01:13:38,219 --> 01:13:39,929
nose wheel steering.

1116
01:13:39,929 --> 01:13:45,090
In order to steer down the runway, you put
even more or less pressure on the right or

1117
01:13:45,090 --> 01:13:45,760
the left brake.

1118
01:13:45,760 --> 01:13:51,030
It turned out that we landed with the max
crosswind.

1119
01:13:51,030 --> 01:13:58,030
We had a crosswind from the right side, I
believe, and so wanted to blow the Orbiter

1120
01:13:58,960 --> 01:14:01,369
over to the left side of the runway.

1121
01:14:01,369 --> 01:14:08,369
And so the commander had to put extra brakes
on the right wheel.

1122
01:14:08,579 --> 01:14:10,380
And so that was what was heating up.

1123
01:14:10,380 --> 01:14:16,269
And I just remember, because I was sitting
right behind him up on the flight deck, we

1124
01:14:16,269 --> 01:14:22,139
touched down, everything went fine down the
runway, the nose wheel came down and we could

1125
01:14:22,139 --> 01:14:25,869
feel the deceleration.

1126
01:14:25,869 --> 01:14:29,050
I thought we were just about stopped.

1127
01:14:29,050 --> 01:14:34,449
And I remember thinking to myself it's all
over, nothing can go wrong now.

1128
01:14:34,449 --> 01:14:37,909
Boom, the whole Orbiter shook.

1129
01:14:37,909 --> 01:14:41,670
I mean I really thought that one of the fuel
tanks had blown up or something.

1130
01:14:41,670 --> 01:14:44,300
It was really impressive.

1131
01:14:44,300 --> 01:14:49,099
And, like Allen said, these things put out
a lot of shrapnel.

1132
01:14:49,099 --> 01:14:54,269
In fact, after most flights, sometimes you
will see the crew get out and walk around

1133
01:14:54,269 --> 01:14:59,699
and kind of kick the tires and just sort of
pat the Orbiter and say thank you for a nice

1134
01:14:59,699 --> 01:15:00,900
flight and all that.

1135
01:15:00,900 --> 01:15:07,710
But they made everybody get out of there because
the other tires, obviously, were overheated

1136
01:15:07,710 --> 01:15:10,260
as well and they were worried that they were
break.

1137
01:15:10,260 --> 01:15:12,989
But, as Yogi Bear said, it ain't over till
it's over.

1138
01:15:12,989 --> 01:15:15,190
And it was exciting.

1139
01:15:15,190 --> 01:15:22,130
But after that they fixed the nose wheel steering,
they got rid of the beryllium brakes and replaced

1140
01:15:22,130 --> 01:15:26,289
them with carbon, they put in the drag shoot,
and we really haven't had any problems since.

1141
01:15:26,289 --> 01:15:32,130
And I think it's a really good example of
the whole engineering process where you build

1142
01:15:32,130 --> 01:15:33,409
in margin.

1143
01:15:33,409 --> 01:15:39,449
And that is absolutely critical when you're
designing a system.

1144
01:15:39,449 --> 01:15:44,849
And then going through the testing and then
the operation and then closing the loop.

1145
01:15:44,849 --> 01:15:50,309
Once you find out how these systems really
operate then, if you have the ability to make

1146
01:15:50,309 --> 01:15:54,510
changes, you can go in and improve them.

1147
01:15:54,510 --> 01:16:01,510
Let's take our two-minute break, stand up,
turn around and then we'll take up again with

1148
01:16:01,769 --> 01:16:04,860
the manipulator systems.

1149
01:16:04,860 --> 01:16:11,440
Start up again with a different mechanical
system.

1150
01:16:11,440 --> 01:16:18,440
In this case the manipulator system which
is the space crane.

1151
01:16:18,650 --> 01:16:22,280
That's a good term for it.

1152
01:16:22,280 --> 01:16:29,280
It is a space crane.

1153
01:16:29,849 --> 01:16:33,809
This is a whole different way we did this.

1154
01:16:33,809 --> 01:16:39,929
When the Orbiter was built there were several
sized payload bays.

1155
01:16:39,929 --> 01:16:43,389
One was 30 feet and one was 60 feet.

1156
01:16:43,389 --> 01:16:50,389
And it turned out that we did not really have
a system to handle the payload where you were

1157
01:16:51,409 --> 01:16:55,199
going to carry the payload, but we really
didn't have them at the time.

1158
01:16:55,199 --> 01:17:02,199
Altitude and inclination varied.

1159
01:17:02,729 --> 01:17:06,389
Here was the significant capability we had
to do.

1160
01:17:06,389 --> 01:17:11,440
We had to do 65,000 pounds, 15 foot in diameter
and about 60 feet long.

1161
01:17:11,440 --> 01:17:16,849
That is about the size of a greyhound bus.

1162
01:17:16,849 --> 01:17:22,610
And we really did not have any system to handle
it.

1163
01:17:22,610 --> 01:17:27,840
The thoughts were don't worry, we will spring
it out, we'll throw it out, but we had no

1164
01:17:27,840 --> 01:17:31,300
retrievalment methods.

1165
01:17:31,300 --> 01:17:38,300
Besides that, another systems engineering
problem, most of the resources in the program

1166
01:17:41,510 --> 01:17:44,590
were on the Orbiter, or just to get the shuttle
flying.

1167
01:17:44,590 --> 01:17:51,380
And there was really not a lot of attention
paid to the payloads in the early days.

1168
01:17:51,380 --> 01:17:56,999
In addition to that, when you look back, the
ongoing programs were Skylab.

1169
01:17:56,999 --> 01:17:59,340
We had Skylab still going.

1170
01:17:59,340 --> 01:18:04,409
We had Apollo-Soyez just about ready to fly.

1171
01:18:04,409 --> 01:18:05,920
And then the prime objective, the Orbiter.

1172
01:18:05,920 --> 01:18:11,710
All these things contributed to the fact that
it was a little later in getting this started

1173
01:18:11,710 --> 01:18:18,710
than perhaps it should have been.

1174
01:18:23,860 --> 01:18:26,550
All the NASA centers had a concept.

1175
01:18:26,550 --> 01:18:29,360
Marshall had a concept.

1176
01:18:29,360 --> 01:18:31,679
We did not have a concept at Johnson at the
time.

1177
01:18:31,679 --> 01:18:38,679
We were doing some off-line work on manipulators,
but the initial part was not for the Shuttle.

1178
01:18:42,679 --> 01:18:48,499
We had some systems that were pretty good
for deployment, but we had no system for retrieval

1179
01:18:48,499 --> 01:18:50,309
at the time.

1180
01:18:50,309 --> 01:18:56,780
That was a problem.

1181
01:18:56,780 --> 01:18:58,710
The manipulator became a crane.

1182
01:18:58,710 --> 01:19:05,050
It essentially became a contender once we
understood a little bit more about the requirements.

1183
01:19:05,050 --> 01:19:10,369
And the one that came up that said we have
to go capture a satellite.

1184
01:19:10,369 --> 01:19:15,389
That is the one that was the real driver for
the manipulator.

1185
01:19:15,389 --> 01:19:22,389
We

1186
01:19:27,639 --> 01:19:29,219
had some studies going on.

1187
01:19:29,219 --> 01:19:30,999
I guess you guys call it robotics.

1188
01:19:30,999 --> 01:19:37,999
And we had found that we could get from General
Electric some of the Atomic Energy Commission

1189
01:19:42,420 --> 01:19:48,630
which they used to handle the very critical
elements.

1190
01:19:48,630 --> 01:19:51,280
And we were just working on it.

1191
01:19:51,280 --> 01:19:52,999
And this was a side issue.

1192
01:19:52,999 --> 01:19:54,229
We were doing this technology.

1193
01:19:54,229 --> 01:19:58,960
It had nothing to do with the Orbiter at the
time.

1194
01:19:58,960 --> 01:20:04,320
And we decided, after a while, that we liked
the way it worked and what we would do is

1195
01:20:04,320 --> 01:20:06,900
just make an extension of that, so we did.

1196
01:20:06,900 --> 01:20:12,590
And we decided that we would try to go to
handling system.

1197
01:20:12,590 --> 01:20:12,949
And we did.

1198
01:20:12,949 --> 01:20:18,459
I'm not sure.

1199
01:20:18,459 --> 01:20:24,349
Is master slave a good term for robotics these
days?

1200
01:20:24,349 --> 01:20:28,309
Let me tell you what a master slave is.

1201
01:20:28,309 --> 01:20:32,030
The hand controllers or whatever you're using
looks just like the manipulator.

1202
01:20:32,030 --> 01:20:33,110
You have a little bitty one over here.

1203
01:20:33,110 --> 01:20:35,670
You've got a big one over here.

1204
01:20:35,670 --> 01:20:38,269
We were using a master slave kind of system.

1205
01:20:38,269 --> 01:20:45,269
And we found out right off that if you've
made an arm that long and you try to put it

1206
01:20:45,300 --> 01:20:48,729
in the crew cabin, it took up a lot of volume
in the crew cabin.

1207
01:20:48,729 --> 01:20:51,619
And so we didn't have that much room to start
with.

1208
01:20:51,619 --> 01:20:54,300
That became an issue right off.

1209
01:20:54,300 --> 01:21:00,110
The other issue was that we found out that
when we were working with the AEC kind of

1210
01:21:00,110 --> 01:21:05,539
things that dexterity and feedback was very
important because they didn't want to drop

1211
01:21:05,539 --> 01:21:05,949
this thing.

1212
01:21:05,949 --> 01:21:07,280
They wanted to be sure they could handle it.

1213
01:21:07,280 --> 01:21:14,280
But we really didn't need that.

1214
01:21:16,260 --> 01:21:19,760
We decided that we had to have a larger system
than that.

1215
01:21:19,760 --> 01:21:26,760
And we also found that during these tests
the fellow would hold his arms up and would

1216
01:21:27,650 --> 01:21:29,239
get tired.

1217
01:21:29,239 --> 01:21:33,340
We decided if we got a barber he would be
the guy that could operate this thing better

1218
01:21:33,340 --> 01:21:35,590
than any of us.

1219
01:21:35,590 --> 01:21:36,530
[LAUGHTER]

1220
01:21:36,530 --> 01:21:37,699
That's a 1G problem.

1221
01:21:37,699 --> 01:21:40,789
Even there, for training, he would get tired
so easily.

1222
01:21:40,789 --> 01:21:44,340
But we never found a barber that could do
it.

1223
01:21:44,340 --> 01:21:51,340
And we kept the master slave concept for future
testing.

1224
01:21:52,559 --> 01:21:59,559
Just so we understand what a master slave
is, let's take a quick look at this.

1225
01:21:59,699 --> 01:22:03,050
Here is the master.

1226
01:22:03,050 --> 01:22:07,860
You can go over and grab the hand controller
right up here.

1227
01:22:07,860 --> 01:22:13,889
And, as you move that hand controller, this
piece over here moves exactly like you move

1228
01:22:13,889 --> 01:22:16,170
the hand controller and the arm.

1229
01:22:16,170 --> 01:22:22,110
Now, that is interesting because if this is
one foot and that is 50 feet, you get a radio

1230
01:22:22,110 --> 01:22:25,239
of about 1:50.

1231
01:22:25,239 --> 01:22:29,590
Instead of being able to move it like we wanted,
you now have to ratchet the thing every time

1232
01:22:29,590 --> 01:22:29,979
you did it.

1233
01:22:29,979 --> 01:22:32,229
It took more space.

1234
01:22:32,229 --> 01:22:37,179
So, we decided that really was not a good
idea.

1235
01:22:37,179 --> 01:22:43,889
In addition to that, we found that the manipulator
that we had was really too small for what

1236
01:22:43,889 --> 01:22:48,349
we really wanted to do.

1237
01:22:48,349 --> 01:22:55,349
And the other problem was that the GE hydraulic
manipulator was probably not what we were

1238
01:22:59,920 --> 01:23:01,530
going to fly in space.

1239
01:23:01,530 --> 01:23:04,280
We did not want to fly a hydraulic system
that would leak.

1240
01:23:04,280 --> 01:23:09,659
Now we had a problem between hydraulics and
electrics, which now we had to do some modeling

1241
01:23:09,659 --> 01:23:09,909
on.

1242
01:23:09,860 --> 01:23:16,860
Of all things, we had some money from the
NASA Medical Group.

1243
01:23:17,869 --> 01:23:23,030
We told them what we wanted to do, they gave
us some money and we went and bought a manipulator

1244
01:23:23,030 --> 01:23:23,699
from GE.

1245
01:23:23,699 --> 01:23:28,170
They got it from Pittsburg Plate and Glass.

1246
01:23:28,170 --> 01:23:33,849
It was about 25 to 27 feet long and it had
a suction end effector on it.

1247
01:23:33,849 --> 01:23:38,309
And what they would do is pick up these big
pieces of glass and move them.

1248
01:23:38,309 --> 01:23:45,309
We bought their manipulator for about $50,000,
I think, but it was medical money of all things.

1249
01:23:47,190 --> 01:23:53,190
And it had a master slave and it had a vacuum
end detector.

1250
01:23:53,190 --> 01:23:59,699
We decided that there were several things
that we had to analyze just to get this thing

1251
01:23:59,699 --> 01:24:00,840
started.

1252
01:24:00,840 --> 01:24:04,269
One was the master slave, and we decided we
wanted an alternate concept.

1253
01:24:04,269 --> 01:24:06,820
That one didn't even work.

1254
01:24:06,820 --> 01:24:10,800
The feedback versus fixed hand controllers
was the other one.

1255
01:24:10,800 --> 01:24:11,869
A lot of people wanted feedback.

1256
01:24:11,869 --> 01:24:15,800
Do you do robotics with feedback, too?

1257
01:24:15,800 --> 01:24:18,559
Any of you in robotics?

1258
01:24:18,559 --> 01:24:25,559
I can tell you anything, can't it?

1259
01:24:26,090 --> 01:24:26,340
[LAUGHTER]
Well, we didn't think we need it.

1260
01:24:30,699 --> 01:24:35,380
The viewing, the line of site turned out to
be another issue.

1261
01:24:35,380 --> 01:24:42,380
When you look at it, in the Orbiter, we had
it at the aft station.

1262
01:24:42,429 --> 01:24:47,050
And looking back, at the time, there were
no windows facing out.

1263
01:24:47,050 --> 01:24:53,780
What we did for the first time was put TVs
on the Orbiter to use it.

1264
01:24:53,780 --> 01:24:59,639
So, the initial test was to see if we could
do things with the TVs.

1265
01:24:59,639 --> 01:25:01,530
We decided that was an issue.

1266
01:25:01,530 --> 01:25:06,369
The end effector configuration was really
never solved until about the end, and that's

1267
01:25:06,369 --> 01:25:12,059
the thing that is the grabber that you have
to grab this thing with.

1268
01:25:12,059 --> 01:25:15,260
And the power source we got fairly early.

1269
01:25:15,260 --> 01:25:19,550
We did not want to use hydraulics.

1270
01:25:19,550 --> 01:25:26,550
The other thing was the tip speed, and that
is the speed at which the tip of the manipulator

1271
01:25:26,670 --> 01:25:29,690
has to move so you can do things with it.

1272
01:25:29,690 --> 01:25:34,920
The problem we had is if we are going to capture
a satellite and we had a relative velocity

1273
01:25:34,920 --> 01:25:39,229
between the Orbiter and a satellite, since
the guy was going to have to move this thing,

1274
01:25:39,229 --> 01:25:46,119
but we didn't have a requirement so we had
to go work on that.

1275
01:25:46,119 --> 01:25:48,459
Payload and cargo handling was the other.

1276
01:25:48,459 --> 01:25:52,709
We knew that we were going to handle 64,000
pounds.

1277
01:25:52,709 --> 01:25:56,400
And the manipulators we were working on weren't
going to do it.

1278
01:25:56,400 --> 01:26:03,199
And, of course, the satellite capturing and
retrieval was what I've already talked about.

1279
01:26:03,199 --> 01:26:10,199
We did a little modeling and converted

1280
01:26:22,070 --> 01:26:25,070
some things at the center.

1281
01:26:25,070 --> 01:26:32,070
We decided that we had to have a high bay,
a big room, so we got a room that was Building

1282
01:26:33,459 --> 01:26:40,459
13 and we built a plastic floor that was very
smooth and put payloads on air bearings.

1283
01:26:41,309 --> 01:26:44,110
And then we mounted our manipulator right
next to it.

1284
01:26:44,110 --> 01:26:51,110
Then what we would do is, on the air bearing
floor, everybody would push this 5,000 or

1285
01:26:56,199 --> 01:26:58,300
6,000 pound payload across the floor.

1286
01:26:58,300 --> 01:27:02,159
And we had two strips where we could get the
velocity of what was going.

1287
01:27:02,159 --> 01:27:07,469
And we decided that we would try to find out
what the tip speed had to be to capture at

1288
01:27:07,469 --> 01:27:09,170
certain velocities, so we did that.

1289
01:27:09,170 --> 01:27:16,170
And we just had very, very simple-minded effectors,
but it worked fairly good.

1290
01:27:16,389 --> 01:27:18,429
We also worked on stationary.

1291
01:27:18,429 --> 01:27:25,429
These payloads right here, after using this
floor for probably a year and a half, we came

1292
01:27:28,639 --> 01:27:31,050
up with some requirements.

1293
01:27:31,050 --> 01:27:33,349
We couldn't use a master slave.

1294
01:27:33,349 --> 01:27:35,489
The feedback didn't really help us.

1295
01:27:35,489 --> 01:27:37,499
It was just too big.

1296
01:27:37,499 --> 01:27:43,949
Tell you what, if you ever look at the linemen
these days that go up and fix these high lines,

1297
01:27:43,949 --> 01:27:48,239
their manipulator, their system is similar
to what we have.

1298
01:27:48,239 --> 01:27:54,519
We have a little bit more sophistication in
the avionics, but it is very, very similar.

1299
01:27:54,519 --> 01:27:57,269
Mechanically they are very, very similar.

1300
01:27:57,269 --> 01:28:01,989
The line of site would be required.

1301
01:28:01,989 --> 01:28:08,909
We had an astronaut come over and use the
manipulator.

1302
01:28:08,909 --> 01:28:14,489
We gave him a TV and then put what it is called
an eye mark recorder on his head.

1303
01:28:14,489 --> 01:28:19,079
And what this eye mark record was is it looked
into your eyes, and when you looked at something

1304
01:28:19,079 --> 01:28:22,780
out here on a TV over here, you could see
where he was looking.

1305
01:28:22,780 --> 01:28:28,229
Then we ran a test to see, while he was operating
to capture these satellites, whether he was

1306
01:28:28,229 --> 01:28:32,659
looking at the satellite -- I'm sorry, the
TV, or while he was going line of sight.

1307
01:28:32,659 --> 01:28:39,659
It turned out, it was very interesting, it
was 60% he was looking line of sight and 40%

1308
01:28:40,170 --> 01:28:42,340
on the TV.

1309
01:28:42,340 --> 01:28:49,340
At the time, there was no aft window, so we
went to Rockwell and they decided to put the

1310
01:28:51,019 --> 01:28:51,769
aft windows.

1311
01:28:51,769 --> 01:28:54,739
Again, here is one of those problems.

1312
01:28:54,739 --> 01:28:56,050
The aft window is about that thick.

1313
01:28:56,050 --> 01:28:58,630
It pure quartz and is very, very heavy.

1314
01:28:58,630 --> 01:29:00,739
And nobody wanted to put them in.

1315
01:29:00,739 --> 01:29:03,139
I think we had some overhead windows in to
start with.

1316
01:29:03,139 --> 01:29:04,849
I'm not real sure about that.

1317
01:29:04,849 --> 01:29:07,940
But we have overhead windows in there and
aft windows.

1318
01:29:07,940 --> 01:29:09,280
So, we got those put in.

1319
01:29:09,280 --> 01:29:16,280
We also defined the end effector speed, the
tip speed.

1320
01:29:16,530 --> 01:29:20,530
We found out that about foot per second was
about all he needed.

1321
01:29:20,530 --> 01:29:25,110
Other than that, probably the satellite was
moving so fast and it probably wasn't safe

1322
01:29:25,110 --> 01:29:29,749
to do it so we settled on that.

1323
01:29:29,749 --> 01:29:32,969
We decided that we could capture satellites.

1324
01:29:32,969 --> 01:29:36,300
That was done.

1325
01:29:36,300 --> 01:29:43,300
And we again said we could not see using hydraulics
on this system at all.

1326
01:29:44,030 --> 01:29:47,929
So, we moved to a bigger building.

1327
01:29:47,929 --> 01:29:54,929
Now we built a 60 x 80 foot floor and ran
satellites across it, a very smooth floor.

1328
01:29:56,190 --> 01:30:02,659
The smoothness of the floor, we had a little
hole in the middle that was 0.009 inches deep,

1329
01:30:02,659 --> 01:30:09,659
and we shot the whole thing with a laser and
got the floor built.

1330
01:30:10,190 --> 01:30:15,219
We also needed an Orbiter mockup so we built
an Orbiter mockup to about where it would

1331
01:30:15,219 --> 01:30:17,709
be on the Orbiter.

1332
01:30:17,709 --> 01:30:19,260
We got the floor built.

1333
01:30:19,260 --> 01:30:22,709
That should be 80.

1334
01:30:22,709 --> 01:30:29,510
The manipulator was now 50 feet long, so we
had to make it 50 feet long.

1335
01:30:29,510 --> 01:30:33,900
But the problem was, since we were going to
use the electrical system instead of the hydraulic

1336
01:30:33,900 --> 01:30:39,349
system, now we had to make that hydraulic
system think it was operating like an electrical

1337
01:30:39,349 --> 01:30:40,619
system.

1338
01:30:40,619 --> 01:30:45,880
What we did was, on the electrical system,
if you put the arm straight out and you lift

1339
01:30:45,880 --> 01:30:48,829
it, we had a first cut at 100 pounds.

1340
01:30:48,829 --> 01:30:55,050
Now in orbit it is inertia that is going to
get you, but on the ground we said we will

1341
01:30:55,050 --> 01:30:58,110
hold this thing out at 100 pounds for the
electrical system.

1342
01:30:58,110 --> 01:31:05,110
So, we modeled the hydraulic system to work
just like that.

1343
01:31:06,869 --> 01:31:09,429
Also, we needed a lower scale payload.

1344
01:31:09,429 --> 01:31:10,219
We did not have any.

1345
01:31:10,219 --> 01:31:12,030
Remember what I was telling you a minute age?

1346
01:31:12,030 --> 01:31:16,150
60 feet by 15 feet is about the size of a
greyhound bus.

1347
01:31:16,150 --> 01:31:20,989
Was what we were trying to work on.

1348
01:31:20,989 --> 01:31:26,670
And we also went to a fixed hand controller
which drove us into the hydraulics business.

1349
01:31:26,670 --> 01:31:26,989
I'm sorry, into the avionics business.

1350
01:31:26,989 --> 01:31:33,989
Before we did that we had to figure out a
way to handle payloads.

1351
01:31:36,729 --> 01:31:42,269
And so what we did was we had looked up some
of these people who were loggers up in the

1352
01:31:42,269 --> 01:31:48,260
Northeast, and they were using essentially
a dirigible to take the logs down.

1353
01:31:48,260 --> 01:31:50,519
And they were big, about like what we wanted.

1354
01:31:50,519 --> 01:31:55,820
We got that company, Sheldahl, I think was
the company, to build this thing and put helium

1355
01:31:55,820 --> 01:31:57,150
in it.

1356
01:31:57,150 --> 01:32:01,900
And it turned out something this big has a
tremendous inertia, which was great because

1357
01:32:01,900 --> 01:32:03,110
that was what we wanted.

1358
01:32:03,110 --> 01:32:05,809
We didn't want it to be heavy but we wanted
the inertia.

1359
01:32:05,809 --> 01:32:09,860
Plus, we got a little resistance from the
air when we moved it around.

1360
01:32:09,860 --> 01:32:15,130
We had to take that one and show that we could
grab it and put it in the payload bay.

1361
01:32:15,130 --> 01:32:21,449
And that took a while because when you get
it all set around, when you start putting

1362
01:32:21,449 --> 01:32:26,229
it down near the payload bay, say there is
the aft station of the payload bay, you find

1363
01:32:26,229 --> 01:32:27,800
out that you cannot see anything.

1364
01:32:27,800 --> 01:32:33,880
Now you really are on the TVs and you really
have to get that manipulator where it knows

1365
01:32:33,880 --> 01:32:35,209
where it is.

1366
01:32:35,209 --> 01:32:36,110
That was the other thing.

1367
01:32:36,110 --> 01:32:40,349
We found that once you started drop some of
these payloads you will want to automate a

1368
01:32:40,349 --> 01:32:41,949
whole bunch of this stuff.

1369
01:32:41,949 --> 01:32:48,949
In addition to that, when you look at the
requirements, just putting it in the payload

1370
01:32:52,400 --> 01:32:57,070
bay is kind of interesting, but once you get
it in there you've got to hold it.

1371
01:32:57,070 --> 01:33:01,650
What we did is -- There is the trunnion right
there.

1372
01:33:01,650 --> 01:33:07,190
You can see right there is where the trunnion
goes in there.

1373
01:33:07,190 --> 01:33:11,459
This thing comes back, it opens up and it's
like a big latch.

1374
01:33:11,459 --> 01:33:15,459
If you can drop that thing in there, you can
just put it in there.

1375
01:33:15,459 --> 01:33:19,199
Now, that is not so easy so I will show you.

1376
01:33:19,199 --> 01:33:20,099
We built some guides.

1377
01:33:20,099 --> 01:33:24,380
But the other thing was none of the payloads
were all the same size.

1378
01:33:24,380 --> 01:33:28,079
What we had to do is, this is the longeron
right there.

1379
01:33:28,079 --> 01:33:30,539
There is that longeron in there.

1380
01:33:30,539 --> 01:33:35,860
And so we had these bridge fittings that you
could move along and move all along the payload

1381
01:33:35,860 --> 01:33:36,420
bay.

1382
01:33:36,420 --> 01:33:43,420
Now anybody that came along with any kind
of size of payload we could now accommodate

1383
01:33:43,539 --> 01:33:44,130
those fellows.

1384
01:33:44,130 --> 01:33:45,969
And it worked fairly well.

1385
01:33:45,969 --> 01:33:48,409
And we had done that.

1386
01:33:48,409 --> 01:33:55,409
The other part was once you got the trunnion
latch you had to get this thing in there.

1387
01:34:00,119 --> 01:34:06,499
What we did was we tried a lot of schemes,
but this was one that worked.

1388
01:34:06,499 --> 01:34:08,619
Let me start with this side.

1389
01:34:08,619 --> 01:34:09,800
There is the trunnion.

1390
01:34:09,800 --> 01:34:16,800
That is essentially these guys right here.

1391
01:34:21,219 --> 01:34:24,280
Those are the trunnions.

1392
01:34:24,280 --> 01:34:31,280
When you look at the trunnion it sticks out
of there and it just drops down into the payload

1393
01:34:31,820 --> 01:34:34,840
bay and it goes into that latch.

1394
01:34:34,840 --> 01:34:39,079
But getting it into that latch is not that
easy because you really cannot see sometimes.

1395
01:34:39,079 --> 01:34:42,199
What we did was built a thing called a V Guide.

1396
01:34:42,199 --> 01:34:45,969
This is the V Guide right here.

1397
01:34:45,969 --> 01:34:50,019
And the V Guide over here is right there.

1398
01:34:50,019 --> 01:34:54,599
And then we have a scuff plate so that once
you drop it in the V Guide this scuff plate

1399
01:34:54,599 --> 01:34:59,519
kept the payload from hitting up against that
latch.

1400
01:34:59,519 --> 01:35:06,519
And they are still using the same concept.

1401
01:35:07,340 --> 01:35:10,659
Here is what we really went with.

1402
01:35:10,659 --> 01:35:11,978
Not master slave anymore.

1403
01:35:11,978 --> 01:35:18,978
I'm sure in robotics labs or something you
probably go to hand controllers like this.

1404
01:35:19,939 --> 01:35:26,179
We went out and looked at a lot of the cranes
that people work with, and we found out that

1405
01:35:26,179 --> 01:35:33,179
these three motors right here all were parallel,
their rotation was parallel.

1406
01:35:34,679 --> 01:35:41,679
What we did was put sort of the auxiliary
placement things outside those three things,

1407
01:35:43,159 --> 01:35:46,380
just the way the linemen do out there now.

1408
01:35:46,380 --> 01:35:49,949
They do not have a hand controller.

1409
01:35:49,949 --> 01:35:55,820
They have a switch box or they have little
handles that they use.

1410
01:35:55,820 --> 01:36:00,610
That is essentially the configuration that
we started with on there.

1411
01:36:00,610 --> 01:36:06,949
And, if you look at it, this is a little more
complex.

1412
01:36:06,949 --> 01:36:13,949
And about this time we had had enough work
with the manipulator that we had that we had

1413
01:36:14,659 --> 01:36:21,579
built in-house a 50 foot model that we could
use and prove to the Program Office that we

1414
01:36:21,579 --> 01:36:23,059
could handle the payloads.

1415
01:36:23,059 --> 01:36:30,059
We had the big inflatables, we had the air-bearing
floor, and so the Shuttle Program Manager

1416
01:36:30,159 --> 01:36:32,320
said we're going to go with it.

1417
01:36:32,320 --> 01:36:36,249
And the Air Force wants it so we're going
to use it.

1418
01:36:36,249 --> 01:36:42,260
At about that time, the Canadians decided
they wanted to be in the space and they are

1419
01:36:42,260 --> 01:36:45,650
the ones who came and asked us could they
build it.

1420
01:36:45,650 --> 01:36:51,420
And people in Washington said yes, so our
division kind of backed off for a while and

1421
01:36:51,420 --> 01:36:53,380
they formed a program office with the Canadians.

1422
01:36:53,380 --> 01:37:00,380
Actually, that is a Canadian arm called the
Canada Arm.

1423
01:37:01,219 --> 01:37:03,219
Well, you know, you've got to have everything.

1424
01:37:03,219 --> 01:37:10,219
[LAUGHTER]

1425
01:37:10,860 --> 01:37:13,599
This is the longeron in the Orbiter.

1426
01:37:13,599 --> 01:37:16,050
This right here is the longeron in the Orbiter.

1427
01:37:16,050 --> 01:37:20,570
And these are just little sort of wrists,
and they will latch it in.

1428
01:37:20,570 --> 01:37:24,360
And you can see that we got the TVs here.

1429
01:37:24,360 --> 01:37:31,360
I think that probably this gives you a little
better feel for the rotation.

1430
01:37:31,809 --> 01:37:38,809
We had one rotation that the first thing we
had to do was, because when the payload bay

1431
01:37:38,978 --> 01:37:45,840
doors closed, they closed on top of this thing
so what you had to do was roll the manipulator

1432
01:37:45,840 --> 01:37:51,420
out because we had to get it out of the way
so there would be no interference with the

1433
01:37:51,420 --> 01:37:52,679
payload bay doors.

1434
01:37:52,679 --> 01:37:58,130
There is a degree of freedom that is really
just repositions the thing.

1435
01:37:58,130 --> 01:38:04,228
And then after that there is five degrees
of freedom on there at least.

1436
01:38:04,228 --> 01:38:11,228
And if you start from the back here that first
joint is a yaw.

1437
01:38:11,900 --> 01:38:18,209
And then all three of these center joints
are translation.

1438
01:38:18,209 --> 01:38:23,550
And then there is a roll up here and there
is a pitch up here.

1439
01:38:23,550 --> 01:38:28,409
We could go to any place with the end effector
if we had the tip speed and we had enough

1440
01:38:28,409 --> 01:38:30,329
joints.

1441
01:38:30,329 --> 01:38:37,329
The problem was that when we did this and
we tried to build some gear trains and we

1442
01:38:38,519 --> 01:38:43,209
found out that you didn't want to back drive
this arm.

1443
01:38:43,209 --> 01:38:45,360
You caught something and it back drives.

1444
01:38:45,360 --> 01:38:48,760
We did that a lot with the inflatables.

1445
01:38:48,760 --> 01:38:55,760
If you use spur gears you would strip the
gears out, so we went to roller gears or essentially

1446
01:38:55,900 --> 01:38:57,978
the planetary type gears.

1447
01:38:57,978 --> 01:39:03,510
I think the Canadians now have all these interior
angles or all those roller gears.

1448
01:39:03,510 --> 01:39:10,510
In the interest of time, since I am going
on, here is the manipulator and this is the

1449
01:39:25,900 --> 01:39:26,579
aft station.

1450
01:39:26,579 --> 01:39:28,030
And I have a little better one of that.

1451
01:39:28,030 --> 01:39:34,550
But about the time that we were just about
to get this thing proven, we found out that

1452
01:39:34,550 --> 01:39:36,539
people in the world were very interested in
this.

1453
01:39:36,539 --> 01:39:43,539
We had a Russian general want to come see
us, so we said OK and we entertained the Russian

1454
01:39:45,530 --> 01:39:46,659
general.

1455
01:39:46,659 --> 01:39:51,599
We wanted to show him that even though the
arm was about 40 feet long that we were very

1456
01:39:51,599 --> 01:39:57,300
dexterous so we were going to pour him a glass
of water.

1457
01:39:57,300 --> 01:40:04,099
And we did, except when we got the general
there and I walked in, they had the glass,

1458
01:40:04,099 --> 01:40:05,679
but the water wasn't in what I thought it
was in.

1459
01:40:05,679 --> 01:40:09,010
It was in a vodka bottle.

1460
01:40:09,010 --> 01:40:10,579
[LAUGHTER]

1461
01:40:10,579 --> 01:40:17,579
And there is no liquor allowed on a federal
installation.

1462
01:40:17,969 --> 01:40:24,969
And I'm sitting there and the guide is looking
at me and I'm saying there goes that job.

1463
01:40:26,469 --> 01:40:26,719
[LAUGHTER]

1464
01:40:26,630 --> 01:40:30,860
I told the general, his interpreter, hold
your glass there so that you got the bottle.

1465
01:40:30,860 --> 01:40:31,579
Real nice.

1466
01:40:31,579 --> 01:40:33,489
The guy was really good at the manipulator.

1467
01:40:33,489 --> 01:40:35,019
He poured it in there.

1468
01:40:35,019 --> 01:40:37,329
Fortunately it was water.

1469
01:40:37,329 --> 01:40:38,579
[LAUGHTER]

1470
01:40:38,579 --> 01:40:44,969
But we actually poured a glass of water out
of vodka bottle for the general.

1471
01:40:44,969 --> 01:40:48,360
But I thought my time at NASA had come to
an end.

1472
01:40:48,360 --> 01:40:53,659
You guys wouldn't do that, would you?

1473
01:40:53,659 --> 01:40:53,909
No.
It would have been vodka.

1474
01:40:55,050 --> 01:40:55,478
[LAUGHTER]

1475
01:40:55,478 --> 01:40:57,630
Yeah, they'd use the vodka.

1476
01:40:57,630 --> 01:40:59,239
Nowadays, they might use the vodka.

1477
01:40:59,239 --> 01:41:04,159
I hadn't thought about that.

1478
01:41:04,159 --> 01:41:06,090
Well, let me go on here.

1479
01:41:06,090 --> 01:41:13,090
I was going to point out one thing here that
the TVs turn out to be a very important part

1480
01:41:14,809 --> 01:41:17,439
of this whole thing.

1481
01:41:17,439 --> 01:41:22,570
Once you get a payload and you sort of are
blind, now you have lots of TVs you can use.

1482
01:41:22,570 --> 01:41:24,110
There are four on Orbiter.

1483
01:41:24,110 --> 01:41:30,228
There are two up front, two on the back bulked
and there is one on the end effector so that

1484
01:41:30,228 --> 01:41:36,010
you can sort of see where you're going for
the last engagement.

1485
01:41:36,010 --> 01:41:41,719
And you can see here there is the aft station,
there are the windows.

1486
01:41:41,719 --> 01:41:44,539
Now, he's got a pretty good line of site if
there is nothing in there.

1487
01:41:44,539 --> 01:41:48,860
If there is a docking tunnel in there that
makes it a little more difficult.

1488
01:41:48,860 --> 01:41:53,539
Did you have a docketing tunnel?

1489
01:41:53,539 --> 01:41:58,670
You just had a place where you could set it.

1490
01:41:58,670 --> 01:42:03,719
My favorite thing, for this gentleman, is
that fixing the Hubble to me was the greatest

1491
01:42:03,719 --> 01:42:04,939
thing that we have ever done.

1492
01:42:04,939 --> 01:42:07,449
And I hope they do it again some time.

1493
01:42:07,449 --> 01:42:10,689
And the manipulator always plays a part in
that.

1494
01:42:10,689 --> 01:42:16,389
The only other thing that we did that was
interesting, early on we built an end effector

1495
01:42:16,389 --> 01:42:18,999
where the astronaut could stand on it.

1496
01:42:18,999 --> 01:42:24,829
Our first cut at this was to do it like the
guys that do the high lines, and we put all

1497
01:42:24,829 --> 01:42:27,439
the controls out on the end effector.

1498
01:42:27,439 --> 01:42:29,920
The Canadians did not like that.

1499
01:42:29,920 --> 01:42:32,699
It complicated things.

1500
01:42:32,699 --> 01:42:39,699
Remember, we only had about 120 kilobytes
total for the computer for this thing and

1501
01:42:41,189 --> 01:42:42,689
that was it.

1502
01:42:42,689 --> 01:42:47,780
They didn't want to waste any more and they
didn't want all the weight.

1503
01:42:47,780 --> 01:42:53,519
I guess the astronauts or someone said we'll
go with just a foot stand and then we will

1504
01:42:53,519 --> 01:42:56,619
control it from the aft station here.

1505
01:42:56,619 --> 01:42:59,670
And I think that's the way you do it now,
isn't it?

1506
01:42:59,670 --> 01:43:00,559
Yeah.

1507
01:43:00,559 --> 01:43:05,728
It was a tough battle, but weight and cost
won out again.

1508
01:43:05,728 --> 01:43:12,728
It's tough to beat them.

1509
01:43:14,670 --> 01:43:21,670
These aren't really that great, but you can
see that this thing takes up a lot of control

1510
01:43:22,499 --> 01:43:25,869
panel in the aft station of the Orbiter.

1511
01:43:25,869 --> 01:43:27,860
It really does.

1512
01:43:27,860 --> 01:43:31,900
And here are the windows right there.

1513
01:43:31,900 --> 01:43:35,010
And there is an overhead window.

1514
01:43:35,010 --> 01:43:42,010
We thought at one time that what we would
have to do, the arm is here, this aft, there

1515
01:43:43,269 --> 01:43:46,539
was a payload that wanted the arm to come
back this way.

1516
01:43:46,539 --> 01:43:49,880
If it did that you had to have that window.

1517
01:43:49,880 --> 01:43:54,880
A very strange thing happened, because when
you turn your arm back that way, right is

1518
01:43:54,880 --> 01:43:56,320
left and left is right.

1519
01:43:56,320 --> 01:44:03,320
We had to practice the reverse of everything
or get a mirror or something.

1520
01:44:04,519 --> 01:44:05,550
We tried a lot of it.

1521
01:44:05,550 --> 01:44:11,579
The Program Office wisely decided that was
not a good idea so they were going to handle

1522
01:44:11,579 --> 01:44:12,989
that payload another way.

1523
01:44:12,989 --> 01:44:18,079
I wish I could remember exactly what it was.

1524
01:44:18,079 --> 01:44:23,969
There are two hand controller here, and here
they are right here.

1525
01:44:23,969 --> 01:44:27,739
This was a lot more fun than wheels, brakes
and tires.

1526
01:44:27,739 --> 01:44:30,130
This was a fun project.

1527
01:44:30,130 --> 01:44:35,019
And this is the translation controller.

1528
01:44:35,019 --> 01:44:37,630
You've operated this one.

1529
01:44:37,630 --> 01:44:42,059
And there is the rotational hand controller.

1530
01:44:42,059 --> 01:44:48,228
This one on the left essentially operates
the three center joints where it goes like

1531
01:44:48,228 --> 01:44:48,478
that.

1532
01:44:48,269 --> 01:44:54,889
And then all the others are done with this
hand controller.

1533
01:44:54,889 --> 01:44:57,150
I think those are pretty normal flight controllers,
aren't they?

1534
01:44:57,150 --> 01:44:59,650
Those are the ones you used.

1535
01:44:59,650 --> 01:45:03,920
At least we thought it was.

1536
01:45:03,920 --> 01:45:10,630
The biggest argument we had with the Canadians
was this, the end effector.

1537
01:45:10,630 --> 01:45:17,530
That is the hand, the thing that grabs it.

1538
01:45:17,530 --> 01:45:21,019
We wanted one that was more dextrose.

1539
01:45:21,019 --> 01:45:27,099
They argued, and rightfully so, that what
we really wanted was one that would make a

1540
01:45:27,099 --> 01:45:29,929
good sturdy latch.

1541
01:45:29,929 --> 01:45:31,619
And this one does.

1542
01:45:31,619 --> 01:45:36,860
The way this works is that there are three
little wires in here, three cables that come

1543
01:45:36,860 --> 01:45:43,860
in, so once this end effector is placed over
this grapple pin here these wires close.

1544
01:45:46,679 --> 01:45:53,679
And, as they close, they also move back and
they grab on the end of that pin right there

1545
01:45:55,019 --> 01:46:00,959
and pull this end effector into this shoulder
right here.

1546
01:46:00,959 --> 01:46:07,639
Now, in the meantime, there is a docking target
that he looks at that he can see.

1547
01:46:07,639 --> 01:46:12,478
Now, once it sits on this shoulder that really
is a good structural latch.

1548
01:46:12,478 --> 01:46:14,119
You've got a great structural latch.

1549
01:46:14,119 --> 01:46:20,400
And if this indexes you can also make an electrical
connection across there, which some payload

1550
01:46:20,400 --> 01:46:22,719
is willing to do.

1551
01:46:22,719 --> 01:46:27,449
Now you make a capture latch which is essentially
the way you do docking a lot of times.

1552
01:46:27,449 --> 01:46:34,449
You make a capture latch with these wires
that actually just close around this thing.

1553
01:46:35,249 --> 01:46:41,179
Then it pulls it back, sets it on these shoulders
and now you have a nice sturdy thing.

1554
01:46:41,179 --> 01:46:43,909
And the Canadians did a good job there.

1555
01:46:43,909 --> 01:46:44,728
I have to tell them that.

1556
01:46:44,728 --> 01:46:49,949
The problem with that is the one we had on
the nose of your steering.

1557
01:46:49,949 --> 01:46:56,590
We had ten single point failures in there
which makes you nervous, particularly if you're

1558
01:46:56,590 --> 01:46:59,939
hauling a big payload or an expensive payload.

1559
01:46:59,939 --> 01:47:02,728
However, they did a good job.

1560
01:47:02,728 --> 01:47:09,728
Reliability has never failed that I know of,
so that was a good thing that they did.

1561
01:47:10,499 --> 01:47:15,809
This was a lot more fun than the wheels, brakes
and tires guys.

1562
01:47:15,809 --> 01:47:20,119
Then the only other thing is we had a backup
mode.

1563
01:47:20,119 --> 01:47:22,709
We were afraid.

1564
01:47:22,709 --> 01:47:28,469
At the time we weren't that enthused with
computers so we wanted a backup mode.

1565
01:47:28,469 --> 01:47:34,079
So, we got everybody to go to a single joint
mode.

1566
01:47:34,079 --> 01:47:40,199
What we did was hardwired all the joints and
put a box on the control panel so you could

1567
01:47:40,199 --> 01:47:42,679
move each joint singularly.

1568
01:47:42,679 --> 01:47:45,709
And that was the backup mode.

1569
01:47:45,709 --> 01:47:51,539
You can do it with a single joint or you can
do it computer supported.

1570
01:47:51,539 --> 01:47:52,219
You can do it either way.

1571
01:47:52,219 --> 01:47:55,489
And we also had to have a jettison mode.

1572
01:47:55,489 --> 01:48:00,840
If this thing stuck out there, you would have
to throw it overboard because you couldn't

1573
01:48:00,840 --> 01:48:02,320
close the doors.

1574
01:48:02,320 --> 01:48:05,300
We had to get rid of it.

1575
01:48:05,300 --> 01:48:07,289
The Canadians thought that was not a good
idea.

1576
01:48:07,289 --> 01:48:14,289
OK, last bit.

1577
01:48:14,760 --> 01:48:18,189
This was a different project from the other
one I was talking to you about.

1578
01:48:18,189 --> 01:48:21,070
This one did not start with any history at
all.

1579
01:48:21,070 --> 01:48:23,030
We really had to start this one from scratch.

1580
01:48:23,030 --> 01:48:29,189
It is probably one of those things that came
along just at the right time.

1581
01:48:29,189 --> 01:48:31,409
And we were studying some technology.

1582
01:48:31,409 --> 01:48:38,409
And we had enough sense to convert, but it
essentially is just a big crane.

1583
01:48:40,689 --> 01:48:47,689
I think that the thing that surprised us the
most was this one right here.

1584
01:48:51,090 --> 01:48:54,978
The crew took to this very, very easily.

1585
01:48:54,978 --> 01:48:57,039
It took very little for them to do it.

1586
01:48:57,039 --> 01:49:02,170
As a matter of fact, our simulator in Building
9A became a trainer forum.

1587
01:49:02,170 --> 01:49:03,719
We were still doing development work.

1588
01:49:03,719 --> 01:49:05,789
And they said, no, we're going to make this
a trainer.

1589
01:49:05,789 --> 01:49:08,550
And those guys were pretty good.

1590
01:49:08,550 --> 01:49:15,340
They came in, in very, very little time.

1591
01:49:15,340 --> 01:49:16,289
We had to do this.

1592
01:49:16,289 --> 01:49:17,809
This was that inflatable testing.

1593
01:49:17,809 --> 01:49:21,510
Remember on our other project I said you've
got to do the testing, you've got to prove

1594
01:49:21,510 --> 01:49:22,889
the requirements?

1595
01:49:22,889 --> 01:49:28,189
Here was one where we did a little bit of
innovation with that big inflatable to show

1596
01:49:28,189 --> 01:49:31,309
that we could meet the requirements.

1597
01:49:31,309 --> 01:49:34,530
And we did.

1598
01:49:34,530 --> 01:49:39,459
And surprisingly and happily working with
the Canadians was great fun.

1599
01:49:39,459 --> 01:49:43,519
It was the first time I had ever worked with
any of the internationals, but it was great

1600
01:49:43,519 --> 01:49:43,769
fun.

1601
01:49:43,630 --> 01:49:47,150
And they did a great job on this thing.

1602
01:49:47,150 --> 01:49:50,829
They are still upgrading it.

1603
01:49:50,829 --> 01:49:52,459
It is still flying.

1604
01:49:52,459 --> 01:49:54,630
And I'm taking up all your time I'm going
to take up.

1605
01:49:54,630 --> 01:50:01,630
Just one or two things in finishing up.

1606
01:50:02,780 --> 01:50:07,059
Allen talked a lot about the importance of
testing.

1607
01:50:07,059 --> 01:50:12,809
And this was a challenge with the arm because,
remember, all the stuff that we did with the

1608
01:50:12,809 --> 01:50:15,449
inflatables, that was all done with a hydraulic
arm.

1609
01:50:15,449 --> 01:50:21,050
The actual arm with the electric motors was
incapable of lifting its own weight in the

1610
01:50:21,050 --> 01:50:21,659
earth's gravity.

1611
01:50:21,659 --> 01:50:26,939
I remember going once up to the factory in
Canada, and the only testing that they could

1612
01:50:26,939 --> 01:50:29,300
really do, they had a big air bearing floor
up there.

1613
01:50:29,300 --> 01:50:34,039
And they could use the electrical arm, but
only in two-dimensions.

1614
01:50:34,039 --> 01:50:41,039
And so it didn't get its full three-dimensional
testing until STS-3, the third orbital flight

1615
01:50:41,519 --> 01:50:43,179
test where they had the arm on.

1616
01:50:43,179 --> 01:50:47,919
And that was the first real use where they
could put it through all the paces.

1617
01:50:47,919 --> 01:50:49,079
But it really has worked well.

1618
01:50:49,079 --> 01:50:54,949
And, in fact, you've all seen the picture
of the astronaut Bruce McCandless and the

1619
01:50:54,949 --> 01:50:57,919
manned maneuvering unit flying off by himself.

1620
01:50:57,919 --> 01:51:00,179
That has become like an icon.

1621
01:51:00,179 --> 01:51:07,179
The reason that was originally built and fielded
was because people didn't think that the manipulator

1622
01:51:07,760 --> 01:51:13,429
arm would actually have the capability of
grabbing onto a moving or rotating satellite.

1623
01:51:13,429 --> 01:51:19,179
And so the idea was that the astronauts would
have to go and catch it and then fly it or

1624
01:51:19,179 --> 01:51:22,679
stabilize it so that you could come pick it
up with the manipulator.

1625
01:51:22,679 --> 01:51:29,130
But, on the solar maximum repair, actually,
it turned out that they couldn't catch it

1626
01:51:29,130 --> 01:51:34,630
with the manipulator because there was a configuration
problem and they couldn't latch it.

1627
01:51:34,630 --> 01:51:39,429
And so they actually had to go after it with
the manipulator arm, while it was spinning,

1628
01:51:39,429 --> 01:51:41,679
and they were able to get it.

1629
01:51:41,679 --> 01:51:47,249
And, in fact, a lot of work that we did in
simulators showed that the manipulator had

1630
01:51:47,249 --> 01:51:50,169
a lot better capability than we originally
thought it would.

1631
01:51:50,169 --> 01:51:53,530
That was Joe Allen, right?

1632
01:51:53,530 --> 01:51:56,079
Well, it was Terry Hart who actually caught
it.

1633
01:51:56,079 --> 01:51:56,329
Terry Hart.
There was Pinky Nelson who went out.

1634
01:51:57,909 --> 01:52:00,189
Joe and Dale went out to get [OVERLAPPING
VOICES].

1635
01:52:00,189 --> 01:52:03,010
These were not big astronauts.

1636
01:52:03,010 --> 01:52:04,320
They were a couple of the smaller guys.

1637
01:52:04,320 --> 01:52:11,320
Anyway, just to end, the moral of this is
there is a lot of discussion often about humans

1638
01:52:12,219 --> 01:52:14,249
and robots and who should be doing what.

1639
01:52:14,249 --> 01:52:19,090
And I think a lot of people don't realize
that, from the very beginning, we have actually

1640
01:52:19,090 --> 01:52:22,499
had a human robotic interaction on the Shuttle.

1641
01:52:22,499 --> 01:52:28,260
And particularly for EVA activities it has
allowed -- And I will be talking about this

1642
01:52:28,260 --> 01:52:31,669
later in the term.

1643
01:52:31,669 --> 01:52:34,130
We get humans and robotic systems working
together.

1644
01:52:34,130 --> 01:52:38,010
Now, granted these are teleoperated robotic
systems.

1645
01:52:38,010 --> 01:52:43,650
The real hardcore roboticists don't call it
robotics unless it's autonomous.

1646
01:52:43,650 --> 01:52:50,650
But, nevertheless, it is a telerobotic system
that we use in combination with humans.

1647
01:52:52,209 --> 01:52:55,789
And it has given us very great capabilities.

1648
01:52:55,789 --> 01:52:59,189
OK, we will see you on Thursday.

1649
01:52:59,189 --> 01:53:00,840
Let's see.

1650
01:53:00,840 --> 01:53:03,719
Oh, there is a lot of stuff.

1651
01:53:03,719 --> 01:53:07,900
OMS, RCS, fuel cells, auxiliary power unit
and hydraulic systems.

1652
01:53:07,900 --> 01:53:14,900
And also we will be looking for the outline,
the first cut on your reports.

1653
01:53:15,340 --> 01:53:19,728
Henry will reveal you with all of that.

1654
01:53:19,728 --> 01:53:21,340
And let's thank Allen.

1655
01:53:21,340 --> 01:53:21,590
[APPLAUSE]

1656
01:53:21,369 --> 01:53:21,619
Thank you.