NASA Johnson Space Center
Oral History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
Ronald
L. Berry
Interviewed by Carol Butler
Houston, Texas – 18 October 2000
Butler: Today is October 18, 2000. This oral history with Ron Berry
is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
at the offices of the Signal Corporation. Carol Butler is the interviewer,
and is assisted by Summer Bergen.
Thank you for joining us today.
Berry:
You're very welcome.
Butler:
To begin with, if maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you
developed an interest in aviation and engineering.
Berry:
Well, I grew up in this town called Grand Prairie [Texas]. It's in
between Dallas and Fort Worth. It's primarily, when I was growing
up, the big industry in town was aerospace, really aeronautics. They
had the big North American plant there during the war, where my dad
worked, and then it became LTV [Ling-Temco-Vought, Inc.] and Chance
Vought [Corporation], and it still exists today as LTV there. So that
was primarily the big thing in town, what everybody talked about.
I don't remember the war years so much, but afterwards I remember
most of the talk being about aeronautics and various things. My dad
worked there. He was a quality-control engineer, so he talked about
it quite a bit.
In between my high school years, I would work there during the summers,
you know, out on the flight line where it was 150 [degrees] or whatever,
taking salt tablets. Then let's see. After my senior year in high
school, I got to move inside where it was cooler, during that summer,
and got to do some drafting work, helping engineers and so on, so
that gave me a little taste of the aeronautics world.
Butler:
That's certainly a good introduction to the world. Not many people
get that opportunity to jump right into something they're so interested
in. And you decided then—you went off to college and majored
in aeronautical engineering.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
Did you have much knowledge of the space program during that time?
Berry:
Yes, I followed it pretty closely, you know, through the news articles.
Of course, when I was in college, that was all the talk. Got to work
on a lot of the—as school projects, college projects at MIT
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts],
we got to work on a lot of space projects, you know, creating our
own space missions to Mars and this, that, and the other. That, with
following the news articles, with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin and so
on, it kept me up to speed on what was going on and kept me very interested.
Butler:
Had you ever, as in high school, had you considered the possibilities
of the space program before all of that happened?
Berry:
Oh yes. Even before high school, I was a big reader of science fiction,
you know, Jules Verne and all the rest. I guess a lot of kids do.
So that really probably first got me interested, coupled with, like
I say, the environment in the town there.
Butler:
Great. How did you—well, I guess through some of your course
work then at MIT, was that how you learned about the opportunities
at NASA for after you graduated?
Berry:
Not really. I had an idea I wanted to work for NASA when I graduated,
but I went on and took a—I graduated in 1960, and NASA had not
moved into this area at that point. You know, [President John F.]
Kennedy had not made his big announcement, which was a year later
So I went to Austin and I worked for the Defense Research Laboratory
there in Austin, and while I was working there, I picked up a master's
degree, part time while I was working. During that time is when it
was announced that the Manned Spacecraft Center was going to be located
here in Texas, which was very exciting to me because I had wanted
to stay in Texas, since that's where my real roots were. So all that
kind of came together.
So when they did move down here in '62, I put in my application. I
finished up my schooling there in June of '62, so I had my application
in and everything seemed to fit.
Butler:
Good, good. What was the process like for interviewing to come to
work at the Manned Spacecraft Center, since they were in the process
of moving down here?
Berry:
It was pretty loose and chaotic. I had turned in my application when
I got here for my interview appointment. They didn't know who I was.
They didn't have any record of my application.
Butler:
Oh, no.
Berry:
And so on and so forth. I was being interviewed by an Englishman who
had come down here from Canada.
Butler:
Okay.
Berry:
He was a great guy, though. Morris [V.] Jenkins was his name. I subsequently
ended up working for him. We had a real nice interview, and I came
right on to work. Began work there at the Petroleum Center, Houston
Petroleum Center there on Gulf Freeway. Of course, NASA was scattered
everywhere, and to go to meetings and so on, you'd have to get in
a NASA cab and go from one building site to another and be bused all
over the place, essentially. But it was fun and exciting.
Butler:
What did you think of the challenge to go to the Moon, Kennedy's challenge
that was now spurring all of this new growth at NASA?
Berry:
Oh, it was a great motivator, very exciting, all for it, and that's
really one of the major factors I decided to come on with NASA.
Butler:
Okay. When you first came in, what were your first tasks, your first
duties or projects that you worked on, your responsibilities? You
went right into the Mission Analysis Branch.
Berry:
Right, working for Morris Jenkins, as I said, the Englishman via Canada.
He put me right to work on designing lunar trajectories right away.
A good many of the folks there in the division, MPAD [Mission Planning
and Analysis Division], were working on Mercury and Gemini, but that
particular branch I went into was focused strictly on Apollo. So right
out of the chute, got to do some exciting work, lunar trajectory work.
They had a small computer there in the Houston Petroleum Center, but
also the big computer, where we had to go for most of the more detailed
lunar trajectory work and rendezvous work, had been set up, a big
computer, over in the Channel 8 studios. I don't know if many people
remember that.
Butler:
Haven't heard that one.
Berry:
Because they had the raised flooring. At that time all the big computer
systems—they still do today, the big ones do—have to have
the raised flooring so you can get under there and route all the wiring
and so on and so forth. That was the only place NASA could find to
rent that had the raised floorings for the bigger computers. We would
go over there and spend most of the day and half the night over there
running the trajectories and so on and so forth.
Butler:
That must have been—well, actually, how different was that from
work that you had done beforehand? Had you done much to prepare you
for—
Berry:
I had done some orbital mechanics work both at MIT and at University
of Texas, but nothing to the extent of what we were into here at NASA,
so it was night and day. Even though we had seemingly a pretty long
time to get ready, from '62 to '69, it was really a short period of
time to get ready. So everybody was full bore.
Butler:
What was—you talk here that you were involved with lunar trajectory
planning for Apollo, but yet you mentioned that some of the other
people were involved with Mercury and Gemini. What was the role of
MPAD in general? I know it can't be very general because there was
a lot to do. When did MPAD and the various parts become involved in
the planning mission?
Berry:
MPAD would get involved very early, in the very early stages of any
program, and provide the early mission plans or trajectory designs,
if you will, for that program, and then they would follow the program
in successive stages all the way to the operational. Then even the
post flight, they would be involved in post-flight analysis and what
happened.
Butler:
So basically—
Berry:
So, cradle to grave.
Butler:
Okay. That's good. Given, okay, here's the program, we're going to
do unmanned flights and basically just lined out by the administration
and passed on to planning then. That's certainly an interesting area
because you're involved in so many different aspects of it all.
Berry:
Right. And it was not limited. MPAD's role was not limited to just
the mission or trajectory design; they were also involved and had
responsibilities in maneuvers themselves and in navigation. In Apollo,
in the maneuver side, they were responsible for assessing, evaluating,
and validating, doing independent verification of the onboard software,
the onboard guidance and navigation. On the ground side, they were
responsible for a lot of the major guidance, support, targeting, navigation
that was done on the ground. There we were primary, as opposed to
just assessing somebody else's work. We'd actually do the computer
formulation.
Butler:
Did MPAD involve a lot of work—you've mentioned the computers
and such. Did much of the planning involve planning for the ground
support equipment as well, or was that a separate area?
Berry:
MPAD's role was, like I said, in the computer formulation, what they
call the requirements. In other words, laying out the equations that
would be programmed by another group that was in another area, Flight
Support Division at that time. But we were all in the Flight Operations
Directorate [FOD]. So we would do the equations and so on for the
ground software, transfer them over to the other group, another group
who did the actual coding and verification, and whom we would support
with independent verification support as they were doing their development
of the software.
Butler:
As you continued and as the program went on, you became head of the
Maneuver Analysis System. Was this some of what you have just described
here with lunar trajectories or did that have other tasks as well?
Berry:
It included lunar trajectories and primarily the trajectory from Earth
orbit through the translunar injection, mid-course corrections, the
lunar orbit insertion maneuver, breaking into lunar orbit, and then
the trans-Earth injection to bring you back home, mid-course corrections
coming back. We looked at all those maneuvers. We did not look at
the lunar landing maneuver or the lunar ascent; that was done by another
branch at that time, another section. But we would look at all those
maneuvers, understanding what the maneuvers were about, assessing
the proposed guidance schemes for those maneuvers, how you would go
about monitoring those particular maneuvers. We developed abort contingency
procedures that could occur during those maneuvers or even pre- and
post- those maneuvers. So that was what we were about in the Maneuver
Analysis Section.
Butler:
As you—around in this time as you were in those roles and also
as you probably transitioned into Chief of the Lunar Mission Analysis
Branch, planning for Apollo 8 came along. At what stage did you become
aware of that mission, and what were some of your thoughts on it?
Berry:
I was actually on vacation in California, the first vacation I'd had
in quite a while. That was the summer of '68. Got this phone call
from my deputy branch chief saying, "Guess what? These people
want to go to the Moon in December. You'd better get back home."
And so I did. That was the first time I heard about it, was after
they had made the decision to do that. Of course it was secret at
that time, had not gone public.
So, got back and things were in pretty much of an uproar, everybody
getting excited because that was coming in a year, year and a half
before it was originally scheduled for. So we started supporting that
potential decision with lunar trajectory scans, performance scans
for the time period they were talking about, which was December, to
see where we would be able to put the orbit and so on, when we would
launch, starting to lay out the preliminary trajectory, which we were
pretty well prepared tool-wise to do. We had the performance scans
to do. But the thing where we were really behind the power curve was
in having all of the planning tools ready to support it, because we
were just four months away.
We had been on a schedule to gradually develop those over the next
year to year and a half, and now we had to compress everything into
a four-month period, which was bad enough, but the real crunch came
in the real-time ground system, ground support system in the mission
control center. It was nowhere near ready to support a lunar mission.
So the only way we could see to do it was to convert some of our planning,
continue with a crash program on developing our planning tools, but
at the same time spin off a version of those planning tools that could
go right into the control center to provide the real-time ground support
system, as well as the planning function. So we had to really develop
dual-purpose software at that time in a very short period of time,
so that was the extreme challenge and crunch that we ended up working
night and day on.
Butler:
Well, it did all come together.
Berry:
Yes, and people in the Navigation Branch—it was called the Math
Physics Branch at the time—were having to do the same thing
for navigation. They had been developing navigation analysis tools
to start analyzing the navigation situation, but they had to quickly
turn those tools into real-time ground support software to support
the navigation to and from the Moon and while in lunar orbit. So they
had an equally large challenge.
Butler:
Absolutely. At any point during this very challenging time, when everything
was crunched to get it to pull together, were there any questions
about whether you would make it, or was everyone just gung-ho enough
that—
Berry:
We were determined to make it one way or another, but we did have
to work very long hours, and it was scary, because, you know, there
was always a chance we wouldn't. But we were determined to make it.
We knew that we were going to be trying to do these things for the
first time. Nobody had ever done them before. It was really an exciting
time.
I remember I sometimes would literally have nightmares at night, and
the consistent dream would be, we'd be on this trajectory to the Moon,
and when we'd get up there, the Moon wouldn't be there. [Laughter]
Butler:
That's quite a nightmare.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
Oh my.
Berry:
Turned out it was there.
Butler:
It was very definitely there. It was a very successful mission. Did
you—seeing the mission's success and seeing that everything
was so right on track, right where it was supposed to be, happening
when it was supposed to happen, what was your feeling at that time
as all that came together?
Berry:
It was one of real intense exhilaration and satisfaction. We were
really thrilled with the whole thing, the way it worked out.
Butler:
For good reason.
Berry:
Yes. I know we were criticized by some at the time, some atheist groups,
as to why we were doing this at Christmas and so on and so forth,
and I even had to develop a document to answer some potential court
proceeding—I don't remember what ever happened to it—to
show that really the fact that it came out when they were in orbit
at Christmas was coincidental. We were aiming for December, all right,
but the fact that it came out in orbit at Christmas was because we
were trying to duplicate the same lighting that would be required
on the front side of the Moon that would be required for the subsequent
landing missions, and that's what caused us to be there at Christmas.
It worked out very nicely, anyway. Very merry Christmas.
Butler:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it was certainly, for a lot of people,
with everything that was going on in the world, it was a nice way
to end what had been a bad year for many different areas. Because
you were so caught up with things in the space program, were you much
aware of what was going on in the rest of the world, the war and the
civil unrest and things? Or were you pretty focused on—
Berry:
Really pretty focused on that. I would occasionally try to catch up
with the news, but we were so totally focused and consumed by the
mission, that we had very little time for anything else.
Butler:
I can certainly see why. There was a lot that had to go into it to
make it all come together and make it successful. Where were you during—well,
during Apollo 8, but actually during any mission, how did your role
fit in with the actual operations of the mission?
Berry:
We would generally be in the staff support room, supporting the main
Mission Control Center room, and we would be there to monitor everything
that was going on with trajectory and guidance and, later, navigation
standpoint, and to let them know if they were making the right decisions,
or to comment on what decisions they were making. They would ask us
questions. It was that kind of thing. So we were right across the
hall from the main control center, usually. Occasionally we'd go into
the control center and sit down and chat with the front-line flight
controllers if a particular problem was coming up.
Butler:
In planning for a lunar mission or Apollo 8, but also for some of
the later ones, what were the various—you talked about some
of the areas that would be covered, but how would you go through the
stages of building that plan for the mission, or was there a regular
way that it was done?
Berry:
It evolved into a regular way. The way it evolved was early on with
the mission, preferably a year or two ahead, rather than this four-month
business, you would start with a preliminary trajectory plan or mission
plan, and that would support the early feasibility studies or it would
support where you wanted to land in terms of Apollo. We would work
with the lunar scientists and determine where they could think about
landing for the particular time period you were talking about, or
if you could not land there, what kind of mission constraints that
had been imposed prior to that, to what extent they'd have to be relaxed
to be able to land in a particular place. So you'd do all that in
the preliminary plans that you would lay out, which would consist
of scans, performance scans showing where you could land on the Moon,
what areas.
When a landing site was picked out, then you would actually develop
a preliminary trajectory that went to that specific site for everybody
to look at and to show absolutely that it was feasible from a performance
standpoint.
Then following that phase, you'd go into what they called the reference
mission or reference trajectory phase, and that was a little bit more
detailed version of this trajectory. You would do it in more detail,
add more degrees of freedom in the simulations and so on, and that
was used for all the rest of NASA to do their detailed planning against.
That's why they called it a reference plan. That would typically come
out six to nine months before the mission.
Then in the period six months on in, you would usually do one or two
operational plans, trajectories, which was even more detailed, and
that's the one that you actually flew to. As you went through these
successive plans, after each plan would be put out for distribution
to the community, you'd have a round of comments and criticisms or
whatever, and you'd incorporate, you'd have big meetings to decide
which of those comments would be incorporated in the next version
that would come out and which would not. So that was how we stepped
through the thing, typically. But, of course, in the case of Apollo
8, everything was compressed. It was just one big working at your
computer and having meetings. It's all a blur.
Butler:
I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. As you were going through these various
stages from the preliminary to the reference to the operational, and
you mentioned having meetings and talking about what changes would
be made, would there be many major changes? Obviously there was a
variety of changes, but would there be many major changes to the plan?
Berry:
No, not really. It would normally be how long you stayed in orbit
before you do this or that. And also at about this time, of the reference
trajectory, when it came out, you would start having these meetings
called mission techniques meetings. They originally were called data
priority meetings, but they eventually changed the name to mission
techniques meetings. These are initially chaired and run by the deputy
division chief of MPAD, a guy by the name of Bill [Howard W.] Tindall,
who was a genius at this kind of thing. But it was not just an MPAD
thing; it was the entire community.
The purpose of the mission techniques was to say, "Look. You've
got this trajectory that you want to fly to and you've got this hardware
and software that you're going to use to attempt to fly to that trajectory,
but how do you really do it? What targeting do you actually use? Who’s
primary for the target? Is it on board or is it ground? In whichever
case that is, is the other one backup? How do they backup and monitor
that? What are the actual parameters you use for monitoring? How big
an envelope can you withstand before you have to change over from
primary to backup?" This covered both guidance, navigation, incorporated
the flight plan, what the crew's doing, what the ground crew's doing.
It really was a systems integration of the entire program at that
time. I'm not sure many people realize that that was a very critical,
important activity.
Anyway, what I was leading up to is that those meetings sometimes
would come out with changes, would have the most significant changes
to the trajectory plan, such as breaking into lunar orbit. The initial
plan had us going into a circular lunar orbit when it broke into lunar
orbit, with one maneuver. But when we got into the mission techniques
meetings with the crew there and everybody else, it became clear that
that was a pretty dicey thing to do for the first time to the Moon,
because you had one burn and you were burning down pretty close to
the surface of the Moon.
So we decided, based on the mission techniques, again led by Bill
Tindall, to do it in two stages. You had broke the burn down into
one that put you into an elliptical orbit, which was quite a bit safer,
where if you overburned or something, you still had some maneuver
room. You wouldn't crash into the Moon on the front side. You were
doing a burn, of course, on the back side of the Moon. So you broke
it down into two maneuvers for safety reasons, and that was an example
of a fairly significant change that happened from the reference to
the operational.
Butler:
And that was—was that primarily for just the first few missions
or did that last for—
Berry:
It lasted pretty much through the entire set.
Butler:
Seems like certainly an important consideration.
Berry:
Yes. That was just one example. Speaking of lunar orbit insertion,
one of the big problems we had for Apollo 8 in converting these planning
tools over to the real-time tools, was that we had this massive planning
program called the generalized iterator. It was designed to be a general-purpose
trajectory planning tool. You could put in any conditions you wanted
to meet, and, of course, given enough degrees of freedom that you
were willing to change to get to those end conditions, it would eventually
find the right trajectory to get to those end conditions.
But it was very slow, and even though we had the fastest computers
available at that time, the program was trying to do so much with
this generalized approach, be able to solve any maneuver, whether
it's a translunar injection or mid-course correction or breaking into
lunar orbit or coming back to the Earth, we soon realized it was going
to be too slow. So with just a couple of months to go on Apollo 8,
we had to go in there and develop a whole new set of schemes, formulation
for the real-time system that would solve the time problem. We were
still able to use the generalized iterator for maneuvers like mid-course
corrections and so on, where we had plenty of time leading up for
it to finally find its solution, but for the lunar orbit insertion
phase, we were just not going to have that much time from the time
of the last mid-course correction leading up to going behind the Moon.
So we had to come up with a whole new formulation. That made the last
couple of months really something.
Butler:
I bet it did. Talking about computers, you, throughout your career
at NASA, actually, you saw quite an evolution in the abilities of
the computers and the speed of them, in their capabilities. Was that—did
you ever stop and think about that, and about especially now, looking
at a desktop computer, what it's able to do versus what you were dealing
with here when you were planning on sending people to the Moon on
such a challenging mission?
Berry:
At the time, of course, in hindsight, it's amazing. If we'd only had
a desktop. But at the time, we were fighting the capabilities, the
constraints of the computer continuously. It wasn't big enough, it
wasn't fast enough. Because of that, we had to do a tremendous amount
of the work manually, manual iterations, make a run, make a jillion
runs in shotgun fashion in order to get the right answer, or to let
this generalized iterator run for several days. So that was how we
felt about it at the time. It was just a continual battle. Whenever
a new computer would come out with a little bit more memory or a little
bit faster processor, we would jump right on it.
We were able gradually to more and more automate the tools that we
had as we progressed through Apollo and certainly in Shuttle and so
on. So it was a continual battle of fighting the computer capacity
not being there.
Butler:
Worked out well enough, anyway, that most things were successful.
Berry:
Right. And it made you appreciate the computer power when you did
get it, because you didn't have to do as much manual work. Of course,
you learned a lot doing it manually.
Butler:
I'm sure you did. In fact, that's one of the things some teachers
comment nowadays, that kids don't do things enough on their own, that
they don't understand it as well.
Berry:
Right. To run one of the early lunar trajectories and associated rendezvous,
we were using FORTRAN programming to program the equations of motion
and so on, and we had to sit there at a keyboard and punch these little
punchcards. I don't know if you've ever even seen one. You probably
haven't.
Butler:
No.
Berry:
Called the old IBM punchcards, full of these little holes. You'd have
to sit there and manually punch a card for one instruction, and of
course you had thousands of instructions, so you'd end up, to make
a computer run, you'd end up with a whole trayful of these cards.
You know, for one lunar trajectory, you might have a trayful of cards
this thick with these all punched individually. It was quite something.
Butler:
Quite something. Very different.
Berry:
You'd write out your FORTRAN code and then you'd have to punch it
into these IBM cards, and then stack them all together to make a continuous
run. Of course it would never work the first time, and you'd have
to find which card was wrong in this whole stack. So it was really
a bear.
Butler:
Quite time-consuming.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
Talking about this type of thing and programming the computers and
setting things up, and talking about sitting in the meetings and having
the discussions on the plans, was there a typical day, or did all
of this into—
Berry:
The typical day was that there was no such thing as a typical day.
That was the only consistent thing. You would go from—and I'm
talking about supervisors as well as the working-level folks, nearly
everybody would spend some part of the day doing hands-on technical
work. At least I did as a section chief and as a branch chief. So
your day would usually be a mixture of doing hands-on technical work,
doing schedule analysis, were we on schedule, that kind of thing,
having the usual management staff meetings to let everybody know what
was going on, but it was usually from a technical or schedule standpoint.
Very little focus back in those early days on budgetary considerations.
We pretty much had a set budget which was adequate, and we didn't
have to worry about it, unlike later years where it became 75 percent
of your job to work the budget concerns and try to figure out how
to do things cheaper and so on.
And another thing we did not have a lot of was people-problem meetings.
Everybody was so focused on this one goal and so unified on this one
goal of getting to the Moon, that people would let their little petty
things go. It was amazing. I can recall very few. I might have one
or two people problems in a six-month period or something like that.
Again, much different than later years, where people became more concerned
about their own situation and so on. So that was what a typical day
was like.
Butler:
That is interesting, that you mentioned the people problems. I guess
having such a goal that was such a positive goal really helped with—
Berry:
It works wonders.
Butler:
Everybody had something good to work for.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
That's interesting. During this time you transitioned through from
originally as head of the Maneuver Analysis Section to Chief of the
Lunar Mission Analysis Branch and then to Chief of MPAD, of Mission
Planning and Analysis Division. How did your role change as you were
making these—as you were—actually, I'm sorry, I've got
myself out of sequence here. You did make that transition, just not
immediately.
Before we get there, going back through a couple of the Apollo missions,
actually, that you were working through at the time, we talked a little
bit about Apollo 8 and then there was Apollo 9 and 10, with the lunar
module both in Earth orbit and then going in lunar orbit and then,
of course, working toward Apollo 11. Were there any specific details
as you were working for any of these missions—obviously for
Apollo 11, is the big lunar landing mission—were there specific
points that came up along the way as you were planning for them, or
did it just move pretty normally, if there was such a thing as normal,
through the kind of things you just talked about?
Berry:
I guess you would use the word "normal" for what went for
normal back in those days. Everything was on such a frenzied pace
that you didn't really have time to stop and think about what was
normal or what was not normal. You took each challenge, you just absorbed
it and went on, and you found the solution as fast as you could and
went on to the next one, regardless of what mission it was in, because
I guess Apollo 8 got us into that kind of mode of working, and we
just kept going. It finally softened and got more calm later in some
of the later missions after Apollo 11 and, of course, on into the
subsequent programs. But that was what went for normal in those days.
Butler:
In planning for Apollo 11, at the time did you think about this being
the mission that was going to land on the Moon and the impact of that,
and do you remember then the mission itself and what you were doing?
Berry:
Oh yes. Everybody had a very strong sense of the history being made.
This added to the excitement. We were excited enough, trying to meet
all the schedules, but the sense of history was extremely strong.
Everybody felt it, not just for Apollo 11, but Apollo 8 had extremely
strong sense of history also, especially for my particular group,
because my particular group in the Lunar Mission Analysis Branch,
we supported the landing and the ascent and rendezvous, but that was
not our major focus. Our major focus was getting to the Moon, getting
into orbit, and then getting back. So Apollo 8 was really in a lot
of ways our high point and our big sense of history, and when we got
to Apollo 11, everybody was very excited because we were really going
to be landing and so on, but our group had already done essentially
our historic thing, getting the crew to the Moon and into orbit and
then back.
I was in the control center again for Apollo 11. I was sitting next
to John [P.] Mayer, who was in the staff support room, who was the
Chief of MPAD, and we all had our big old headphones on, you know,
listening to what was going on, and we all jumped for joy and screamed
and everything else when they finally got the thing landed. It was
a pretty exciting time, because there were some alarms that went off,
as you know, during landing and so on. So it got very exciting. So
everybody got very scared at that point.
Butler:
I can understand that. Certainly some tension there.
Berry:
But we were all over in the control center. A very exciting time.
Butler:
Moving on from Apollo 11, Apollo 11 was very successful, achieved
the goal, landed on the Moon, and Apollo 8 had achieved the goal of
getting to the Moon, as you pointed out, but then they wanted to begin
to start working toward some of the more precision to things. Apollo
11 hadn't landed quite where it had been planned, so on Apollo 12
they wanted to do more of a pinpoint landing. Were you involved in
that at all? I know you mentioned earlier that you physically did
the trajectories and not the landing-down or the ascent from the surface,
but—
Berry:
We were on the periphery of that, my particular group. One of our
sister branches, the Math Physics Branch, that was responsible for
the navigation, they were the ones on the front line for that one,
because it had become obvious during the first few lunar missions,
Apollo 8, 10, and 11, that we did not have the modeling of the gravity
of the Moon down right. Of course, neither had JPL [Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, California]. They had been there for the early
unmanned missions also.
So the Math Physics Branch had to figure out what procedures they
could use, because they didn't have time to completely come up with
a new gravity model of the Moon, together with the other NASA centers
whose responsibility that was, Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt,
Maryland] and JPL in particular, so they had to come up with some
way to kludge it or fudge it, to be able to pull off a pinpoint landing.
They came up with a way of when the spacecraft would come from behind
the Moon, first visibility with the Earth orbit, they would measure
the difference between that first sighting and the actual time, and
when they thought, using the old gravity model, at that time the current
gravity model, which was incorrect, when that predicted you would
first see them, and that was a time difference, so they just came
up with a simple time kludge, you know, based on that delta between
the time that they actually saw the vehicle. This was before the landing.
It would make several revs before the landing, and on those several
revs you would come up with this, be able to determine and to refine
this kludged delta factor in time. That's how they pulled off that
pinpoint landing, was just comparing the actual versus the predicted,
coming up with a delta, and putting that into the navigation and guidance
programs. That's how it happened.
Butler:
And that certainly worked very successfully.
Berry:
Yes, landed right on a dime.
Butler:
Right where they were supposed to be, which, of course, made the later
missions able to go to some locations that might have been more challenging.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
Quite an accomplishment there. Apollo 13 was the next mission, and
obviously things started out well, but then quickly several problems
developed with the explosion in the oxygen tanks and so forth. You,
on the trajectory side of things, were pretty involved with the rescue
process or the recovery process. Can you tell us about that whole
time, how you first learned of the accident and then how you progressed?
Berry:
Yes. I had been in the control center most of that day and had come
home for that evening. The guy that I had transferred over to, a guy
by the name of Bob [Robert F.] Wiley, who worked for me in that branch,
Lunar Mission Analysis Branch, called me at home and told me they
had had a problem, I'd better get back in. So I immediately got back
in.
When I got there, things looked pretty bleak, to say the least, because
we were just getting the early estimates of how much life support
they might have for different situations and they were asking us to
support them in determining how much time it would take, what's the
shortest time it would take to get them back. Of course, initially
there was a pretty large gap in those, a negative gap, which was scary.
So the Director of Flight Operations at that time, Sig [Sigurd A.]
Sjoberg, pulled me aside. He said, "I want you to go downstairs.
We're going to pull off one of their big computers, and you and your
guys can have this computer solely. I want you to run everything you
can think of to try to figure out the fastest way back."
So that's what we did. A guy that worked for me at that time, a guy
by the name of Bob [Robert S.] Davis, and I went down there and spent
most of those first few hours and days running that computer, because
even though, back to the point of the computer capacity and processing
being very much a limitation to us, even though we had the fastest
computers available at that time in the control center, they were
not fast enough to have a completely automated abort trajectory determination
routine in them. So we had to make all these abort contingency trajectory
runs, possible ones, manually.
So we ran literally thousands of possible abort trajectories, both
those that would return directly to Earth as well as those that would
go around the Moon, and putting in, of course, first of all, we didn't
know exactly whether the service propulsion engine would be available
and be able to get back on line or not, whether we would have it,
or whether we would only have the LM, the Lunar Module engine. So
we had to run both those possibilities. And we didn't know how long
we would have for either one of those engines. We might only have
the service propulsion engine for a certain length of time. We might
only have the lunar module engine for a certain length of time because
of the consumables problem on board, the shortage thereof. So we had
to run everything. Like I say, we literally ran thousands and thousands
of trajectories and had a team of folks helping us manually plot the
results.
From those thousands of trajectories, of course, the other folks were
working on whether the SPS [Service Propulsion System] engine [on
the Command and Service Module, CSM] would be available, turned out
it was not because of the explosion, and so things were gradually
getting more narrow and more defined on the other side, the consumables
and what engine we'd have available. So we were able to gradually
converge it over those few days in there. Of course, nobody was getting
any sleep, which, in hindsight, was a mistake. We should have taken
naps, but we were too charged up, too much adrenaline flowing.
So we finally were able to come up with a trajectory which gave us
a positive gap with the consumables left, so from then on we were
quite happy. The rest of the mission was just monitoring the execution
of those maneuvers which resulted from the thousands of scans that
we had made, making sure they went okay. Not to say that it wasn't
a very nervous time the rest of the mission.
We also had to work on the mid-course corrections coming back, supporting
the flight controllers and the crew on coming up with how to make
those maneuvers without using the full-up guidance and navigation
system, using optical visuals, the Earth and the Moon and so on, using
those to align the spacecraft right for the burns and so on. So we
still had quite a bit to do.
There was evidently some unknown venting going on in the spacecraft,
which kept causing the return trajectory to deviate, so we kept having
to make additional mid-course corrections all the way back in till
very late. So that made it exciting also.
Butler:
Very much so. Had you done any planning beforehand of anything like
this happening?
Berry:
Yes, we had some basic abort modes, if you will, the return with the
big ellipse without going around the Moon, and then going on around
the Moon. We had those basic modes in mind, but we, of course, did
not have the specific case that occurred, where you had just the lunar
module engine and nothing else. But we had done enough pre-flight
work so that we were able to limit the number of trajectories we ran
to the thousands instead of the millions, which would not have been
possible.
Butler:
On the mid-course corrections, you mentioned using the sun and the
Earth as guiding points. Had that been something that was considered
before, or was that dealt with—
Berry:
For monitoring, yes. That was one of the reasons that we had designed
the mid-course corrections the way we had, and this also was something
that came out of those mission techniques meetings that I talked about.
If you did the exact mid-course correction that would be required
for any particular situation, it would end up with a slightly cockeyed
kind of firing direction for the engines, but nearly every time you
would determine one, it turned out that it was fairly close to being
perpendicular to the line of sight to the Earth. It wouldn't be exact.
It would be off a few degrees this time or off another few degrees
another time.
But in the mission techniques, Bill Tindall, again, said, "Hey,
what if we just fired exactly perpendicular, fired our mid-course
corrections exactly perpendicular to the line of sight to the Earth,
which would then make it set up a nice crew monitoring, backup monitoring
situation for making sure they were aligned properly and the burn
was done correctly in the right direction, even though it would not
be exactly theoretically the right direction, would it be close enough?"
And we did an evaluation of his suggestion and, sure enough, it was.
So the nominal way we ended up making mid-course corrections was that
exact perpendicular way anyway, so that set it up pretty nicely to
do a manual burn, because you were just really using the backup techniques
that we had developed pre-flight, using the Earth, perpendicular to
the Earth technique.
Butler:
And it all worked out very well.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
The mission came back. I'm sure that was quite a relief for you.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
All the training and all the planning had paid off.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
As Apollo 14 came along, but then Apollo 15, 16, and 17 were the J
missions, extended-duration missions. How did, or did, planning differ
for those missions from the earlier ones? Was there any change in
focus?
Berry:
Yes. The big change there was in the site selection itself and the
type of translunar trajectory we would use. Like Apollo 15 that landed
at Hadley Rille was 25 degrees North, and to reach that kind of latitude
on the front side of the Moon, we had to consider relaxing some of
our trajectory constraints.
The first few Apollo missions, the translunar trajectories were on
what's called free-return trajectories. In other words, after you
made the translunar injection burn, you were essentially on a trajectory
with a mid-course correction capability of circumnavigating the Moon
and coming back to the Earth. It's called a free-return trajectory.
But when you stayed on that kind of trajectory, it turns out that
you cannot go to all places, very many places on the Moon because
it took so much to break into lunar orbit. In other words, if you
wanted to go way north on the front side of the Moon, like 15 did,
you had to make a very large burn, lunar orbit insertion burn, on
the back side of the Moon, very much changing the plane of the incoming
trajectory. And it took too much propellant to get up there. We couldn't
get up there.
So this caused us to go to what's called a non-free-return trajectory,
where you would start off on a free-return trajectory, but the first
mid-course correction you would make would change it from a free-return
trajectory to a non-free-return trajectory, so that you could be coming
in at a steeper angle on the back side of the Moon. It was not a trajectory
that would automatically return you to Earth if you did not make the
lunar orbit insertion burn, but it was one that would minimize the
size of the lunar orbit insertion maneuver so you could get to these
more extreme landing sites. So that was the biggest change that we
saw.
Butler:
Do you want to take a quick break?
Berry:
Sure. [Tape recorder turned off.]
One thing I failed to mention earlier, which is probably worth mentioning
in these lunar missions, it started in Apollo 8 and on through, was
there was a very large activity between our group and the sister group
at the Marshall Space Flight Center [Huntsville, Alabama]. Marshall
was responsible for, of course, the launch and the Earth orbit and
the translunar injection burn, and that's where we picked up theoretically
at the end of the translunar injection burn. But they had to know
where to aim that thing.
So we had to work out what turned out to be a fairly extensive interface
activity and work group between ourselves and Marshall, to get all
that straight. We had to arrive at a way of targeting that maneuver
that would make sense to them, that they could work with. Of course,
they were all working in the metric; we were all in the English. Of
course, recently, you know, the Mars mission had a problem when you
had that kind of changeover, mixture of systems, measurement systems.
So we had to watch that as well as the more technical things of how
to target those maneuvers. So that was quite a large activity. It
required a lot of trips between here and Huntsville and so forth,
and those people coming over here.
But in the end, it worked out real well. We arrived at a fairly nice
clean set of parameters we could always give them, vectors that they
would aim for, and they were able to back that up, take those vectors
and back that through their maneuvers, through TLI [trans-lunar injection]
and through the orbit on back to the launch site. So it was a smooth
fit.
Butler:
How was—a lot of people have mentioned that sometimes there
were interagency almost a rivalry or some challenges in relations
between the agencies. Did you experience any of that?
Berry:
No. With the bunch we worked with at Marshall, it was very congenial.
Again, it was back to this thing of sharing the common goal. There
were instances where we could have got mad at each other or got frustrated,
so on and so forth. We really skipped over those pretty rapidly and
stayed on plan, stayed on goal, I should say. Again, nothing like
a unifying goal.
Butler:
Absolutely. Talking about interactions with different groups, did
you have any interactions with other specific groups here at the Manned
Spacecraft Center at the time, like the Missions Operations Group
or the astronauts or engineering?
Berry:
All of them, yes. I can't think of a group that we weren't involved
with. We were working with nearly everybody, in particular the flight
controllers, that group that was originally in the Flight Control
Division and then became MOD [Mission Operations Directorate] eventually.
With the flight crew, the people that did the crew activity plans
or the flight plans, which was a separate activity but very much related
and had to work hand in glove with the trajectory design and maneuver
design, and the overall time line. So we ended up working very closely
with them and the flight crew.
I remember I had to go out before Apollo 8 to the Cape because when
we were doing a verification of the onboard software for Apollo 8,
we found a fairly major problem with the software that they would
use to return themselves if we lost communications, the trans-Earth
abort return, software that was on board and that had been done by
the MIT Instrumentation Lab people. There was a problem in there causing
it to blow up, the software to blow up. So we had to do a quick workaround
in the last few weeks, so I had to go to the Cape and explain it all
to the backup crew, which was Neil [A.] Armstrong and Buzz [Edwin
E.] Aldrin [Jr.] at the time. Then because it was so late, you know,
we couldn't get in to see the actual flight crew, so we had to relay
everything through the backup crew. It was an example. Prior to that,
of course, we could work with the primary crew before they went into
isolation.
Butler:
As—we've talked now in general about Apollo. Were there any,
especially toward the later missions which we didn't talk about specifically,
each one, were there any events or problems that arose or anything
throughout any of the process from the planning to the actual missions
itself that you'd like to discuss or—
Berry:
I think we've already covered most of them.
Butler:
Okay. I always like to give the option in case there's something I
missed. As the end of the Apollo Program came up, as it was coming
to a close, of course, people were moving on to Skylab and even some
discussions, Shuttle at that time. Were there any thoughts about the
lunar missions ending? Was that anticipated? Any, I guess—
Berry:
We were all sad to see them end, but I really thought subsequent missions
back to the Moon would start back up certainly within five or ten
years. I had no idea it would be this long. [Laughter] I think everybody
was of the same mind, that it was just going to be a temporary halt.
But turned out not to be.
Butler:
Unfortunately. Hopefully we'll see it at some point going back to
the Moon.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
Toward the end of the Apollo Program, you became the Assistant Chief
for Mission Design. Did your responsibilities change much from what
they had been?
Berry:
Then they encompassed not only the translunar, going into lunar orbit
and then coming back, but also picked up the landing maneuver on the
Moon, the ascent, and rendezvous, as well as all the abort maneuvers
and procedures that went with those different phases of the mission.
Butler:
So it did expand significantly.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
Moving into Skylab and you were in this role then as Assistant Chief
for Mission Design, what were your duties in planning for that program,
and how did you plan for such a program that was so different from
what had come before?
Berry:
Really we had by that time, because we had supported quite a few Earth-orbit
missions, even though Marshall was primary, we had to simulate all
that in order to give them the right targeting and so on for Earth-orbit
missions. So we had essentially all the tools pretty closely ready
to go, as well as the techniques for using them to do a rendezvous
in Earth orbit. So we had pretty much all the tools, techniques, and
procedures down, so that was not a big thing. It was just a matter
of executing those in the same successive path, you know, way that
we had before.
The new things, we had to come up with a better model of the Earth
because of the long-duration orbits. We worked with the various other
groups to try to get a better refined way to do long-duration trajectory
predictions on an Earth orbit. We had to have that because this fed
back into the consumables. How often would you have to make maneuvers
to raise the orbit back up after it started decaying and so forth
and so on, and to maintain that orbit.
So the two things that really required more work was that gravity
model and trajectory projection programs for Earth orbit had to be
refined, as well as more emphasis on the consumables for this long-duration
mission. We were responsible for coming up with consumables' estimates
and managing, essentially establishing budgets and so on for the consumables.
So those were the two big changes there, as well as at the end of
Skylab we had to support the decay and actual deorbiting the Skylab.
I think that was in '79. So after six years up there, it finally had
to come down, so we supported the effort in the control center of
trying to bring it down in a safe part of the Earth.
Butler:
That must have had its own unique challenges.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
Luckily that did all come out.
Berry:
It came down in the Indian Ocean and a little bit straight through
an isolated part of Australia, a little strip of Australia there that
didn't hurt anybody, thank goodness.
Butler:
Looking at that and just kind of speculating on International Space
Station work that's going on right now and that's going to be a larger
structure, a lot more pieces, do you have any just thoughts or opinions
on how that will ultimately come down, and will it be done in a similar
way or—
Berry:
All the planning techniques that evolved all through the previous
programs are still being used. They're still being refined and so
on. The big change here, more like Skylab but even more so, is there's
a much tighter integration between the mission design and the flight
plan or crew activity plan, because the real emphasis is in space
station, like it was in Skylab, getting there, now what's the crew
going to do every minute of every day. So the big shift is over towards
the crew activity plan or flight plan side, but still needing to be
integrated with the mission or trajectory design. But I think the
whole emphasis shifts more so, center of gravity in planning, over
to the crew activity planning side.
Butler:
In looking over my notes, I came across something that mentioned that
in 1973 you had been involved with the design of future contractor
role for flight operations. Can you expand on that or explain some
of what that involved?
Berry:
We were just looking at how we might turn over more of the contractor
work on what's called a completion form basis. Up until that point
in time, we had used contractors in what's called a level of effort,
where you essentially hired them by the hour. They'd come in and you'd
say, "Do this and do that." You'd kind of have overall control
of what they did sometimes even on a daily basis. They were really
like extensions of your civil service force, more so.
Thinking about going to a completion form contract meant that you
would contract with them to do total end-to-end complete jobs, more,
where they would have more authority to decide what their folks did
on a day-to-day basis in order to work for the larger objectives of
the contract, what we called then a completion form. I don't know
what they call them today. So that was essentially the basis of that
effort, to see if it looked like it would hopefully save some money
for the government. The budgetary problems, those clouds were starting
to arise at that time, as well as give the contractors more a feeling
of controlling their own destiny and being able to hopefully have
a little bit more enthusiasm and feeling of satisfaction on their
side.
Butler:
Talking about the contractors and kind of going back to the earlier
discussion about some of the interaction between the different parts
of the agency, how did that work with the contractor role? Was it
a pretty comfortable relationship all throughout?
Berry:
Yes. Like I say, it was this level of effort type of contract initially,
through the Apollo. It was very comfortable for us, and I think it
was fairly comfortable for the contractors, even though it did not
have these other advantages from a corporate standpoint that I just
mentioned. But from a workers' standpoint, again, they were part of
this unified goal thing, and they worked alongside us just like other
civil service employees. In fact, a lot of times they brought experience
and knowledge that the younger civil service people did not have,
so they really taught us in a lot of respects. I remember one guy
that worked for TRW, named Bill Lee [phonetic], he was a big help
in actually teaching the rest of us things about guidance and maneuver
analysis and so on from his experience at TRW unmanned programs. So
I think that was a big factor that in the early years, at least, there
were so many young kids just coming out of college, working for NASA,
that somebody needed to teach them what things needed to be done in
what way, and experience in a lot of cases came from the contractors.
Butler:
Sounds like a pretty valuable relationship.
Berry:
Oh yes. And a very collegial one also. Like I say, in today's environment,
I'm sure trying to work like that side by side, there would be all
kinds of frictions, work and so on, but if they did exist, they were
overlooked in short order.
Butler:
You mentioned a little bit earlier, just a little bit before now,
that some of the budgetary clouds were starting to roll in with Skylab
and into Shuttle. How did you meet those challenges of dealing with
those concerns, or did you just kind of take it in stride as part
of what had to be done?
Berry:
Well, again back to the computer evolution, that was a big factor,
the fact that the tools were coming along to enable us to become much
more productive, automating all the systems and knowledge that we
had developed during the Apollo and earlier programs. We were able
to automate those to a much higher degree, as well as store the knowledge,
essentially, of all of our experience in these computer programs,
so that when we did change contractors for a better price or so on,
we had the knowledge stored. We didn't lose the knowledge. And also
experimenting with the completion form contracting helped quite a
bit, getting a better price for the product. Plus the fact that our
civil service staff was that much more experienced and therefore more
productive.
Butler:
In around about 1976, which is kind of at the end of Skylab and a
little bit after Apollo-Soyuz, actually, you transitioned to the role
of Chief of the Mission Planning and Analysis Division. How did your
duties change with that promotion and—
Berry:
Besides the mission phases that we talked about earlier that I was
responsible for, at that point I picked up all the navigation and
the rest of the guidance analysis for the other major phases of the
mission, like launch, the launch guidance, coming up for Shuttle,
and the landing of Shuttle. That phase picked up both the guidance
and the navigation. So those were the big things that were picked
up with that promotion.
Butler:
Jumping back as I did, kind of skip over there, Apollo-Soyuz, what—when
did you learn of that project and what were some of the challenges
of pulling that together, integrating two completely different spacecraft
from two different countries and launching them to be able to rendezvous
with each other? What were some of the challenges you faced there?
Berry:
Well, of course the big challenge is what you would expect, working
with somebody you can't understand. [Laughter]
Butler:
Yes.
Berry:
And I wasn't up to learning Russian, although I gave it a try, but
I just couldn't do it.
Butler:
It's a hard language.
Berry:
So we had to rely upon the translators for verbal and written. There
were some errors made along the way, but they were all corrected in
time, and misunderstandings and this, that, and the other. We got
to a point of working with the Russians. It was, again, quite collegial
and they are just like we are, the same problems. They had the same
budgetary clouds, even though more so, I guess. We ended up with quite
a good working relationship with them. We worked mainly with them
on the orbital phases, the rendezvous. They launched first and then
we launched the rendezvous, so we had to work together to determine
the best orbit they would go into for us to be able to rendezvous
with and so on, and working with us as we did rendezvous. It turned
out to be quite a good experience and one I think was beneficial for
both countries in the long run. Certainly satisfying for us that worked
on it.
Butler:
That's always a good thing.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
You mentioned that as Chief of Mission Planning Analysis that you
began to get involved obviously now for Shuttle and launch and a variety
of other aspects to the planning. How different—well, Shuttle
was obviously a very different vehicle with a very different mission
from Apollo and from Skylab. What—how did you make that transition
and what were some of the biggest differences to you from a planning
aspect?
Berry:
Well, not just from planning. Planning was the most similar. Trajectory
design was the most similar. We'd done similar things. But the bigger
challenges were in the guidance phases, guidance and navigation phases
of the ascent and landing, because these were very much different
kind of vehicles, had very much more stringent constraints. You didn't
want to break the wings off and things like that.
The program made a conscious decision for MPAD to provide the guidance
formulation for those two phases, rather than having the contractor
do it for both ascent and landing, as well as the orbital maneuvers.
We were pretty mature in our understanding of how to do orbital maneuvers.
So the big challenges there were to develop the guidance scheme for
the launch, the guidance and navigation scheme for the launch, the
guidance and navigation scheme for the landing. Those took most of
the—well, the majority of the focus of the division was getting
those two major maneuvers down, because they were both very critical
to this new kind of vehicle we were flying, all different kinds of
structural and kind of constraints. Marshall had the responsibility
for the launch before, but they did not have to worry about wings
and things like that, so they were helpful in that transition, but
we had to develop quite a bit of new knowledge ourselves in how to
do that guidance properly.
Butler:
During the transition period, basically, between Apollo-Soyuz in '75
and the launch of Shuttle in '81, was it just mostly involved with
this planning and developing these new—
Berry:
Right. We started several years ahead for the Shuttle planning and
developing the guidance.
Butler:
As it was coming up time for—oh, actually, were you involved
in the planning for any of the [Shuttle] Approach and Landing Tests
[ALT], or did that tie in some of that guidance?
Berry:
Yes, because we were testing and utilizing the landing guidance for
those approach and landing tests. So we were right in the middle of
those.
Butler:
Building up from those to the first launch and STS-1 going so well
and not having major—any major problems itself, what were some
of your thoughts as that whole—
Berry:
Very satisfying. The thing went off right. [Laughter] And for a first-time
flight of a vehicle like that, that had never been flown before, in
hindsight it was pretty amazing everything went as well as it did.
The software people that were in another group had a glitch leading
up to STS-1, so there were some glitches leading up, but in our particular
area it was pretty smooth sailing. And everybody was very nervous
and uptight because of the ascent guidance and landing guidance on
that first one, but it worked like a charm.
Butler:
Had you had any thoughts before that of this being the first launch
of this vehicle and yet they were putting men on it for the first
time, whereas in earlier programs they'd always done some unmanned?
Berry:
Certainly, but we had gotten so good, I guess is the right word, at
verifying all of our work, we developed all these checks and counterchecks
and verification techniques between us and the software vendors and
the overall systems testers, that we felt very confident going in
that everything was going to go okay.
Butler:
As the Apollo—as the Shuttle missions progressed, did your responsibilities
or duties change any once the basic planning was down? Did it change
much for each mission or did things go—was it pretty much a
verification process?
Berry:
Right. There were always some new wrinkles for each kind of mission.
Duration was one, where consumables became an issue, again having
enough consumables, trying to stretch the flight as long as we could
but still be safe from a consumables standpoint. We were always looking
at as the configuration changed in terms of weight and this kind of
thing, always having to reverify all of our nominal maneuvers as well
as abort maneuvers. So they kept us busy.
Butler:
Certainly would. You became then Director of Mission Support Directorate
later on in the Shuttle Program, in fact, '85. Again, was this a more
expanded role then building off of—
Berry:
Right. It kept all the planning and the software navigation as well
as the guidance and trajectory, but added the control center development
support during the missions. It added the development of the flight
crew trainers and the support associated with those, as well as the
institutional computer support. So it was quite an expanded role at
that time.
Butler:
Mentioning the control center, was this—did it fall under you
then some of the redesign when they built the new center?
Berry:
Right. The early stages of that were under the MSD [Mission Support
Directorate], the basic architectural change to go to a more distributed
system as opposed to the more centralized system we had used up until
that time. We did the preliminary work on that for what has become
the current Mission Control Center.
Butler:
I'm guessing a lot of the computer advances that we've talked about
a couple of times had a big role.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
Big transition there. As the Shuttle Program was going along and there
were obviously a number of missions with different objectives that
were all moving along pretty well, with a variety of different glitches
here or there, or some more major problems, some less, but then, unfortunately,
in 1986 the Challenger accident happened. How did that—obviously
it impacted everyone to a very big degree. Was there changes then
in planning aspects or did your division, department, directorate
participate in any of that post-investigation?
Berry:
Our support involved reconstructing all the trajectories involved,
that were used by the other investigative arms to determine what really
happened and so on. But in terms of changing any of our procedures
or ways of doing business, it really did not. That was more on the
solid rocket hardware side, of course.
We, of course, went through and evaluated all of our contingency plans,
techniques, and so on, to see if there were any that should be changed
significantly, but we did not find any. All of our abort modes stood
up. Of course, none of them could have handled that particular catastrophe,
but for others less significant, we showed that we could handle them
fine. The return to launch site abort mode or the continuing on to
orbit, and the transition from one of those to the other and so on,
they all stayed just about the same.
Butler:
In fact, there has been a lot that has shown that even if something
similar would have happened today, there's still not really a way
to recover at that phase of the mission.
Berry:
No.
Butler:
Unfortunately. It must have been rewarding to see everything get back
on track.
Berry:
Oh yes.
Butler:
Eventually you moved on to be Director of Information Systems Directorate.
This seems to be a slightly different area.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
How did that come about and—
Berry:
What the center wanted to do with that area was, because of the budgetary
clouds that had become severe thunderstorms, the center had to become
more productive for budgetary reasons and the fact that the technology
was starting to become available to do it and it's the right thing
to do anyway. So the job that we were assigned was to attempt to make
the entire center more productive through the use of better computer
technology, of course, but also moving into the networking era. So
our job was to start completely networking the center together with
the other centers and with the contractors and so on and so forth.
So that's what one of our major challenges was, as well as to provide
day-to-day support to everybody at the center for their computer needs.
Butler:
Certainly is a—
Berry:
And we also wanted to bring on to the center a super computer capability
which it had not had up until that point, which we did. During that
reorganization we were able to bring in a lot of the people over in
the Engineering Directorate that had worked on super computers at
other centers for a long time and knew them inside and out, and we
were able to use their skill and knowledge to help us acquire and
bring on and install and eventually operate the supercomputer, the
Cray.
Butler:
Okay. And is the Cray primarily—is its primary goal for mission
support work?
Berry:
No.
Butler:
Or—
Berry:
No, primarily it's for engineering analysis.
Berry:
Oh, okay. Oh, that's good.
Berry:
Aerodynamics, structural.
Butler:
And that's still over there?
Berry:
Oh yes.
Butler:
And operating today. That's great. I hadn't even realized they had
one over on-site.
Were you—during any of this, was there any focus on using what
you were doing with the idea of space station in the future, of Space
Station Freedom or ISS [International Space Station] eventually?
Berry:
Like I say, the whole focus was to make the entire center and its
interfaces with other organizations around the country and the world
more productive, so obviously, in order to get ready and lean and
trim and efficient for this space station era, which was the focus
there, we did do quite a bit of work in advanced computer technology
development, virtual reality, fuzzy logic, computer-aided computer
training and so on, and we did develop some of that and make it available
for the flight crew and the ground crew for training for eventual
Shuttle-Space Station flights. Virtual reality training is what we
call it. We developed quite a nice simulation of the Shuttle-Space
Station.
Butler:
Interesting, you mentioning virtual reality and fuzzy logic, yet here
you had started out back in the early days working with the punchcards
and taking days to make a run.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
In looking at all that, the changes in technology and computers and
the growth of the space program, would you ever have imagined where
your career would lead you?
Berry:
No, not really. It was amazing, the Information Age kind of snuck
up on everybody. In looking back at it, it's just mind-blowing.
Butler:
It certainly is.
Berry:
Everybody's into it and can't live without it.
I hope people are not losing something in not having to manually plot
things anymore.
Butler:
It certainly is a question. It certainly is something that I think
there's still a lot that people are going to have to learn and adapt
to and figure out how much reliance to put on things, technology.
Berry:
Yes. There is, I think, something you do lose, you can lose, if you're
not careful, in totally going to automation. There's something about
the mind and the hand doing something that causes you to really understand
something sometimes.
Butler:
Absolutely.
Berry:
Or being able to express yourself.
Butler:
They say one of the best ways to learn something is to teach somebody
else. So if you're relying on computers or other instruments and so
you don't really even understand it, it's hard to teach someone else
and to make that transition. It'll be interesting to see what happens,
certainly.
Looking back over your career with NASA, you've mentioned several
times a couple different people, and obviously with the program so
big and so many aspects to it, it takes a lot of people to make it
all happen. Were there any individuals that you worked with that you'd
like to comment on, on their impact on your or the space program?
Berry:
Back in the original MPAD days and on through Shuttle, through ASTP
and Shuttle and so on, there was a guy named Ed [Edgar C.] Lineberry,
who really I consider to be the father of our rendezvous techniques
that were used today. He and his group developed the rendezvous techniques.
He was doing this in a sister branch to mine in the early days of
MPAD. I think people should know about Ed. He has passed away several
years ago. But he was a major force, very quiet guy. His way of making
presentations, unless you were really into it, could put you to sleep
really fast, but, boy, did he know his stuff. He really, like I say,
was the primary force, in my opinion, behind the whole rendezvous
schemes that are so critical in everything we do today.
Butler:
Absolutely.
Berry:
There's John Mayer, who was the original Chief of MPAD. He understood
the planning process, the significance of it, its tie-in with the
guidance and navigation world and how that should be tightly integrated.
He made a big impact on the space program.
Of course, our boss at that time above MPAD in the Flight Operations
Directorate, Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.], was a tremendous
force, as everybody knows, but that's no surprise.
Lyn [Lynwood] Dunseith, who was really one of the primary contributors
to the early development of the control center and went on to become
division chief and then a deputy directorate chief, Data Systems Analysis
Directorate when Bill Tindall was the director there. He has passed
away also, unfortunately, but he was one of the great minds, I think,
and motivators and doers in the whole space program, which owes him
a real debt of gratitude.
I mentioned Bill Tindall. I hope I'm not the only one mentioning Bill
Tindall.
Butler:
Certainly not.
Berry:
Bill and his mission techniques work and his famous Tindallgrams.
I don't think the space program could have really pulled off what
they did without his efforts and his activities.
I failed to mention, when we talked about the expanded responsibilities
when I took over MSD, one of the things we picked up was the whole
onboard software area at that time, and I think not a particular name,
but the whole effort that IBM did and, of course, MIT Instrumentation
Labs before them, Draper Labs, but in particular IBM, through the
Shuttle, they developed what I consider the closest thing to zero-defect
software in the world. Of course, we claim we helped them a little
bit, but I think it was primarily IBM and a lot of folks there who
deserve a lot of commendation for coming up with the techniques and
the disciplines and the strategies for developing not only a state-of-the-art
piece of software, but one that had close, like I say, to zero defects.
There were a lot of independent studies of that software that they
did, and it's still operating today, of course, that gave it the highest
rankings of any that they had ever rated. I think they should not
be forgotten in all of this.
Butler:
Certainly not. Sounds like they had quite an impact on things.
Berry:
Yes.
Butler:
Definitely a lot of good people that have made some good contributions.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
In looking back over your career, was there a most challenging point
for you?
Berry:
Well, it had to be Apollo 8, probably, for the longer term, like four
months. Of course, the four days was Apollo 13, but the four months
was Apollo 8. They each had their different kinds of challenges, I
guess, but they were both time-critical. Apollo 8 was just continuous.
At least Apollo 13 was over with in a little while. But those were
the two in terms of the challenges and where I think I made the most
contributions to the space program.
Butler:
Both of those as well.
Berry:
Another guy I forgot to mention was Jim [James C.] McPherson and Emil
[R.] Schiesser and Bob [Robert T.] Savely and Paul Pixley, who were
in the navigation area of MPAD. I think they were another group of
unsung heroes in the whole thing. You talk about your pinpoint landing
and all the rest, they were the ones that made that happen with their
navigation analysis and techniques. They worked both the ground navigation
as well as the onboard navigation.
Butler:
That's certainly a very vital role.
Berry:
Right.
Butler:
What do you see, just in your opinion, based on your experiences,
for the future of the space program, or what would you like to see,
I guess? They're two separate questions.
Berry:
Right. What I'd like to see, of course, is a Mars manned mission.
But I think that's going to be a ways off. I think the space station
is going to do a lot for the country, the world, as it is an International
Space Station. I think it's going to become even more the fabric of
our everyday lives, maybe not as glamorous and short-term exciting
as some of the previous programs but I think it's going to be every
bit or more valuable and influential and significant to our culture,
our civilization. I think eventually we will be able to go to Mars,
but I don't see it anytime soon.
Butler:
I want to thank you for coming in today and for—
Berry:
You're very welcome.
Butler:
—talking with us and sharing your experiences. You've certainly
had an interesting time.
Berry:
We did. It was not like a job. A little bit like a job in the later
years. In the early years, not like a job.
Butler:
That's fortunate. That's very fortunate that you had that opportunity.
And we're fortunate for you sharing it with us.
Berry:
Thank you very much. Enjoyed it.
[End
of Interview]