NASA Johnson Space Center
Oral History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
Aaron Cohen
Interviewed by Ron Stone
College
Station , Texas –
12 May 1999
Stone: So, you were born in Texas?
Cohen:
Yes, sir. Born in Corsicana, Texas.
Stone:
Went to school at—?
Cohen:
I went to Texas A&M University, class of [19]’52.
Stone:
And then into the Army.
Cohen:
Then I went to the Army for about 2 years. I was in Korea, and then
when I got out, I went to work at Radio Corporation of America [RCA].
Stone:
What did you do at RCA?
Cohen:
Actually, very interesting. I started my engineering career and I
had the opportunity my first day or first week there to work on something
called a microwave oven; and I worked on the early magnetrons that
went into a microwave oven. I didn’t know what they were talking
about. They said, “We’re going to design an oven that
you can cook a roast in, in a few minutes.” I went home and
told my wife, I said—she said, “You don’t know how
to cook.” I said, “No, but we’re going to design
an oven.” So, I worked on magnetrons, which is the main tube
in a microwave oven; and then I worked on color television at RCA.
Stone:
How does one make the skip from microwave ovens and color television—?
Cohen:
Well, it’s still electronics. Electronic tube is basically what
it is. I worked on the magnetron, which is a part of the electronic
tube; and then of course the colored television is basically an electronic
tube. So, basically that’s the same—that’s the theme.
It’s electronic systems.
Stone:
But the move into General Dynamics took you—.
Cohen:
Well, that was an interesting thing. I got interested in the space
program just by reading what was happening in the paper. And it turns
out that General Dynamics was interviewing in New York City; and,
of course, I was working in New Jersey. And I took the train across
to New York City and interviewed with General Dynamics, and I got
a job. And so my wife and I moved to San Diego [California] to work
for General Dynamics Astronautics [Corporation] and—.
Stone:
What was your job? Your first job at General Dynamics?
Cohen:
Well, my first job was working on the Atlas [rocket]. And actually
I was doing heating of the Atlas, aerodynamic heating. And then I
got into guidance, navigation, and control. And then when I was—after
I was there for a while, we worked on the Atlas. It was stated that
these people from NASA were coming—and I didn’t know what
they were talking about—NASA was coming to launch a space capsule
on top of the Atlas. And, of course, if you know how the Atlas is
built, it’s basically what they call a balloon structure. The
skins are very, very thin on the Atlas. It because it’s pressurized—it’s
actually structurally stabilized by having pressure in it. But we
had to put a belly band around the station 502 (and I remember the
station) so you could mount the capsule to it.
And so we worked—and I don’t know whose idea it was. After
talking to people, I don’t know if it was NASA’s idea
or General Dynamics’ idea, but I was working on that belly band
because they said NASA was coming the next day to talk to General
Dynamics to see if we could launch one of their spacecrafts on it.
So, that was really my first encounter with NASA, which I—and
I didn’t know I—at that time I didn’t know I was
going to work for them. But that’s what I did at General Dynamics.
And then I got into the area of guidance, navigation, and control
and worked on the Centaur vehicle, which is still flying today as
an upper stage. And then, interestingly enough, I worked on General
Dynamics’ proposal for the Apollo Program.
Stone:
You make it sound like it’s an easy skip from microwave ovens
to rockets and guidance. That to me, that seems like a huge jump!
Cohen:
Well, it isn’t a big jump. And it is a big jump and it—they
are different types of engineering. But basically, as I’ve learned
and as I’ve—(actually, I’ve learned this when I
started teaching) basically it’s the same process. If you understand
what the customer wants, understand what the requirements are, usually
with an engineering background you can make your changes in the different
disciplines or different projects. So, in that regard I was very,
very fortunate to have worked on a broad spectrum, which I think gave
me the benefit that led me to be able to do what we call systems engineering.
Stone:
So, General Dynamics says, “We want you to write a proposal
to NASA. We want this Apollo contract.”
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
And you set about doing that.
Cohen:
Well, I was working on the team that set—
Stone:
Yes.
Cohen:
—about doing that. And we worked on the contract—we worked
on the proposal to NASA for the Apollo spacecraft, Apollo mission.
And, of course, we didn’t win. And then after that, I decided,
well, I still wanted to—I got very interested in Apollo and
decided I wanted to go work for NASA. And that’s when I came
and worked for NASA.
Stone:
Do you remember hearing that speech that [President] John [F.] Kennedy
made?
Cohen:
Yes, I do. Of course at that time, I believe that was (what?) in [19]’60,
’61—
Stone:
’61, ’62—
Cohen:
’62.
Stone:
—somewhere like that.
Cohen:
I joined NASA—I think I was at NASA—I got enamored with
the program before the speech, I believe. And that was when we were
still working on the proposal. And—but I do remember the speech.
Yes, I do.
Stone:
But do you remember thinking, “Wait a minute. I’m not
sure we can do this?”
Cohen:
You know, I guess maybe I—No, I didn’t. I didn’t
really think that. Now you know, talking to some of the other people
like Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] and maybe Gene [Eugene F.]
Kranz or Glynn [S.] Lunney, they may’ve thought that. I really
didn’t think—I probably wasn’t smart enough to think
that. I probably thought it was an engineering problem. And not really
recognizing what all the issues were, just decided that we could do
it. Now in—at that time—the early times of the Apollo
Program—I was primarily focused on the guidance, navigation,
and control and the reentry heating, the thermodynamics of it, which
were two big technology efforts you had to overcome. But that’s
really what I was working on in the early days of the Apollo Program.
Stone:
When you went to work for NASA, did you immediately come to Houston
[Texas]? Or did you go to Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia]
first?
Cohen:
No, I went to Houston. I went—I came directly to Houston. In
fact, we worked—I came to work at—on the freeway, off
the freeway, Gulf Freeway—.
Stone:
Farnsworth Chambers building?
Cohen:
No, I was—
Stone:
No?
Cohen:
—I was in the Office City building, right on the Gulf Freeway.
Stone:
On the Gulf Freeway. Okay.
Cohen:
Yeah.
Stone:
Okay.
Cohen:
In fact, that’s where I came to work. That’s where I worked.
Stone:
As I recall, back in those days, there were all these bright, young
men—
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
—mostly men at Farnsworth Chambers.
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
—And all these bright—
Cohen:
That was—
Stone:
—young people over at the Gulf Freeway.
Cohen:
—yeah. And Office City. So, Farnsworth Chambers was like the
headquarters building—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—and I was in the engineering building. There was another one—there
were several other buildings.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
The Houston—there was a little petroleum building on the freeway.
And then there was a—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—there were a couple of other buildings that I don’t recall
the names of. But Farnsworth Chambers was like the headquarters, and
the Gulf Freeway was what—where the Apollo Program Office was.
Stone:
Somebody described that as an extremely heady time for engineers.
It was like you were looking for the Golden Fleece and knew you were
going to find it.
Cohen:
Well, as you know, when you think about it—when you think about
it, you said, did I think we couldn’t make it? That’s
a very interesting question because if you really look back on it,
there were not any textbooks written of how you were going to do that.
We didn’t—couldn’t find a textbook of how you were
going to do the aerodynamic heating. How were you going to do the
guidance, navigation, and control. How you were going to build the
structures. How you were going to design an environmental control
system. How you were going to design the landing system. So, there
were not any textbooks. So, we almost had to write the textbooks as
we were going on. And as I tell my students today, I said, “You
know, don’t think you can’t do something. Because you
can.” We didn’t know how to do it. So, your question was
a good one: did I think we couldn’t do it? I think the answer
to that is I didn’t really think about that. But when I think
back now and try to teach my students, I do relate to that type of
problem that, you know, you’re given a problem; and don’t
think you can’t do it. Because you can.
Stone:
Was this a heady time for all of you? Or just a busy time? How do
you recall it?
Cohen:
I think it was a busy time. In fact, it was so busy and I—it
was so busy you really lost sight of what your family was doing. You
really lost sight of what—you had to have a good home life,
because you had to have somebody there to take care of the children
and be patient with you. But you really were dedicated with your work,
almost 24 hours a day. You were—you didn’t mind working
around the clock, coming in Saturdays and Sundays, because you knew
that what you were doing was really something that everybody wanted
and you were interested. And the question you asked (I’ll go
back to it; it was a key one): could you really do it? After it was
done, after we had accomplished it, then I started thinking: could
we really do it? I mean—.
Stone:
Your initial job, I think, was a structures and materials engineer.
What does that mean?
Cohen:
Well, I was really working in the—when I first got to NASA,
I was working in the structures group which was looking at the thermal
protection system, the heatshield, for the Apollo vehicle. So, I was
working on the heatshield, which is—was the ablative material
built by—made by AVCO Corporation, which is with the heatshield
to go on the outside of the Apollo spacecraft for reentry.
Stone:
And there again, we’re breaking new ground.
Cohen:
Breaking new ground. You know, very new ground. The aerodynamic heating,
how did you calculate the aerodynamic heating? How did you attach—what
kind of material did you use? What—how did you test the material?
How did you attach it? So, it was all very, very new and very different.
But I don’t think we really thought we couldn’t do it.
Stone:
This is 1962, and somewhere about that time you transferred to the
Apollo Spacecraft Program—
Cohen:
Program Office.
Stone:
—Office.
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
What led to that?
Cohen:
I really wanted to get in more directly into the guidance and navigation
control area. As I said, at General Dynamics I had a little bit of
aerodynamic heating and a little bit of guidance, navigation, and
control; and I was really more interested in the guidance, navigation,
and control. And my entrée to that was to work in the Apollo
Program Office, which basically was doing the guidance, navigation,
and control and, at that time, working with the MIT (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology) Instrumentation Laboratory. And I was—I
got involved with working with MIT Instrumentation Lab on the guidance,
navigation, and control system. And that was really my desire. That
really was what I really wanted to do.
Stone:
The pat question that’s written down here seems all too simple.
It’s got to be more complex than this. But, what were the challenges
in developing [a] control and navigation system in those days of spaceflight?
I mean we could take the whole 90 minutes for that I suppose.
Cohen:
Well, that’s right. That’s right. And, of course, I think
that probably is one—in my mind was one of the key technological
issues. Because here you are on Earth, and you want to hit something
in a pinpoint accuracy 240,000 miles away, and you had to hit it at
the right time, at the right angle, at the right position. And how
were you going to do that? And so, there I had the opportunity to
work with the people at the MIT Laboratories who had started working
on something we call inertial guidance (and that was under Dr. [C.
Stark] Draper at the MIT Instrumentation Lab). People like Dick [Richard
E.] Battin and Phil Felleman and Norm Seers and these type of people
that were working at the Instrumentation Lab.
And basically, to get a little technical, an inertial navigation system
is composed of a computer, an onboard computer. It’s composed
of something we call an inertial measurement unit, which allows you
to determine the attitude of the vehicle in space, and a star tracker,
that’ll allow you to, like the old sailors of years gone by,
measure the angles between stars. And from that, you can determine
your position and velocity in space and know where you are. And so
that’s basically an inertial guidance system. And then you had
your control of how you controlled the jets that moved you around
the center of gravity. So, with that system we were able to guide,
navigate, and control to the Moon. Now later on, we did decide to
use aid from the ground, from the Deep Space Network to get ground
information. So, with all that we were able to guide and navigate
to the Moon. And it turns out it was a very, very sophisticated system.
The thing that’s interesting: if you look at the computer we
used on the Apollo vehicle—
Stone:
Not much of a computer.
Cohen:
—it’s not—it has—your PC at home is much,
much more powerful than that little computer we used. And it was a
wire rope memory, where you actually had to—actually wire the
zeros and ones in that made up the computer memory months before you
decided to fly. And we had a little bit of erasable memory. So, it
was a—to me, it was one of the big achievements. And really
it was the forerunner, in all honesty, of many of the things we’re
doing today, both in spaceflight, aircraft flight, and commercial
uses of computers.
Stone:
While you were working on that, Mercury and then Gemini were going
on.
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
Were you learning things from them or not?
Cohen:
You know, we—I tell you what. And I guess—I was really
not involved in the Mercury Program or the Gemini Program. The big
offshoot of those two programs, though, were primarily, especially
in the Gemini, was learning how to do rendezvous. Rendezvous, that
was one thing. And, of course, how to really design your electrical
power system with fuel cells and your environmental control system.
So, those were the helps that those programs gave us.
Stone:
How did you change jobs? Why were you promoted to Technical Assistant
to the Chief of Systems Engineering Division? What does that mean?
Cohen:
Well, what happened is we started going along. We found that there
was a bigger job in terms of—which—a bigger job in how
you integrate all the systems into the spacecraft. So, you know it
wasn’t just guidance, navigation, and control, which is a subsystem.
It was how do you put all the systems into the spacecraft (the environmental
control system, the guidance and navigation control system, the—all
the systems that made the Apollo vehicle work)? And so, I was promoted
to that job, to see how we could get the system to work.
There is an interesting—a very interesting point in my career
at that time, which probably not too many people know about. It—Joe
[Joseph F.] Shea was the—at that time was the Manager of the
Apollo Program Office, and Joe and I became very good friends. We
used to play tennis every Saturday morning together and became very
good friends. And I was doing the guidance and navigation control
work; and he said, “Aaron, there’s a bigger job in understanding
how you resolve all the interfaces. And that’s—there’s
a very important document called [the] interface control document,”
which every system has today. He says, “How do you get all the
interfaces worked out between the command module—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
“—the service module, the lunar module, the launch complex,
all the hardware that went in it?” And it’s very complicated,
because interface control documents cannot be developed until you
design. You can’t design until you have the interfaces defined.
So, I was given the job to resolve the interfaces; and that was probably
one of the biggest jobs and one of the best jobs and one of the most
important jobs I ever had. And I was—I mean, at that point in
time I didn’t recognize the significance of it. But if you couldn’t
resolve those interfaces, you couldn’t put the vehicle—I
think there was like 1200 interface documents to resolve.
Stone:
Does this mean you’re running interference between all these
contractors, trying to get—?
Cohen:
All the contractors, all the—between Marshall [Spaceflight Center,
Huntsville, Alabama], Kennedy [Space Center, Florida], and all the
contractors. We were trying to put the thing together so we could
actually bolt things together, have wire runs complete, have the functions
complete. The interfaces are electrical interfaces, mechanical interfaces,
functional interfaces. They all have to fit. And you have to do that
before you can build a vehicle. And they have to be resolved; so one
person knows what has to go on each side of the interface so they
can design it.
Stone:
Did the contractors have trouble getting together on this?
Cohen:
Oh yeah! And one person’s got something designed. Another’s
got something designed. And as simple as a bolt hole pattern, wouldn’t
work. I’ll give you an example: If you go to change a tire and
if your tire doesn’t fit on the rim—
Stone:
You’re in trouble.
Cohen:
—that’s a simple interface.
Stone:
Right.
Cohen:
And so, all these interfaces had to work. And—.
Stone:
So, how’d you ever get them—?
Cohen:
Well, it’s an interesting story. They gave me about 10 people.
We had about 1200 interface control documents, and we had to get them
resolved or we weren’t going to get the [Apollo] off the ground.
So, you know, that was a very, very important part of it. So, Joe
Shea—in fact, I remember Joe Shea taking me to Marshall Space
Flight Center, and he took me to see von Braun. He introduced me to
von Braun, and he said, “This is Aaron Cohen. He’s going
to resolve all the interfaces.” And of course, I felt very,
very good about that until von Braun says, “What’s an
interface?” So, I knew then I had a little problem with it!
But the way we did it is, we identified all the interfaces. And then
I had a big meeting at Cape Kennedy. I got—
Stone:
Got all the contracts—
Cohen:
—all the contracts together in the big firing room. And I said,
“We’re going to stay—” and we broke down into
teams, and I said, “We’re going to stay here until we
get all the interfaces resolved.” Well, of course, that was
an overstatement because there was no way you were going to do that
in one meeting. But at least—we stayed there about a week, and
at least we got them all defined and found out what the issues were
so everybody knew what they had to go back and work on. And then we
periodically had a meeting; and I guess that over a period of 4 to
5 months, we were able to resolve it. And that to me was one of the
biggest achievements I think I made and one of the biggest contributions
I made to the space program in getting the interface—not many
people really recognize the significance of it. But—
Stone:
Well, the mythology always is that everybody was in lockstep. That
everybody was doing exactly what they were supposed to do.
Cohen:
Yeah, right. Right.
Stone:
In fact, they were not.
Cohen:
They were not. And not by any maliciousness. It’s just that—
Stone:
No.
Cohen:
—people were going off and doing their own thing, and somebody
had to bring it together so that when this bolt hole pattern was made,
the other person’s bolt hole pattern would meet that so you
could bolt them together. That’s as simple as the electric wire—the
wire runs and how you’d bolt the lunar module to the command
and service module, and so forth and so on. The launch vehicle. So,
that was, to me, the—one of the—I was very young at the
time, but it—to me, it was one of the highlights of my career.
From going from the guidance and navigation. So, we went from microwave
ovens to color television to guidance and navigation and control to
interface documents on the Apollo vehicle.
Stone:
There again, nobody told you couldn’t do it. So, you did it.
Cohen:
That’s right. And we did it in about the time schedule they
gave us, too.
Stone:
Was there—speaking of time schedule. Was there a feeling of
tremendous pressure on everyone at that time?
Cohen:
I think there was, yes. I think time was really—I think your—I
keep going back to your question: did we think we couldn’t do
it? I don’t think technically, even though we didn’t know
exactly what we were doing,—I don’t think technically
we really had an issue. I think the time was really the thing that
was bothering us the most. And I think that’s where people like
George [M.] Low—then when George Low came in and Chris Kraft
came in and George [E.] Mueller really made that schedule happen in
my mind.
Stone:
There is a question about hardware or software, which was the most
difficult to work out?
Cohen:
Well, that’s a tough one. I think the software at the time—the
software at the time was probably the most mysterious, you might say,
because we weren’t in the computer age really as we are today.
You know, if I look at what my students could do—my students
can do today with software, it’s amazing. I mean, they could
do things we couldn’t do, that we didn’t know how to do.
So, I think in that time period, software was probably—whether
it was harder or whether it was more mysterious, it probably was a
little bit of mystique about it because a lot of people didn’t
know how to do it. So, I would say software probably was harder in
some regards. You’d have to say software.
Because hardware, you know, whether you’d be—you know,
you have aluminum. You have composites—we didn’t have
composites at the time. We really dealt mostly with aluminum and that
type of material, which was conventional material. Environmental control
systems were of interest, but if compared—for Apollo, the environmental
control system really wasn’t that complicated, and the thermal
protection system was evolving. And it was pretty robust. So, I would
have to say that it was software in that time period. And that’s
why I go back to the guidance and navigation and control system. It
was probably the most sophisticated system with an onboard computer,
using a computer with the software; and the Mission Control software
really probably was the—
Stone:
Now MIT was the original contractor to do this sort of work. Am I
right about that?
Cohen:
For the onboard system, yes, they were.
Stone:
Now, did the other people who were also building components get in—try
to get into the guidance business as well?
Cohen:
Well, the guidance business was composed of the following: MIT at
first was the major integrating contractor and did the software and
designed the inertial measurement unit and the optical system and
the computer. But as we went along, we found that MIT probably—it
was too big a job for MIT to produce anything. So, we gave the job
really to AC Spark Plug [Division of General Motors Corporation] at
the time, which became more the integrating contractor for the guidance,
navigation, and control system; and they actually did the production
build of the inertial measurement unit. Raytheon [Company] built the
computer; and Kollsman Instruments [Corporation] built the optical
system; and MIT did all the software. And it basically was put together
by AC Spark Plug. So, that’s how it was really done.
Stone:
Do the American people realize that AC Spark Plug built that thing?
Cohen:
Probably not. But that was part of General Motors at the time.
Stone:
Right. I understand.
Cohen:
Yeah.
Stone:
But it just seems funny to say, well, AC Spark Plug—
Cohen:
Well, that’s right.
Stone:
—is going to take care of that.
Cohen:
We called it “AC Spark Plug,” and it was really a—of
course, it was part of General Dynamics at the—General—
Stone:
General Motors.
Cohen:
—Motors, excuse me.
Stone:
What are your impressions of the people you worked with at the MIT
Instrumentation Lab?
Cohen:
Well, of course, I’ve got the highest regard for them. I really
feel that the people at the MIT in the guidance and navigation were
one of the key people in getting the Apollo Program accomplished.
Dick Battin and those people, Norm Seers, Phil Felleman, Milt [Milton
B.] Trageser, Ralph [R.] Ragan, all those people to me were really
key. And they had a lot of lot of their expertise came from graduates
of MIT right into the Instrumentation Lab. And of course, the whole
Dr. Draper activity of inertial guidance to me was very, very important.
So, I have to give them a lot of credit. Now that’s my own personal
feeling on it. I think that the MIT people really did a fantastic
job for the space program.
Stone:
Somewhere along the line, Wally [Walter M.] Schirra [Jr.] is credited
with saying, “I’m sitting on top of this thing, each part
built by the lowest bidder.” I don’t know whether that’s
his original line or not—
Cohen:
Yeah. Right.
Stone:
—or whether he stole it from somebody—
Cohen:
Yeah.
Stone:
—but how bad is, in fact, what we’re talking about? How
difficult was it to work with all of these people and keep them on
track?
Cohen:
Well, you know, if you go back to that point in time, if you really
look at the key people in my perspective at the Johnson Space Center
[JSC, Houston, Texas], of course, we had the command and service module
[CSM], which was at that time North American Aviation [Inc.]. And
if you look at their leader was George [W.] Jeffs, who was extremely
motivated person to get the job done. If you look at Grumman [Aircraft
Engineering Corporation] of Joe [Joseph G.] Gavin [Jr.] and Tom [Thomas
J.] Kelly. And if you look at MIT Instrumentation Lab of Dick Battin,
all of those people were very, very, very motivated to get the job
done. And even though they may have had differences and they may have
gone off their way, they really all were very motivated. Then if you
take the Marshall Space Flight Center with their people, it was the
same thing. You know, people like Ludie [G.] Richard at the Marshall
Space Flight Center who was in charge of their guidance, navigation,
and control system, which was done by IBM [International Business
Machines]. Those people were all motivated. And the same thing with
the Cape [Canaveral, Florida—later named Kennedy Space Center
(KSC)]. So, really it was a very motivated team that everybody wanted
to get the job done.
And then if you look at our leader in Washington [DC] at the time,
George Mueller. You know, George has a way of pulling everybody together.
He’s got a fantastic reputation. When George had to make a decision—in
fact, when he had to make a decision on how you were going to do the
way we were going to do Lunar Orbital Rendezvous [LOR] or Earth Orbital
Rendezvous [EOR] or go direct, George Mueller—and there were
a lot of differences of opinion, and George Mueller used to get those
people together and keep them together Saturdays and Sundays until
they were able to make a consensus decision on it. So, George had
a way of getting people to agree to do things and come out with a
consistency of decision processes. Even though some people were unhappy
with it, they still agreed with it.
Stone:
Still there was not a blank check that you were working with. There
were budget constraints. You were trying to use as much—as many
products off the shelf as you possibly could, and obviously you had
to make a lot from scratch. But how much did that enter into the whole
thing?
Cohen:
Well, it did. I do think, though, you have to start at the fact that
we did have a very clear statement from President Kennedy. And I look
at that as—when I teach today, I say, “That’s a
need statement.” He said it very clearly. “We’re
going to send men to the Moon and return them safely within a decade.”
And that’s a very, very simple statement. He didn’t tell
you how to do it. He told you what he wanted done. And from that—with
that, when the leader states that, it makes it pretty clear in what
you’re going to do now. Your point is that you do run into constraints.
Constraints always are dollars. And dollars become very, very significant.
Now in the Apollo era, though, the dollars weren’t as significant
as we go to the next program, into the Shuttle Program.
Stone:
Yes.
Cohen:
The dollars became much more significant. Time was really the constraint.
Because if you listened to his need statement or his general requirement,
“We’re going to send men to the Moon and return them safely
at the decade,” he didn’t say anything about dollars.
Now, dollars are always there. So, we had a number of reviews that
tried to get the dollars back into a box; but, actually, we did have
dollars to do the job for the Apollo Program.
Stone:
Nobody worried about the budget, is that what you're telling me?
Cohen:
No, I didn’t say that.
Stone:
Okay.
Cohen:
I didn’t say that. No, they were worried about the budget because
they had a constraint. But the dollars were there to do the job. And
we still had to go explain why we were spending money, how we were
spending money. But the dollars were easier during the Apollo Program
than they were during the Shuttle Program.
Stone:
In 1966, you became the Assistant Chief of the Systems Engineering
Division. What were your responsibilities there?
Cohen:
Well, that was the systems engineering organization was the organization
to basically do all the systems aspects of it; to be sure, again,
that everything played together and that we were ready to go to checkout
and deliver the vehicle. So, my job was to be sure that all the analysis
was completed, all the systems; when we looked at the structural analysis,
the thermal analysis, all the detailed guidance analysis, that it
all played together. And that was my job in that organization.
Stone:
You set up a flight readiness review program—
Cohen:
Flight readiness review.
Stone:
—at that time.
Cohen:
We did a flight—we did what we called an FRR (flight readiness
review). First we did a—first we—of course, we did a critical
design review. Then we did a flight readiness review for each mission,
and we had 2 weeks to get the vehicle through that.
Stone:
What was a customer’s acceptance review?
Cohen:
Customer’s acceptance review is when you basically get together
and go through all the documents and look at all the designs and be
sure the design meets your specifications. And you essentially buy
off on the vehicle. The customer, which is NASA in this case, basically
buys off the vehicle from the builder of it. So, you look at basically
what they’ve accomplished and what your requirements were. And
you buy off the vehicle.
Stone:
At this point, you—you’re—everything’s on
schedule—
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
—going along. Then there’s that tragic fire. And everything
comes to a grinding halt. Where did you hear about the fire?
Cohen:
Well, that was interesting. If I go back and think about it, they
were doing a countdown demonstration test, and I was listening to
the—I can’t remember if I was listening to the results—or
listening to the test, or was in a room where we were getting the
results. And I think, in all honesty at the time when I think back
on it—and, of course, sometimes your memories become a little
bit—I think George [W. S.] Abbey and I, who’s now the
current Center Director, were in a room together. George and I were
listening to the results together at the time. And we—something
went awry. Something went wrong. We didn’t know exactly what
because we couldn’t tell. But that’s our first indication.
And, of course, we got a later report. I was in Houston [Texas] at
the time—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—I was in Houston listening to it on a hookup—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—in a—actually, I wasn’t in the—even in the
Control Center. I think we were in an office. I think we were just
in an office listening to—because it was a fairly routine test.
I mean, you know, we didn’t really think that it was going to
be a, you know—a countdown demonstration test is not a significant
test. It’s a minor test in many people’s minds.
Stone:
As I recall, the next day there was a deep, dark, black cloud over
NASA. Everybody just—it was awful. Not just the loss of those
three men but what the future might hold for the whole program.
Cohen:
Right. Well, that’s right. And, of course, there was a lot of
uncertainty. A lot of “Why did it happen? How did it happen?”
And then, of course, then you go through that investigation, which
is very traumatic, and you find the results. Then you go through what
corrective actions you have to take. The thing that’s interesting,
though, is that there were black clouds; but people did feel very
motivated to fix the problem and continue on. And there was no question
about the fact that we wanted to fix the problem and continue on.
The astronauts, the management, and the country—the Congress
and the country—wanted to fix the problem and move on.
Stone:
When Frank Borman called you and said, “I want you on the Tiger
Team.” (I don’t know whether he called you or not.) But
when you—
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
—how did you feel?
Cohen:
Well, I felt very good. Actually it was George Low who called me.
Stone:
Okay.
Cohen:
George Low who called me. It was—Frank was actually—George
Low actually set up the team.
Stone:
Okay.
Cohen:
And, of course, I was elated to do it because I felt it was a way
that I could really get involved in getting the vehicle ready to fly
again. And that’s what I felt was important, is to get the vehicle
ready to fly again. So, I was elated in some respects. I was a little
bit—then I really felt the problem that you asked me: could
you do it? I was really concerned: could we really get the vehicle
ready to fly again? Because it was so important, and we had to overcome
all the issues that were there.
Stone:
At Downey [California—the North American plant], things—there
really was a black cloud over things at Downey, were there not?
Cohen:
Yes, there was. Yes, there was.
Stone:
Tell me what that was like.
Cohen:
Well, the issue—unfortunately, whenever you have an accident
or a bad problem, you go through the fact of: what happened? Why did
it happen? And then unfortunately you start thinking: whose fault
was it—
Stone:
That’s right.
Cohen:
—this thing?
Stone:
Fingers start being pointed.
Cohen:
Fingers start being pointed. Of course, that really doesn’t
help solve the problem. But that’s the type of thing.
Stone:
That’s right.
Cohen:
Whose fault was it? Why did this happen? Why did that happen?
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
And that is really the—something you have to overcome before
you can really get going again. Once you get going, though, you forget
that part of it. And so, we got over that pretty quick. The team—I
think that’s where the team was really important. With Frank
Borman’s charisma, with his dedication, with his can-do attitude,
him being out there overcame that problem. I think that, in my mind,
was the biggest thing that Frank was able to do, which was monumental.
He already—he was able to focus on the fact we wanted to get
this thing flying again. He had a team to do it. He wanted—we
needed Rockwell to do it. Or North American Aviation at the time.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
We needed North American to do it, and so Frank saw that. And he had
the blessings of George Low and Bob [Robert R.] Gilruth to get that
done. And so, with Frank as the leader, I think we were able to accomplish
that. So, that was the big thing, was to overcome this finger-pointing.
Stone:
You started, though, at ground zero all over again—
Cohen:
Exactly.
Stone:
—and rewired that thing, reconfigured it.
Cohen:
Yeah, in fact we did even more than that. What we did is, we started
and we went through system by system, subsystem by subsystem, system
by system, to find out, even if it had nothing—not a thing to
do with the failure, we went through each point and tried to see what
type of corrective action did we have to take to fix it so it was
as good as possible. Now, in later years, I found out after the Challenger
[51-L] accident there’s a saying that “A ship in the harbor
is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” So,
you could not make this perfect. And we knew we couldn’t make
it perfect. But we certainly could make it better than it was within
the time, money, and schedule and dollars constraints we had, and
make it essentially safer. And we did do that. But we went through
every system, point by point. And that’s where George Low had
meeting after meeting, where we—each person brought up issues
they had. The flight control people did, the engineering people did,
the contractors did, and we addressed each problem. We didn’t
fix everything everybody wanted us to fix. But we—but when we
didn’t do it, we let them know why we weren’t doing it
and then the job we really had in the [time] was to get those things
implemented and get the spacecraft built again.
Stone:
Tell me about how the decision was made on the oxygen blend.
Cohen:
Well, in fact I was out at Downey during that time with the Borman
team and I got a call from George Low. And he said that “The
testing’s that being done by Max [Maxime A.] Faget’s people
with the materials we have will not allow us to use the oxygen atmosphere
we have. So, we need to—there is no materials that will be self-extinguishing.”
That was a criteria. The materials that, once ignited, had to be self-extinguishing.
Stone:
Right.
Cohen:
And, of course, what is a fire? A fire is oxygen; it’s fuel,
which is material; and it’s some type of ignition source. In
fact, this room right now has ignition sources in it.
Stone:
Sure.
Cohen:
I mean, it has a fire—but in a spacecraft where you 100% oxygen
and you have electrical wiring and you have a fuel, such as even metal,
you’ve got to do something to correct it. And they couldn’t
find any way out. So, he said, “Would you please—would
you take it—I want you to have a design team and come up with
what you could do.” So, I had a design team that was one person
from Rockwell, Dave [David S.] Levine, John Zacarro was on the team,
Joe [Joseph P.] Kerwin, who was a medical team and later became an
astronaut for Skylab, and myself. [We] actually went about seeing
what we could do, and we came up with a 60% oxygen, 40% nitrogen on
the pad, which in testing the materials became self-—could itself
self-extinguish—the materials were self-extinguishing. And we
started that out at 14.7 psi. Now the next thing we had to do was
figure out how we could get this back to 100% oxygen—
Stone:
Get rid of it, yes.
Cohen:
—at a reduced pressure, and without tearing the vehicle apart.
And we found, interestingly enough, a penetration of the vehicle that
had a nozzle on it, and you could open the nozzle. The nozzle was
very much like your garden faucet. You could turn it. You could put
a—essentially a fixed penetration of the vehicle, so we could
vent it down and then have the regulator—oxygen regulator resupply
the oxygen. So, by the time we got on orbit, we were at 5 psi, 100%
oxygen, which also was self-extinguishing. So, we were able to do
it without any changes to hardware or software; it was just procedures.
And, of course, that was a really an interesting way. And they flew
every mission that way. They flew every mission that way.
Stone:
But had it not been for that fire, you never would have figured that
out—
Cohen:
That’s right.
Stone:
—and the fire was just an accident waiting to happen—
Cohen:
That’s right.
Stone:
—somewhere, was it not?
Cohen:
Yeah, well, that’s right. And there are a lot of reasons for
it. People have varied reasons. But we were 100% oxygen at 16 psi.
You can go back in history why we were at that way. There were reasons
why.
Stone:
Sure.
Cohen:
Whether they were right or wrong, there were reasons why we got to
that point, which obviously was not the right place to be in hindsight.
But it’s like many things, you can correct things in hindsight
that you couldn’t do beforehand.
Stone:
Take you to 1968 and you’re the Chief of the Command and Service
Modules Project, Engineering Division.
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
What does that mean?
Cohen:
That’s getting each vehicle—it means getting each command
and service module ready to fly. So, we would get each vehicle from
Downey; ship the command and service module from Downey to the Cape;
and then once at the Cape, get it ready to fly. And then once it’s
flown, you get the next one ready. So, our job was to—and then
actually take it through the flight readiness reviews. Take—to
take each vehicle through the flight readiness reviews. So, that was
the job. That was a (you might say) was a detailed engineering job
but more of an operational engineering job of getting a designed vehicle
ready to fly.
Stone:
I have some friends who work at NASA who swear to me they never read
the paper and there was no race with the Russians involved anywhere.
They were racing with themselves doing all sorts of things. But all
of a sudden, were you one of those people who’s looking at the
paper and wondering what the Russians are doing or not?
Cohen:
Well, you know, I’m not sure I really was at the time. I guess
I was so busy doing what I was doing that I’m not sure I really
paid too much attention to it, although probably more than I recognized.
But I really wasn’t paying too much attention to it.
Stone:
So, were you taken aback when someone calls you in and says, “[Apollo]
8’s going to do—”
Cohen:
Well, that’s—of course I feel that—you know, I talk
about important things in my career. That was probably the highlight
of my career, Apollo 8. Again I got a call from George Low. And I
said that we wanted—he said, “I need you back in Houston.
We need to review Apollo 8—to be sure that we can get Apollo
8 ready to go to the Moon, that’s spacecraft 10[3]. The nomenclature
was spacecraft 10[3]. And of course, each vehicle was supposed to
be designed to go to the Moon, but you really don’t know until
you go through the—all the flight readiness reviews and everything.
So, I remember very distinctly. I came back to Houston. I brought
a gentleman with me by the name of Ed Smith. And Ed Smith is—was
my counterpart at that time at Rockwell—at North American. He
was a head of the engineering for North American Aviation. And we
did a review of every drawing, every discrepancy report, all the wiring
to see: could spacecraft 103 (or Apollo 8) do a lunar mission like
we designed to be?
And I remember we did that. We spent about 2 or 3 days doing it, and
we had a lot of, you know, a lot of teleconferences back to Downey,
looking at records, having records sent in. And we were able to complete
the review. And I remember typing up the report in—my wife and
I took it over to George Low’s house the night before he was
getting ready to leave to go to Washington [DC] to meet—to get
approval for Apollo 8. So, I had that memo I gave him. I had that
memo prepared, and after the flight I gave it to—I asked Frank
Borman to sign it. So, I still have that. I still have that letter
with Frank Borman’s signature. He says, “You were right,
Aaron. This was a good spacecraft.”
Stone:
So, there again, no question in your mind as you and your wife typed
up this report—
Cohen:
My wife didn’t. But I have the signature. We delivered it.
Stone:
—you know, as you type up the report and you and your wife took
it over to Mr. Low—
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
—no question in your mind that it could be done.
Cohen:
No. No question. No.
Stone:
Never looked back?
Cohen:
Never looked back. I felt it was—that was what it was designed
to do, and there was no reason to feel that the design wouldn’t
work on all the systems we had, including the guidance and navigation
system. I remember the one issue Frank had. You know, we changed—one
of the big changes after the fire, which we didn’t talk about,
was the fact from an inward opening hatch to an outward opening hatch.
Because Apollo had—on the fire had an inward opening hatch—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—primarily because of Gus Grissom’s flight [Mercury-Redstone
4, Liberty Bell 7], which caused the outward opening hatch to cause
the failure. So, we went back to an outward opening hatch. It turns
out, on the pad, you’re safer with an outward opening hatch
for escape; but in space, you’re safer with an inward opening
hatch because the pressure tends—the pressure inside is higher
than outside and it tends to seal. And an outward opening hatch, it
tends to want to blow it open. And that was Frank—one of Frank
Borman’s biggest issues. He wanted us to be sure that thing
wouldn’t open on him. And it was designed like a vault anyway,
so it wasn’t going to open. But that was his biggest issue,
I think.
Stone:
Around you other people at NASA, as I recall, seemed to be terribly
surprised that things were moving at this kind of Mach speed, that
you were going to do—that 8 was going to do what they thought
9 or 10 was going to do.
Cohen:
Right, right.
Stone:
Did you have a lot of explaining to do to them, or—?
Cohen:
Well, I didn’t personally. No, I just felt that 8 could do the
job. We did what we had to do. 8 could do the job, and—which
I didn’t really have any problem with. I think the issue was,
again, the guidance and navigation was going to work. The heatshield
was going to work. The environmental control system was going to work.
We looked at all the wiring—any potential problem with the wiring
and the structure, and we saw no issues with the parachutes and the
recovery system. So, we didn’t see any issues with it. Everything
was tested. Everything had been tested. The thrusters had been tested.
The engine had been tested.
I guess the one issue, the one real issue in the mission was an interesting
one was that we were having a problem with the service propulsion
system. Not a problem with it, but we found that you do have to make
some corrections (what we call midcourse corrections) on your way
from the Earth to the Moon based on the information you get from the
guidance and navigation system to put you back on course. And, we
found that, of course, you have one service propulsion system, which
is used to get you out of lunar orbit; and so it’s a very, very
important engine.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
But it also had to be used to make the midcourse corrections. And
we found, by doing some tests, that if you—there were two feed
lines or two banks, we called them, in one engine. But if you fired
that engine with both banks dry before you had wetted them, you got
a pressure spike which could cause the engine to explode. And the
Mission Rules called for the midcourse corrections to be made—excuse
me—to go into orbit with both banks, because you wanted to be
sure you burned into orbit correctly. Now the question was: how are
we going to get both banks wetted before you got in orbit? So, I remember
they brought me that problem—the engineers at JSC and North
American brought me that problem. And—but they also—but
we also had a solution. And the solution was to fire one bank on the
way to the Moon and go out of plane, so you didn’t disturb your
trajectory; and then a little later, fire the other bank—
Stone:
Bring you back.
Cohen:
—bring you back, so you didn’t disturb your engine and
you’d have both banks wetted. Well, I had to call George Low
and tell him that—and tell him that problem. Now the thing about
George Low: he was one of the kindest gentlemen you ever wanted to
meet. I mean, he really never got excited. Never, never raised his
voice. You knew, though, when he was mad. So, I had to call him where
it’s about 2 days before launch. And they had all the Mission
Rules written, and Frank Borman had gone through all this.
So, I called—I was the one who had to call him and tell him
of it. So, he really got very mad at me. I mean, he didn’t give
me a chance to give him the explanation of the solution. I mean, it
was uncharacteristic of George, but he did get very mad at me. He
says, “Why are you telling me this so late in the count during
the mission?” I said, “Well, George, I just found out
about it myself. But I’ve got a solution.” So, once I
could give him the solution, we were okay. And how that’s how
we flew every mission basically. It was basically a solution that
we had. So, the lesson I learned there was: always be sure that when
you told your boss a question, be sure you had a solution for it.
But we were able to work out a solution for it.
Stone:
That also brings up an interesting point. The assumption was that
all things like that had long since been figured out.
Cohen:
Well, that’s right. And this one came up very, very late. And
that’s another thing we learned: we learned that that was going
to be mission after mission. It was always something late in the count
or late in the mission that was going to come and surprise you. No
matter how good you designed it or how well you did it, there was
always going to be some kind of surprise that you had to work on.
Stone:
That had to be scary. I mean, you know.
Cohen:
Yeah, it was scary. Yeah, there was—
Stone:
Did the astronauts realize this was happening to them, too?
Cohen:
I think they did. I think they knew that. And I think that’s
of course where our good operations people came in. Because I think
our operations capability with people like Glynn Lunney and Gene Kranz
and Chris (at that time) were able to help resolve those operational
issues even though the system—you know, I was more into the
design part of it. They were more in the operations part of it, and
I think—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—that’s where it all came together really.
Stone:
Do you remember that Christmastime when 8 went around the Moon—
Cohen:
Yes, I do.
Stone:
—and we lost them for a while?
Cohen:
Right, right.
Stone:
And we didn’t know—I mean, I guess you knew they were
going to come back the other side. But sheer mortals didn’t
know it was going to come back.
Cohen:
Well, I knew they were. But it’s just—it’s no matter
if you knew or not knew, you knew physically they could. But of course,
whether the communication was going to come through was another question.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
Of course, that was always a very tenuous time, when you’re
behind the Moon. You can’t do much about it until you come to
the other side, and you hope you’re going to re-contact with
them. But, yes, it was very—I won’t say it was scary.
But it was very tense.
Stone:
When Apollo came home, did you feel like you had had done it all?
I mean, that you’d done everything that they brought you to
Houston to do?
Cohen:
Well, you mean Apollo 11 or Apollo 8?
Stone:
No, when 8 came home.
Cohen:
Well, I—no. I still felt we had to do Apollo 11, and that’s
really what we—
Stone:
But from a guidance standpoint—.
Cohen:
From a guidance standpoint, we really did what we had to do. And from
the heatshield—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—from the two things that I was really, you might say—from
a subsystem point of view, interestingly we did, but you also have
to recognize that then I became, as you pointed out, in my career—I
became more involved with all of the systems. And so, I really—until
the parachutes came out and the bags came out, and we got the crew
out of the vehicle, it was not over.
Stone:
In 1968, you became the Chief of Command and Service Modules Project,
Engineering Division.
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
What does that mean?
Cohen:
Well, that meant that I really was doing the—almost the same
thing, but just had the title, really is what that meant. I was really
doing the same thing as I did in the Project Engineering Division.
Stone:
Then in [19]’70, you were the Manager, Command and Service Module.
Cohen:
Service module, right. Then I took over the total job and that’s
when I became manager of the total project, including the resources,
the schedule, the resources, and the vehicle. Right.
Stone:
You are the manager of the command and service—
Cohen:
Service modules.
Stone:
—modules for a program that is winding down.
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
Was it difficult to keep the enthusiasm up after 11?
Cohen:
Not really, no; it really wasn’t. I didn’t have that problem.
I mean, I think the enthusiasm for Apollo was there. And I think people
did recognize the significance of it. And I do think people knew that
each step along the way was important. And I think George Low left
us with a legacy of understanding the detail, working on the details,
and paying attention to details. So, he taught us that. And with that
type of a legacy, you pay attention to details. So, yes, I think it
wasn’t hard to keep the people’s—at least I don’t
think it was hard to keep people’s interest up.
Stone:
The day Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan took that last step on the Moon and
started coming home, did you go home that night and say, “Well,
you know, this—” I mean, did you feel the historic significance
of this? Or did you think there would be lots of other people going
back to the Moon?
Cohen:
Well, I thought that—I thought we would have a continuation—not
necessarily to the Moon, but some continuation. Although the Shuttle
was in the horizon, and that’s where I was headed towards. Of
course, we did have one—we did have this interruption of Apollo
13 in the middle of all that. And of course, that was an interesting
story in my perspective of what happened on Apollo 13.
Stone:
Was—this is a stupid question. It was a surprise, obviously.
But were you surprised that what happened to 13 could happen to 13?
Cohen:
Yes, I was. And it turns out that I was just in the transition. You
talk about the head of the command and service module. I was in the
transition of just taking over the command and service module. I’m
not even sure the announcement was out yet, but I was really the project
manager for the command and service module on Apollo 13. That was
really the—my first mission. And it turns out the problem with
Apollo 13, in my perspective when you go back and look at it, was
again a very interesting circumstance, the situation.
We were again doing a countdown demonstration test on Apollo 13. And
as you know, what you do is you load all the consumables, the cryos,
and the oxygen tank, the liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen. You load
all the propellants, and you count down to zero and then you stop.
And then, of course, you have a successful test. The crew gets out
and goes home, and then you offload everything. Well, we did that;
but we could not offload the oxygen out of oxygen tank 2. We got the
hydrogen out and we got the oxygen out of oxygen tank 1, but we couldn’t
get the oxygen out of oxygen tank 2.
So, we had an—and I was the manager of the command—I had
just took over as manager of the command and service module; and we
had a teleconference between Downey, the North American people, Beech
Aircraft [Corporation], who made the cryo tanks in Boulder, Colorado,
and the Cape people and our subsystem manager, who was also at the
Cape at the time. And we said, “Well, we can’t get the
oxygen out.” Now there’s really no reason to get the oxygen
out, other than the fact that it would boil off and you’d like
to get more pure oxygen in so—because you’re not going
to launch for about a week. So, we—normally the way we get the
oxygen out is you actually pressurize—you have a port in the
tank where you pressurize it with nitrogen and you cause the pressure
to flow the oxygen out through another port.
Stone:
Okay.
Cohen:
And we couldn’t do that. I mean, it just didn’t work.
We looked at the X rays in the tank, which we had, and as the records
show, that had been in one—another vehicle and had been taken
out and was dropped. And in dropping it, there’s a union—a
little union that connects the port—and it was dislodged. So,
there was not a continuous flow path. Now that did not have anything
to do with the timing. No operation of the tank was at risk. In fact,
the only problem with that port is you couldn’t take the oxygen
out.
So, we decided (all of us decided, the North American people, the
Beech people, the Cape, and the Johnson people) the right thing to
do was to turn the heaters on in—the tank had heaters and fans;
heaters so you could cause the liquid oxygen to become gas so if you
go to the fuel cells, and the fans, so that you could stir the oxygen
in zero g so you didn’t have a void. You had a continuous system.
So—and it also had a capacitance probe, so it did have electrical
circuits in the oxygen. So, we decided to boil off the oxygen, turn
the heater on. Now—and we said, “Well, that’s really
not going to be a problem because oxygen—cryogenic oxygen, its
temperature is –270°F, so that’s pretty cold.
And we also had a thermostat, and with a thermostat with a relay that
if the heater got at the—heater got higher than 80°F, the
thermostat would open and take the power off the heater. And we also
had strip charts in the Control Center to watch the temperature. So,
we decided that we’d do this to go boil it off. Well, we did;
and it was very successful. And we boiled it off, and there was no
problem. And, of course, what we didn’t recognize were a couple
of things that were very, very interesting later is that: the thermostat
did not operate, did not take the heater element off. As a result,
the temperature of the heater element in the probe got to about 1000°F
and, of course, took the Teflon insulation off the wire of the heater
element. And the reason why is because there was a very subtle change
made after the fire on the pad, where we went from a 28V DC system
to a 65V DC system so we could pressurize the tanks easier. And the
65V DC system would’ve been all right; except, when you kept
it on for the period of time we kept it on, the relay was not compatible
with it; and it essentially locked in place so that the thermostat
didn’t work.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
And, of course, we didn’t recognize that until after the flight.
And when you then get to turn the heater on during flight, as they
did—as Jack [John L.] Swigert did—he really turned on
the—they said he pushed the circuit breaker in for the fan,
but and also the fan and the heater were on the same circuit. The
heater element got hot and, of course, that’s when you had the
explosion. So, in retrospect, we knew exactly what the problem was.
It was a—several changes that were made that really were not
recognized at the time. And why? I guess I never did know clearly
why in the control room they did not measure the temperature and see
the temperature. I guess that whether it was off the scale or whatever,
but that’s what happened.
And, of course, we are able to—and I was with Jim [James A.]
McDivitt. I spent a lot of time with Jim McDivitt on the accident
investigation in preparing for the hearing in the investigation. And
the biggest issue they hit us on was have—be sure you understand
your hardware and understand the changes you make to your hardware,
which we—and I was—I remember very clearly, that was recommendation
number 9. And they beat us up on recommendation number 9 because we
did not clearly document the fact that we went from 65V—from
28V DC to 65V DC. And that was really the change. And I use that—in
all honesty, when I lecture in my classes, I use that as an example
of how you need to pay attention to detail, you need to communicate,
and you need to have teamwork. And it was a very subtle problem.
Stone:
You move in [19]’72 to Manager of the Orbiter Project Office.
The Space Shuttle Project Office. That’s—it seems to me
like that’s almost like jumping from microwave ovens to guidance
again. This seems like a big jump to me.
Cohen:
Well, it was. Of course now I’m responsible for the design,
development, and operation of the—
Stone:
You’re going to start and build the whole thing?
Cohen:
Right. We’re starting with a viewgraph. And we’re starting
with all over building a Space Shuttle. And the Space Shuttle Orbiter
was—is basically three systems. It’s basically a launch
vehicle; it’s a spacecraft, because it stays; and it’s
an airplane. So, you’re designing three systems in one. And
in the system complexity, the Orbiter is so much more complex than
the Apollo vehicle. I mean, it’s just—the mission is not
as complex but the systems are so—I mean, it’s just a
so much more complex. And at that time I also had the responsibility
of the integration of the system. When we first started out, Bob [Robert
F.] Thompson gave me the job of the Orbiter plus the integration,
so I did have also the integration of the system engineering integration.
Stone:
What is the lead Center management structure?
Cohen:
Well, the lead Center management structure is a way of managing the
vehicle. And—when you have a very complicated system like the
Shuttle and you have various centers operating it, you want to have
some Center in charge, or you could have one—some Center in
charge. The Johnson Space Center was given the lead Center, and systems
engineering and integration was given to the Johnson Space Center;
and that was under Bob Thompson. And then the Orbiter was responsible
to Johnson Space Center. And the main engine and solid rocket boosters
and tank was the responsibility of the Marshall Spaceflight Center.
And then the launch was the responsibility of the Kennedy Space Center.
And the lead Center was at the Johnson Space Center under Bob Thompson,
which integrated that total activity.
Stone:
When they gave you this job, did they tell you they wanted a reusable
Space Shuttle, as it were?
Cohen:
Yes, they did. They said they wanted a reusable Space Shuttle.
Stone:
Why that instead of like what the Russians were doing?
Cohen:
Well, because the whole idea—the whole thought process that,
in order to make spaceflight more economical—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—and more readily usable for commercial activities, you wanted
something that could be reused time and time again and not throw away
the expensive guidance and navigation system, environmental control
system, for the basic structure. So, that’s why they wanted
a reusable system. And I think in that context, the Shuttle has proved
out to be very, very successful.
Stone:
Are you one of those kind of people who sits around and doodles on
a piece of yellow foolscap? Did you draw some designs of that just
in your mind?
Cohen:
No, I really didn’t. I—in all fairness, there were several
configurations that came out of it that had been done previously,
and we—I came in when—the point when we had proposals
from the North American, Grumman, and Lockheed [Aircraft Corporation],
and Martin [Marietta Aerospace] (at the time). And basically, all
had had a very similar configuration.
Stone:
Didn’t they have big wings at one time?
Cohen:
That—well, they had fly-back boosters, if that’s—they
had fly-back boosters.
Stone:
Okay. Yeah.
Cohen:
But the point there was that the fly-back booster—see, you had
several problems with the Shuttle. Now you become very much—you
have a cost constraint to get to the point that you—
Stone:
No blank check this time.
Cohen:
—no blank—it said, “You’re going to build
a reusable system.” The need statement or the top requirement,
“You’re going to build a reusable system,” and didn’t
give us a time constraint on it, but that had to stay within a cost
constraint of so many dollars in a given year. I think it was [19]’72
dollars. And—’72 year dollars, because we accounted for
inflation. And so, you were fixed now. When we went to a fly-back
booster, it—you went out of the development box. It became too
expensive. So, that’s why we had to go without the big wings
on the booster. And so, that’s why we gave up the total—the
fly-back booster and stayed with the system you see today.
Stone:
Can you talk about how much the Department of Defense [DoD] entered
into this whole thing?
Cohen:
Well, the Department of Defense entered into several factors. They
drove basically the size of the bay of the Shuttle, because they had
some payloads they wanted to fly. So, they drove that. They made a
very—and they also drove the amount of (I’ll use the term)
cross-range. How much out-of-plane maneuvering the vehicle could take
for purposes. And that drove the wings, the type of wings we had.
So, when you look at what the Air Force really did, their requirements
for—to satisfy the requirements drove those two things. And
the Air Force was very, very important in helping get the Shuttle
really sold to the government.
Stone:
You built it to stay up for a month, I guess?
Cohen:
Well, the original requirement—the original requirement was
for—let’s see. It was really a—what we called a
28-day mission—
Stone:
Okay.
Cohen:
—it was 4 people for 7 days. That’s a 28-day mission.
And then later, it was stated that we wanted to be able to stay up
for 30 days with the number of people. So, we really had a design
that could do that, but we never really—and that sort of drove
the problem. But, yes, that’s what we had, is the—
Stone:
So, that one that’s flying right now is basically that same
kind of design?
Cohen:
Right. It’s basically the same.
Stone:
But they don’t stay up that long.
Cohen:
No, they don’t stay—well, we really never did design—we
never really did stay up 30 days. We never did really stay. The—they—it
was—
Stone:
But did you have to compromise the design because of that?
Cohen:
Yeah, you had to compromise the design; but we—it was really,
in all honesty,—it was more of a soft requirement. That was
a soft requirement than a hard requirement. To see what you could
get with a goal of 30 days. It was really never a hard requirement
to make a 30-day mission. But actually, it’s done—it’s—we’ve
had 7 people up for—we’ve sent 7 people up for 14 days,
so that’s—let’s see, that’s 98 day—that’s
a hundred—that’s a 100 man-day mission, you might say.
Stone:
You said when it was designed, it was designed to be—or when
it—when they started talking about it, it was going to be a
reusable thing that would really make space travel efficient and inexpensive.
And they were talking about sending up two or three of these things
a month. Is that ever going to happen?
Cohen:
Well, I think it probably will. But I think there’s got to be
some changes in technology before it happens. It—you know, first
of all, how are you going to make it cheaper? And let’s talk
about that. How are you going to make space travel cheaper? I think
you have to some way reduce the effort in terms of the amount of people
working on it to get the turnaround to go. I think that’s number
one. Number two, there are things such as single stage to orbit, which
they’re trying to do, or two stage to orbit, which they’re
trying to do; and that technology is coming along, but it’s
not quite there.
I think the biggest thing in—to get to the flight rate you’re
talking about, I think we’ve got to simplify the systems quite
a bit in the Shuttle. The Shuttle system will not allow that type
of high flight rate. I think you’re going to have to simplify
the systems. Now I say that, and I think that’s left to the
engineers to design it. I’m not sure exactly how you’d
go about doing it. I think eventually it will come. I think eventually
it will come. I think the NASA would like to reduce the cost a pound
to orbit to more of the 100 dollars per pound rather than the $1000
or $5000 a pound. So, I think eventually it’ll come. But it’s—and
it’s needed to come before we really can take advantage of spaceflight
in the commercial world.
Stone:
It’s amazing. If we go back to the time when you graduated from
high school in Corsicana, Texas, the thought of going to the Moon
was not even—I mean, you know, you couldn’t even think
about that. So, in a reasonably short period of time, we’ve
done a great deal. Do you see that kind of—
Cohen:
Well, I think—
Stone:
—warp movement within the next 25 or 50 years?
Cohen:
—well, I think so. If you look at 1903, the Wright brothers
flew—
Stone:
Oh yeah.
Cohen:
—their plane, and it was the length of the external tank. So,
you know—so, and now we can fly—we can keep a vehicle
in orbit for, as you point out, 30 days. And Space Station and actually
send probes, unmanned probes, to Mars and Venus. And eventually, I
think we will send human probe—or human vehicles to Mars—in,
that’s what my students are working on—but we’ll
send them back to the Moon and on to Mars. I’m convinced of
it.
Stone:
Are the guidance problems solved? I mean, that part of the—
Cohen:
I think the guidance problems are solved. I don’t think that’s
an issue. I think now the issues are more: can we make the propulsion
systems more efficient? Can we make the structure more efficient?
Those are the type of things. Can we get more efficient—really
for interplanetary travel, can we have a closed-loop environmental
control system so you can actually recycle all your waste products
and that type of thing? So, you’re now looking for things like
that. And can you take advantage of resources on other planets? Can
you get propellant? Can you get oxygen out of the lunar soil or the
Martian soil? These are the type of technologies that you’re
looking for today.
Stone:
The Space Shuttle design was an exercise in compromise, it has been
said. In a perfect world, what would it have looked like?
Cohen:
Well, I think—
Stone:
If you hadn’t had to make all those compromises?
Cohen:
—well, I think in the perfect world, in my mind, of course,
I’m a—I sort of feel like the father of the Space Shuttle
Orbiter, so I’m not going to be too critical of what my offspring—
Stone:
You shouldn’t be.
Cohen:
—looks like. But I do think if you—in a perfect world,
you probably would have a fully reusable Shuttle. By that I mean,
you wouldn’t have to throw away the external tanks or let the
solid rocket boosters go, even though we recover them. You would have
a fully reusable system. As you pointed out, you’d have more
of a fly-back booster. That would be the perfect world. Of course,
is the development cost—and that’s where they talk about
the compromise. Is the development cost warranted in that in making
up for what the operations—reduction in operations cost? So,
how do you balance development cost to operations cost? And that’s
what—that’s would be when they talk about compromises,
that’s where the compromise is.
Do I think that’s a major compromise? Probably no. I do think
there are things we could’ve done better had we had some of
the tools that our young engineers have today, such as computer-aided
design systems, CADS systems, systems that are more automated in design
processes rather than drawing on a drafting board and a T-square,
as we did in the olden days. But that’s to me where you can
make your benefit of it. And I think eventually it’ll come along.
Stone:
Has your baby been everything you thought it was going to be?
Cohen:
Yeah, it really has. I mean, I’m very proud of it. And I think
it’s really been very, very good. I—and I think it’s
going to fly for a long—I think it’s going to fly for
a lot longer. I think one of the things we did is: we picked up technology
that, in the’72 time period, that still stuck with us. In fact,
they’re making modifications now. They’re changing the
cockpit. They’re upgrading what the cockpit looks like. The
so-called glass cockpit, where we do go away from the electrical mechanical
devices to more electrical devices. So, I think the Shuttle will be
upgraded. But it will be flying a long time. And I think successfully.
I wish there would be ways to make it to reduce the cost to orbit.
I—and I wish they could do that. But it’s a complicated—the
other thing is, we try to do—is we try to do a lot of things
for a lot of different people, and that does make the flight a little
bit more expensive.
Stone:
Can you tell me what your gut felt like the day Challenger blew up?
Cohen:
Well, that, to me—that really—I think I recognized—I
was in the Control Center—in fact, I was sitting in the Control
Center with Chris Kraft. We were sitting in the Control Center together.
I’d just got back on a trip. I was head of—when that happened,
I was head of research and engineering. And I was really not working
on the Shuttle at the time. I was working off on Space Station and
advanced technology, and I’d just returned the morning I saw
it blow up. And I guess, in that point in time, I recognized the—I
recognized what the problem was.
I mean—I shouldn’t say that. I didn’t know it was
the solid rocket booster. I thought it was—everybody thought
it was the main engine, the liquid engine. But I did recognize the
significance of what happened. I knew there was no way, with that
type of activity—there was no way we were going to save the
crew and we’ve got a big rebuilding now. I did think, though—I
guess what I did think, where I was wrong—I did think after
living through the Apollo accident—tragedy that this was going
to be an easier problem to fix, because once we recognized it was
the solid rocket booster that was a pretty simple thing to fix. In
my mind, I mean, because I—we—you could analyze what the
problem was. I mean, it was a bad design that could be fixed. But
I guess in retrospect, we did very much like we did in Apollo. We
went through every system and made every—and looked at everything
we could do to make it safer so we could get it safe again. And it
took us longer than I thought. But it—but we were able to fix
it. But I did recognize the significance right away.
Stone:
Mr. Cohen, there was—there’s a vast difference, I think,
from a public perception, from the Apollo fire and the Challenger.
After the Apollo fire, people wanted us—we still had a goal.
After Challenger, there was some serious talk in Congress and among
other places that, “Well, maybe that—maybe we just don’t
need to be doing this. There’s no reason to do this.”
Cohen:
Yeah.
Stone: Did that—were you aware of that?
Cohen:
Yes, I was. And, of course, that’s where we really coined that
phrase “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what
ships are built for.” My deputy—I became Center director
about that point.
Stone:
Yes.
Cohen:
And my deputy was a great guy named Paul [J.] Weitz. He was an astronaut.
And Paul and I had the job of trying to figure out how we were going
to get the astronauts and how we were going to get the [Johnson Space]
Center going again. And I think when you really got down and started
talking to people, they really wanted to fly again. The people at
the Johnson Space Center really wanted to fly again. And that’s
what the business we were in. And we felt we did have a mission to
do. We did have satellites to put up. We did have research to do in
orbit. We did have things that we felt were good for humankind that
we could do in orbit that we couldn’t do on the ground, and
that the Shuttle was the place to do it until we had a space station,
until we could get a space station going. So, I think in that context,
we were able to convince ourselves and we were able to convince the
people at the Johnson Space Center. As a result, I think we were able
to convince Congress and the public that was what we wanted to do.
Stone:
But that must’ve been an extremely trying time because—
Cohen:
It was a very hard time. Yes, it was.
Stone:
—you had essentially two jobs. You had—you were in charge
of rebuilding that Shuttle—
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
—and at the same time, you got a—you’ve got all
these people whose heads are hanging low—
Cohen:
That’s right.
Stone:
—and you’re trying to build them up.
Cohen:
Yeah.
Stone:
How’d you do that?
Cohen:
Well, I really went back—what I did is I—again, I took
the lessons from people I learned from, like George Mueller, George
Low, Chris Kraft. And I took things—and Frank Borman—things
that I learned from them, and I went back—I used the analogy
very much to when a football team or a baseball team is having problems.
You go back to your fundamentals. You go back to paying attention
to details. What is your goals? What are you trying to do? How do
you fix it? And we just went back paying attention to our details.
Trying to see how we fix the things that were wrong and with a motive
of how we got things going again. And as a result, everybody jumped
in and we had teamwork again.
Stone:
And how did you feel when the Shuttle flew again?
Cohen:
Well, I was quite elated. I’ve got to be honest with you, that
was very—that was probably the most nervous I’ve been
in a long time. But we had a great crew and a great operations team.
And I think—and a great contractor team that helped us get the
vehicle ready to go again.
Stone:
One of the things you did to stabilize the Center was have each directorate
report directly to the head as opposed—tell me about that. Tell
me about that organizational method you used.
Cohen:
Well, what we did is, we had—the way we operated is that I would
have meetings with each directorate that reported to me. We would
have one-on-one meetings once a week. If they could come in—like
a Gene Kranz could come in and tell me what was his problem. Each
person could come in and the head of the Flight Crew Operations Division
and the Astronaut Office, and each group would come in and tell me
what—(excuse me)—what issues they had. What they thought
ought to be fixed. What they—what their complaints were. And
I clearly stated to them, “I’m not going to be able to
fix everybody’s problem. But if I can’t fix it, I’ll
tell you why I’m not going to do it.” And I think I became
very successful. Now, I—to be honest with you, that wasn’t
original with me. I learned that from Chris Kraft. But that’s—but
it puts more of a human touch, so people really could contact me and
work with me on a day-to-day basis. My door was always opened and
we would always listen to people’s problems.
Stone:
There was a larger public relations problem, though, with the people
outside the space center. People just, like, didn’t care anymore.
I mean did that—did you find that shocking or—?
Cohen:
Well, I did a little bit. But I think what—let me tell you how
I worked that. I worked that—I got a very great deal of help
from the Greater Houston Partnership, from the people at the—in
downtown Houston. People with—you know, with Jim Koehler and
the people there—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—were very helpful in keeping the interest of Houston up. And
the people in the—in Houston helped me with the—at the
national level. So, I had a great deal of support from our congressional
delegation, whether it be Democrat or Republican at that time, and
also from the Greater Houston Partnership. So, I had a lot of support.
And I interacted with them quite frequently. I was a member of the
Greater Houston Partnership. And I used to go downtown quite a bit
and spend time with them, and I had just a lot of support from them.
They were very helpful. They were very supportive. And then, of course,
we became a—Dr. Debakey became very, very helpful to us and
we became very helpful to Dr. Debakey in some work that he wanted
to do. So, we had a good relationship with the people of Houston and
with our congressional delegation.
Stone:
Did Space Center Houston come about because you needed to change your
image or what?
Cohen:
Well, Space Center Houston was—we wanted Space Center Houston
for several reasons. One, we were—felt that we were inadequate
in what we were doing in allowing people to share with us what was
going on at the Johnson Space Center. And over and above that, there
became a security issue. If you recognize how we used to do—there
was a lot of issues with it in letting people wander around the Center.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
I mean, that became a real security issue. I mean, when you looked
as Center director and you saw what was happening—and I’d
look out the window and see all these people wandering around the
Center, not knowing who they were or what they were—you became
a little bit concerned: “Are you going to have a safety issue?”
Now the result was to build Space Center Houston, which now the issue
was: you had to charge people, because we had to pay for it; so, that
was an issue with people. But in all honesty, we did it for several
reasons. One, we weren’t satisfying what we thought was the
public need; and two, we did have a real security issue. So, with
those motives, I was convinced that we needed to do something different.
And that’s really how Space Center Houston came about. The idea
came about, I should say.
Stone:
What do you think NASA could do to improve its public relations standings
now? Or are the standings good now?
Cohen:
I think the standings are good. I think that the biggest problem NASA
has is being able to explain what they’re doing to the lay person.
In fact, a little history on that. And I got burned by that a little
bit. The Greater Houston Partnership said, “Aaron, tell us why
the—” And some very important people were there. “Tell
us why the space program is important?” So, we put some documentaries
together. And when you look at the documentaries, they look like a
Ph.D. thesis. And so, I took that—I didn’t recognize that
myself. And I took that to the Greater Houston Partnership, and they
said, “This won’t help.”
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
They said, “You’re talking to—you—you’ve
got a Ph.D. thesis put together. You didn’t put together what
the public needs to know.” And I think that’s probably
one of the hardest thing for a technical organization such as NASA
to do. They know so much technically and they’re concerned about
how they—they’re concerned they don’t want to give
you too much of a soft—of a hard sell, but as a result they
tend to do it more technically and don’t—and do not communicate
accurately with the lay person. I think that’s the hardest problem
for us to do. The information we do have, the research we do, the
knowledge we do is—the knowledge we have obtained for people
is fantastic. And if we could only explain it to them a little better.
It’s easier said than done. I mean, NASA tries to do it, but
it’s easier said than done.
Stone:
Well, that’s why they need to teach speech across the street
over there as well as engineering.
Cohen:
Well, that’s right.
Stone:
To understand—so you can understand those things.
Cohen:
Yeah. But it’s—you know, it’s just very hard to
do. It’s not easy to do.
Stone:
In 8—in 1989, you wrote the Report of the 90-Day Study on Human
Exploration to the Moon and Mars.
Cohen:
Yeah, right.
Stone:
10 years ago. What’s happening?
Cohen:
Well, I think a lot’s happening. I’ve got to be honest
with you: that was another great point in my career, to do that study.
It turns out it was probably a little bit more expensive than people
wanted it to be, so it didn’t go over too well. But in all fairness,
I think it was better than people accepted. Because our—the
way we costed it was really a long-range program that was going to
do—it was where we were going to go back to the Moon, this time
to stay, and on to Mars. That’s what President [George H. W.]
Bush stated that we wanted to do. And when we priced that out, it
became very expensive; but if you really looked at the missions, they
weren’t that out of the ordinary when you compare it to the
Apollo cost. I think the framework was good. I think there have been
studies since then. I think the time probably was not right for it.
I think there were other circumstances within the country, such as
the problem with the monetary system in the Savings & Loan. So,
I think things really weren’t right—
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
—for us to spend that money. But what’s happening is—I’ll
tell you what’s happening under Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin, which
is very positive. We are sending robotic probes to Mars, to other
planets. There are studies to see how you would send humans to other
planets, essentially Mars. And I’m convinced that that report
is a forerunner; and I’m convinced that all this will come to
pass. I’m convinced that students of mine will—if they
desire to become astronauts, will be able to walk on Mars. So, I’m
convinced that is going to happen.
Stone:
Mr. Cohen, we probably would not have gone to the Moon when we did
had there not been a Cold War going on that required—
Cohen:
That’s true.
Stone:
—the missile gap to—
Cohen:
Right.
Stone:
—catch up. So, is it going to take something like that now to
propel us on?
Cohen:
Well, I’m not sure it’s going to take that. I do think,
though, your point’s well taken. The—you know, you go
back and why was the space program started? It was not started for
science or technology or economics. It was started because of the
Cold War. And so, you’re absolutely right. But I do think that
there does have to be a need, a need that causes the public to see
the importance of it. Now what’s that need going to be? I don’t
know.
Stone:
That’s my question.
Cohen:
I don’t—.
Stone:
What is the need for you to go to Mars?
Cohen:
Well, I think there is going to be a desire of understanding the existence
of the solar system. Just a—just to give you what little things
that have been found out to date. If you look at what the Hubble Space
Telescope has found out—and I’m plagiarizing a little
bit from what I’ve heard people say—but the people that
have looked at the Hubble Space Telescope say they’ve discovered
billions and millions of—
Stone:
Yes.
Cohen:
—galaxies. In these galaxies, you have billions and billions
of solar systems. And in these solar systems, you have billions and
billions of planets. The universe as we know it has been in existence
for 10 billion years. And so, are we going—is there someplace—something
out there that has life or culture equivalent to ours or above ours?
I think that is going to be something that people are going to want
to know and to find out, especially with some of the discoveries that
have been made at the Johnson Space Center. And the other thing I
think that’s important, that I think you’ll find, that
people are wanting to know why the ecology has changed on Mars and
what could that do to—what could we learn from that? In fact,
as I was doing the 90-Day Study, I was working very closely with [Dr.]
Carl [Edward] Sagan. And we used to talk about what is it that we’re
trying to prove or trying to find out? And that was his thought process.
That was what he said. That we ought to find out what—why did
Mars change? What changed in Mars?
And the other thing I think we have to recognize, the biggest problem
I think this world (not the country but the world) faces is our lack
of energy. We are not going to be able to rely on fossil fuel. In
our lifetime, there’s not going to be a problem. But in the
lifetime of our children and our grandchildren, fossil fuel is not
going to do it. With the Third World countries wanting to come up
to our standards, with the population increasing, we’re going
to have to have another source of energy. Whether it’s solar
energy or energy from another source—such as helium-3 from the
Mars—from the Moon—I don’t know. But I think energy
and the ecology is going to cause that need. Not a Cold War.
Stone:
You moved up to Washington, D.C., in 1992. So, is the view from the
top much different than the view from—?
Cohen:
Yes, it is. It is. You become a little bit more humble. You become
a little bit more humble. You know, at Johnson Space Center we felt
we were ruling the roost; and when you got to Washington, you understood
that there were other people that had to look at to see what you were
doing. But I enjoyed that very much. I did learn a lot. And I felt
I contributed a lot. I was there in the latter days of [Richard H.]
Truly’s—I was Acting Deputy Administrator for Dick Truly.
And then when Dan Goldin came, I was his Acting Deputy Administrator
for about a year. And so, we did a lot of budget hearings; a lot of
going to Capitol Hill and the White House. So, I did learn a lot.
And I think I contributed quite a bit.
Stone:
Did you also not realize or find out that dealing with these people
in Congress makes you feel like maybe we haven’t gotten our
message across as well as we should have?
Cohen:
Well, you know, I think that’s—it varies. I think there
are some people that are extremely, extremely supportive. And I think
there are some people that really don’t care. But I guess that’s
true in many things. I think I can say this, though, very clearly:
the Texas delegation while I was there was as supportive as anybody
you can want. Democrat, Republican, you really had a fantastic support
from the Texas delegation, which would help you sell your story. And
there were people in other places that you might think didn’t
have interest in the space program, such as people from Wisconsin,
such as Mr. [F. James] Sensenbrenner [Jr.], who were very, very supportive
of the space program even though you might say their States did not
have a direct benefit from the space program. So, I think it varied.
It varied quite a bit. But I think, all in all, at least in my perception,
we had a great deal of support from the Executive Branch and from
the Legislative Branch.
Stone:
You are not in the business of being a prognosticator. But look down
the road 50 years from now. Will there still be a Johnson Space Center?
Will there still be a NASA?
Cohen:
Oh I don’t think there’s any question about it. I think
there will always be a NASA. I think there will always be a Johnson
Space Center. Of course, always is a long time. I do think the mission
of the space program is about three different things. First of all,
I think we touched on a couple of them. One such as launch vehicles.
I think we need to do better in launch vehicles; and I think eventually
they’re going to have to have a replacement for the Shuttle.
What that is, single-staged orbit, two-staged orbit, we’re going
to have to have some way of getting payloads and people into space
with less expense than we do today. I think we got to work on some
kind of propulsion systems, whether it’s ion propulsion systems
or plasma propulsion systems. I think that’s got to happen.
And I think exploration will take place. I think we will explore.
Stone:
Do we all—do we still have to have men and women out there,
though? Or computers are getting smart enough that we don’t
have to do that, do we?
Cohen:
Oh, I—no, I think you still—I think there’s a place
for both. I think you do need a robotic missions. In fact, I’ve
been on the Mars Architecture Study at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
[Pasadena, California] where we’ve looked at the robotic missions.
But even the people that are very interested in the robotic mission
are very firm that you do need men and women in space. There is no
question in their mind, the robotic missions are the precursors. But
eventually to do the job, you do need men and women. And I think you
get very much in support from both the people doing the robotic missions
that humans are going to be a very intimate part of the exploration
program.
Stone:
Why’d you leave NASA?
Cohen:
Well, I left NASA because I felt it was time for me to do something
else. I always had the desire that I wanted to teach. I’ve had
that desire—I never taught before. I always had the desire;
I wanted to teach; and an opportunity was coming to me at the—at
several places. One at MIT and one at Texas A&M. And, of course,
I’m a graduate of Texas A&M and I felt that it was a good
time for me to go. I didn’t want—I—but leaving NASA
was very hard. I mean, it was very hard; and it was—they treated
me very well. I enjoyed it. I had a wonderful career. I couldn’t
think of anything I’d want to do more than I did. But I did
want to teach. And I had an opportunity to come here and teach senior
mechanical engineering design, which is something that I can use my
talents on. A lot—many of the things we talked about today are
examples how I get my students and teach my students. In fact, we
design projects very much like what we’re talking about. The
futuristic projects, these students do that. So, I had the opportunity
to come teach; and that’s why I left. And I—
Stone:
Your students still want to go to the Moon or go to Mars?
Cohen:
Yes, they do.
Stone:
Is this still a—is this still something that engineering students
are interested in?
Cohen:
Yes, they are. And it—well, of course, it does challenge the
engineering in terms of structures, materials, guidance systems, propulsion
systems, environmental control systems. So, it really taxes them on
their technology and their advancement of the state of the art. So,
they’re very interested in it. And I’m very fortunate
to teach here at Texas A&M because I do get a lot of rejuvenation
myself, you might say, in working with the students.
Stone:
You could’ve stayed making microwaves. Are you glad you came
to NASA?
Cohen:
Oh I can’t—I mean, yes, I’m very happy. I’m
very happy I came to NASA. Yes, I am.
Stone:
At the time you did, it must’ve been terribly exciting.
Cohen:
It was extremely exciting, and I’m—I feel very, very fortunate
to have worked with the people I had the opportunity to work with
and the things I had to work on. It was just a wonderful, wonderful
career for me.
Stone:
8 or Moon landing or the first time the Shuttle flew? The biggest
moments of your life?
Cohen:
Well, let me give it to you in sequence.
Stone:
All right.
Cohen:
First of all, I have to say the most significant event in my career
was Apollo 8, as we talked about. I think that because humans left
the influence of the Earth for the first time. And that had to be
a very, very significant event. The second most important thing in
my career was the first flight of the Shuttle. Because that to me
was the most complicated vehicle we ever flew. And the second most—the
third one was actually the second flight of the Shuttle, because that
showed we had a reusable vehicle. And the fourth one, which although
was very, very important, was the Apollo lunar landing—was the
fourth one in my estimation. So, that’s how I rate my goals
and my—
Stone:
It’s interesting that everybody’s making lists—
Voice
off camera: And we’re recording.
Stone:
If you look at all those lists that people are making now at the—as
we come to the end of the 20th century about great events of the 20th
century, Apollo 11 is way up there.
Cohen:
Yeah.
Stone:
8’s not even there.
Cohen:
Well, I think that’s right. And I think when you—like
the National Academy of Engineering is—which is the most prestigious
engineering organization in the country came up with their list and
they actually have Apollo 11 as one. They don’t mention Apollo
8.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
You’re absolutely right.
Stone:
Yeah.
Cohen:
And I think that’s probably right from a perspective of the
country and of the world. But if you really look at the engineering
and what you—as you pointed out, what you were really trying
to accomplish, Apollo 8 has to stand out. And I’ve got to tell
you: I don’t think today that you could make a decision on—to
do Apollo 8 like we did. I mean, this was something George Low thought
was important; for whatever reason, he thought it was important. He
was able to put it together. He was able to sell it. And we were able
to do it. Could you do something like that today? I’m not sure
you could. I mean, I’m not sure that you could because there
are a lot of risks. I mean, talk about risks! There were—you
said, you asked me and I passed it off, like, “Yeah, it was
easy.” But there were a lot of risks in doing Apollo 8. And—that’s
something that not too many—
Stone:
There are debates going on to this very day as to whether you all
really were ready to do what you did with Apollo 8. Obviously it worked!
But the question is: were you really ready?
Cohen:
Well, you know, I really think so. I mean, I really think we were.
You know, at some point in time you’ve got to do what you set
out to do. And we set out to leave the Earth and not stay around in
low Earth orbit anymore. We said we were going to go someplace.
Stone:
Did that mean you’d learned so much on those previous flights
that it was just—you just didn’t need to do the same thing
over again, or what?
Cohen:
Well—yeah, I think that’s right. Well, I—whether
you learn, I think you accomplish what you set out—
Stone:
You—yeah.
Cohen:
—to do. And I don’t think you were really going to learn
much more—I mean, you know, you couldn’t study—you
can’t study forever. And—
Stone:
So, somebody was too conservative in 1968 or ’69 when they started
building up all of this stuff?
Cohen:
Well, I think we looked at various plateaus. And I think if we’d
have had some problems in those, you probably would have regrouped.
But I think it’s like anything else, we were successful. I mean,
what were the things were the biggest issue, I guess, and I think
the—Frank Borman probably said it best. Somebody said, “Frank,
what’s going to happen if once you get into lunar orbit and
you can’t fire the service propulsion system?” You know,
that’s the one engine—the one single engine we talked
about—that gets you out of lunar orbit; and if you can’t
fire it, then you’re going to stay in lunar orbit. I mean, there’s
no way to get out. There’s no way to be rescued. There’s
no way to get out. And Frank says, “It’s a bad day.”
Well, that’s right.
It would’ve—if you couldn’t have fired that service
propulsion system to get out of lunar orbit, you were—it was
going to be a very, very bad day. And that was the biggest risk. So,
the service propulsion system probably was the single most questionable
item of, “Was the mission going to be a success or not?”
The guidance system, we felt was good. The environmental control system,
the hatches, the so forth was—were we going to be able to get
out of lunar orbit? And of course, that is a very testable system.
I mean, we did a lot of testing. And ground test versus in-flight
test is not going to accomplish very—different. So, we were
very, very, very, very satisfied that we had a very, very good propulsion
system. A sound propulsion system. So, in that context I don’t
think we were nervous. I mean, well, I shouldn’t say “nervous.”
We were nervous. But I don’t we had any technical issues that
we were going to learn anything more about.
Stone:
We’re in the business of history here today. Not romanticizing
something.
Cohen:
Yeah, right.
Stone:
And I’m not trying to do that. But I am curious, as historians
may be in the future, as to whether people like you and the actual
astronauts who flew ever discussed the possibility that these things
wouldn’t work? I mean, really sat and talked about it.
Cohen:
Well, I’ve got to be honest with you. I wasn’t involved
in the real, you know, like, what if it didn’t work from a point
of view of a more of a sociological problem. I was involved in discussing
it more from a technical problem. What did we have to do to be sure
it did work? What gave us the confidence it worked? I didn’t
talk about the social problems or the society problems if it didn’t
work. And when we came to the details of (really) the engine design,
the engine testing, that’s where we felt very, very comfortable.
Because we had a very, very sound test program. There were no shortcuts
taken in the test program. There were no shortcuts taken in any anomaly
or discontinuity in the test results. And we were able to really correct
everything we felt was a problem. So, we felt very comfortable about
it.
We did a—in fact, I remember doing a very detailed review of
all the propulsion systems for Apollo 8 to show that we were good.
And we put together a large notebook for George Low on every test
we did, every discrepancy we had in every test, and what was the fix
for every discrepancy and how we validated it. So, you know, I think
we did as thorough a job as we could do possibly—humans could
possibly do. But I never was involved really in “what if this
didn’t happen?” It would’ve been very dire—it
would’ve been very bad.
Stone:
Did you ever ask yourself whether you were asking man to do more than
man could do? I mean, your machines are going to work. And all these
things are going to happen right. The is man the wild card in all
this?
Cohen:
Yeah. Well, I think you have to be sure in your design that you don’t
ask the man or the human (shall we say?) to do more than they can
do in a given period of time. And I think in Apollo 13—and if
you look at the depiction of what happened, I think—and with
all those failure modes, we may have been asking the humans to do
more—or probably more than they should be asked to do. But,
of course, that was a very abnormal situation, and they did overcome
it. And, you know, I have to say from my point of view of Apollo 13,
in my mind the hero of Apollo 13 was Fred [W.] Haise [Jr.]. Because
I think Fred probably knew—I mean, I know Fred very well and
I’ve worked with Fred. In fact Fred, in the early days of the
Shuttle Program—Fred was on my staff in the Shuttle Program—I
mean, the Orbiter Project Office. And Fred probably knew more about
that vehicle than anybody else, and probably had it all figured out
before anybody else could tell. So, Fred—but I think you do
have to be careful you don’t ask humans to do anymore than what
we did. And I think we do take that into consideration, because astronauts
and operations people are part of our design review boards. And they
sit in. So, they don’t allow us to do that.
Stone:
But those people, those astronauts, if they are the kind of “right
stuff” people that fiction makes them out to be, will say, “Oh
yeah, I can do that. No problem.”
Cohen:
Well, I think, you know, you’d be surprised. You’d be
surprised. If you sit in these meetings, in these change boards, they
speak up. These people do not—are not potted plants. I mean,
if they don’t like what you’re doing, they let you know
in no uncertain term. A Frank Borman’s going to let you know,
in no uncertain terms, he’s not going to do that. Or a Gene
Cernan will let you know. Or any of the astronauts today. Rick [Frederick
H.] Hauck. A Rick Hauck is going to let you know that that’s
not what the right thing to do is. So, the astronauts of today, the
astronauts of yesterday, are not going to sit back. They’re
no shrinking violets. They’re going—they’re not
going to sit back and not tell you what they think. They’re
not doing that.
Stone:
That Space Station out there—that’s out there, or going
to be out there—or—
Cohen:
Yeah, that’s right.
Stone:
—we—the Russians made us feel like everybody had overstayed
their time there and men were—men and women were doing more
than they really should do and could do. And that got to be a situation
where I think the American public began to ask a lot of questions
about whether this was wise or not.
Cohen:
Wise, and should we participate? Should we send astronauts back to
the Mir? Well, I think that’s right. I think anytime—you
know, it’s easy anytime you have a potential failure or a failure
that becomes life-threatening, you question it. So, in this question,
I think we gained an awful lot from going to the Mir and working with
the Russians. I think today, if you look at the Space Station (and
I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m not that much—I’m—I’ve
been away from it a while, so I’m not really an expert) —
Stone:
I understand.
Cohen:
—but if you look at what—where the Space Station stands,
I feel firmly that if the Russians don’t participate with us,
there’s ways we can get around it. On the other hand, I think
if they can participate, we probably would do it faster, maybe, with
a little less money. But I do think we can handle it without the Russians.
Stone:
Which brings up the whole point of international cooperation that’s
going on now. Is there really that much or—or not?
Cohen:
Well, I think there is. I think, you know, there’s Russians
and—we’re talking about Space Station in particular. There
are the Russians. And of course the—you’ve got to recognize,
there are the Japanese, there’s the European Space Agency. So,
I think the international cooperation’s very large. There’s
also a lot of international cooperation in the robotic missions, the
missions the Italians are playing a big part in, in sending robot—the
unmanned missions to Mars. So, are the French; the CNS. And I think—I
really think that space, since I really feel space is an international
enterprise, I do think international cooperation is extremely important.
And I don’t think it’s really going to be a success unless
you have true international cooperation.
Stone:
We are—we’re in the middle of 1999, as this is being recorded.
Are you surprised that there has not been more of a commercialization
of space? That—?
Cohen:
Well, I wish there was more. I think in some regards the [commercialization]
of space has been very good. If you look at the communications satellites,
I think it’s been very good. I think the real issue has been
primarily the lack of launch vehicles, commercialization of launch
vehicles. So, I’m a little concerned about that. As you may
or may not know, I’m doing some consulting with a company [Kistler
Aerospace Corporation] that is trying to do a commercial reusable
launch vehicle, with George Mueller, who again is one of the key players
in the Apollo Program. (He was head of the Apollo Program.) And I
think that it’s inevitable that we will eventually have a commercial
reusable launch vehicle. But I—and I think it’s needed.
In fact, that’s one reason why I got involved with George Mueller,
is because I saw the need for a commercial vehicle that’s built
purely with commercial money and asked—and do not—does
not ask the government for any funds; and that’s what we’re
trying to do. We’re not asking the government for any funds
because I do think that’s going to be step to commercializing
space. And I think it will happen. But I think industry has to change.
Industry has to be a little bit more, you might say, willing to take
a risk rather than having the government always come to its rescue
funding. And so, until that happens, I think we’re going to
have a problem. Also—but also, they’ve got to see the
return on investment so that their stockholders will be satisfied
with what they’re doing. So, it’s a give and take. But
I think the market’s there, and I think eventually it will come.
Stone:
Thank you, sir.
Voice
off camera: Clear.
Stone:
Okay.
[End
of Interview]
