| NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas |
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| Launch of Mercury Spacecraft with its distinctive escape tower on top on an Atlas ICBM Rocket. The spacecraft were NASA designed and built under contract to NASA, but the boosters/rockets were part of the Department of Defense establishment and all were intercontinental ballistic missiles modified for manned flight |
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The story of my life up to this point is an exciting one. How in the heck do you go from working with Dolphins for the Navy in a new and exciting research program to launching manned spacecraft for NASA. Well, hold on to your hats, because that is exactly what I did.
I left California and headed to Texas to enroll at Texas A&M School of Oceanography, but on the way to College Station, I went through Houston, slightly out of the way, but I wanted to say hello to my former Navy boss at Point Mugu, Navy Captain Bill Wakeland and his wife, both wonderful people and I admired Capt. Wakeland very much. He had just been transferred from Point Mugu and the Navy duty, to NASA by the Department of Defense as the DOD rep to NASA for the launch vehicles which NASA was going to use. These launch vehicles, the Redstone, Atlas, Titan were all ballistic missiles that the military owned, but that NASA was going to adapt to manned space flight.
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When I got to Houston on my way to College Station, Navy Capt. and Mrs. Wakeland were very happy to see me and welcomed me into their home. But Bill had something else planned. He had done his dirty work as soon as he knew I was coming through Houston. He had set up an appointment for me to visit with Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. who had just been named the Director of Flight Operations for Manned Flight by NASA, and NASA had further decided that it would build its Manned Spacecraft Center just outside of Houston. I was also introduced to others in Flight Operations that were setting up the mechanics for the new organization to be under Mr. Kraft in Houston.
At this point NASA had leased several buildings in the Houston area for the few staff that had moved there from Langley, Virginia. Mr. Kraft had about 125 people in Houston at the time. His office was located in a small group of offices just off the Gulf Freeway, the Houston Petroleum Center.
Captain Wakeland thoroughly briefed Mr. Kraft on my background working with instrumentation, missiles, radars, communications and tracking systems of all kinds. Bill was a great fan of mine. He treated me like a favorite son.
I was offered the job of taking over the management of the world-wide Manned Spaceflight Tracking Network and the control of all the ground facilities of both NASA and the Department of Defense during manned flights. The early flights were to be directed out of Cape Canaveral at the Mercury Control Center and later on, 1964 to be exact, out of Houston/Clear Lake where the Manned Spacecraft Center was to be built. Later on, as the Chief of the Network Operations Branch, I was also put in charge of the operation and maintenance of the new Mission Control Center there in Houston.
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| Brand new logo for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration |
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My whole life has been exciting so far! But how can you top all the things I have already been into? Captain Wakeland had greased all the skids for me. I never even filled out an application for employment. I was given a transfer from the Department of the Navy to NASA. I was told that I would be on my own to set up the mechanics for the position of Network Controller for NASA. Prior to this time, the position had been filled by Air Force and Navy personnel under the Department of Defense. Mr. Kraft told me that he wanted a NASA guy in that position for the future.
He also told me that I would be the first civilian Network Controller in the Program, and that the other government agencies that actually owned the tracking stations, aircraft and ships that would be employed by Manned Flight would not be too happy to have someone in Houston telling them what to do. All he asked was that I not start any wars with these other organizations that he couldn't stop. But he wanted me to have clear in my mind that he wanted "control" over all the tracking facilities around the world, and that my job was to see to it that he had it.
He wanted to be able to organize the sites, set up their instrumentation, communications and operating procedures. Everything during and before mission time was to be controlled by the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, no matter who actually owned the tracking site. I really didn't find out until later what all this meant.  How's that for a start of a new job?
I joined the NASA Manned Space Center in Houston, Texas in 1962 right at the beginning of our Nation's effort to have man fly in the outer atmosphere and possibly to the moon. I took about a week to make up my mind to change my whole life at this point. Texas A&M had everything ready for me to appear and spend about two years in their Doctorate Program. It was all going to be paid for by the Navy.
And manned flight was still very uncertain. Many thought it couldn't be done. No one had ever done it.. The Russians were the only other nation that was trying to do that. No one knew that man could survive and function in space. So the President of the United States gave NASA a mandate, ........work like mad and get to the moon and do it soon! Not exactly his words, but certainly his meaning. NASA took up the challenge, and I just happened to join the effort.
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| Mercury Control Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida. This is where I reported for work for MA-9, Gordon Cooper's flight in Mercury. |
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From wearing a rubber diving suit to work every day for over two years, working with animals in the water, June of 1962 and then less then a year later to be sitting in the Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral at a console right next to the NASA Flight Director Chris Kraft for the launch of Astronaut Gordon Cooper in Mercury Atlas ( (MA 9) in May 1963. How the heck does a guy do that? Well, I did it!! |
| Please note that some of the photos are thumbnails. Please click on these to view a larger photo. |
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| Gemini 4 launch on the Titan Rocket |
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| Following Mercury, we moved on at a very rapid pace. The layout was approved for the new Manned Spacecraft Center, built close to Houston, out in an area called Clear Lake. There was nothing clear about clear lake. And the ground was gumbo, sticky, and everything sank into it. But it was a political move to locate there, so Mr. Kraft just told the gumbo to cooperate.
I was given the responsibility for the setting up the operation and maintenance of the new mission control center. We hired contractors (Philco, IBM, Univac, and others) to support our effort. We set up the teams of people that were required to maintain and operate this critical facility. And off we went into Gemini and Apollo.
And to this day, the Mission Control Center being used right now for the Space Station and Shuttle missions is very much like it was at its conception in 1964. A major change, though, is that we had no female controllers at all! Now even the Flight Director can be a female. What has this world come to?  Pretty good planning done some 40+ years ago.
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| Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas |
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| Genini 6 and 7 Rendezvous in Space |
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| My console in the Mission Control room just to the right of the Flight Director's position which is just past my left shoulder as I sit at the Network console. Talking to me is Col. Henry E. (Pete) Clements, USAF who was the first Network Controller early on in the progem and had become the Manager of the Flight Support Division in Houston. My branch, Network Operations was in this Division. From this position in the Control Room, I controlled all the tracking stations, ships and aircraft around the world that were part of the world wide tracking and control system. In a "back room" were technicians who were experts on every system used on the network and who could jump right in and help solve technical problems anywhere in the world if needed. |
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With the completion of the new Center came loads of visitors of all kinds. And they all wanted to see the Mission Control Center. We were fairly careful about who was invited to visit, but it was impossible to slow the flow because of the political environment that NASA was forced to respond to.
I was the only official that spoke Spanish and knew the technical detail of the control center and the mission in general, so I got assigned a lot of official visits by Kings and Queens, Presidents, Key leaders of nations all over the world that spoke Spanish, and even movie stars and baseball teams. It was fun, but also interfered with trying to carry out a huge job at the same time. Lyndon Johnson, President of the U.S. was one of my visitors and I took him all over at his request. While I was giving President Johnson the tour, it was being televised nationally, his visit to the Manned Space Center. My brother, laying in a hospital bed in Chicago was watching the TV, saw me on the tube with the President, and almost lost his mind, yelling and screaming all over the hospital that his brother was on TV. They thought he was in the wrong ward. Maybe he should be transferred to the nut ward!
The President wanted to know everything about every piece of equipment in the Mission Control Center. Fortunately, I knew it all. Dizzy Dean, the famous baseball pitcher was another favorite as was Jimmy Stewart, the movie star. We tried to get Dizzy into a flight simulator, but his legs were too long. I got to know all the major league baseball teams as well over the years.
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| Briefing to Congressional leaders and their wives. Mission Control was my baby to worry about, so I had to know everything about it. This was always quite a challenge. |
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| The President of Mexico and all the Govenors of the many States of Mexico. All in Spanish! Looking over my shoulder is Dr. Robert Gilruth, the first Director of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center who is trying to figure out what I'm telling this group in Spanish. |
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| One of the two mission control rooms during a space mission |
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| A tense moment in the flight, with the Flight Director Christopher C. Kraft (L), Dr. Robert Gilruth (C) Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, and Dr. George Low (R) NASA HQ. This was the hub of critical decisions made during all flights. |
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| A President of the United States issues a mandate in 1961 to go to the moon, and eight years later, we do it. From not knowing if man could even survive in space to landing on the moon in that short period of time. The engineering genius of the American really came through as we finished the lunar landing program of Apollo after successful missions to that unfriendly body in space.
I can never thank God enough for the wonderful opportunity I had personally to be a part of this great effort, man getting off the ground atop a rocket, meeting other men in space, and finally taking a trip to the moon which we all had been watching all our lives. What a feat for man. Neil Armstrong said it well when he said "it was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".
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| Golf course on the moon? |
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| Final layout of the new Manned Spacecraft Center, Clear Lake, Texas. Note Clear Lake in the upper part of the photo. This led out to Galveston Bay and then to the Gulf |
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