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A long shot (Apollo missions)
ceres
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
This is a long shot. I'm pretty sure there's no way, but I'm hoping there is someone out there who is better at google than me because I can't find anything.
My grandfather worked on multiple Apollo missions, likely as a contractor. He even had a bunch of the coins hanging on his wall. Growing up I heard stories, but I wish I'd thought more of them now. He designed part of... something, I don't remember, and it's so frustrating.
Is there any way to find out who those people were? I can't find a list of contractors, the designers for different machinery, or individuals in mission control. I would love to find out what exactly he worked on, and if the few stories I remember were true. If they are... man, they're great stories.
My grandfather worked on multiple Apollo missions, likely as a contractor. He even had a bunch of the coins hanging on his wall. Growing up I heard stories, but I wish I'd thought more of them now. He designed part of... something, I don't remember, and it's so frustrating.
Is there any way to find out who those people were? I can't find a list of contractors, the designers for different machinery, or individuals in mission control. I would love to find out what exactly he worked on, and if the few stories I remember were true. If they are... man, they're great stories.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
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https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/255.html
but they're listening to every word I say
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4104.pdf
Which says they had a lot of total personnel over time. Read appendix b.
but they're listening to every word I say
Is the official NASA history Twitter. You could try asking them.
https://history.nasa.gov is their official office website.
but they're listening to every word I say
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4205/app-f.html
This one doesn't seem to want to work. Contacting them via twitter is.. well hopefully I won't have to do that, I've managed to make it this long without twitter.
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4205/app-f.html
this is a general breakdown of the major contractors on the saturn v
and further down from that, this is probably as exhaustive of a list of subcontractors from the major players on the saturn v that could be compiled
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/app-e.htm
hope this helps
I truncated the link some more.
The short of it is that appendix B says yhey had something like 30k personnel between 63 and 69.
However it breaks it down by job which make me think someone actually has some kind of list somewhere by job you might be able to find.
but they're listening to every word I say
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000910.html
If you know where he was geographically, that would probably help a lot.
The following has a few useful charts.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/mission_oriented_r_and_i_policies_case_study_report_apollo_project-us.pdf
Figure 4 (can't scrounge the actual page number, sorry) has some names attached to project areas, if anything rings a bell. Figure 9 has a breakdown of who made what on the payload side.
The Lunar Module article on Wiki seems to have a map of where its parts came from, so maybe you'll get lucky there.
It is by far the best method of contacting companies for customer support. I've gotten immediate responses from blue Cross blue shield on the weekend when they are closed by sending a bitchy tweet at their account. And I have like 13 followers all of whom are bots.
It's a really good way to contact customer support if you don't want to wait on hold for hours and talk to dozens of robots
I have most of what I need confirmation of this one story though. It's one of my favorite stories about my grandfather. He was one of those people who was just... a genius, at so many things. I mean, he was a genius-genius, but also he loved to draw and paint and work with wood and design things and build furniture and write computer programs. My grandmother and grandfather were probably the smartest people I will ever know, and I had no appreciation for that until after they died.
Anyway, when I have more toward what I'm looking for I'll post some of those stories.
Because of course he got two. :P
https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/18944/history-lesson-ge-played-key-role-in-apollo-11-moonwalk
Are those the flown metal medallions?
Yesterday when I was talking to my mom about this, I said that I feel like with everything he was a part of and everything he did with NASA (some of which bordered on heroic levels of ingenuity) someone somewhere should at least know his name. Like, I should be able to find it somewhere. Her response: "There are countless people behind the scenes that made those launches happen whose names will not be known." That's both inspiring and a little depressing to me. So many worked on these projects not thinking about their careers or their names, but just to be a part of something larger.. and chances are we'll never know who most of them were or what they did to make something so important come to fruition.
I have literally no idea what you mean by this. I vaguely remember him saying once that not many were made, but I was too busy being an asshole in my teens to take a lot of note. They were just sort of always around on their mantle.
edit: I looked this up and the answer is "I don't know." I've asked my mom for a picture of the other side of the coins. If I lived less than 2000 miles away I could just look. Also, it appears the flown metal coins were not rare for Apollo 11. I don't know where I got the idea that they were, because he actually seemed really nonchalant about these so maybe he was talking about a different coin.
I also very vaguely remember asking about his career for a report in school, and he said something about heading one of the plants that piloted the thermonuclear weapons program, so good job remembering important and interesting facts, teenage me. I asked him if the ethical implications of that ever bothered him, and he said not really because that's not what he did, that his work focused on using the technology to produce usable energy.
That's really cool, but also weird to me that it focused on like.. the boots. I know they're iconic and the suits were important, but I'm pretty sure my grandfather didn't do that.
I got some more images of the stuff and looked into it, I'll post them in a little bit.
This is... unlikely. First of all he wasn't the type to make up stuff about himself, and second, he really didn't care much about these coins. He had them out, but they weren't particularly on display. They were some of the few things that he had related to his job work with GE. My mom has memories of some things from when she was a teen, and yeah.. there isn't really any doubt in anyone's mind that he earned the things he displayed.
My mom was about 12, so she remembers some of the terms involved, but I don't think she ever had a great understanding of it. At this point trying to piece together what exactly he did for these missions is really hard. What's more, he had these plates and searches are giving me nothing. It's possible someone made them for him.
If you know where he lived and his full name it's possible there are some company records, somewhere, on it.
Buuuuuuuuut... my mom did end up sending me pictures of those plates, which filled in a whole lot of blanks in combination with what we knew of him.
She said he worked on Project Gemini from the start, had a role in engineering and design for the SNAP program, and stayed with the SNAP-27 units for the duration of their use in the Apollo program. No one I can call at GE is probably going to give me that info.
It was the GE facility in King of Prussia, which is near where my mom (and I) grew up. Hopefully my uncle can add something.
So now I know when and where the first supermall (bigger than 2 million square feet of leaseable space) was built
(it's not the one in King of Prussia, which is an area in Pennsylvania by the way, that one is just the current biggest (but they cheated by joining two malls together so I dunno))
goddamnit wikipedia
That's fucking cool as hell.
(it was totally cheating)
That division of GE, btw, was sold to Martin Marietta in 1993, who later merged with Lockheed to form Lockheed Martin.
My mom said she remembers the space landing (age 12) because they just happened to be visiting New York to sight-see and go to a show and when they got back to the hotel my grandfather got a call and had to run in to give a statement.
Yeah mom, you just happened to be in New York. What a coincidence.
I wonder if he has a plate from Apollo 12 as well, since 6 missions (12,13,14,15,16,17) had a SNAP-27 to power the ALSEP on the moon (apollo 13's obviously came back).
As far as I know, that's all of the plates. There are a couple things missing from the collection, that might be one of them, I'm not sure. I think 12 was the one that happened when he was in New York. We think my uncle might have some of that stuff. My mom's been really busy the past couple days but promised to call him when she gets the chance. He's 4-5 years older than her and might remember more of it, but there is just one thing I'm really looking for info about before I go into this story.
My mom and my uncle both remember hearing his side of the phone call he got in New York, where he said "they can go ahead and hit it with a hammer, there's nothing they can do to that thing up there that will break it." And then he had to run off to do something. He didn't talk to anyone while they were on the moon of course, but still, pretty cool.
For those who aren't familiar, when Al Bean went to remove the fuel for the generator (a rod of plutonium-238) from the cask, the material that held the cask into place on the lunar module had swelled a bit from the heat of the fuel and they couldn't get it out. They were really worried they'd break it but they didn't have much time, and of course they wouldn't get a second chance if they did. They had a tool to use to hold and carry the fuel because it was hot enough that it would be a risk to their suits if they tried to touch it. What ended up happening was that Bean, who was trained to move the fuel, slowly worked it out of the cask while Pete Conrad beat the crap out of it (the cask not the fuel good lord) with a hammer. They did get it free in the end and that generator was up there and running for a long time.
A group at NASA bronzed a hammer and gave it to him after. After my grandparents died my mom and uncle looked everywhere for that hammer and never found it. I still think they should ask the people who live there now if they ever stumbled across it.
My grandfather did all kinds of cool stuff for NASA with GE. If I hear any other stories maybe I'll post them, this is just the one I remember best from when I was younger.
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