{"id":7872,"date":"2020-08-07T15:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T19:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=7872"},"modified":"2021-01-22T14:07:10","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T19:07:10","slug":"the-eagle-has-landed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2020\/08\/07\/the-eagle-has-landed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eagle Has Landed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Georgia Southern Alumni Reflect on Work with NASA Space Program<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The Vertical Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 1967, Georgia Southern graduates Bob Pound (\u201967) and Charlie Abner (\u201967) hopped in a car and headed for Cape Canaveral with one mission \u2014 to \u201cfix NASA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January of that year, NASA was conducting a pre-flight check for the crew of Apollo 1 \u2014 the program\u2019s first crewed mission \u2014 when a fire broke out in the cockpit and killed its three astronauts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter that, we said \u2018Let\u2019s go down there and put the space program back on its feet,\u2019\u201d said Pound, a native of Statesboro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t call. They didn\u2019t have an appointment. They just pulled into the badging station on U.S. 1 and figured they\u2019d found their destination. \u201cWasn\u2019t a very big building, but it had some rockets out front,\u201d said Pound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat can we do for you?\u201d the attendant asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, we came down here to get a job,\u201d said Pound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay, who with?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, NASA, of course! Isn\u2019t this NASA\u2019s place here?\u201d Pound said they didn\u2019t realize it at the time, but there were several hundred contractors coming in and out of Kennedy Space Center (KSC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUh, let me make a few phone calls,\u201d said the attendant, and motioned them to wait in the lobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pound listened as the attendant talked on the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, they don\u2019t have an appointment….they\u2019re here! They\u2019re sitting right here! No, they just came in and said they\u2019re looking for a job\u2026. No, they\u2019re here already!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey said that over and over,\u201d recalled Pound, laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attendant hung up the phone and said, \u201cThey\u2019re going to call me back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pound and Abner waited and waited, wondering with each passing minute if they\u2019d made the trip for nothing. Then the phone rang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a call that not only changed their lives, but also carved a path for several Georgia Southern graduates who would follow in their footsteps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get After That Aerospace<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pound and Abner were the first graduates of Georgia Southern\u2019s physics and mathematics degrees to join the ranks at NASA, and the tale of their success quickly spread through the small department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonny Belson (\u201968) traveled down to Cape Canaveral the next summer and showed up unannounced the way his classmates had. He interviewed and was offered a job the next day. Chris Fairey (\u201969) skipped class to drive down to KSC and get his name on the list, and he was hired the summer after graduation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was absolutely amazing that you literally walked in, a cold call off the street, and here I am,\u201d said Belson. \u201cAnd I\u2019m still at it after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though they all graduated with the same degrees, they were each assigned to wildly different roles within the Apollo program. Pound says this was a testament to the college and its faculty, especially Carroll W. Bryant, Ph.D., professor emeritus and head of the physics department at Georgia Southern from 1963-1975. He passed away in Statesboro in 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bryant was an accomplished physicist who served as a scientific advisor to the U.S. Armed Forces and most notably worked on the development of the atomic bomb. He was not only a knowledgeable physicist, but also had the wealth of experience to convey physics\u2019 practical use for his students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was really an amazing man in terms of what he could convey to us in terms of theory and physics and his own application\u2026.\u201d said Fairey. \u201cYou ask yourself, \u2018How am I going to use all of this?\u2019 And what you realize at the end is that what they\u2019re teaching you are the tools. You may not necessarily use a particular theorem or a math equation, but you understand how it evolved and why it\u2019s there and how it can be used.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is Going to be Big<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Georgia Southern\u2019s NASA alumni stand under the
Saturn V rocket on display at the Apollo
museum at KSC. Pictured are (L to R):
Chris Fairey (\u201969), Bob Pound (\u201967), Sonny Belson (\u201968)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When Pound, Abner, Belson, Fairey and other alumni joined NASA, they were thrust into a workforce of more than 400,000 employees, contractors and consultants working all over the United States to achieve one goal, set by President John F. Kennedy: \u201cbefore this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pound was assigned to the Ground Instrumentation Systems technical staff in the Central Information Facility (CIF). His team collected real-time telemetry data surrounding the Saturn V rocket, and displayed it on the huge Eidophor Projectors in the Control Room. Abner started as a ground station engineer, working up to ground station manager before leaving to join the Air Force in 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fairey joined Pound in the CIF, the entire second floor of which housed two giant GE 635 computers that were responsible for managing data for Apollo. \u201cToday, you have more computing power on your phone!\u201d said Fairey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belson went to work with the design engineering directorate in the communications electronics area, where he installed and designed the operational television system at the launchpad and towers around the complex, and the mobile television vans for use during launch and events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As each took on their small piece of the larger puzzle, they couldn\u2019t immediately see the true impact and scale of what they were doing. It wasn\u2019t long, however, before the picture became crystal clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, at the time, of course, it was just a job,\u201d said Pound. \u201cThen we saw how big it was and what all it encompassed, and we thought, \u2018Wow! This is going to be something big!\u2019 And we felt like we were doing a pretty important job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to get lost in the massive scale of NASA. There, everything is big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnytime you put together a large program like the Apollo program that involved human spaceflight as well as the manufacturing of the launch vehicle and the facilities that manage it, you realize the scale of the vehicle itself,\u201d said Fairey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest part of the Apollo program was the Saturn V rocket, which is still the most powerful rocket ever built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saturn V was a three-stage, expendable, super-heavy lift launch vehicle that was used to send Apollo missions into space between 1967 and 1973. It was 363 feet tall, weighed more than 6.5 million pounds and reached speeds of more than 17,000 mph to break free from earth\u2019s gravity. To house the construction of these rockets, NASA constructed the Vertical Assembly Building \u2014 the VAB \u2014 which is still the largest and most visible complex at KSC. The building is 526 feet tall and covers 8 acres of square footage. It\u2019s a vast cavern with 40 floors of scaffolds and railings that allow thousands of technicians to reach every part of the spacecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the Saturn V was built, it had to be moved to one of two launch pads, the closest of which was 3.5 miles away. To accomplish this impossible task, NASA used one of two machines called \u201ccrawlers,\u201d weighing 6 million pounds each, to carry the launch vehicle \u2014 fully upright \u2014 across the complex, traveling at less than 1 mph. The journey took roughly 8 hours to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more impressive was the level of detail involved in creating these rockets and executing their missions. Each stage of each rocket was built by a different American company, and each wire, duct, nozzle, rivet and screw was carefully designed by engineers who were armed with nothing but slide rules and an expert grasp of their field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For each Georgia Southern alumnus, their role supported one step in an impossibly large number of procedures and processes that all came to fruition on July 16, 1969. The launch of Apollo 11, which carried the first men to step foot on the moon, was a history-altering event each of them witnessed firsthand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of hard to describe until you see it,\u201d said Fairey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom a mankind standpoint, this was a significant achievement,\u201d said Belson. \u201cYou know, if you look at where we are today in all of that, it\u2019s based on how we got there. So it\u2019s very, very important for mankind overall that we were able to go do this. And somehow we played a part in that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
One of two \u201ccrawlers\u201d at NASA, which carry the launch vehicle to the launch pad.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Space is A Risky Business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Accomplishing the goal of manned space flight came with difficulty and sometimes tragedy, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1970, while more than 210,000 miles from earth, the crew of Apollo 13 was doing a routine stir of the oxygen tanks on the service module when a faulty wire ignited and caused an explosion. With the service module inoperative, the crew of three astronauts had to use the lunar excursion module (LEM) as their lifeboat home, but it was only designed to support two men for two days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back on earth, engineers at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston worked around the clock to create procedures to reprogram and modify the LEM to support all three crew members for four days, and communicated the plans to astronauts who had limited power in their craft, a cold and wet cabin, and a shortage of potable water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Pound and others that worked in the Launch Control Center at KSC, these types of events meant quick decisions and immediate action \u2014 both of which would mean the difference between life and death for the flight crew and ground personnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Chris Fairey, Albert Morrison, Bob Pound, Johnny Wilkerson, Jimmy Dobson (star baseball pitcher for GS), Danny Johnson (last to come), Jim Winn, Sonny Belson Charlie worked in film library \u2014 bottom floor of the student center \u2014 Pound\u2019s dad director of
student center<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe used to say it was hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror,\u201d said Pound. \u201cAnd we had to be able to make decisions pretty quickly without talking to the other people. And then we had to know who to talk to in case we needed answers to get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the story of Apollo 13 ended happily, there were other space program missions that did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1986, Fairey was the shuttle project engineer for the Space Shuttle Challenger, and one of the key figures involved in its launch. On Jan. 28, 1986, he was in the control room of KSC when, only 73 second into liftoff, a leak in one of Challenger\u2019s rocket boosters caused the external fuel tank to explode, disintegrating the shuttle and killing its crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a horrible day \u2014 especially due to the fact that I had trained with the crew. I knew the crew,\u201d said Fairey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was midfield of the shuttle landing facility, and actually was there with some of the astronaut family,\u201d said Belson. \u201cIt\u2019s very close and personal and, you know, I still won\u2019t watch the video. I won\u2019t watch it today. Yeah, it was very emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fairey and his engineers spent the next two years going over the accident, learning what happened. As a result, they completely reworked all of their procedures, software and training and then completely retrained with their colleagues in Houston and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou do all you can to minimize the risk, but it\u2019s risky business,\u201d said Fairey. \u201cI mean, you\u2019re sitting on top of a bomb \u2014 liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It took a lot of people checking a lot of things, double checking, lots of tests and test firings. This is a risky business, and when you commit to human spaceflight, you have to be willing to take the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Place in History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Through both tragedy and triumph, mankind\u2019s pursuit of space changed the world forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its establishment in 1958, and its charge to reach the moon within a decade in 1962, NASA has been a place where scientists and mathematicians can dream big. The space program enlarged those dreams, broadened them far beyond the bounds of earth, and made people believe that they could achieve anything to which they set their minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to space exploration, however, the NASA space program also pioneered new technologies that people around the world now take for granted in their daily lives. Whether they use solar panel technology, cordless and battery-powered tools, reflective vests or even memory foam, they can thank NASA and the space program for these inventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe technology that came out of this program was awesome,\u201d said Fairey. \u201cIt advanced the United States exponentially in terms of computing capability, material science and all those things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe technology that came out of this program was awesome,\u201d said Fairey. \u201cIt advanced the United States exponentially in terms of computing capability, material science and all those things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his tenure in the Apollo program, Fairey worked with researchers from the University of Arizona to pioneer a lightning detection system at KSC as lightning was an especially dangerous hazard during launch. Fairey worked on all the mathematical algorithms used in the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was so accurate that you could actually see the electrical potential build up if a storm was coming from Orlando or out in the ocean,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd you could calculate when it would get here and make a determination of whether or not it was safe to launch. And so they use that today for all the launches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fairey passed away on April 8, 2020, but left a great legacy at NASA. He finished his career as the flow director for four missions of the Space Shuttle Discovery, an orbiter that launched several satellites and other hardware into space, including the Hubble Space Telescope. Most notably, Fairey arranged for Discovery astronauts to fly several Georgia Southern University flags on one of their missions, and then presented one of the flags to the University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After more than 30 years of service, Fairey retired in 2002 and became a docent at NASA, sharing his knowledge and his love of teaching with camp participants and museum visitors, and inspiring the next generation of students interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his interview, he reflected on the program and the impact it had on the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re proud to have been a part of a team that worked so hard for so many years that achieved this unbelievable goal that many people thought was not even possible,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you\u2019re very humbled in the aspect of you being such a small portion, and just one individual of a very large team that achieved this magnificent goal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abner returned to NASA in 1974 and finished his career as the chief engineer for the Space Shuttle program. He is currently \u201csemi-retired\u201d as a staff engineer at the United Space Alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belson worked with the design engineering directorate throughout his career at NASA, and helped design the video systems that film the countdowns and launches, as well as the video simulators that astronauts used to train for their missions in space. He left NASA after the Challenger accident and went to work for the Department Of Defence supporting Expendable Launch Vehicle satellite programs being flown from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Station in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt gives you a certain sense of fulfillment that we had the opportunity to even participate in this,\u201d said Belson. \u201cWhen I go back and look at the history, I remember watching Dr. Wernher von Braun on TV talking about rockets and going to the moon and landing on the moon. So it\u2019s not a job, it\u2019s more of a vocation, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pound finished his career as chief of the NASA Test Director\u2019s office, the culmination of his many roles in coordinating and planning for all the missions at KSC. He worked at NASA for 28 years and retired in 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope it makes Georgia Southern feel proud of us,\u201d said Pound. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m hoping. I think we did a pretty good job while we were down here and glad we could do what we could. And then the Georgia Southern people looking at it and looking at us saying, \u2018Well, we were part of that.\u2019 So Georgia Southern was a part of it, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a really fun career,\u201d he added. \u201cI enjoyed every minute of it, except for the moments of sheer terror.\u201d \u2014 Doy Cave<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Georgia Southern Alumni Reflect on Work with NASA Space Program In the summer of 1967, Georgia Southern graduates Bob Pound (\u201967) and Charlie Abner (\u201967) hopped in a car and headed for Cape Canaveral with one mission \u2014 to \u201cfix NASA.\u201d In January of that year, NASA was conducting a pre-flight check for the crew of Apollo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":7971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-7872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-summer-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}