PATRIOTIC LINK

IT TAKES ABOUT 3 MINUT3ES. BUT WELL WORTH THE TIM.

WATCH IT WHILE I START UP ME NEW BLOG.

'THE OLD COUNTRY BOY'

http://www.interviewwithgod.com/patriotic/highband.htm

START OF NEW BLOG - PART # 1

LIFE STORY OF DANNY ADWIN BEELER & DAILY JOURNAL

This story is prepared with no story outline and is just a set of ramblings as they come to me. Hopefully I can edit this account later.

I was born on March 16, 1933 on Harmston Bench (Roosevelt, Utah). My mother's Dr. was Dr. Whitmore. He was on another delivery when mother went in to labor and said he would come when he could. Mother was so afraid because she had almost died when Dorothy was born and they had told her to never have any more children but only gave her abstinence as a way to avoid it. Anyway, Grandma BEELER had Dad go get Aunt Wealthy Sheaffer, who was a midwife. She came but told Grandma and Dad she would tell them what to do but they would have to do it as the government was having a crackdown on midwifery. Anyway, I was born, ripping the heck out of mother and the doctor didn't show up until the next day.

I weighed in at 11 lbs 3 ounces and have had trouble with my weight every since. My mother claims that all she ate for the 9 months she carried me was bread, potatoes, greasy pork and a few vegetables. Not really a diet that they recommend today.

We moved to Park City when I was about 2 and dad worked in the Silver Mines for about 3 years. We next moved back to Roosevelt and lived for about two years on the Marx place. Dad paid $2 for an old horse that the guy was going to sell to the Fish Hatchery for fish food. That poor horse was so old that he had a hard time walking let alone running. Don Rudy and I would ride him bareback and make him gallop until he would finally have to stop, almost falling over from exhaustion. I remember Don & I would wait for him to reel out his extended equipment to pee, then we'd shoot it with our BB Guns. Oh what fun! That horse had a miserable couple of years until he finally died at about age 27. Don had a little cart that he'd hook up to this old Billy Goat. He didn't like to pull us, so we'd poke a small stick up his butt, twist it to crank his motor. Then he would run like heck.

Mom & Dad then bought a 5 acre piece of ground just across from the Roosevelt City boundary line in 'MUD FLATS' that had a shanty type house on it. Dad worked as the Foreman in the Castle Peak Gilsonite mine south of Myton while we stayed home and tried to run the 5 acres. This was about the time that Dorothy learned how to heat up LIPTON'S NOODLE SOUP. I got really tired of that soup.

I remember mother sticking the (.22) rifle out of the kitchen window and shooting pheasants for our dinner. Dorothy & I got our money for school clothes by selling corn, squash, etc., that we had raised during the summer. I remember selling the corn for $1.00 per gunny sack and was glad to get it. We also sold the extra eggs that our hens laid for 15 cents a dozen.

SPACE ODDESSY PART 6 (FINI)

THIS WILL BE THE LAST POST TO THE SPACE ODDESSY. HOPE IT HASN'T BEEN TOO BORING. I'M GETTING TIRED OF THE SPACE STORY, I LIVED IT FOR OVER 10 YEARS. MORE ON A DIFFERENT SUBJECT LATER MAYBE.

MOL:

After the APOLLO Program started phasing out, I went over to McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach. This was a super-secret SPY-IN-THE-SKY project that required securety clearances higher than TOP SECRET. Looking back, I'm not sure what all of the fuss was about.

Anyway, I brought my Design Team over with me from North American Aviation. By this time in my career, I had assembled quite a few brilliant Engineers, many with PhD's. The team consisted of 51 Engineers & PhD's.

I had to wait for 3 months for my clearance to come through. I got calls from people that I could barely remember asking me what I had done wrong because the FBI was asking all sorts of questions about me.

Well, I scraped by, apparently they missed many of my nefarious teenage deeds or overlooked them, because they elected to give me a clearance that I'm not at liberty to talk about until 'death do me part' upon penalty of 50 years in Ft. Leaven Worth, Kansas.

The cover story for the MOL was that it was to be an ORBITING SPACE STATION to study man's role in space. In actuality it was something else. I'll leave it to your imagination to determine what we would be doing orbiting the Earth with several passes each day over the Soviet Union. Now days, we have hundreds of unmanned satellites doing much the same thing, but much better. At that time, however, we were sworn to secrecy upon pain of imprisonment.

I worked in an underground, bomb proof, vault. I would take the elevator down 3 stories and would have to wait in an anteroom until my clearance was checked. Then I went through a double set of 18" STEEL vault doors. Another security check after exiting, then to work.

When I arrived at McDonnell Douglas I found that the MOL project was a combination of 'Black' and 'White'. 'Black' being SUPER SECRET & 'White' requiring only 'Secret' & 'Confidential' clearances. Only about 5% of the work force required the higher clearance.

MOL HEIRARCHY:

The 'Black' portion of MOL consisted of about a thousand Engineers & Technicions SCATTERED THOUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES & some parts of the Free World.

I hired in as a Section Chief (later I was promoted to Branch Chief & finally Chief Engineer) with the Apollo Team intact. At the head of the Engineering Group was a Chief Engineer, followed by Branch Chiefs, Section Chiefs, Supervisors, Engineers & finally the workhorses of the bunch, the Technicians. Techs were not assigned to any particular Section, but were on call as needed.

As I remember it there were 5 Branch Chiefs at Huntinton Beach, each with 4-5 Section Chiefs reporting to them, each with 4-5 Supervisors, each with 8-10 Engineers - about 1,000 personnel in all counting the Techs. I probably had the largest Section in the group.

I can't tell you about our activities, but it was an interesting 3 years of Engineering and the last 2 years of idle time.
I can't tell you about our activities, but it was an interesting 3 years of Engineering and the last 2 years of idle time.

12 September 1962 - President John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice University, Houston, Tex., where he said:
"Man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. . . .
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
"It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency. . . ."
Now that I've got you attention, I'll say it like it should be said, "My travels supporting the SPACE PROGRAM".

Over the years on the APOLLO PROGRAM & the MOL PROGRAM, I traveled to most of the major cities in the United States. I traveled in excess of 250,000 air miles. All of the APOLLO trips were "WHITE" while the MOL PROGRAM was a combination of "WHITE & BLACK".

Sometimes I would be called for a conference back East to give a presentation on our progress on the MOL PROGRAM.

Security Personnel would handcuff a locked steel briefcase to my wrist, my wife would drop me off at one of the LAX terminals then drive off. I'd then catch a shuttle to my actual departure terminal, then fly to an intermediate destination. There I would change planes and fly on to my last stop if the connecting flight went there, otherwise, I would need to catch another plane at the new stop. I once had to take 4 different flights to get to where I was going.

Sometimes when I caught the "RED EYE" I would arrive after my contact had gone to bed. Then a restless night with the briefcase locked onto my arm, then showering the following morning with the Briefcase attached. FUN ! ! !

The last two years were probably the most demeaning time of my SPACE PROGRAM life. It all started on "BLACK TUESDAY". The Chief Engineer called the Branch Chiefs and Section Chiefs into his office & informed us that the Department of Defense (DOD) had withdrawn it's funding for the MOL Program. We were to make up a 'TOTEM POLE' (Most important to least inportant of the Engineers on our staff).

At that time, I had 5 supervisors & 46 Engineers assigned to me. We brought our TOTEM POLES back to the Chieh Engineer & he said we were to give the bottom 1/3 three weeks notice.

Well, this didn't go over very well with anyone in our group. I had made several contacts nationwide with Vendors & Associate Contractors. We pepared resumes and sent them off & was able to place all of the laid off Engineers with other firms.

Then a couple of weeks later, the Chief Engineer called us back & gave us the opportunity to update our TOTEM POLES. Then we had to give notice to the next 1/3. Again, the phone calls, resumes, etc., and with lots of arm twisting, we were able to place this next group.

Finally the axe really fell. We had to lay off the remaining 1/3.

By this time all of the jobs had been filled. The top of the TOTEM POLE was made up of Senior Engineers, Scientists and lots of Engineers with Masters Degrees & a few with PhD's.

Most of these guys ended up pumping gas, managing McDonalds & the like. Loss of homes, divorces, etc. resulted in short period of time.

Many of the remaining group of Managers were given promotions so it would look good on our next phase of the SPACE BOON DOGGLE. I was promoted to the position of Branch Chief with the title "SENIOR ENGINEER SCIENTIST SPECIALIST". NASA was very impressed with titles.

We spent the next 2 years writing volumes touting MAN'S ROLE IN SPACE. We would finish the study, prepare several copies (the first submission filled 2 semi trucks), & ship them off to NASA. They would review it and send it back for rework. This went on for over 2 years. I got to the point I felt like backing up to get my paycheck, I was so ashamed of my efforts.

Somewhere along the way, I was promoted to Chief Engineer, not because I deserved it, but because the slot became open when the Chief himself felt guilty enough & moved on.

Later I applied for a position as a TELEPHONE ENGINEER with MOUNTAIN BELL. My starting pay was less than 1/2 what I was making at McDonnell Douglas, but I could sleep at nights.

SPACE ODESSY-PART 5

Apollo 13 (April 1970) had been scheduled to be the third manned lunar landing. However, the lunar landing portion of the mission was aborted because of the explosion of an oxygen tank in the service module en route to the moon. We were monitoring the flight's progress when we became aware of the explosion. Needless to say, we spent many anxious hours until the Crew return safely A cislunar mission was accomplished and the lunar module was used to provide life support and propulsion for the disabled command and service module en route home. A safe return and landing was effected in the Pacific. The Command Module landed within 400 yards of the Recovery Carrier.
Although Apollo 17 was the last of the manned flights to the moon, it was not the last of the Apollo spacecraft. Apollo paved the way for missions to follow. The next program using an Apollo command module was Skylab (May 14, 1973-February 8, 1974), occurring within the time frame of this chronology, as studies of lunar samples and data returned from Project Apollo continued in laboratories throughout the world. Skylab was man's most ambitious and organized scientific probing of his planet and proved the value of manned scientific space expeditions. Skylab proved man's value in space as a manufacturer, an astronomer, and an earth observer, using the most sophisticated instruments in ways that unmanned satellites cannot match. Skylab also demonstrated man's great utility as a repairman in space.
Detailed studies of man's physiological responses to prolonged exposure to weightlessness proved his ability to adjust to the space environment and to perform useful and valuable work in space. In solar physics, Skylab enriched our solar data more than a hundredfold, with a total of some 200,000 photographs of the sun made from the Apollo Telescope Mount. As observers of earth resources from Skylab, the crews returned over 40,000 photographs and more than 60 kilometers of high-density magnetic tape. Data were acquired for all 48 continental United States and 34 foreign countries.
We will continue to apply what we learned from Apollo, as well as Skylab as we venture into the next manned program, known as the Space Shuttle (I wasn't fortunate enough to work on the SHUTTLE, but the APOLLO PROGRAM gave me quite a ride).

SPACE ODESSY # 4

The universe has fascinated mankind for many, many years, dating back to the very earliest episodes of Star Trek, when the brave crew of the Enterprise set out, wearing pajamas, to explore the boundless voids of space, which turned out to be as densely populated as Queens, New York. Virtually every planet they found was inhabited, usually by evil beings with cheap costumes and Russian accents, so finally the brave crew of the Enterprise returned to Earth to gain weight and make movies.

A SPACE ODESSY-PART 3

Apollo Spacecraft Chronology covers a period of eight and a half years, from January 21, 1966, through July 13, 1974. The events that took place during that period included all flight tests of the Apollo spacecraft, as well as the last five Gemini flights, the APOLLO 3 fire, the manned Apollo flight program and its results, as well as further use of the Apollo spacecraft in the Skylab missions.
The manned flights of Apollo, scheduled to begin in early 1967, were delayed by the tragic accident that occurred on January 27, 1967, during a simulated countdown for mission AS-204. A fire inside the command module resulted in the deaths of the three prime crew astronauts, Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee. On January 28, 1967, the Apollo 204 Review Board was established to investigate the accident. It was determined that action should be initiated to reduce the crew risk by eliminating unnecessary hazardous conditions that would imperil future missions (WE had to hermetically seal all electrical components that were inside the Command Module. This quadrupled the program cost as well as extending the mission time by several months). Therefore, on April 27, a NASA Task Team - Block II Redefinition, CSM - was established to provide input on detailed design, overall quality and reliability, test and checkout, baseline specification, configuration control, and schedules.
The unmanned Apollo 4 placed 126,000 kilograms in earth orbit. It accomplished the first restart in space of the S-IVB stage; the first reentry into the earth's atmosphere at the speed of return from the moon, nearly 40,200 kilometers per hour; and the first test of Launch Complex 39.
As time for the first manned Apollo flight neared, a decision was reached to use a 60-percent-oxygen and 40-percent-nitrogen atmosphere in the spacecraft cabin while on the launch pad and to retain the pure oxygen environment in space. By March 14, 1968, testing of the redesigned interior of the vehicle demonstrated that hardware changes inside the cabin, minimized possible sources of ignition, and materials changes had vastly reduced the danger of fire propagation.
Although complexity of the operations substantially increased, the mission control operations for Apollo evolved from Projects Mercury and Gemini. The medical data collected during the Gemini flights verified that man could function in space for the planned duration of the lunar landing mission. Many of the concepts for crew equipment - such as food and waste management, housekeeping, and general sanitation - originated from the Gemini experience with long-duration missions. The Gemini missions also provided background experience in many systems such as communications, guidance and navigation, fuel cells, and propulsion.
While the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft were being developed and operated, the three-man Apollo program had grown in magnitude and complexity and included a command module, a service module, a lunar module, and a giant Saturn V rocket. The spacecraft and launch vehicle towered 110 meters (about 400 feet) above the launching pad, and weighed some 3 million kilograms (about 6.5 million pounds. The Command Module, where the 3 ASTRONAUTS rode, weighed about 10,000 pounds). With the Apollo program, the missions and flight plans had become much more ambitious, the hardware had become more refined, the software had become more sophisticated, and ground support equipment also grew in proportion.
In October 1968 Apollo 7 became the first manned flight test of the Apollo command and service modules in earth orbit and demonstrated the effectiveness of the manned space flight tracking, command and communications network.The second Apollo flight was the much-publicized Apollo 8 mission in December 1968, during which man for the first time orbited the moon. Aside from the fact that the flight marked a major event in the history of man, it also was technically a remarkable mission. The purpose of the mission, to check out the navigation and communication systems at lunar distance, was accomplished with a complete verification of those systems. In May 1969 Apollo 10 journeyed to the moon and completed a dress rehearsal for the landing mission to follow in July. This mission was designed to be exactly like the landing mission except for the final phases of the landing, which were not attempted. The lunar module separated from the command module and descended to within 15 kilometers of the lunar surface, proving that man could navigate safely and accurately in the moon's gravitational field.
With the flight of Apollo 11, man (Neil Armstrong, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind") for the first time stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. The mission proved that man could land on the moon, perform specific tasks on the lunar surface, and return safely to earth.
Apollo 12 (November 1969) was the second manned lunar landing. Pieces from the unmanned Surveyor III spacecraft were recovered, and the first Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) was deployed.

SPACE ODESSY-PART 2

One day we were listening to CAP-COM (World Wide Communications System) while Schirra and Cooper were orbiting the Earth in one of the early GEMINI Flights. Deke Slayton asked, "Wally are you a Turtle?" Schirra responded, "That's a heck of a way to win a drink."

The next time Wally came to our Lab I asked him what that was all about. He said that the original 7 Astronauts had formed this Turtle Club. They were adding a few members to it and did I wish to join.

Of course, anything good enough for the Astronauts was good enough for me. "Ok, here's the deal. Every Turtle assumes every other Turtle owns a Donkey. If one Turtle asks another Turtle "Are you a Turtle , he(she) is required to answer "You bet you sweet ass I am." You must give that exact answer or you must buy the asking Turtle a drink of their choice.

Obviously Wally couldn't give that response with the world listening in.
Here are a few of about 25 qualifying questions, that given the correct answers (non-vulgar), will entitle you to become a member of the TURTLE CLUB. If you answer at least 4 of these questions with the proper answer, you will become a TURTLE. I'll swear you in if you are successful and if you so desire. You'll join the ranks of several thousand distinguished members world wide, but remember, it could be costly if you don't give the proper response to another TURTLE'S question, "Are you a TURTLE?" ("YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS I AM"). As a TURTLE, you are entitled to proudly wear a TURTLE Tie Tack, Lapel Pin or other distinguishing items that will identify you a TURTLE ( Look for these items that might be worn by your acquaintances and friends that will identify them as TURTLES). You'll have to purchase these items commercially yourself from various sources - I can't remember where I got my Tie Tack, but it's two small gold turtles making love - a single TURTLE is sufficient.

Qualifying questions:
The answers to the following questions are neither vulgar, lewd, nor salacious.
What does a woman do sitting down, that a dog does on three legs, and a man does standing up?
What is a four letter word, ending with "k," that means intercourse?
What is so long, and so hard, and sticks so far out of a man's pajamas in the morning, that he could hang a hat upon it??
What does a cow have four of, that a woman only has two of?
What is long, hard, and tubular and filled with "sea-men?"
What does a dog do that a man steps into?

A SPACE ODESSY

I graduated from the University of Utah with a BSEE in 1960. I first went to work for HUGHES AIRCRAFT designing a MISSLE DEFENSE SYSTEM. After a couple of years, I went to work at North American Aviation in Downey, California, and was assigned to run a Research and Development Lab to develop a RE-ENTRY DISPLAY to go on the APOLLO SPACECRAFT. It was my good fortune to be able to have a team of brilliant Mathematicians and Computer experts on our Development team.

This was in the days when Integrated Circuits were in their infancy. Salesmen from Texas Instrument, Fairchild, National Semiconductors, etc. gave us thousands of dollars worth of their newest products, Differential Amplifiers, Flip-Flops, etc. just so we might use them on the APOLLO Program (Great Advertising). An early Integrated Circuit would contain the equivalent of 25-30 discreet electronic components on a 1/4" X 1/4" chip. Today several thousand equivalent components can be placed in the same package.

In the course of our development, we had to interface with the Original 7 Astronauts.

We got to know each of the Astronauts quite well, and was on a first name basis with most of them. My favorite was Wally Schirra, who was very knowledgeable in what we were attempting to do. The Astronauts came to our Lab and "FLEW" Simulated RE-ENTRY Missions so we could fine tune our design.