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.