(“Earthrise” captured by astronaut William Anders on Apollo 8 – courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
Former NASA engineer and flight director, Neil Hutchinson, will be at the Museum of Flight to talk about the Apollo 17 mission and his role Saturday, December 10th at 2:00 P.M.
You can watch Ryan Harris’ complete interview with Hutchinson in the video below:
A NASA veteran, whose tenure goes back practically to the beginning of Americans flying in space, is coming to our area Saturday to celebrate a special Moon-related anniversary.
Neil Hutchinson was a mathematician barely out of college when he started at NASA in 1962 – right in the heart of the Mercury program – and quickly making his way to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which soon after became home to Mission Control.
Hutchinson led the team that developed the telemetry systems and designed those rows of consoles for Gemini and Apollo you see in the old NASA films, working with the people who would use them to provide exactly the information they wanted or needed to see. It was a very early example of using an old-fashioned television tube to display computer information, and Hutchinson says the fact that they could display real-time information from vehicles nowhere near Houston made them state-of-the-art.
Hutchinson didn’t always work in the big room at Mission Control. On Apollo 13, he was nearby and solely focused on water condensation in the damaged command and service module that became a lifeboat for the astronauts, but he was in Houston for tragedies, like the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. He says they were able to keep emotion from overwhelming them because they were trained to focus on their jobs and follow strict protocols, like locking down the room and recording the last information displayed on their screens so it could be used for the investigation.
Hutchinson says the same is true for the good moments, like when he was flight director for the first Space Shuttle mission, flown by John Young and Bob Crippen. He says in that case, there’s maybe a little bit of relief when they get to orbit, but he says there’s really no emotion. “It’s kind of ingrained in you in your training to do your job and pay attention to the stuff you can pay attention to and that you’re responsible for,” Hutchinson says, “and, of course, in the case of a flight director, you’re responsible for the whole shebang.”
When you hear “flight director”, think Gene Kranz with his white vests with mission patches, made by his wife, leading the Apollo missions in Houston. Hutchinson calls Kranz “the ultimate flight director” who is a legend in his own time. Hutchinson says Kranz has a saying, “tough and confident, and you better be both, or you probably won’t work for him for very long.”
Since Hutchinson was flight director for the first two Shuttle missions, we asked him if there’s anything, even after their retirement, that the rest of us might not realize is amazing about the technology, and without hesitation he says ‘it’s the airplane design.’ Hutchinson says previous space vehicles were a symmetrical design, where the Shuttle was not. He says the launch required a precise angle of attack which, if off by even a small amount, would rip the wings right off the orbiter. Hutchinson says another unique fact about the Space Shuttles is that they were flight tested for the first time with people on board while others were uncrewed.
Hutchinson says the Artemis Space Launch System takes them back to the symmetrical rocket design, and that it’s another amazing piece of machinery, but he says it’s not the SLS that will delay NASA’s plans to return people to the Moon. He says the vehicles from Elon Musk’s Space X haven’t even flown yet, so they haven’t been proven, and he believes there’s no way they are ready in time to meet NASA’s schedule.
Hutchinson will speak at the Museum of Flight Saturday, December 10th at 2:00 P.M. to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the missions he worked on: Apollo 17, which sent Gene Cernan and lunar geologist, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, to the to the Moon for Apollo’s final mission.