EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 20

P o w e r Bu dg e t e r things work, including people” got him the job offer with NASA. Aaron was an EECOM controller, first on Gemini and then Apollo. Aaron’s broad curiosity led to contributions in systems expertise that still draw the admiration of colleagues, including the two others interviewed here. After Gemini, Aaron moved on to Apollo. In January 1967, during his first weeks on the moon landing program, a launch pad fire killed the crew of Apollo 1. While not on duty at the time of the accident, Aaron recalls the blow it dealt to the Apollo program and NASA at large. The tragic fire nevertheless had one positive outcome: “It gave people time to take out some of the ‘warts’ which had accumulated in the design and relook at the procedures” to launch men to the moon on the new Saturn V rocket. On the first manned flight in the 20 EE Times | Apollo | July 20, 2009 series, Apollo 7, Aaron and his colleagues quickly got up to speed on the new hardware in what was an engineering-centric systems test flight. The bold move to send the crew of Apollo 8 around the moon came as a surprise and a challenge to Aaron. But once the idea of the Apollo 8 lunar mission was floated, Aaron and his colleagues lobbied NASA management hard to give it a go because they “were young enough to try anything,” as Aaron said in a NASA oral history interview conducted in 2000 by Kevin Rusnak. Aaron acknowledges that the Apollo 11 moon landing was the highlight of U.S. manned space flight but believes the progress and sense of destiny manifested in Apollo 8 was probably “the pinnacle time” for Apollo. Career moments at Mission Control continued beyond the first lunar landing. Aaron made a “great save” on Apollo 12. A lightning strike during launch occurred when the ionized gases from the Saturn V rocket plume created a path to the ground for the lightning despite only light rain showers. Critical electrical systems in the Apollo 12 CSM were knocked for a loop, and dozens of caution lights shone in the crew cabin and back at Mission Control.

EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009

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