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CHAPTER 2: The Commitment to Space

can recall watching the sunlight reflect off of Sputnik as it passed over my home on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia," Dr. Robert R. Gilruth recalled to the audience at the Sixth International History of Astronautics Symposium meeting in Vienna, Austria, in 1972. "It put a new sense of value and urgency on the things we had been doing. When one month later the dog, Laika, was placed in orbit in Sputnik II, I was sure that the Russians were planning for man-in-space." 1 The American response grew from an unusual concatenation of events--a Russian satellite and a dog in orbit, a NACA Pilotless Aircraft Research program, the presence of a large assemblage of German rocket scientists in Huntsville, Alabama, and the sudden unemployment of a Canadian fighter production team. Congress, with NACA/NASA assistance, provided leadership in devising the manned space programs and set the stage for the bold scheme to land an American on the Moon. In the summer of 1958, as Congress deliberated space legislation, Dr. Hugh Dryden, NACA's Director, called Gilruth and Abe Silverstein, the director of the Lewis Research Center, to Washington to begin formulating a spaceflight program. Silverstein and Gilruth shuttled back and forth from their home offices, usually spending four or five days a week in Washington. For several months, Silverstein noted later, Gilruth's interests had quickly moved in the direction of "manned spaceflight." 2 Gilruth assembled a small group of associates and advisors, including Max Faget, Paul Purser, Charles W. Mathews, and Charles H. Zimmerman of the Langley Laboratory; Andre Meyer, Scott Simpkinson, and Merritt Preston of the Lewis Laboratory; and many others on an "as needed" basis. He brought in George Low and Warren North from Lewis and Charles Donlan from Langley to help polish the plan in the late summer. The product of these intensive sessions was much more than an organizational format for a work project; it was an engineering design for putting an American in space. As Gilruth said, "we came up with all of the basic principles of Project Mercury," including a pressurized capsule with a blunt face and a conically shaped afterbody containing a contour-shaped couch, to be launched variously by an Atlas or a Redstone, and including a special cluster design proposed by Paul Purser and Max Faget, to be called the "Little Joe," to test an emergency escape device and a waterlanding parachute system.3 Congress, meanwhile, was deliberating the Eisenhower administration's legislation, introduced by Lyndon B. Johnson and Senator Styles Bridges, calling for the creation of NASA. Hearings were being conducted before the Senate Select Committee on Space and Astronautics, chaired by Johnson, and the House Select Committee on Aeronautics and Space Exploration, chaired by Congressman John W. McCormack. In July 1958 before final approval of the NASA legislation, Gilruth, with Silverstein and Dryden, presented the concept for manned spaceflight to Dr. James R. Killian (Scientific Advisor to the President) and the President's Scientific Advisory Board. Gilruth and Dryden subsequently appeared before the House Select Committee on Aeronautics and Space Exploration, which began hearings on August 1, and explained the manned spaceflight

"I

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Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .

initiative. Concurrent with the approval of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the House created a standing committee on science and astronautics on July 21, headed by Congressman Overton Brooks of Louisiana. Subcommittees included a committee on Scientific Training and Facilities headed by George P. Miller of California, a Subcommittee on Scientific Research and Development headed by Olin E. Teague of Texas, a Subcommittee on International Cooperation chaired by Victor L. Anfuso of New York, and a Subcommittee on Space Problems and Life Sciences under Congressman B.F. Sisk of California. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29. Although the act referred to "manned and unmanned" space vehicles, it by no means specified that the American or NASA "activities in space" necessarily involved placing men or women in space. Not all were convinced (nor would be as the years passed) that a space program and putting humans into space were necessarily synonymous. Nevertheless, in those first weeks following approval of the act, Silverstein and Gilruth urged Dryden to create a special task group to implement a manned spaceflight program. 4 That the American response to Sputnik should literally be to put an "American in space" did not reflect prevailing public opinion or the conventional wisdom of the aeronautical, scientific or military communities. Even among NACA/NASA personnel, many, including senior people, believed that the projected manned spaceflight program was an overreaction at best, a stunt at worst, and necessarily temporary in either event. The "conventional wisdom" was more closely aligned to the idea that manned spaceflight was very premature and could develop only after the technology evolved from unmanned spacecraft. Moreover, many Americans still possessed some innate disaffection for things mechanical, or robotic, that had to do with the further intrusion of machines in the "garden" of American life or, more so, into the "heavens." Flight in any dimension was something some Americans had had difficulty with since the days of the Wright brothers. Despite their reservations and skepticism, Americans had an equally strong, but ambivalent fascination with the "machine." Space vehicles, if such were to be, clearly needed the benign control of the human hand. Although totally unrelated to the in-house NACA/NASA deliberations, a feature article by a prominent political leader in a prominent engineering journal reinforced the arguments in support of manned space vehicles. In Congress, Senator Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Johnson knew intuitively that space was not simply something "out there," but something had become an advocate of a "broader intimately associated with the quality of life on understanding" of the new Space Age. The Earth. He believed space was the first new physical August edition of the American Engineer frontier to be opened since the American West.

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featured an article by Lyndon Johnson, who stressed that America was "badly underestimating the Space Age." Although security had been our first concern, and properly so, Johnson suggested that the overwhelming focus on satellites and missiles missed the point. "The ultimate [purpose] of space vehicles is the transport of man through outer space near or to the Moon, some of the planets, perhaps even to other galaxies. . . . Whatever the date, manned space vehicles will beííwhen they comeíífar less of a detail, far more a pinnacle of accomplishment than we now think." The Space Age, Johnson said, will have an impact of the greatest force on how we live and work. "We are underestimating the meaning of this whole new dimension of human experience." We have entered a new frontier, he said, the first new physical frontier to be opened since the American West. 5 Affairs now moved very quickly. President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Dr. T. Keith Glennan as the first Administrator of NASA, and Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, who had headed NACA, to be Deputy Administrator. They assumed their posts on August 19. Glennan, born in Enderlin, North Dakota, in 1905, earned a degree in electrical engineering from Yale University in 1927. His first employment was in the new "sound" movie industry, before joining Electrical Products Research Company, a subsidiary of Western Electric. He became involved primarily in administration rather than research, at times heading divisions of Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Vega Airlines. During World War II, Glennan joined the Columbia University Division of War Research and soon became director of the Navy's Underwater Sound Laboratories at New London, Connecticut. He became president of Case Institute of Technology in 1947 and elevated it into the ranks of the top engineering schools in the Nation. He served as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission between 1950 and 1952. The Space Act declared that "NACA shall cease to exist . . . ," and Glennan announced its close on September 30 and the beginning of NASA on October 1. It is a time of "metamorphosis," he said, " . . . it is an indication of the changes that will occur as we develop our capacity to handle the bigger job that is ahead . . . We have one of the most challenging assignments that has ever been given to modern man." 6 A few days after NASA became operational, Max Faget, Warren North, Dr. S.A. Batdorf, and Paul Purser went to Huntsville and spent an intensive 2 days discussing with Wernher von Braun and some 30 other engineers and military officers the participation of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) and Redstone in the launch of a manned capsule. On October 7, Glennan, Dryden, and Roy Johnson, Director of the Army's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), heard Gilruth's final proposal for manned spaceflight that had been approved by a joint NASA/ARPA committee, and which essentially reflected the summer work of Gilruth's task group. "Within two hours," Gilruth said, "we had approval of the plan and a `go ahead.' " Glennan advised Gilruth to return to Langley and organize a group to manage the projectííbut to report directly back to Abe Silverstein in the Washington NASA office, rather than to the center director. 7 Not only had a manned spaceflight program been authorized, but the program was to be autonomous and independent of any other NASA center, thus effectually creating the organizational nucleus of what would become the Manned Spacecraft Center or (in 1973) Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For all practical purposes, the Manned Spacecraft Center existed and operated at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory for almost 4 years prior to its relocation in Texas. In truth, it may have been that one of the motives for the organization of an autonomous entity to deal with

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Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .

manned spaceflight was to preserve the integrity of the traditional research orientation of the NACA/NASA organization, and possibly even to isolate the project because it was premature or a stunt from the perspective of the mainstream (and presumably more serious) research and scientific efforts of NASA. It could also have been a simple matter of expediency. The establishment of the STG gave the program identity and some protection from agency politics and funding squabbles. As Glennan explained to the House Committee on Science and Aeronautics in 1959, "To get going, we have had to organize with one hand, while, at the same time, . . . operate with the other." It is not an efficient way to do business, he said, but there was never time to proceed in an orderly fashion. Wesley Hjornevik, who joined the STG as its business and administrative manager, recalled that at what may have been the true moment of inception of the STG, in a meeting with Glennan following the presentation to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff by Gilruth's group, the reality of the manned vehicle project struck. The meeting closed with Glennan's comment, "okay men, let's get on with it." Whereupon Gilruth's mouth "fell open;" he made inquiries about staff, money and facilities. "Glennan," Hjornevik said, "just got red in the face." He had no answers to those questions. He got mad, pounded on the table and repeated, "I said get on with it," and got up and walked out. 8 In a sense, both Hjornevik and Glennan had identified the most prominent and distinctive features of the early manned space effort--its relative spontaneity and organizationally amorphous qualities. Although the STG was unofficially established on October 8, 1958, it was, as Paul Purser noted later, an ad hoc arrangement, for Gilruth had no written authorization to head the STG or to actively organize and recruit. Gilruth acknowledged that he had been given "a job of tremendous difficulty and responsibility," with no staff and only oral orders to "get on with the job." He credited Floyd Thompson, director of the Langley Center, with not only cooperation but also guidance in establishing the manned space program. And given the fact that Gilruth would be dismembering the Langley Center staff, that was no easy commitment by Thompson. Finally, Gilruth dissipated some of the cloud surrounding the establishment of the STG by announcing in a memorandum dated November 3, 1958, (as suggested by Thompson) that the STG did indeed exist, and that he had the authority to request the transfer of personnel to his group. 9 That memorandum effectually marked the inception of the Manned Spacecraft Center. The document is significant both for the manner of its promulgation and the fact that it named those who became the "charter members" of the manned spacecraft program. "Recruiting" for the STG began with meetings between Purser, Charles Zimmerman and R.O. House, who agreed to recommend to Floyd Thompson that a proposal be forwarded to NASA Headquarters to create 230 positions on the "space payroll." Of these, 110 were to be directly related to the manned-satellite project, 60 to support groups, and 60 for other spacerelated projects. Thompson agreed to fund 119 of the positions through Langley, with 36 transfers to be effected immediately. Paul Purser roughed out a "Task Group" memo containing 34 names to which Gilruth added 2.10 The next day, November 4, Floyd Thompson scratched a brief approval on the memo saying "This request is okay with the exception of (William J.) Boyer" (whom he wished to retain on his staff). 11

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NASA - Langley November 3, 1958 MEMORANDUM for Associate Director Subject: Space Task Group 1. The Administrator of NASA has directed me to organize a space task group to implement a manned satellite project. This group will be located at the Langley Research Center, but in accordance with the instructions of the Administrator, will report directly to NASA Headquarters. In order that this project proceed with the utmost speed, it is proposed to form this Space Task Group around a nucleus of key Langley personnel, many of whom have already worked on this project. 2. It is requested, therefore, that initially the following 36 Langley personnel be transferred to the Space Task Group: Anderson, Melvin S. (Structures) Bland, William M., Jr. (PARD) Bond, Aleck C. (PARD) Boyer, William J. (IRD) Chilton, Robert G. (FRD) Donlan, Charles J. (OAD) Faget, Maxime A. (PARD) Fields, Edison M. (PARD) Gilruth, Robert R. (OAD) Hammack, Jerome B. (FRD) Hatley, Shirley (Steno) Heberlig, Jack C. (PARD) Hicks, Claiborne R., Jr. (PARD) Kehlet, Alan B. (PARD) Kolenkiewicz, Ronald (PARD) Kraft, Christopher C., Jr. (FRD) Lauten, William T., Jr. (DLD) Lee, John B. (PARD) Livesay, Norma L. (Files) Lowe, Nancy (Steno) MacDougall, George F., Jr. (Stability) Magin, Betsy F. (PARD) Mathews, Charles W. (FRD) Mayer, John P. (FRD) Muhly, William C. (Planning) Purser, Paul E. (PARD) Patterson, Herbert G. (PARD) Ricker, Harry H., Jr. (IRD) Robert, Frank C. (PARD) Rollins, Joseph (Files) Sartor, Ronelda F. (Fiscal) Stearn, Jacquelyn B. (Steno) Taylor, Paul D. (FSRD) Watkins, Julia R. (PARD) Watkins, Shirley (Files) Zimmerman, Charles M. (Stability)

(signature) Robert R. Gilruth Project Manager

While Gilruth organized his STG at Langley, Abe Silverstein established an office called Manned Space Flight at NASA Headquarters in Washington with George Low as its head. Silverstein, trained as a mechanical engineer, was a veteran flight researcher who joined NACA in 1929. In 1943 George Lewis, who headed the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory in Cleveland (renamed the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in 1948), named him to a special committee to coordinate NACA's high-speed aircraft research. Low, who worked with Silverstein in Cleveland and assisted Gilruth's ad hoc committee in planning a spaceflight program, returned with Gilruth to Langley to serve as deputy assistant to Max Faget but was on the job for only a few weeks when Silverstein called him back to

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Washington. Low, born in Vienna, Austria, in 1926, left Germany in 1938 and immigrated with his family to the United States. He received the bachelor of aeronautical engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1948, briefly worked for General Dynamics, returned to Rensselaer for a master's degree, and joined NACA as a research scientist at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in 1949. He had worked closely with Gilruth in putting together the final plans for Project Mercury in the summer of 1958, and now in Washington with Silverstein, Low considered himself "Bob Gilruth's representative in Washington." He worked very closely with the STG and later the Manned Spacecraft Center until he rejoined Gilruth in Houston in 1964. 12 Silverstein and Low quickly discovered that while Gilruth's group "had good technical strength," it lacked the personnel and expertise to manage the budgeting, finance, and general administration for a manned satellite program. Low and Silverstein effectually became the personnel and fiscal administrators for the STG, while Gilruth focused on technical management. Low explained later that the STG: . . . was a highly technical organization which initially showed little interest in the business management aspects. Personnel management, financial management, etc., were handled on an ad hoc basis. The people were interested in the technical job and had little time for any more than that. 13 This proved to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the "manned satellite program," as it was called for a time, was ill-prepared for the rapid physical growth it experienced; and on the other hand, the fluidity of the organization enabled it to do things, as Gilruth observed, that "could only occur in a young organization that had not yet solidified all of its functions and prerogatives."14 Nevertheless, an administrative crisis would continue to plague the manned spacecraft program through most of its early years. Efforts to deal with the problem led first to an attempt to organize the manned spacecraft program within the administrative structure of Goddard Space Flight Center, being built near Beltsville, Maryland, and finally, to the creation of an autonomous NASA spacecraft center. Gilruth and his associates plunged ahead with fresh intensity. Silverstein and Low met with Gilruth at Langley weekly; and Gilruth, Paul Purser, or another of the task group went to NASA Headquarters or to another center as often. Ten new members were transferred to the STG from the Lewis Center, including Low, Andre Meyer, Scott Simpkinson, Merritt Preston and Warren North, among others. During the first months of their existence, the group perfected the design and technical specifications for the manned satellite, arranged for launch support with the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Division at Cape Canaveral, worked out test procedures for the capsule and the Redstone rocket, gave intensive attention to the use of Thor versus Jupiter rockets for intermediate-range flights, and resolved many problems relating to trajectory, guidance, astronaut selection and training, recovery, and costs. 15 The capsule or man-carrying satellite was to have a pressurized breathing atmosphere within a blunt face and conically shaped afterbody. Gilruth attributed the first working design for the capsule to Caldwell (pronounced Cadwell) C. Johnson of the Langley and Wallops Island design group, working closely with others in the STG. Max Faget and Andre Meyer, he said, conceived of the "escape tower" and Faget contributed the contour couch which would protect the occupant from the high g-forces of launch and reentry. The capsule would be

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The Commitment to Space

launched by an Air Force (Ballistic Missile Division) Atlas rocket, with the Army's Redstone rocket, under development by Von Braun's group in Huntsville, Alabama, used for early test flights. On reentry it would descend by parachute to a water impact. Because it would be America's first manned messenger "to the gods," Abe Silverstein thought the project should be called "Mercury." It was an excellent choice, Gilruth thought, and one that generated great pride. Director Glennan publicly announced the Mercury project on December 17, 1958. 16 The STG's new project orientation improved both the technical focus of the engineers and the organizational lines of the group. Gilruth, as Director of the STG (and director of Project Mercury), placed Charles Donlan immediately under him as the Associate Director. Upon his graduation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1938, Donlan joined the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory and began work on aircraft spin design criteria. During the war he worked on tests of the Air Force's XS-1 design and became the project engineer for the design and construction of Langley's high-speed (7- by 10-foot) wind tunnel, and subsequently headed the high-speed wind tunnel section. A flight systems division headed by Max Faget, an operations division under Charles Mathews, and a reliability and quality assurance group reported to Gilruth through Donlan. Paul Purser was Special Assistant to Gilruth. 17 In practice, the association between division heads and the directorsííand the staff, wherever they might beííwas very informal and collegial. For the most part these were professional engineers who had worked together on various projects in the past and now were joined together to work on another far more exciting and demanding project. Each assumed the tasks they were best suited to perform and critiqued and assisted the others work. And work they did! They worked holidays, evenings, and weekends. They worked New Year's Day. Gilruth recalled the days of the STG's first year as a time of "the most intensive and dedicated work of a group of people" that he had ever experienced. "None of us," he said, "will ever forget it." 18 During their first weeks on the job, the STG completed the specifications for the Mercury capsule and placed it, through Langley's procurement officer Sherwood Butler, in the hands of potential contractors who were to return their proposal within approximately 90 days. NASA awarded McDonnell Aircraft Corporation the contract for the construction of the Mercury capsule on January 9, 1959. 19 Thus, the STG early established itself as the design and management team for manned spacecraft programs. Originally, the manned spacecraft program anticipated considerable in-house design, production, and operations. Gilruth's group, for example, arranged for launch rockets and services through the Air Force and Army Ballistic Missile Agency, and also began work on its own Little Joe rocket to be used for escape system tests at Wallops Island. A group under Scott Simpkinson at the Lewis Laboratory in Cleveland, in cooperation with a small task group under Jack Kinzler at Langley, constructed full-scale Mercury capsule models (called "Big Joe") to be launched aboard Atlas boosters from Cape Canaveral for heat transfer and stability tests. 20 The STG achieved a successful launching of a Mercury prototype vehicle in September 1959, within less than a year of the creation of NASA and the STG. Gilruth arranged to borrow physicians, flight surgeons, and psychologists from the Army and Navy to advise on the selection of spacecraft crew members. Dryden and Gilruth, in fact, discussed naming such crew members variously "astronauts" or "cosmonauts." Dryden

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Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .

favored the term "cosmonaut," inasmuch as the flights would be made in the cosmos or near space, while the term "astro" or "astral" suggested star flights. "Astronaut," however, became accepted simply by virtue of common usage and preference by team members, and it stuck. The STG medical advisors and psychologists urged the selection of astronauts from the more dangerous professions, such as race car drivers, mountain climbers, scuba divers, or test pilots. Whether it was judiciously, fortuitously, or both, it was President Eisenhower who decided that astronauts should be selected from a pool of military test pilots. And they all breathed a sigh of relief, Gilruth recalled, because it "allowed the delegation of flight control and command functions to the pilot of the satellite." 21 The new year, 1959, dawned with still only a small group assigned to manned spacecraft projects. The original 35 in the STG had been joined by 10 engineers from Lewis, and another 12 Langley personnel had been shifted to STG projects. Other individuals had been recruited from the Army and the Air Force, but staffing quickly became a serious problem. Floyd Thompson, who cooperated fully with Gilruth's constant requests for personnel from the ranks of Langley staff, finally slowed Gilruth's "raids," which left his own staff so terribly imbalanced, by telling him: "Bob, I don't mind letting you have as many good people from Langley as you need, but from now on I am going to insist that for each man you want to take, you must also take one that I want you to take." 22 The problem with staffing was compounded by the reality that the United States had only a limited supply of aerospace engineers, fewer still with the credentials that would be useful to the STG. Moreover, the postwar aerospace market was a terribly competitive one such that the government had the greatest difficulty competing in the marketplace. This market situation contributed in the long run to greater and greater dependency on contractors for goods and services, but NASA Administrator James Webb believed that greater reliance on private contractors would help build a stronger constituency for NASA programs. Moreover, President Eisenhower abhorred the creation of large federal establishments, particularly those that might compete with private enterprise. But an unusual and highly fortuitous circumstance enabled Gilruth to obtain a new cadre of aerospace engineers which greatly alleviated his recruiting problems and proved extremely important to the American space program over the next several decades. On February 20, 1959, AVRO Aircraft, Ltd. of Canada, a subsidiary of Britain's A.V. Roe Corporation, closed its doors and terminated about 13,000 employees in response to a decision by the Government of Canada to scrap its plans to build an air defense force centered on the Arrow (CF105) fighter, then reputed to be one of the best designed highperformance aircraft on the drawing board. The AVRO CF100 was in production, and a jet liner, similar to a Learjet, was ready for production. Development of a "state-of-the-art" fighter, however, proved perhaps overly ambitious for Canada and terribly costly and the then highly touted American Bomarc defense system seemingly reduced the necessity for fighters. The result was simply a decision by Prime Minister John Deifenbaker 's government to suspend the program. Company officials, hoping to demonstrate the economic impact of such a decision, elected to dramatize their plight by terminating all employees at once. 23 The government, however, was unmoved. A huge pool of highly qualified aerospace engineers suddenly became available. Among these, for example, were Jim Chamberlin, R. Bryan Erb, Rodney Rose, and others. Erb, who was born in Calgary, was first led to his interests in space by an explorer who visited

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The Commitment to Space

his fifth grade elementary class, and predicted that one day man would fly to the Moon. That, Erb recalled, caught his attention. He later received a C.E. degree in fluid dynamics at the University of Alberta, and then a master 's at the College of Aeronautics in Cranfield, England. At Cranfield, Erb's interest in space was reinvigorated by the visit of science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and by the intense interest of members of the British Interplanetary Society. He joined AVRO Aircraft Ltd. in Toronto, for work in thermodynamics in 1955, only to receive a notice one morning that as of the end of the day, on Friday, February 20, 1959, he was unemployed. Similarly, Rod Rose, who was born in Cambridge, England, obtained a fellowship at the Cranfield Institute of Technology after a "Gentleman Apprenticeship" with A.V. Roe in Manchester. He worked for Vickers Supermarine for a time on a Swift transonic airplane before emigrating to Canada in 1957 to work with AVRO Aircraft, Ltd. Rose attributes the demise of the Arrow project largely to politics. 24 He recalls reporting to work as usual on Friday, February 20, and that about "elevenish" an announcement was made on the speaker system that a serious announcement would be made later in the day. Shortly after 3 p.m., he said, an announcement was made that as of the close of work, all employees were terminated, and would be able to return Monday morning to pick up their belongings. One of the people working with him, Rose recalled, had just arrived from England, was living in a hotel with his wife and child, had received no pay, and had no money. Some 20,000 people, he estimated, were directly affected by the lay-off, and another 100,000 who provided various services to the project were probably put out of work. The major problem, he believed, was that the Arrow project and AVRO were creatures of the Liberal government, and with the return of the Conservative Party to power came a purge of all things associated with the past Liberal Party regime. The purge was so complete, he added, that plans, models, specifications, and designs of the Arrow fighter, engine components, and tests were methodically and deliberately destroyed. It was, he believed, a tragic loss for Canada and the world aerospace industry, for the Arrow CF105 was far ahead of its time. 25 The expertise developed in work on the Arrow (which had been designed with a Mach 2 performance ability), however, became an invaluable part of the NASA manned spacecraft effort. Rose believed that AVRO expertise including operations experience, real-time telemetry, and "fly-by-wire" [where controls operated through a computer system] knowhow plus Arrow advances in thermodynamics, materials and structures, among other things, greatly facilitated the development of the American manned spacecraft effort. 26 In this context, Jim Chamberlin, whom Rose described as a brilliant engineer and who would become a key person in the design of the Mercury project, contacted Gilruth, with whom he had close personal and professional associations, and asked if the STG might be interested in the AVRO people. 27 It was an undisguised opportunity, and Gilruth acted immediately. He, Charles Donlan, Charles Mathews, Paul Purser, and Kimble Johnson promptly flew to Toronto, interviewed about 100 applicants for jobs with the STG, within 10 days extended offers to about 50 AVRO engineers, and received acceptances from 25. Among the 25 was Bryan Erb, whose American connections dated back seven generations to Captain Henry Erb (who threw his lot with the Loyalists in the American Revolution and left the United States for Canada in 1783). Erb, in a sense, had returned home. Another was Rod Rose, who confessed that he had required a bit of persuasion from Jim Chamberlin. 28

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Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .