Page 106 - MY STORY

the misrepresentation spewed out by my

reinforced-plastics brethren in our department.

I think that the only reason I was not summarily

disciplined, or worse, was because the chief engineer
happened to be another metallurgist, and in spite of my
not following written procedures for paper release, he

knew that my data was accurate and correct. He made me
promise to never, ever, do that again. It’s only fair to
admit that over the many years since that moment in time,

pressure vessels made from carbon or glass fiber
reinforced epoxies have indeed exceeded the

performance of equivalent metal devices, especially for
the high performance required of upper stage rocket
motors, where weight saving is absolutely critical.

BEYOND SATURN-APOLLO

This story has no point at the end. It’s just a remembrance
of a significant study that involved a lot of development
effort and had its own broad array of industry challenges.

It even might get boring with technical detail. The
Saturn-Apollo Program was in its heyday. Money was
flowing from NASA like water, Douglas’ place in the

manned moon-trip was locked in, and our advanced