Page 171 - MY STORY

was headquartered in St. Louis (Astronautics Company)

under John Y and Cliff M. There seemed to be constant
infighting for roles and responsibilities in this major
effort.

When management wanted to move some Huntington
Beach managers to St. Louis to support the bid and

proposal effort, some of the Huntington Beach managers
were more concerned with the size of their office in St.
Louis than winning the program. I made several trips to St.

Louis during that effort to support the Materials and
Process organization in the areas of materials for

cryogenic structure and fracture mechanics applied to
propellant tanks.

I met lots of St. Louis people and established some great

relationships with the M&P as well as the structures and
manufacturing staff. In the meanwhile, management kept

trying to figure out how the hell they were going to
engineer, develop, and build this complex machine.

The result of that organizational effort, to be baselined in
our proposal to NASA, ended up with St. Louis taking
program management responsibility and being the design

home for the systems. The program would then be