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The 85% Solution

16K views 11 replies 5 participants last post by  seruzawa 
#1 ·
#9 ·
Incredibly nasty stuff. As I'm sure I mentioned before, the company I work for was sub contracted by the Royal Ordinance division of British Aerospace to do the testing in our high altitude chamber. The chamber used 450 psi steam passed through a series of ejectors to pull a vacuum. On a good low humidity day we could get it up to over 110,000 feet and it was my job to operate the boiler, valving and piping system.

Pretty interesting stuff, I had no direct contact with the motors themselves but I remember the RO techs suited up when connecting and disconnecting the fuel lines on the test stand and the USAF tankers delivering the MMH and NTO, all in enviromental suits.

It was really cool and I'm sure you would have gotten a kick out of it, the facility was built and used to support the Apollo program and I believe it was used to test the LEM and Luner Rover. When the program was over it was basically sealed up and abandoned to be resurrected for the LEROS program that we supported. "The Bunker" was a semi buried control room with a foot thick blast proof window and banks of 60's era commputers and what-not supplemented by modern desktops and screens. Even had rotary dial phones, really cool Sci-Fi vibe to the whole thing, the boiler was an old black oil fired stick-shift D type, completely manual controls. It was really fun to run it, a real museum piece.
 
#10 ·
It was really cool and I'm sure you would have gotten a kick out of it, the facility was built and used to support the Apollo program and I believe it was used to test the LEM and Luner Rover. When the program was over it was basically sealed up and abandoned to be resurrected for the LEROS program that we supported. "The Bunker" was a semi buried control room with a foot thick blast proof window and banks of 60's era commputers and what-not supplemented by modern desktops and screens. Even had rotary dial phones, really cool Sci-Fi vibe to the whole thing, the boiler was an old black oil fired stick-shift D type, completely manual controls. It was really fun to run it, a real museum piece.
That sounds like fun!

NASA is really good at getting their money's worth. Our station (RPS in the Launch Control Center) had a mix of gear from all the way back before Apollo and the "latest and greatest." On the same day, I'd create data sets with punch-tape, punch-cards, removable platter drives, and up to the minute (for 1980) HP microcomputers. The telemetry stuff was definitely "museum" gear. Imagine inputting your computer's IP address with a patch panel and wires!
 
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