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The first rocket launch I ever saw spoiled me because it was a Saturn 5 (the launch of Apollo 11). I
was a high school student working as a Radio Engineer for WQXM (Clearwater, FL), was 16 years old and brought with me to the
press site my trusty Sony 350 Tape Recorder. I got rather lucky and the results turned out to be pretty good. To MY surprise,
no-one at the press site was recording the launch audio with any kind of fidelity (most attention was strictly on the visual
with the only audio being captured on accompanying sound tracks with film or broadcast microphones).
Several years later, I found myself working at NASA-KSC in my early college days. The event pictured below was the first rollout
of Apollo 16. I was working as a Ground Support Equipment Engineer Trainee in Apollo and indeed one fortunate 19 year old.
It was a "CO-OP" engineering position and I think I was a GS-7 (the pay wasn't much, but the experience has lasted a lifetime).
Nevertheless, it was very cool at 19 to have a Red NASA Badge, Green Hypergolic training badge and access to most all of ICBM
Row, which was all still pretty much intact. Recently, I read that Dr. Kurt Debus was largely responsible for the Cooperative
engineering program (CO-OP), a program I understand that actually mirrored a similar one from Pennemunde.
| Apollo 16 (initial rollout) |
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My work in GSE design engineering for NASA, under Keith Jenkins as supervisor,
had responsibilities for the Crawler Transporter, LUT, ECS, Terminal Count Sequencer and Q-Ball Cover. Our group was a great
bunch of guys; Herb Rice, Brooke Shugar, Frank Biggs, Leon Davis and we worked on the 3rd floor of the Headquarters Bldg.
in the NASA Industrial complex on Merritt Island. My first assignment was Apollo 13 (I watched the awesome recovery real time
video in Dr. Debus' conference room on the 4th floor). I stayed for Apollo 13, 14, 15 and 16, after which I left and went
into recording engineering. Herb Rice still is there, as a shuttle specialist. It is interesting, he has had some of my electrical
engineering students as COOPs (keep the stories clean, Herb).
So now, some 35 years later, modern digital audio techniques
have allowed me to manipulate my 1969 recording (in a labor of love) to an accurate archive of the aural event, hence
"The Saturn 5 Audio Archive" with respects paid to Kipp Teague ("The Project Apollo Archive") and his excellent website.
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