Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969–1989 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight) by Jay Gallentine

Author:Jay Gallentine [Gallentine, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: HIS037070 History / Modern / 20th Century
ISBN: 9780803285163
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2015-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

14

Devil from Redondo

A horrendous undertaking.

—Loyal Goff of NASA’s Viking Program Office, on the Viking Biology Instrument

Unfettered and indiscriminate in attitude and behavior, the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil had nothing on Viking’s Biology Instrument. Although quite beyond control, the cartoon Taz was at least more or less predictable—putting him squarely ahead of what TRW had on their hands. As the design of Viking’s life finder had accreted and evolved, the insubordinate machine morphed beyond that of mere convolution into a spastic, blurrily moving target that eluded even the most rudimentary crosshair lock. It spat in the face of its handlers: rupturing valves and fittings, splitting open chambers and hoppers, locking up, conking out. All without warning. One seemingly innocuous design tweak often precipitated a costly domino effect of alterations that sent techs racing to contain them like grass fires.

Nonstop changes became such an ever-lengthening tapeworm that whole procedures went into effect to stem the tide. Gil Levin well remembered this firebreak approach. “If ever we wanted to change any little thing, you couldn’t just call ’em up and tell ’em,” he said. “You had to execute a change order. And they charged for that.” Levin strove to contain his modifications like everybody else. Although “NASA was trying to get you not to change, but NASA was making changes also!”

Four years till launch.

In late October 1971, TRW finished readying down-and-dirty mockups of the Biology Instrument for its first major review. The autumnal date represented a three-month deferral from Viking’s original schedule and most assuredly failed to endear the company to other subcontractors. By then the overall estimated fee of preparing two flight-ready Biology Instruments had surged from $13.7 million to a gag-inducing $20.2. Engineers at TRW begged off, arguing that nobody could ever have predicted just how mind-bogglingly complicated their little Erector Set would become.

Worldly events rolled on by as if flights to Mars never existed. Walt Disney World had just unlocked the doors. One day afterward came Soul Train’s inaugural syndicated episode. People toured Cinderella’s Castle and danced to Eddie Kendricks in pure oblivion to the emotional gymnastics being called to order inside TRW’s Redondo Beach conference facilities. Reps came from Langley, Martin Marietta, NASA. They emptied coffee urns and wore a lot of ties. They sat around tables in discussion for extremely long periods of time. And the scheduled three-day event demonstrated much more than just runaway changes or licentiously amoral cost projections. Viking’s life sniffer faced peril on several fronts. Just like Cannon actor William Conrad, its weight had risen to alarming levels. The mechanical assembly that handled used-up soil and nutrient had become formidably overcomplicated. One of the more disturbing issues, noted project manager Jim Martin, was that in several areas the failure of any given component virtually guaranteed an unrecoverable seizing of the entire apparatus. Only three months beforehand he’d put forth an edict: no single malfunction would be permitted to incapacitate more than one experiment. Hadn’t anyone paid attention?

As 1971 wound to a close, things started coming off.

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