Engineers reminisce about work on the Apollo program

JOPLIN, Mo. -- Carried to the moon by the Apollo 11 spacecraft and left behind when it departed is a plaque bearing the signatures of the mission's three astronauts -- Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, as well as the signature of President Richard Nixon.

There are several more signatures tucked away on the moon, hidden inside a lunar module's descent stage, and one them belongs to Carl Junction resident Carroll Wheat.

Wheat, a mechanical engineer, joined EaglePicher in 1963. The Joplin-based company was responsible for making batteries used in the triple-staged Saturn V rocket, the Apollo command module and the lunar module that went to the moon. Each battery was tested and installed by EaglePicher technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Before Apollo 11 launched, Wheat was responsible for activating the four batteries for its lunar module. He explained that each battery was nested inside a case and the lids to these cases had to be removed prior to battery activation.

There also were back-up batteries there in case they were needed for Apollo 11.

"We had one of these lids off (a back-up battery) ... ahead of time, and we scratched our names (on the inside of the cover)," Wheat said, adding that neither he nor an engineer from Grumman who was working with him dared sign the outside part of the lid. "But we made sure it was a battery that was going to be used on (an Apollo moon) flight."

Wheat said he didn't know which Apollo flight that back-up battery later flew on -- he said it was used between Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 -- but it remained behind when the spacecraft lifted off from the moon.

"And (the battery's) still sitting up there," Wheat said with a note of pride.

Fifty years ago, Armstrong and Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle on the surface of the moon. Nearly seven hours later, Armstrong stepped onto the lunar soil. The moon landing is considered one of the greatest technological achievements in human history, watched live by hundreds of million people around the world.

Rex Erisman, who moved to Joplin to work as a test engineer for EaglePicher in 1965 -- the same year the company received the contract to provide batteries for the Apollo program -- said he didn't give the assignment much weight at first; it was just another engineering task.

"We were 25-year-old kids," he said. "We didn't know anything about rockets or space or the moon or anything."

Erisman, who would retire from EaglePicher as executive vice president and general manager of operations, said he was one of the "lucky ones."

He witnessed the morning launch of Apollo 11 from Kennedy Space Center. Beside him for the historical event were his wife and 3-year-old son. It's a memory they cherish.

"The night before, we were at the hotel -- you couldn't pick up a radio or go out to eat without something going out about the flight," Erisman said. "So we decided we'd better go out there and see what was going on. At 10 p.m., we went out to the causeway and it was already full of cars."

Making a snap decision, they went back to their hotel, checked out, and then drove back out to the causeway, finding a vacant spot. There, beneath the stars, they waited for the 9:32 a.m. launch.

Though they stood 5 miles from the launch pad, he still remembers the powerful rumble as the Saturn V rocket blasted off from Earth.

"You could feel the (rocket) from (that distance). You could see it and feel the excitement bubble. The engines went off, (Apollo 11) went up into the clouds -- and then it was over," he said with a chuckle.

Following the Apollo 1 disaster, in which three NASA astronauts lost their lives inside an Apollo capsule during a fire, the spacecraft was redesigned to make each component fireproof.

"We redesigned all the batteries to make sure there was nothing flammable -- no flame to catch anything (around it) on fire." Earlier batteries had emitted hydrogen gas, Brill said, something that potentially -- although the risk was remote -- could set off a spark. "We got rid of that, minimized the volume of the gas and materials around it so it would not burn.

"The batteries were safe. We never had a problem with the batteries on launch," he added.

EaglePicher batteries have been used on hundreds of U.S. and international projects before and after Apollo, including missions to Mars and the Hubble Space Telescope. The company states on its website that it has more than 2.6 billion cell hours in space without a mission failure. More recently, EaglePicher batteries help power the OSIRIS-REx mission, an effort to land on the asteroid Bennu and bring home a sample. EaglePicher batteries also are powering the InSight lander on Mars, although they were built at the company's plant in Rhode Island.

Wheat said that following a successful launch from Florida, the engineers would fly briefly back to Joplin before heading on to Houston to keep tabs of the batteries during the missions' duration at Johnson Space Center. During a stay in Houston, a NASA employee asked Wheat why he wasn't wringing his hands with worry. There was nothing to worry about, he told the man.

"I don't know of any time during that whole program that an (EaglePicher) battery failed to deliver the power and the capacity or the energy required to the mission," Wheat said. "And that's pretty good."