Word: lowe
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Ever since, Low has been working six-day weeks of up to 16 hours a day. The Apollo command module, with all its 2,000,000 parts, was torn apart, reexamined, and extensively redesigned at a cost of $75 million, an operation that set back Apollo's timetable by many months...
...Low moved to Houston as deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center. That was his position when, in January 1967, Astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Edward White died during a ground test of an Apollo vehicle...
That disaster virtually brought the Apollo program to a halt and threw NASA into chaos. What was needed was a man who could restore order within the program, and Low was the choice. In April 1967, while preparing for takeoff from Washington National Airport in a small NASA Gulfstream turboprop, he was hustled off the airplane and into a nearby office. Recalls Low: "Everybody in the line of command above me in NASA seemed to be there. They asked me to take over management of Apollo. I probably would have liked some time to think about it, but since anyone...
Once he was satisfied with the redesigned craft, Low moved fast. Last August, when it became apparent that the earth-orbiting December flight of Apollo 8 would be delayed by problems with the lunar module, he proposed a bold plan: an Apollo 8 moon orbital mission-without the LM. He was more than convincing, and that is why Apollo 8 got the go-ahead for its historic trip...
...expressing his ideas, and in pushing them into reality, Low has earned a reputation of being reserved and distant. He is not a humorous man, nor one given to poetic fantasies. Yet last week he was as thrilled as any of his five children by the feat of Apollo 8. "I looked at the moon after Apollo 8 went into orbit," he says. "It looked different...