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Aaron Cohen, a longtime NASA official spoke at the University of Maine Friday, discussing the current state of the NASA and Apollo missions. He also addressed comments that current NASA administrator Michael Griffin made recently criticizing NASA’s past work.
Cohen, who worked as an administrator for NASA from 1962 to 1992, is considered the father of the space shuttle, and in 1972 was named space shuttle orbiter project manager.
Cohen, who spoke at the Arthur St. John Hill Auditorium in the Engineer and Science Research Center at 4 p.m. Friday after an introduction by UMaine President Robert Kennedy.
“It truly is an honor to introduce professor Aaron Cohen to this audience and have him at the University of Maine,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy spoke about the inspirational effect the space race had on the globe and how Cohen was one of those people at the heart of it. He also spoke about his work at Texas A&M, where Kennedy got to know Cohen for the first time. Kennedy said that it was one of the thrills in his life to get to know Cohen.
Cohen’s reasoning for the origins of the Apollo program was the Cold War. He said that in order to understand why the Apollo program started, one had to keep a 1960s mindset. Kennedy thought that the United States needed to do something technologically to show up the Russians, and the rest of the world.
Cohen said that in order to further explore space people have to understand the past, especially the Apollo mission.
“We’re on the brink of an age of a new exploration program,” Cohen said. “I’m not going to address the detail of it, but basically, it’s going to be a program that sends humans back to the moon very much like Apollo in the year 2018.”
The focal point of Cohen’s speech was mapping the history of the Apollo program and the mistakes that led up to the Apollo 13 problems.
“How many of you have seen the movie?” Cohen asked the audience.
“Well, I wasn’t in the movie,” he said jokingly.
The Apollo 13 crew consisted of Jim Lovett, Fred Hayes and Jack Swisert. Cohen mentioned that he has stayed in contact with Fred Hayes, who has become a successful aerospace contractor.
Cohen explained the accident that caused the Apollo 13 disaster.
“Any time you have an accident, by definition, it shouldn’t happen,” Cohen said.
One of the main problems that occurred with the Apollo 13 mission is, unbeknownst to the NASA crew, that there were two switches in charge of opening a heater circuit at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but the ground power supply had been changed, so the switches were not compatible with those changes.
“It turns out that it was a very successful mission because we brought the crew back,” Cohen said.
Had the crew not returned, it would have been a disaster, he said.
Cohen brought charts to diagram what happened with the Apollo 13 mission. He diagrammed “the stack” and showed the various parts of the Apollo shuttles.
Cohen addressed comments made by the current NASA administrator Michael Griffin. Griffin said in a meeting with the USA Today editorial board, “NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station.”
Cohen mentioned how one of the most phenomenal missions he has ever seen flown was Apollo 8. It was one of the first missions to leave the earth’s gravitational field and orbit the moon. It was a highly successful mission, and he gave Frank Gorman a lot of credit for that.
Cohen stated that Griffin later said his words were taken out of context, but Cohen believes there is still some honesty in what USA Today printed.
He responded by saying that he knows Griffin very well, and he feels Griffin never wanted to risk human life for anything other than exploration missions. Cohen closed by saying that in order to explore space, there has to be both financial and human risks.
“If you have problems, then you don’t fly,” he said, simplifying the guidelines in light of the Apollo 13 mission.
