L. A. SECTION ENTERPRISE CHAPTER

At The gathering of the AIAA L. A. Section Enterprise Chapter On August 19, 2008, Dick Denison described what life in the mid 50’s was like on a project when few legal restrictions were imposed and technology was less risk-averse.

During the 50’s the Cold War was on in earnest, national defense budgets reflected the urgency to be ahead technologically and there was an eagerness to find solutions to military missions by trying various approaches. The number of new system developments has decreased drastically between the 1950’s and 2008. The knowledge base of the aerospace industry has shifted from creating opportunities for technical breakthroughs to increased emphasis on lifecycle issues, process innovation, and continually improving technology while developing, delivering, and sustaining systems.

The purpose of the X-17 vehicle was to determine if it were possible to design a heat shield that could survive the heat generated during re-entry. The X-17 was a three-stage rocket using solid fuel. The first stage was fired upward and the second and third stages fired downward to achieve re-entry speeds.

Urgencies of the Cold War impacted facilities, people, and organizations working on the project. The X-17 was a key project assigned to the newly created Missile Division of Lockheed. It was housed in two buildings on the edge of the Van Nuys Airport referred to, not too affectionately, as the "lean-tos" because of their slanted roofs. The nature of the technical problems brought scientists, many from Los Alamos, as well as engineers, mainly from Lockheed, to the project. The former were housed in the northern building and the latter in the southern building. Although there was friction between occupants of "north" and "south", the talent was indisputable. Soon after Dick arrived, two of his mentors left to form Aeronutronic and his office mate was Dan Tellep, who later went on to become CEO of Lockheed and arranged the merger with Martin. One of his mentors had persuaded the Air Force to award Lockheed the contract for the X-17 project. The entire contract document was two pages long!

Notwithstanding the friction, which included attempted pirating of engineers from one building by managers in the other, assignments were made. The south lean-to was made responsible for all stages except the nose cone, and the north lean-to was made responsible for the nose cone. Dick and Dan Tellep worked on the nose cone.

Dick correctly diagnosed the failure of early flights of the X-17 after second stage ignition to the restriction of plume expansion at altitude by the skirt of the second stage, and was corroborated in this opinion by consultant Anatol Roshko of Cal Tech. It was difficult persuading the thermodynamicists in the south lean-to, who had tested the engine only at ground level and had not accounted for changes in altitude.

A skirt design change was necessary. Again, the levels of talent here were impressive: one individual who became head of Brush Beryllium, one who became CEO of Litton Industries, and the Chief Engineer, who became a vice president of Lockheed. The design change was approved within Lockheed and discussed with Ramo-Wooldridge, the technical managers for the Air Force. The change was made and flight testing was resumed - in about 10 days!

It would probably take the better part of a year to do something comparable in today’s risk-averse culture which is characterized by more timidity, more formal paperwork, and much more bureaucracy. The relentless pursuit of performance and the eagerness to try new things has been viewed by modern managers as wasteful, but when measured against the timidity to try something new and the length of time that is required to field new systems, it is not clear that the way we do things now is any more cost-effective. Integrated product teams have a way of diffusing responsibility and diluting accountability. The number of projects overrunning budgets and running behind schedule these days lends credence to the inadequacy of current practice.

Many X-17 meetings literally began with the invitation to fight over opposing approaches. Numerous technical problems were encountered. The major issues had to do with laminar versus turbulent flow, shape of the nose cone and shape of the shock wave, thickness of the nose cone wall, and the region of the flow where the maximum heat transfer was encountered. You should refer to Dick Denison’s slides in the AIAA Enterprise Archive of Speaker Presentations at Chapter Meetings, under the title The X-17 Project – No Risk Management and Few Legal Restrictions" to see a graph of heating rates in laminar and turbulent flow developed by Dick as well as many insightful, sometimes humorous, comments on the personalities, the culture, the equipment available, and the technical approaches used to solve problems. The dry sense of humor Dick brings to his slides makes for entertaining reading.

Guido Frassinelli 04/10/09