Project Pioneer: An engineer shares his great adventure at AEDC

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  What would happen if we could look into the future? If Bob Ansley had told his grade-school classmates that someday he would have a hand in helping a man named Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon's surface and return safely to Earth, they probably would have laughed him off the playground.

Ansley, who is 81, can look back at his 32-year career as an engineer at Arnold Engineering Development Center, Arnold Air Force Base, Tenn., and have the last laugh, but that's getting ahead of the story.

On Feb. 20, 1962, a bad case of the flu had Ansley at home, recuperating on the couch with the TV on for a special live broadcast. He watched, as millions around the world did that day, as John Glenn lifted off of the launch pad, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth.

Ansley had been working for a telephone company in North Carolina for 10 years as a lead plant engineer. He was responsible for bringing the company's sizeable headquarters and substations up to date with modern heating and air conditioning systems. 

Initially, he had enjoyed the job - designing systems, monitoring the installation, doing the training on them and signing off on the work. It paid well, enough to raise a family and it even enabled him to fulfill a childhood dream of learning to fly an airplane in 1952. 

However, once his work was successfully completed, he had been reassigned to be a service manager.

The new assignment was not a good fit for a man who enjoyed the complex problem solving engineering demanded.

"My responsibility was hiring, firing, disciplining and doing technical telephone business which I did not like," he said. 

His brother, Sterling, had started working at AEDC in the early days before the center had evolved into the world-class array of complex flight simulation test facilities with its impressive infrastructure.

"I had always wanted to be in the aeronautical industry and I already had been talking to my brother at Arnold about a job," he said. "Sterling replied, 'Well if you want to get into the aeronautical business, the best place to come is to AEDC.'"

Something about being sick at home and watching the coverage of Glenn's flight was the final straw for Ansely. Before the year was out, he was working as a plant engineer in one of Arnold's flight simulation test facilities. 

Ansley said he recalls a lot of excitement as AEDC geared up to enter the space race.

"When John Kennedy said we're going to the moon within a decade, it quickly became clear there weren't enough test facilities," he said.

Before Ansley arrived at AEDC, his older brother had been working as a design engineer under the direction of AEDC Fellow Dr.
Bernard Goethert on a special project supporting what would become the Apollo program.

"Sterling was in charge of designing a complex test cell for the rocket engines that would power NASA's Lunar Module," Ansley recalled. "Known as the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), it was the portion of the Apollo spacecraft to take two crew members to the surface of the moon and back to the parent spacecraft."

The test cell was called J-2A and it was designed to fit inside the J-2 test cell, which had originally been designed to test ram jet engines. The new test cell was designed and built specifically for the Apollo program.

"It was Dr. Goethert's idea to try and simulate space, which is 350,000 feet, where by all definitions, is the threshold of space," Ansley said. "This facility, J2-A, was a very complex test cell. It was designed to simulate that pressure level and as close to absolute zero as possible."

Ansley had only been on the job for a day or two when he got an unexpected surprise.

"I went to work one day and that same day I was assigned as plant engineer for this test at J2-A, in October of 1962," he said. "I walked in and they said you've got a test the next day. We were going to test the lunar vehicle's reaction control system. It had these little engines all over it to maneuver it - in quads of four, pointing in all four directions.

Six months later, Ansley was working as a project engineer with the team to conduct testing on all of the Lunar Lander's propulsion systems, including the ascent engine that would ultimately bring Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin off the moon and back home.

"Within less than two years I had come from a telephone company to the space business," he said. 

"Here I was doing a performance test on the engine that would get the men back off of the moon's surface, but all of the engineers here had been assembled from all over the country - it was a new industry."
He is also still amazed at the ingenuity it took to build the test cell dedicated to the Apollo project.

"They took J-2 test cell and made two test cells out of it," he explained. "A rocket engine doesn't require any air. So, they built a big bulkhead dividing the J-2 test cell and actually put the J-2A test cell inside that ducting and then they turned around and made J rocket test cell, J-2SP, which fired upstream and out through a nozzle."

"So, we had J-2SP which was used for special projects and J-2A which was for ultra-high altitude testing. With J-2 they had to cut the large ducting in half with torches and lift it off and put the J-2A test cell inside it and then weld that ducting back on."

Ansley vividly recalls the high tempo of testing and the pressure, both literally and figuratively, being exerted on everyone to get it right. When Ansley worked as a plant engineer supporting testing and then as a test project engineer, he shouldered significant responsibilities. He also had to tackle some serious challenges.

"As a plant engineer, it was my job to see that the tests were running properly," he said. "When you cool something from atmospheric temperatures to minus 320 degrees, cracks form as the material shrinks and expands. So, after about two cycles after I came on board for this test, they were trying to pump J-2A down for the next test and it wouldn't because the test cell's walls had developed so many small cracks."

The team managed to do one test and when they tried to run the next entry, J-2A wouldn't go past 200,000 feet.

"NASA wanted to bring in the ascent and the descent engine and then a series of small RCS control engines, but we had to fix the test cell first," Ansley said. "We had absolute top priority at AEDC to make it work. We were told to work around the clock until we fixed J-2A. It took us three weeks of practically non-stop work to get it repaired."

The engineering science of the facility and the challenge of keeping it working properly intrigued Ansley.

"When you go to 350,000 feet there are so few molecules in the test cell that you can almost count them," he said "And you can't pump them out in the traditional manner - the pumps quit working and you actually have to freeze the molecules. To do that, you use a helium refrigeration system that followed the same basic cycle as an air conditioning system.

"That's why my experience was applicable, except this was at much lower temperatures. I worked for six months in plant operations and we got the cell back into service where it would attain 350,000 feet on a regular basis."

With each test, they were exploring new territory in another area as well.

"In those days no one knew much about the effects such a low temperature and pressure would have on materials going up in space," Ansley explained. "We were finding out the materials we used at that specific temperature and pressure wouldn't work up in space. J-2A was one of the most exotic test units in the world at the time."

In 1969, the success of the Apollo 11 mission, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's famous lunar landing, brought both a sense of relief and satisfaction to engineers with NASA, AEDC and elsewhere, who had all contributed their time and expertise to the program. However, before long, the space race seemed to end almost as quickly as it had begun, but Ansley still had a role to play in it.

"There were several other missions to the moon, including Apollo 13, where they had an explosion on board the spacecraft," he said. "It took some on-the-spot engineering here and in the air, in order to figure out how to get those men back alive. They had lost their main engine. So, they had to improvise and use the descent engine which we had tested -as the way to slow down, orbit the Earth and return."

As emphasis on the space program faded, other concerns took priority. Ansley said challenges arising during the Vietnam War and the continuing threat from the nation's Cold War adversaries on the world stage were forcing the U.S. military to take notice.

As a U.S. Navy veteran serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II, Ansley knew first hand about the consequences of a nation playing catch up after being attacked without warning by an aggressive and determined adversary, Japan.

"The Kamikazes were killing so many people on our ships," he recalled. "I was on a troop transport; we were the replacements. I was also stationed for awhile on the West coast at a naval shipyard, and every dock and every slip on the Pacific coast was filled with ships damaged by the Kamikazes."

The first wake-up call to develop a new class of jet fighters occurred during the mid-1960s when U.S. Air Force intelligence got an unpleasant surprise. The Soviet Union was busy building a large fighter aircraft, the MiG-25 Foxbat. Limitations with armaments carried by the F-4 Phantom II and U.S. Navy's fighters translated to an imbalance in air combat capability between the two Cold War adversaries.

The Air Force came up with the first version of the F-15 Eagle as the U.S. space race was ending, and Ansley, whether he knew it or not, was waiting to begin ground testing of the Air Force's new warfighter.

By 1970, his role in testing the jet fighter began.

"It was really what I had always aimed for - I have always been an aviation enthusiast," he said. "I had learned to fly to satisfy my aviation desires back in 1952, but still I had always planned to be an aeronautical engineer, except I had gotten sidetracked."

Ansley was now deeply invested in testing jet engines. However, his prior experience with the Apollo program brought him back on occasion to conduct a test in the specialized facility where he had first honed his aerospace engineering skills.

"We used J2A for one test involved with the Minuteman which carried the multiple warheads, or Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV)," he recalled. "In flight, as this warhead separated and went out, the ground controllers had to fire one of the other engines to control the vehicle. This warhead would travel through that engine's plume. I had the project where we took a very small model of one of these warheads, put it in the test cell to determine the effects the plume had on it."

He recalls the ingenuity of the instrumentation engineers and instrument technicians who prepared the test article for the project.

"The model we mounted in the test cell was a very complex system that was highly instrumented to measure pressure and temperature," he said.

As 1969 drew to a close, the pendulum soon swung back to a focus on jet engines as the conflict in Vietnam escalated.

"Around that time, J-2 was converted back to a jet engine test cell," Ansley said. "In January 1970, I was immediately transferred to work with Dr. Bill Kimzey on testing jet engines. I went right in as a project engineer."

Ansley said one of the big problems in all aircraft is engine inlet compatibility.

"The inlet is very critical when you fly an aircraft at supersonic speeds," he said. "The F-15 and F-14 inlets were movable, very complex devices. They had designed a device that would just barely fit in the J-1 test cell with inches to spare. And this monster weighed 36 tons and it simulated the inlet's internal contour and the ramps."

Ansley said the first jet engine-related assignment he had in 1970 was a mechanical job, fitting the huge inlet simulation device in the test cell, hooking it up and making sure it worked. It was used to simulate the inlet of an early model of the Pratt & Whitney F100 engine powering first generation F-15 and F-16 jet fighters.

"I had no jet engine training or experience whatsoever," he said. "During this project I had an aeronautical engineering textbook in one hand and a college thesis on water tables for simulating air flow in the other."

In the ensuing years, Ansley got plenty of jet engine testing experience and often at an accelerated pace. He was finally in his element and said it was a rewarding experience to have played a role in keeping the U.S. at the forefront of combat air superiority.

Later, he did some jet engine ground testing for a country he had last experienced as the enemy. It came late in his career, and the high point of the experience came when he was tapped to be the center's test representative to go to Japan on the project.
At the time the assignment came his way, he was still working on testing an engine for advanced F-16 fighters.

"Before that was completed, the boss walked in one day and handed me a test plan, said 'Look this over, see what you think about it' and walked off," Ansley said. "It was a test plan for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.

"Japan was very anti-war following World War II," he explained. "Their constitution did not allow them to develop a large air force. Around this time though, they changed their constitution and they were allowed to begin development of their own engines."

Ansley said the first engine they wanted to test was for a small, twin-engine jet trainer. The test would be the first Japanese entry at AEDC.

"Once again, I had to start from scratch and take a relatively small engine and figure out how to do this project," he said. "Here we were faced with the language barrier and I had to take the test plan and translate that into a test program."

Not having facilities to conduct altitude ground testing in Japan meant AEDC was the only option. Security requirements made it necessary for each Japanese engineer and technician to have an escort and be kept under close supervision.

"Back then, in 1982, the Japanese were still very formal," Ansley recalled. "We had to study their customs and social protocols. With the language barrier and everything, it could have been nerve-wracking, but I found it interesting. It was a great adventure."

Before the Japanese and their counterparts at AEDC could get the test underway, there was another unexpected hurdle to overcome.

"We were originally going to do the test in J-2 where I had been working," Ansley said. "Suddenly the Air Force told us we were going to have to do it in T-1 because a higher priority test had to go into J-2. So, we had to transfer over and design everything to do it in the other test cell. They brought a designer who was not on the approved list. As a result, the Japanese designer for the project didn't have the proper clearance to go into the test cell. So, he sat in his room in quarters off base and redesigned the hardware that they had designed for J-2 and adapt it to T-1."

Another complication came when the Japanese had insisted that the final contract negotiations would take place on their native soil.

Ansley was excited when he learned he would be heading to Japan to represent Arnold in the final chapter of what he considered a great experience. The trip to Japan proved to be worthwhile and illuminating, both professionally and personally.

"There were seven of us, two Air Force representatives and five Sverdrup employees, including myself," he said. "We had our installation test engineer, instrumentation and an electrical engineer with us. We made the trip in April 1982, discussed and negotiated the whole test plan and finally signed the contract. There were many language problems - we'd have a misunderstanding over certain words we thought had one meaning, find out they meant something else and we'd have to start over."

Despite the language problems and miscommunications, Ansley said it was a great experience and he had tremendous respect and admiration for his hosts.

"They were really nice folks and I've never seen people who worked so hard and who were so determined to get the work done," he said, recalling how the Japanese design engineer had to redesign the test plan for the change in test cells at AEDC without stepping foot on the base.

Ansley's coworkers at had hosted the Japanese engineers before and during the testing at Arnold, taking them around to many of the area attractions and having them over to their homes for meals. Their Japanese hosts had done the same when the Americans came to Japan to negotiate and finalize the project.

Even before that first Japanese project had been completed, Ansley was pulled into another, much larger project that would provide him and his colleagues with one of the greatest challenges of their careers.

A few years earlier, the Air Force had tasked the contractor at AEDC to design and build a unique, state-of-the-art facility to test aircraft propulsion systems in realistic flight environments on the ground. The complex was called the Aeropropulsion Test Facility (ASTF).

Multiple design changes, driven by many factors, including the complex nature of ASTF and technical problems, had pushed the estimated cost of operating the facility higher and higher. The Air Force was understandably concerned and the contractor team in charge of ASTF put Ansley in charge of preparing a final estimate that would be within budget or enough to justify the completion of the project to Congress.

"The Air Force wanted an independent estimate, from people who hadn't been associated with ASTF," he said. "They assembled an entirely new group, but they gave us some of the people from the group in ASTF to work with us."

Ansley said he and his team worked 22 days, arriving early in the morning and staying late into the night, to come up with the required estimate of ASTF's operating cost.

"In January of 1984, by working night and day with a tremendous number of people, we delivered the estimate on time," Ansley said.

The Air Force had made their own estimate and finally the big day arrived for both sides to compare their findings. Ansley was chosen to deliver the contractor's estimate to the Air Force representative from the Pentagon. 

"The day before the general was due to come to AEDC, his representative was here to see our estimate before they made their presentation to Congress," Ansley said. "He looked at our estimate in his book, and breathed a sigh of relief and said, 'Thank God, we're within 10 percent of what our independent estimate was.'"

After a year of working intensively at ASTF, Ansley returned to Japan in 1985 to negotiate another test contract on the qualification work on the same engine he had worked with them on before. By this time, close and lasting friendships had formed between Ansley, his center coworkers and their Japanese counterparts.

Ansley had to continue his commitment with ASTF in between the work with the Japanese on the second test entry.

"So, I had to do the Japanese test, plus keep my hand in on the work with ASTF because the facility was still in the planning, design and building stages," he said. "It was a long way from being ready for testing. I worked the Japanese test and monitored advanced, long range projects at ASTF at the same time."

By the time he retired in 1992, Ansley was managing testing in the center's Engine Test Facility engine test cell T-1 on the General Electric F110 afterburning turbofan alternate jet engine powering the F-16C/D Fighting Falcons.

During his career, Ansley had covered the gambit, a mix of aeronautical and aeromechanic engineering, conducting testing on everything from the lunar lander's engines to the jet engines powering the F-15, F-16, F-14, B-1B Lancer and preparing ASTF altitude test cells for the Pratt & Whitney F119 engine powering the F-22 Raptor.

He said his career was definitely an adventure and he had some simple advice for those young engineers who took the reins at work after his departure.

"I'd tell them don't ever back down from an assignment," he said. "With few exceptions, if your supervisor didn't think you could do something, they wouldn't have had the confidence to give you the assignment."