He flew for the military from the post-WW-II era to Vietnam, was a jet test pilot, was an F-100 squadron commander, risked his life many times for many years, and continued to enjoy commanding high-performance machines all of his life, when ironically, it suddenly and unexpectedly ended with him losing a battle of momentum between his Mazda sports car and a Toyota Highlander, on his way to church, a devout Lutheran who spent his life dreaming of the stars, now at final peace with his God. In that regard, he reminds me, sadly, of Pete Conrad, who after commanding a mission to the moon and back, and becoming a leading light of entrepreneurial space, died riding the motorcycle that he loved on a tight curve just outside of Ojai.
Bill Haynes used to tell the story of when he joined the US Army Air Corps in the 1940s, and told them that he wanted to go into space. “Better put down ‘extreme high-altitude flight,’ son,” the recruiter told him, after thinking for a bit. “The army doesn’t have a space program. Yet.” It still doesn’t, of course, because not long after, it spun off the Air Corps into the Air Force.
I first met him in 1981, when we were both working for the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo. He was working the Military Man-In-Space program, which was looking into military applications for humans in space, which would be tested with military astronauts on the Space Shuttle, which was just going into service. After his military career ended in the late sixties, he had worked on both Skylab and Spacelab, and probably knew as much about space station design issues as anyone at the time. He was highly critical of the space station studies occurring at Marshall and JSC at the time, and predicted many of the problems that the program would encounter over the next decade and a half before it finally started actually launching parts into space.
He was also critical of plans to launch a fueled Centaur upper stage in the Space Shuttle (this was the original plan for launching Galileo). NASA was running into abort issues. In the event of a flight abort, they had to be able to dump the propellants before landing, because with full tanks, the stage not only weighed too much to land with, but presented a serious hazard, particularly because there was only a single bulkhead between the LOX and hydrogen tanks. The problem was that, in the event of a Return-To-Launch-Site abort, they couldn’t dump it fast enough. They had (heavy) helium bottles on board to blow the tanks down, but the pressure needed to make it happen fast enough for RTLS just blew through the fluffy liquid hydrogen, leaving it behind in a trail of helium bubbles.
Bill, Jim Ransom and I came up with a scheme to not only solve this problem, but to increase the performance as well (and one that readers of this blog may find familiar). Launch the stage dry. This would not only reduce the stage weight, because it wouldn’t have to take the loads of the propellant through the acceleration of ascent, but also reduce the weight of the cradle that held it, and eliminate the heavy helium bottles needed for abort.
Where would the propellant come from?
Because the Shuttle would launch with a light payload, there would be excess propellant in the External Tank at main-engine cut off condition, which could be transferred through the umbilical into the stage.
We did extensive analysis of it, but could never sell Lewis Research Center (the center responsible for the Shuttle/Centaur) or Rockwell on the idea (later, when I went to work for Rockwell, I worked with Jack Potts, the program manager for the Shuttle/Centaur, but after the program had died). Jerry Pournelle (who I hope is aware of Bill’s passing, and can make the funeral on Saturday and whose son, Rich, I saw in a meeting today, before I heard that Bill had been killed) has written about it.
Eventually, the delays of resolving the abort issue resulted in a shift of Galileo to a Titan, and many think that these delays, with lots of moves of the probe between decisions and the prolonged warehousing time until launch were the cause of the sticking umbrella antenna that reduced the data return when it eventually reached Jupiter, because it lost the graphite lubricant.
But the principle still applies, and was partially the basis for a lot of the recent propellant depot work (Dallas Bienhoff was at Aerospace at the same time as Bill and I, though I’m not sure if he was aware of the work at the time, and then went to work for Rockwell in Downey shortly before I did).
Other stories perhaps still to come, including the reactionless “Jones” drive, and the Crewlock. I hope that others who have Bill stories can chime in (I’m looking at you, Gary Hudson).
[Update a few minutes later]
Jerry Pournelle is apparently aware (you may have to scroll a little). I suspect he’ll have more to say later.
[Update in the afternoon]
As a commenter points out, I got the history a little wrong — Galileo did launch in the Shuttle, but on an IUS. The point remains that it was probably affected by the delays and remanifesting.
We did extensive analysis of it, but could never sell Lewis Research Center (the center responsible for the Shuttle/Centaur) or Rockwell on the idea
Interesting, I had read about such schemes but I didn’t know you were involved with their origin.
Sounds like a great guy. When friends pass it makes you think seriously about what’s important. I know we do not share the same beliefs Rand, but there is a promise I believe… their is a day coming in the future after armageddon. a resurrection period, where we may see our old friends again. It will be different from today in that satan and his angels will not have any influence. A new book of knowledge will reveal things we never knew and we will have most of a thousand years of life to mature before the judgment day of all mankind.
I’m hoping those books talk about the meek inheriting the universe while living forever. With friends like yours I can’t imagine anything less.
I’d like to read more about the dry Centaur, but it didn’t look like I could download the article from the link you provided. Is there available literature out there?
I certainly have had a few harsh things to say about today’s USAF culture and the current crop of leadership, but Bill was the kind of officer and gentleman that proves the happy exception to the rule. (And he did his service in a different age, of course.)
I don’t have any particular story to relate, sad to say. Rand has already mentioned Centaur. And the crew lock (the great idea that keep spacesuits outside the cabin, avoiding time and expense of pressurization and depressurization cycles). Personally, I remember the kindness and support that people like Bill (and Max Hunter, and Harry Stine…also now passed) showed a young upstart who had the temerity to believe he could design rockets. Bill never questioned that belief, but helped when and where he could. To remember him and the others properly, I pass it forward.
I saw Bill last not that long ago, but neither of us talked about space or the future. I think we concluded was too depressing, or perhaps maybe I alone did. I’m trusting he never gave up hope. Requiescat in pace…et lux perpetua luceat eis.
RIP Bill Haynes. I didn’t know him as well as you did, but have fond memories of time spent with him.
Galileo was launched by the Shuttle/IUS stack and required multiple Earth flybys. Cassini launched on a Titan
I first “met” Bill online when I read a posting by him in a forum about extending human life span. He had written a touching story: when he was about five years old, he suddenly realized that he is mortal, that one day he will die. He started running around the house, crying, saying that he will die. Parents and relatives tried to calm him down, but neither could understand that what had so disturbed the five year old was not the fear of immediate death, but the very nature of our mortality. He had written that when he was born, life expectancy was 55 years, and since he was 75 at the time of the posting, he was joking that he had lived 2/3 of a year of his allocated time each year, hence the extra years. He then commented on how with the progress in medical sciences, we will start living less and less of our allocated time each year, until the rate of using up our “allocated time” becomes zero. He had added at the last line of the post “but I don’t think I will be around then!”.
I was a student then, I wrote back to him, commenting on his posting, and ten or so years of email correspondence followed. We met once, and I got to ride his red sports car. I finished graduate school, became a biomedical scientist working on tissue regeneration. And man, aren’t we close to that “zero allocated time” point.
But he spent the allocated and extra time given him truly living, the way it is meant to be done.
I met Bill when I started at the Aerospace Corporation in 1983 in the Manned Spaceflight Office. I worked with him for several years, and I came to think of him as the “idea man”. We worked the Manned Spaceflight Engineer (MSE) Program together and he was always looking toward the future of manned spaceflight. Years later when I transferred to another position at the NASA JSC facility, I would always meet with him when I came back to El Segundo and discuss the direction of manned spaceflight. He would tell me of his efforts to certify his ultralite and talk about the direction the country was going with regards to space activities. I will truly miss our discussions and his visions of the future. RIP Bill.