Three short stories reminiscing about some old Hexagon history

Here are several stories about Hexagon including two about testing to see if a caging mechanism was necessary to keep the Hexagon film rolls from telescoping during launch’s severe vibration. By Phil Pressel.

 During some reminiscing discussions that I had with Paul Brickmeier, Paul Convertito, Mike Krim and several other Hexagon alumni well after the program ended, we had talked at the beginning of the program that we wondered whether the film reels might telescope during the severe g loads in the direction of the central rotating axis of the reels. Paul told the following story:

 “I remember going for a centrifuge test on a supply film stack. It was mounted in a box and brought up to MIT’s Lincoln Lab centrifuge facility. to see if the film would telescope while undergoing high g loads.  Telescoping meant whether the film layers would slide with respect to each other in the direction of their central rotating axis.

 Our customer, the CIA had cleared everybody at MIT’s Lincoln Lab centrifuge facility for Top Secret security. However for some reason even though the staff there was professional we all felt, not entirely to be trusted completely. There were a bunch of customer guys outside, security types in case there was a breach of security. There was a lot of concern that the test article was going to go through the wall of the centrifuge facility. You don’t think much of that until the centrifuge gets wound up and comes past the window and you wanted to duck because even though the absolute angular velocity doesn’t sound very impressive but when you have a 1000 pound article on a radius arm, it comes by fast and is scary.

 The guys in the lab were absolutely pissed off that they didn’t know what was in the box being tested. I think that if we had driven a Volkswagen in from the street and mounted it to the centrifuge they would have done it in a half hour. They knew what was up though because they had probably done work with Itek before on a similar reconnaissance program, but the fact that we wouldn’t tell them had them slightly miffed so they did everything reluctantly.

 Bill Hample was the loads guy at TRW and worried that the stack would become oval and shift the center of gravity. We conducted the test and everything was fine. The stack did not telescope and that was what we hoped and expected. I remember the worst part of it was when we told them to shut it down. Nobody including me was prepared for it. They stopped the thing and when it stops, it stops on a dime and makes a loud bang and generates huge loads that could cause the film to telescope. It didn’t telescope but we were shocked by the big bang.”  

 Here is another story Paul Brickmeier told us about caging film..

 “I remember one of the first visits to Rochester on the caging mechanism there was a guy named Hans, a German and he had a scaled model of a roll of film, maybe 35 mm about 2 feet in diameter and he couldn’t understand why we would need a caging mechanism. The more we discussed it the angrier he got. I told him we had some people who were concerned, primarily Ken McLeish one of our vice presidents who had some prior experience where they had telescoping problems. But Hans takes this roll and he got so pissed off that he began banging it on the side of the table, smashing it against the wall and nothing happened to it. It was like a brick. He was right and it took 6 flights before we pulled the caging mechanism off the supply reels.

 Paul Convertito told a story about a trip that he took to visit our customer in DC and that Mike Weeks, our then General Manager also wanted to go to. Mike was not liked by many of us but he was a character.        

 “I remember once I was headed down to the customer shop to et a briefing on some new thing, I don’t remember what. So Weeks says to me “when are you going down.”  I said tomorrow. Weeks  says “I think I’ll head down too. Are you staying a couple of days?” I said yes. He said “Good, I can’t come tomorrow but I’ll be there the following day. I’ll be taking such and such a flight on the shuttle, can you pick me up?” I said yes I’ll pick you up.

 So that morning I head to the airport. It was National Airport where you have to go around and around until somebody shows up.. What happened was that when I got to pick up my rental car at Hertz they didn’t have a car for me. The only car they had was a brand new bright red Cadillac convertible with white leather seats. So I’m driving around and Mike is there and I’m waving to him; he ignores me and I go around again and I’m waving to him and blowing the horn; he is ignoring me; he must have said that can’t be the car. Finally I get an opening and pull up to the curb and blow the horn. I said Hey Mike what the hell is the matter with you. He said “where the f--- did you get that lady chick wagon? When I get to see your expense account I’ll fix you.”

 Then he comes over and he says, “can I drive it?”