It’s funny how when you see something often enough, you never forget it — even decades since the last time you saw that thing. For me, one of those things is my grandfather giving the “OK” or “go ahead” point of his finger. He did it whenever we left his house when I was a little kid, and I saw him do it to others. He gave it to me and to my cousins when we rode bicycles.
VL Pinson Sr. Signals His Team Is Ready For Launch
I saw this old video, “Biography of a Missile” that was made for CBS television back in the early days of rocket science: the goal at the time were long range missiles and the race to get them working and reliable in service of America’s self-defense. It was an all-out effort with nearly as many failures as launches. As the title suggests, it was the story of one such missile, culminating in its launch and liftoff.
My grandfather, VL Pinson, was a part of Hardtack Teak nuclear testing in 1958. They were conducted above the Johnston Atoll as part of Operation Newsreel, and the weapon was carried aloft by a Redstone missile — making it one of America’s first attempts at constructing an intercontinental ballistic missile. The bomb was 3.8 Megatons in power, and exploded at an altitude of 47.7 miles. Teak, along with HARDTACK-Orange were the two largest high-altitude nuclear explosions in US history.
As for my grandfather, he worked as a telemetry engineer, making him and his team responsible for maintaining communication with the missile throughout its flight. That was required in order to have command and control of the rocket itself, as well as gathering information not only from the rocket but also the weapon as well.
The rocket junkyard, Alamogordo. Being that it was a no trespassing zone, that I was not from there, and it was in a decayed part of town (nothing terrible, just abandoned sites all around me) I didn’t go around the perimeter as much as I would have liked.
I’m guessing these are surplus parts from the White Sands range. I also think that this is a storage facility for NM Space History Museum.
Anyway, there were all sort of interesting tidbits in there. A rail from a rocket sled, a Matador tactical nuclear cruise missile, a few V-1 derivatives, etc. It was interesting to look at this stuff just sitting around in the elements.
Fifty-three years ago today, I saw Apollo 11 as she lifted off from Cape Kennedy and on her way to the moon.
The day was typical Florida morning coastal weather: hot, humid, with a bit of a sea breeze to only slightly temper the sun that bore its way through the sky and onto sizzling skin. The crowd around me flapped whatever papers or fans they had as they waited nervously for the launch, whose time was marked by a huge clock counting backwards.
My mother and I had been at Cape Kennedy since long before dawn, and we were seated among VIPs that included the vice president, movie stars, politicians and the well-to-do that NASA thought important. I was not important, I was just a lucky kid.
To celebrate our twentieth anniversary, my wife and I took a trip to Yosemite National Park in California. This is where we got married all those years ago, just her and I in the Yosemite Chapel. We’d both had the big church hoo-ha in the past, and neither of us were interested in having another day of pomp and circumstance again…the point was to celebrate our relationship, to forge a new union and to enjoy the whole experience.
It worked out. Rather well, in fact. For two decades, we’ve managed to ride the highs and the lows, and have stayed committed to each other. Yay us. It’s a lifelong commitment and I think it will last until we’re gone.
Here are some photos that I took while we were out west:
Bridalveil Falls, Merced River, Yosemite National Park, May 31, 2022
On May 18, 1969, at 11:49AM ET, Apollo 10 launched from LC-39B at Cape Kennedy. It was the second mission to the moon (Apollo 8 being the first), the fifth launch of a Saturn V, and the first Saturn V launched from Pad LC-39B — the same pad that now supports SLS / Artemis.
It was quite a busy day for everyone at Kennedy Space Center, and my Dad, Armand Boyer, on duty that day as the “Pad Chief” was one of them. He was responsible for fire and safety activities at the launch pad, but his job for the day didn’t end with the rocket launching. The aftermath of the rocket leaving the pad was incredible in its own right.
Quite a number of my family members have worked in the space program at various points in their careers, and for some of them, it was their career. I’ve known for a long time that my late Mom had a relatively brief stint out at Kennedy Space Center / Cape Canaveral Air Force Station working as a nurse for TWA, who was contracted to provide medical services for the facility, but it’s rare to find any pictures of her working there.
I found one today in a pile of my Dad’s papers. I was looking for a report he had written about the state of Pad LC-39B after Apollo 10 launched, and came across this photo. My mother is the one on the right.
“STAND BY RESCUE UNITS AWAITING STATIC FIRING OF S/C #3 AT CRYO. BLDG. L-R:: Mr. A. Mair, Mr. Harold Moore, Mr. Thain, Miss Penelon, Mrs. Dismukes, MILA”
Photo: NASA: 104-KSC-65C-880 / 1-15-65
At the time, she was still married (and soon to be divorced) from my biological father, hence the name Dismukes.
Here’s a story in the Huntsville (Alabama) Times from 1958 talking about my grandfather and my uncle and their jobs with the space program. V.L. Pinson, my grandfather, was a senior engineer and manager with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which was later merged into NASA in 1960.
George Pinson, my uncle, joined Boeing shortly after this article was written, and during his time there, he was an engineer, director and senior manager. When he retired, he had over 300 patents, some of which can be found here. One of the main projects he worked on was the Saturn V S-IC first stage, as well as military rocketry systems.
They were both very intelligent men, and literal rocket scientists who taught me a great deal — not the least of which was how to learn and how to go about solving problems.
When an employee of NASA or one of its contractors participated in a major milestone, they were often sent a thank you letter from their manager. Here’s one my grandfather got from his boss, Dr. Kurt Debus.
In this case, my grandfather got a letter from his boss, Dr. Kurt Debus, congratulating him for his participation in helping to launch America’s first satellite, Explorer 1. The satellite was not only the first for the nation, it was also the first to carry scientific instruments designed to make measurements in the new frontier of outer space.
Explorer 1: Scientific Payload (courtesy NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory
One of the measurements that the satellite made was cosmic rays — a form of high-energy radiation that constantly bombards the Earth, and originates from outside our solar system. The expected count was thirty strikes per second on the instruments aboard Explorer 1, but periodically, it would drop to near zero. Analysis of this data showed that zero counts were occurring when Explorer 1 was at an altitude of 2,000 km above Earth, but it would rise to the expected level of thirty. This in turn led to more experimentation on later satellites, and as a result, the Van Allen Belt was discovered — a geomagnetic phenomena where highly changed particles are trapped in the magnetic fields surrounding the Earth.
Explorer 1 at LAunch Complex 26-A in Cape Canaveral prior to its launch (photo: NASA)
Debus’s letter to my grandfather:
Kurt Debus letter to V. L. Pinson Sr. (from Pinson’s archives)
A quick story for y’all: for years I had this crazy memory, but one that really seemed like it really happened. Thing is, memories from that age seem more like dreams from long ago but still remembered than they do things that actually happened. This one actually did happen. My date with Morgan Fairchild? Well, no, that was definitely a dream. The other memory? It might have been even more far-fetched.
The memory is this: I vividly remembered my Dad, an astronaut and me riding around in Dad’s car in Cocoa Beach, and then Dad drove the car into the Indian River and took us for a ride on the water — still in the car — to look at a Saturn V off in the distance at the Cape. When we were done, Dad drove us all home in that same car.
Sunbeam Amphicar at Downtown Disney
Crazy. It bugged me for a long time — it just seemed so real but the whole idea of my Dad, some astronaut and me riding around in a car is just too crazy to be true.
A few years before he passed on, my Dad and I were sharing a drink and not really watching the game on TV so I asked Dad about it, and also asked him not to laugh if it was something I’d dreamt up: was I just remembering something that I imagined, or did it possibly really happen?
Dad looked at me, grinned and launched excitedly into a story about this car he had “before I met your mother and for a while after” and how this car was also a boat, and that yes, positively that had happened, in his Sunbeam Amphicar.
The astronaut was Wally Schirra (Apollo 7), he was there to see the pad procedures that were being developed for the coming Apollo launches. He didn’t say much to other than a kind hello, because I was pretty young in 1966: I didn’t turn five until Thanksgiving week. It was pretty easy to ignore me while I was strapped down in the back seat. I was just along for the ride. No worries, I still had fun.
Dad added that later on when he got married to Mom and “had us kids” that Mom told him he had to sell it to get a station wagon for all of us. He always added immediately, and laughed, “I already knew the secret to a happy marriage: just say ‘Yes, Dear’ and get it over with.”
Unfortunately, my Dad passed away on March 18, 2010, after a sudden illness. He never emphasized his contribution to the space program—he said he was a tiny cog in a huge machine and left that to be that, except the times he said, “Mongo only pawn in game of NASA” with a roaring laugh that told you he found that as funny in 2005 as he did in the 1970s after he saw “Blazing Saddles” for the first time. He did say he enjoyed what he did and that he’d never trade the experience.
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