A Bid To Save A Modern Day Santa Maria:
The Preservation Story of the Last Apollo-Saturn Launch Umbilical Tower
by
Doug Forrest
“The jet that had rushed him here from Washington, after that midnight briefing with the President, was now dropping down toward one of the most familiar, yet most exciting, landscapes in all the world. There lay the first two generations of the Space Age, spanning twenty miles of the Florida coast. To the south, outlined by winking red warning lights, were the giant gantries of the Saturns and Neptunes, that had set men on the path to the planets, and had now passed into history. Near the horizon, a gleaming silver tower bathed in floodlights, stood the last of the Saturn Vs, for almost twenty years a national monument and place of pilgrimage.” -“2001, A Space Odyssey”-Arthur C. Clark.
Several years ago I was searching in the Los Angeles Central Library for any information I could find on the Saturn V and it’s launch support systems for a model I intended to make. In the course of my search I came across a book, American Astronautical Society History Series, volume 17: History of Rocketry and Astronautics, which contained a paper written by John London called, "A legacy for the future: Preserving Space-related historic sites." In it, Mr. London related the story of how Apollo’s last Saturn V Launch Umbilical Tower (LUT) was saved from the scrap heap through the efforts of two Air Force officers, who worked at the cape during the change over days between Apollo and the Space Shuttle. The names of the two officers are not mentioned in the paper, but it’s a story that has captured my imagination and is one that I hope to pass on to everyone who reads this.
It’s true that there are three Saturn Vs still in existence. One of them is at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, another at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville Alabama and the third at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. However, only one of those, the one at KSC, has been afforded the luxury of a major refurbishment and a roof over its head to keep the harmful corrosive elements of the Florida coast at bay. The Smithsonian did a tremendous job of preserving and refurbishing the rocket back to its original condition. It was riddled with corrosion and had, among other things, birds nesting inside it where there were holes in the sides of the tanks.
There is another detail to remember historically speaking. All the rockets that are displayed today are surplus stock and were not the actual ones used. Of all the Saturn Vs that were launched to go to the moon, the Command Module was the only piece to come back. However, what about the Launch Umbilical Tower (LUT)? How many people know that there is still one of these left, and of it’s history, and more importantly, the fact that it may not be around for much longer?
Arthur C. Clarke wrote about a national monument. Why not? You’d think that with all the things that are made into monuments, the Saturn V and it’s gantry would be high on the list of historical importance. Not just because they are relics from one of the most technical achievements of the last century, but also because they still exist. Imagine if Christopher Columbus had come back from the new world and someone had said, “Let’s preserve the ship.” It would be priceless now. Unfortunately, most people don’t seem to have that foresight.
Originally, there were three of these 450’ tall, bright red, towers, which were permanently fixed to the mobile launch bases that the Saturn V was stacked on, moved to the launch pad on and eventually launched from. The combined structures were designated LUT 1, 2 and 3.
When Project Apollo ended and the Shuttle program was being built up, LUTs 2 and 3 were scheduled to be dismantled and have parts reused for the Shuttle program. The mobile bases had their towers removed and then went off for a refit for the different layout of the Shuttle stack (three holes for the engines, instead of one for the Saturn V). The top two thirds of those towers, along with their hammerhead cranes, were permanently installed on the concrete hard stands and rotating service structures were built next to them to service the new Shuttles. The hammerhead cranes were later removed (pad A in 1994 and pad B in 1995) due to the high cost of maintaining them. It was decided that, since a ground based crane could be used, it was cheaper to remove and scap them, than it was to refurbish them. The remaining parts of those two LUTs; the bottom third of the towers and most of their swing arms were presumably scrapped. When Apollo/Soyuz ended the Apollo program in 1975, NASA had no use for the third LUT, but they did want the mobile base. In January 1983, they announced plans to demolish the tower and the Saturn 1B pedestal that had been attached to it for the last four missions, and sell the metal for scrap.
I should mention at this point, that this particular LUT was LUT 1. It was the tower used for Apollo 4 (the first launch of a Saturn V), Apollo 8 (the first manned mission to leave the confines of Earth orbit and orbit the Moon), Apollo 11 (the first manned landing on the Moon), all three manned Skylab flights and finally, Apollo/Soyuz (the first American/Russian link up in space). The historical significance of this particular tower is without doubt.
Luckily, there were two Air Force officers who worked at the cape who, when they read the Florida Today newspaper report of NASA’s plans to scrap the tower, decided to try and prevent it. They recognized the historical implications of the tower and so wrote a letter to The NASA Administrator, James Beggs, while copying Senator Lawton Chiles, Senator Paula Hawkins, Congressman Bill Nelson, Richard G. Smith, the Director of the Kennedy Space Center and Harry B. Chambers, the Vice President/General Manager of TWA Services Inc., who ran the KSC visitor’s center. In it, they proposed that the tower be taken down in such a way that it could be reassembled at a later date, at the visitors center as one of the major displays. This arrangement had the added benifit of not impacting NASA’s future plans for the mobile base. This letter was to spark off four months of arguments, controversy and negotiations.
While waiting for a response to the letter, they found out that the award for the demolition contract was imminent and that if they waited for the reply, it would be too late. After making some inquiries, they contacted the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology (who oversee NASA’s budget), The U.S. House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Florida Department of State, Division of Archives, History and Records Management. All these agencies backed the idea of preserving the tower and began to apply pressure to NASA to disassemble the tower carefully. NASA’s initial response was negative to the preservation proposal, since they felt that doing so would delay the schedule of the Shuttle program and that the extra costs involved would be prohibitive. They maintained that the pieces of the other two towers that were being used for the Shuttle program satisfied their preservation responsibilities. After a number of letters were sent back and forth between members of the preservation coalition and interested members of Congress, NASA finally agreed to getting an estimate for a preservation option from the disassembly contractor, Best Wrecking Company of Detroit, Michigan. After much negotiation, both parties agreed on a sum of $1.818 million over the intially agreed demolision figure of $0.574 million. The extra $1.818 million was to pay for the careful disassembly option and the extra work involved in ensuring that the pieces would be kept in as good condition as possible while in storage. It would also pay transportation expenses to move the tower segments to a storage site and the estimated scrap value of the metal, since possession and ownership of the tower would be retained by the government.
While NASA requested the preservation option from Best Wrecking, they only allowed sixty days for Congress and the preservation groups to review the estimate and come up with a means of funding the project. Representative Manuel Lujan – Republican from New Mexico, responded to this by offering House Resolution 2065 on 12 April 1983. This proposed to ammend the fiscal 1984 NASA Authorization Bill, adding $1.818 million to fund the preservation. The resolution was adopted by voice vote, but this budget would not be available until October 1983. However, Lujan saw this as a way of showing NASA that Congress wanted the tower to be saved.
At the same time, the coalition of preservation groups in Washington filed a suit in federal court against NASA, seeking to obtain a temporary restraining order to prevent NASA from going ahead with their plan to scrap the tower. The suit was filed on 18 April 1983.
Due to the pressure from Congress, preservation groups and interested citizens around the U.S., NASA informed Representative Lujan that the preservation option would be exercised and that the funds were to come from the fiscal 1983 NASA budget that was already authorized. As a result, the law suit was settled out of court on 27 May 1983 and the tower was carefully disassembled during the summer of 1983.
Now that the tower had been saved, the task fell to finding the funds neccessary to rebuild and display it. To do this the preservation coalition formed a non-profit, Washington based corporation called “Save the Apollo Launch Tower (STALT) Incorporated” in November 1983. This name was later changed to “The Apollo Society ” to better reflect the wider range of preservation interests that it’s members held.
The Apollo Society’s plan was to have the tower disassembled and stored at a suitable location until the funding could be found to reassemble it. Proposals were drawn up to have the tower as part of the KSC visitor’s center. A concrete base, which resembled the dimensions of the mobile base would house gift shops and information interpreting the tower for the public. It would also access the elevators that could take visitors on a ride up past a mock-up Saturn V to a real command module, in the same way the Apollo astronauts had done.
At the same time, Best Wrecking Company management, who had profited from the preservation decision, privately drafted their own proposal to be given to NASA and the Apollo Society for the reassembly and operation of displaying the tower, as they felt that it had high potential as a profit making tourist attraction. They formed a new separate company called “Apollo Launch Tower Associates (ALTA)” for this purpose.
Their proposal was in keeping with the Apollo Society’s goals, where allowing ALTA to do the entire job would negate the need for a massive fund raising campaign and would also have the tower displayed and interpreted for the public. However, NASA were not open to it, because ALTA waanted to put the tower at the visitors center with a mockup of a Saturn V next to it and charge a hefty fee to tourists to ride the elevators to the top. NASA, and subsequently, the Apollo Society felt that the commercial aspects of the proposal threatened the dignity of how the tower would be presented to the public.
ALTA tried to negotiate higher and higher contributions from the Apollo Society to go towards the reassembly costs and this in turn, developed into the Society’s diminishing interest in the proposal. Eventually, ALTA dropped the proposal after tiring of dealing with the bureaucracy of trying to make a commercial venture out of government property and with the decrease of support from the Apollo Society.
This left the Apollo Society with their original plan of trying to generate the estimated $8.5 million reassembly costs through a nationwide fund raising campaign. Their initial approach was a direct mail campaign, using the membership lists of various space related groups. Unfortunately, when published statistics of the expected response to such a campaign were looked at, they were below the expectations of certain Apollo Society board members. The president soon after resigned and the National Trust for Historic Preservation pulled formal support from the Society. The Society did continue for some time, but has since gone the way of ALTA.
The sections of the tower are still in the field where they they were put in 1983 out behind the Headquarters building at KSC. You can see them if you take one of the “Up Close Tour” buses that is run from the visitor’s center.
In March 2001, I had a chance to go into the storage area, or “boneyard” as KSC personel call it, and have a close look at the pieces. While I was there, I met two other gentlemen, who were being accompanied by their own NASA guide. We all got talking and they were asked what they were doing there. They told us that they were there to survey the pieces of the tower with the purpose of producing a quote to sand blast them back to the bare metal. When asked why, the response was that NASA wanted to get rid of it.
This stayed in my mind for the rest of the trip, as I had been given permission to visit this site to photograph the tower for an article I was proposing to write about the preservation of existing Apollo era hardware that is not well looked after; this tower being the prime example. While on the plane going home, I decided that instead of just writing about preservation, I should like to try and actually get involved in seeing this tower restored.
The first thing that I did was write to Roy D. Bridges, Director of KSC to ask what NASA’s plans actually were for the LUT. His response on April 27 confirmed my fears that the tower was indeed being disposed of. He explained that there was a Federal screening process that would insure that no other agency had need of the tower. If that draws a blank, then it will be offered to the Smithsonian Institute, but they will only get 45 days to respond. Failing that, it will be offered to qualifying museums across the country, but with a 21 day response deadline. Finally, if all else fails, it will be offered for sale.
Mr. Bridges also mentioned the fact that two sections of the tower have been preserved and are included in the Saturn V Center display along with the hammerhead crane, but these are not the two top pieces as NASA maintains. The original top section of the tower housed the elevator machine room and had no elevator shaft running through it. The upper portion of the display has the crew access level, which was originally, the third level from the top.
I immediatly sent off another string of questions that inquired how long would the screening process take before the LUT was offered to the Smithsonian, had the process already begun. Could it be interrupted and would the two sections of the tower in the Saturn V Center be released from the display to make up the complete tower if the funding could be found.
Mr. Bridges wrote back on June 12 to tell me that the screening process had begun, but there was no fixed time on how long it would take. He also said that the process had to be completed, regardless of outside funds being made available, and that it would not be possible to remove the two sections from the display. NASA, rather than Delaware North Parks Services, would make any decision concerning removal of these sections
In my second letter to Mr. Bridges I wrote,
“Getting right up and touching things is a fundamental thing that we like to do. It makes us feel close, it sets our imagination off and in some cases, can change our direction in life. As I wrote before, I believe that this tower represents a huge part of the history of the manned space flight program, because it is one of the few remaining pieces of hardware that was actually used, and that being able to walk on it and ride the elevators up past a (mock-up) Saturn V would be an experience that few people would forget.”
When I first started planning my trip to Florida to see the tower in March, I managed to get hold of an email address for John London, the author of the paper that I had originally read which sparked my interest. I subsequently learned that he was one of the two Air Force officers who were responsible for the original campaign. Several emails later, I managed to meet with him in May. Through him, I have also been in touch with his colleague, Joseph Fury, the other officer involved, and who was the chairman of the Apollo Society.