The Warren L. Brasher Papers is composed of memorandums, operating manuals, handbooks, professional papers, publications, articles, presentations, books, technical reports, and miscellaneous materials, created, used, or collected by Warren L. Brasher during his career working at NASA. He worked at Johnson Space Center from 1966 through at least the late 2000s. The bulk of the collection is composed of professional papers Brasher authored or co-authored reports relating to Apollo and Space Shuttle programs; technical reports on NASA programs; and official NASA reports. There are also a number of handbooks and other records on the Apollo Lunar Module propulsion system, on which Brasher worked between 1966 and the early 1970s. A good amount of official NASA records exist on the testing and selection of propellants for the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) during the 1970s and early 1980s, as the Space Shuttle Orbiter was being developed.
The Harry T. Briggs Papers is composed of personnel records, certificates, correspondence, training and operational manuals, handbooks, workbooks, specifications, reports, binders, plans, notes, documents, contracts, presentation slides, memorandums, handouts, booklets, brochures, telephone directories, and miscellaneous materials, documenting the entire career of quality assurance and control engineer and officer Harry T. Briggs at NASA Johnson Space Center largely between 1963 and 1991. Briggs worked as the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center quality control engineer at the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation in Bethpage, New York, for Grumman’s construction of the Lunar Excursion Module (later the Lunar Module) for the Apollo Program.
Briggs also would become the one of the chief quality control engineers who worked for JSC on the development of the Space Shuttle orbiter in the 1970s and early 1980s. Eventually, Briggs became the chief of the Requirements and Compliance Branch of the Quality Assurance Division, specifically assigned to the Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance (SR&QA) Office in that Branch. He was the chief quality control officer partnering with West Germany on their Biostack experiments for Apollo 16, Apollo 17, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in the 1970s. The bulk of the collection is composed of Briggs’ personal copies and drafts of quality assurance and quality control guidelines, manuals, contractor contracts, and other records, that he used in his role developing JSC’s quality control standards beginning with the Apollo Program through the initial design for the United States’ planned Space Station Freedom in the late 1980s.
These records show the progression of quality control planning, standards, and design implemented by NASA and JSC as the various space programs developed from the 1960s through the 1980s. Briggs’ most important records are his copies of original manuals, handbooks, and other records, he created or used while assigned as NASA’s quality control engineer for the Lunar Module at Grumman Aircraft between 1963 and 1969. The other set of extremely important records in this collection are Briggs’ copies of the original West Germany Biostack experiment projects design, implementation, and report records—many in German.
Aaron Cohen was born in Corsicana, Texas on January 5, 1931. After graduating from Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1952, Cohen served as a U.S. Army officer for two years during the Korean War era. On returning to civilian life, he worked for RCA as a microwave tube design engineer from 1954 to 1958, whereupon he moved to General Dynamics Corporation. In 1958, Cohen received a Master of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from Stevens Institute of Technology.
In 1962, Cohen joined NASA as a structures and materials engineer in the Spacecraft Research Division. He assumed positions of progressively greater responsibility until he was named manager of the Apollo Command and Service Modules in 1969. Cohen held this position until 1972, when he became manager of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Office. In this capacity, Cohen oversaw the design, development, production, and test flights of the Space Shuttle orbiters. In 1982, he was promoted to Director of Engineering at the Johnson Space Center, and four years later, he became director of the center. He served in that post until 1992. Aaron Cohen then served as the Acting Deputy Administrator of NASA between February 19, 1992, and November 1, 1992. In 1993, Cohen retired from NASA to become H.B. Zachry Professor of Engineering at Texas A&M University, his alma mater, while simultaneously serving as a senior technical advisor for Kistler Aerospace Corporation in Kirkland, Washington.
The collection covers Aaron Cohen’s career from 1954 to 2009 with biographical and personnel data; correspondence; writings, speeches, and interviews by Cohen; documents from RCA, NASA, and Texas A& M University; NASA presentations and proposals; honors and awards; reports and studies; slides and transparencies; publications; business cards; and DVD recordings of class lectures. Box 1 contains biographical data, correspondence, writings by Cohen, speeches and interviews by him, and schematic drawings from RCA. Box 2 contains other RCA documents and NASA presentations. Box 3 contains additional NASA presentations and proposals, information on honors and awards, information on Cohen’s participation in AeroAstro annual, and a report on space exploration cost. Box 4 contains NASA reports and studies as well as publications and newspaper clippings and flyers, slides, photographs, and transparencies. Box 5 contains miscellaneous documents, business cards, and DVDs of Cohen’s lectures at MIT.
The Allan DuPont Papers is composed of internal NASA presentations, professional presentations, memos, and other related documentation, from NASA employee Allan DuPont’s time working in the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) Subsystem at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, from 1963 to 2016. The majority of the collection consists PowerPoint-style presentation slide pages (printouts and transparencies). Topics within the collection include Rendezvous Proximity Operations & Capture Rendezvous (RPOC) between the International Space Station and various service vehicles; the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle; the European Space Agency Automated Transfer Vehicle; detailing of the development, testing and integration of the H-II Transfer vehicle and Automated Transfer Vehicle with NASA and the ISS; and other topics.
The David L. Eichblatt Papers is composed of memos, correspondence, photographs, booklets, manuals, notes, maps, design plans, articles, scientific test information, scientific data, and miscellaneous materials, documenting the service of David L. Eichblatt at NASA Johnson Space Center from 1964 to 2009. Most of this collection consists of data Eichblatt collected as an engineer while he worked constructing, planning, and testing the aerodynamics on different spacecraft for NASA and the U.S. Air Force—mostly with the Space Shuttle orbiter program. During this period, he was in charge of the simulation programs for the testing of the Space Shuttle orbiters.
Eichblatt’s projects included testing flights by comparing tire speeds, rollouts, landing, touchdowns, nose wheel contact, tail cone effects, number of engines, engine weights and fuel, parachutes, wings and parawing models, in different weather conditions, runway conditions, and different gravity effects for spacecraft and aircraft used by NASA. The collection contains study booklets prepared by Eichblatt, such as a take-off and landing performance study for the space shuttle orbiter vehicle in 1970, with data collection and hand-drawn aircraft information in them. There are materials documenting Eichblatt’s role in the simulation programs for the Shuttle, including the landing dynamics program, which simulated orbiter separation and derotation of the Shuttle orbiter following touchdown through nose wheel contact. There are research materials on the feasibility for the use of the modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to transport the Shuttle orbiter in the 1970s.
The collection includes a set of photographs, a hand drawing, and data collection used by Eichblatt during his role in testing for a lunar motorcycle between 1969 and 1970. The collection also includes a set of rare, square photographic prints documenting his involvement in the Australian landing sites evaluation and survey with the Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV) in 1993. This was part of the U.S. and Russia examining whether Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft could serve as stop-gap lifeboat spacecraft as NASA was designing a lifeboat for use for their planned Space Station Freedom. These are very unique images of an international NASA partnership with Australian space exploration personnel. The collection has an article, landing observations information, meeting agendas, photographs, documents, English-Russian translations, and letters, from Eichblatt’s role as leader of NASA team of four Americans and one Australian to Russia and Kazakhstan to observe the landing and recovery of the Soyuz TM-16 crew and capsule.
Joe D. Gamble was assigned to work with the group responsible for the aerodynamics and flight mechanics analysis for human spacecraft at NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, starting around 1963-1964. Gamble supported the Gemini and Apollo Programs by performing simulations and analyses of the Apollo launch escape system and entry capsule. He developed a twelve degree of freedom computer simulation for analyzing parachutes and payloads, that was eventually used by NASA Langley Research Center in support of the Viking Mars missions. Joe Gamble helped develop the aerodynamic requirements for the Space Shuttle Orbiter. He was a member of the team responsible for the development and verification of the Orbiter entry flight control system.
Between 1986 and 1988, Gamble manage the aerocapture and landing portion of contracts with Martin Marietta, Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in support of a project intended to return a soil sample from Mars. Between 1990 and 1993, Joe Gamble served as NASA’s Chief Engineer for the Space Station Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV) project, where he directed the efforts of 35 NASA engineers. As Chief Engineer, he managed the engineering portions of ACRV contracts with Rockwell International, Lockheed Missiles, and Space Corporation.
The Joe D. Gamble Papers is composed of original materials Joe D. Gamble gathered from his personal work files while employed at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, from his time working there between around 1963 and 1993. Most of the material in this collection is from his time as the Chief Engineer for the Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV) Program, that began under the Space Station Freedom (SSF) Program and then transitioned to the International Space Station (ISS) Program. It covers his work with the Soviet Union on the use by NASA of the use of a modified Russian Soyuz vehicle for the Space Station rescue vehicle.
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