tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post8483815409150488700..comments2024-03-27T00:26:31.343-07:00Comments on The Commercial Space Blog: Part 8: 150 Years of Canadian Aerospace HistoryChuck Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506476753520146858noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post-59088691376737718832017-05-18T20:06:10.037-07:002017-05-18T20:06:10.037-07:00Thanks for the anecdote Kieran. STEM was definitel...Thanks for the anecdote Kieran. STEM was definitely on Mercury, starting with Sigma 7. I have a NASA document where someone compares the different companies and their proposed technologies for long rigid antennae. I can't remember the date on it, but it clearly suggests that NASA looked at several domestic options before settling on STEM. Phil Lapp's memoir (advertised below) clearly outlines how he was invited by Chapman to visit the NRC to look at Klein's small prototype. He then returned to Downsview and working with McNaughton and Ernie Groskopfs they developed a magnetic "drawing" process to make a STEM like the one you describe, i.e. VERY long. This all seems to have come from the need to make Alouette, which although it didn't fly until late 1962 was actually announced in early 1959. This would seem to suggest that Maynard's encounter with STEM would have to be very late 1959 but more likely some time in 1960-61. <br />Rob Godwinhttp://apogeebooks.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post-72673670801094140462017-05-09T09:46:20.575-07:002017-05-09T09:46:20.575-07:00Rob --- this seems a good place to document one of...Rob --- this seems a good place to document one of the many anecdotes that Owen Maynard told me, back in 1994. Because, it ties together Owen with the STEM work at DeHavilland under Phil Lapp. (Interestingly/strangely, while Owen and Phil were nearly contemporaneous, e.g., both attending U of T's Ajax Division engineering only one year apart from each other, and both went on to become leading space engineers, Phil told me that they never met. He knew of Owen back then, but their paths never ended up crossing.)<br /><br />(As far as I know, this was not one of Owen's told-many-times anecdotes; I may be the only one he told this to.)<br /><br />This anecdote Owen told me during the 1994 ISDC in Toronto (held by the CSS, of which I was then President), during a tour of SPAR's Brampton facility that I arranged for the "NASA Canadians" who attended. The SPAR host talked about SPAR's space history, including of course about STEM tubes and their role in Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. After the meeting, Owen told me about seeing a prototype STEM at DeHavilland Canada, in the 1950s. At that time, Owen must have been an engineer at Avro. He was also a member of the RCAF reserves (which he joined, after his stint as an RCAF flying officer and Mosquito pilot in WWII), in Toronto Squadron, which operated out of the RCAF base that shared Downsview field with DHC. Apparently the DHC and RCAF people at Downsview were fairly chummy. Owen said that one day when he was on-base, hanging out by one of the hangars with some other pilots, a DHC engineer called them over to "show them something interesting". He stood at one side of an open hangar door, holding a box with a hand-crank on it. He proceeded to operate the crank, whereupon a tube started to emerge from the box. He kept cranking, until the tube spanned the distance from one side of the hangar doorway to the other (some tens of feet), the tube showing no sign of sagging, and obviously pretty stiff and light-weight. He thought that pretty neat.<br /><br />A few years later Owen was at NASA Langley working at the Space Task Group as a new-hire, doing various systems engineering tasks. One design problem being worked by Caldwell Johnson (one of the senior Mercury design engineers) had to do with stowing and deploying radio antennas. Owen remembered the neat demo from the DHC guy, and mentioned it to Johnson, giving him contact info for people at DHC. <br /><br />Owen then moved on to other things, and didn't follow it up himself. However, STEMs ended up being incorporated into Gemini and Apollo spacecraft (and maybe Mercury as well). Perhaps Owen's memory of that early DHC STEM tube demo, and his passing the contact info along to Johnson, was the initial connection between SPAR and the US manned space program. In which case, that's the closest that Owen and Phil Lapp came to crossing paths, as Phil was leading the group that developed the STEM as a product for DHC.<br /><br />Of course, the STEM product ended up leading to bigger and better things for SPAR in the US manned space program, including the Canadarms. And most of the rest of Canada's space program has flowed out of that. It certainly is interesting to think that almost our entire space program can be traced back to that one chance event in Downsview!<br /><br />Now, maybe DHC's route into Gemini and Apollo with the STEM product actually followed a different path. It'd be interesting to dig into this. Sadly, most of the principals involved are now passed away --- Owen, Caldwell Johnson, Phil Lapp, John McNaughton (who was DHC's lead for their STEM product line). (I wish I had thought to ask Phil about this anecdote, when I had the chance...) Maybe some space historian could try looking into the old files at Northrop Grumman's Astro Aerospace division in California, which is where SPAR's STEM business ended up.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12960084427838224646noreply@blogger.com