Steve Bales
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Steve Bales is a former NASA engineer and flight controller. He is best known for his role during the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
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[edit] Early life
Bales was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, and grew up in the nearby town of Fremont. His father was a school janitor and his mother was a beautician. From a young age he had an interest in space; at the age of thirteen he was deeply affected by a Disneyland show that discussed the future of space travel. "This show," he said later, "probably more than anything else, influenced me to study aerospace engineering. And this wasn't the ordinary thing to do for a boy raised in a small Iowa farming community." [1]
He graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering, and was hired by NASA in December, 1964. [2]
[edit] NASA career
At NASA he was assigned to work in the Flight Dynamics branch as a Guidance officer, a flight controller whose responsibility was determining the location of the spacecraft in space, and monitoring the guidance systems on board. He was a backup controller for Gemini 3 and Gemini 4, but worked his first mission as a flight controller in his own right on Gemini 10, when he was still only twenty-three.[3]
[edit] Apollo 11
Steve Bales is best known for having been Guidance officer during the Apollo 11 lunar landing, when he dealt with several problems that could have ended the mission. In charge of monitoring the lunar module's position and velocity, he came close to having to call an abort when it became clear that a navigational error had occurred. The spacecraft was moving at 20 feet per second faster than it should have been, and was halfway to its abort limits. However, Bales continued to monitor the data, and the situation remained stable.
The last few minutes of the landing were punctuated by program alarms from the guidance computer. These alarms signified an "Executive overflow," which meant that the computer was potentially failing to keep up with its computing tasks. Bales had to rapidly determine whether or not this failure was serious. If high-priority computing tasks were not being completed, he would have to call for an abort.
While Bales is sometimes credited for having made the decision on his own,[4] in fact he worked, like all flight controllers, with the assistance of a team of "backroom" engineers. It was twenty-four year old Jack Garman, a computer specialist, who first recognized the meaning of the alarm and determined that the situation was acceptable. As Bales said later: "quite frankly, Jack, who had these things memorized said, 'that's okay', before I could even remember which group it was in". [5] The final decision lay with Bales however, as did the responsibility if anything went wrong.
His decision--to go ahead with the landing--was the correct one, and Apollo 11 landed safely. When President Richard Nixon awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the three Apollo 11 astronauts, Steve Bales was also honored by being chosen to accept a NASA Group Achievement Award on behalf of the entire mission operations team. "This is the young man," said the President, "when the computers seemed to be confused and when he could have said 'Stop,' or when he could have said 'Wait,' said, 'Go.'"[6]
[edit] Later career
Bales remained at NASA until 1996, at which point he was Deputy Director of Operations at Johnson Space Center. After leaving NASA, he took a position at Amspec Chemical in New Jersey. [7]
[edit] In films
Bales was played by Andy Milder in the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. He was also interviewed in the History Channel documentary Failure Is Not an Option and the NOVA documentary To the Moon.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Watkins, Billy (2006). Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes. Connecticut: Praeger.
- ^ Flight Controller Assignments (PDF). Retrieved on July 12, 2006.
- ^ Ibid
- ^ For example, see The Eagle Has Landed: 20 Years After Apollo 11, Houston Chronicle, July 16, 1989.
- ^ Lindsay, Hamish. Apollo 11. Retrieved on July 11, 2006.
- ^ Richard Nixon: Remarks at a Dinner in Los Angeles Honoring the Apollo 11 Astronauts
- ^ Watkins, Billy. Apollo Moon Missions.
[edit] References
- Flight Controller Assignments (PDF). Retrieved on July 12, 2006.
- Marshall, Thom, Kreps, Mary Ann; Chriss, Nicholas C.. "The Eagle Has Landed: 20 Years After Apollo 11", Houston Chronicle, July 16, 1989. Retrieved on July 12, 2006.
- Murray, Charles; Cox, Catherine Bly (1989). Apollo: The Race to the Moon. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-61101-1.
- Nixon, Richard. Richard Nixon: Remarks at a Dinner in Los Angeles Honoring the Apollo 11 Astronauts. Retrieved on July 13, 2006.
- Watkins, Billy (2006). Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes. Connecticut: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-98702-7.
