July 20, 2004
T.S. Hopkins Remember 1969? It
was the year of the first major U.S. oil spill off the California
coast, the year "Easy Rider" opened, the year of Woodstock, the year of
the first draft lottery since 1942. And it was 1969 ‹ 35 years ago today ‹ when an Apollo 11 astronaut first walked on the moon, carried there by rockets that were tested right here in Las Cruces. "I relive that moment every day of my life," Las Crucen Archie Beckett said Monday. "I'm proud to have been a part of it." Beckett,
now 77, was a young mechanical engineer and a graduate of New Mexico
State University when he came to work at NASA's White Sands Test
Facility east of Las Cruces. With eight years' experience at a
petroleum company, Beckett came to the NASA site because he wanted in
on the ground floor of the space program. "We were doing testing
on the rocket engines at the NASA site before there was a ground
floor," Beckett joked. "I started with NASA in Las Cruces in 1964 when
they were just getting ready to build the LEM's (Lunar Excursion
Module). There were all kinds of glitches, but we overcame them." Crews
at the site made the first test firing of the Apollo project's large
service propulsion engine in September 1964, according to information
from NASA spokesman Ray Melton. Beckett worked with a team of 20 engineers and technicians that performed those tests on the mesa east of Las Cruces. "We
had a schedule and tasks to complete every day," Beckett recalled. "We
were working 20-hour days and never thought about it because the tasks
had to be completed." Beckett said his boss called him one night
about midnight to tell him to sleep in, have a good breakfast, go to
church and be back at the site by noon. "That's the way it was, but we didn't care," Beckett said. Beckett
credits the space program for developing the miniaturization of
components to fit into the space capsule, the development of computers
and many everyday items like cellular telephones. Through the
years of the space program there have been tragedies, including the
Challenger launch explosion in 1986 and last winter's Columbia shuttle
that burned up on re-entry over Texas. Beckett also recalled the launch-pad fire in Apollo's early years that killed three astronauts. "I
was the chief investigator in the death of Virgil Grissom, Ed White and
Roger Chaffee in 1967," Beckett said. "I went to the Cape (Cape
Canaveral) to see the capsule." Beckett said the hatch on the
capsule opened inward to create a tighter seal on the door, but made it
impossible to exit in a hurry. "I had just built my kids a T-bar
slide attached to a 30-foot pole," Beckett said. "I changed the design
some, but we attached a cable from the capsule to be used in an
emergency and all the astronauts had to be trained to slide down 489
feet from the top of the capsule to the ground." Beckett chuckled as he recalled talking with astronauts about the cable. "One of them said, ŒYeah, I'm going to space, but I'm never sliding down that cable again.'" According to Melton, 19 current NASA site employees were a part of the Apollo Program between 1963 and 1972. The
site will mark today with an informal display of Apollo memorabilia for
employees and those who were involved in the program through the years. T.S. Hopkins can be reached at [email protected] In observance € The New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo will mark the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon mission with special exhibitions and free admission from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday. €
Among the exhibits is the model of the moon used by Walter Cronkite to
point out the landing to a world television audience and many photos of
men on the moon for the first time.
Sun-News reporter
I am the Marketing Director at the NM Museum of Space History. There are two errors relating to this article that I am aware of. First, it is the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. Second, the museum is not offering free admission on Wednesday. Please call the Museum at 575-437-2840 for more information on what we are doing. thank you.
Posted by: Cathy Harper | July 21, 2009 at 08:15 AM
Guess I should have read the date on this article! LOL
Posted by: Cathy Harper | July 21, 2009 at 08:16 AM