Read Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program for Free Online

quarter was offset by the quarters of work at the Lewis Research center. I worked in five different units there. One of them involved the study of the air cooling of a plugged nozzle used to vary exit area in the jet engine exhaust plane for optimum engine performance. One was jet engine testing in engineering cells. One was to investigate shock tubes and I had several tours in wind tunnels. The most advanced of these was a ten by ten foot test section at speeds up to Mach 3.
    Co-oping brought lasting rewards in beginning to understand technologies, analysis and testing. Jet engine testing relied on extensive pressure (and other) measurements throughout an engine. Today, you might marvel at how we took test points.

Glynn at College Graduation on left: Mom and Dad on right: Dot and Bernie Ostrowski

Pressure sensors were fed to a very large vertical board with many manometer tubes, side by side, a room full of them, with a background grid to measure the various mercury levels. As a test point stabilized and was taken, the field of manometers was photographed. This film was then provided to a room full of female data technicians, where they manually read the manometer tube levels in the photos and eventually calculated a pressure for each sensor. This then provided a pressure distribution either inside an engine or over the surface of an engine inlet. This was a very far cry from automated IT systems of modern times, but the process taught rigor, discipline and working with people.
    One of my assignments was the study of shock tubes to create a certain type of photograph, called “schleiren,” of supersonic shock wave patterns. Another was in various wind tunnels, including the ten-by-ten foot wind tunnel, which was unique in all the world. Because of the amount of electrical energy used from the Cleveland grid, it was only operated at night. I was the engineer on duty and did everything the technician, who knew all about facility, told me to do. Respect the source of knowledge, especially when you don’t know zip. Whenever we finished in the morning, I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and went to the Airport bar on Brookpark road for beer and breakfast.
    I really enjoyed my time as a co-op and the lessons lasted all my life. I remember George Smolak, George Wise, Len Obery, Jim Connor, Nick Samanich and Jim Useller, all of whom tried to help this young co-op. So many of the engineers at Lewis were great at what they did and in providing guidance and advice to a young kid. I thank them all.
     

Chapter Three: Graduating to the NACA Lewis Research Center
    My brief time at Lewis was fulfilling and a continuation of learning for later challenges. Looking back on my brief time at Lewis after graduation, I see it now as the calm before the storm. As a research center, there was a certain tempo and it was different from what the early manned spaceflight effort was. Lewis had many brilliant engineers engaging the day-to-day problems of our aviation industry and trying to provide solutions, usually in the form of NACA technical reports. They were also working subjects well before their time, such as long duration, low thrust engines for interplanetary trajectories.
    This work was lead by a man with the name of Wolfgang Moeckel. I doubt he ever knew of me but I was impressed with him, his work and the foresight he brought to this subject, many decades before it was ever seriously considered for flight. Lewis and the other NACA Centers, were intellectual property creators for the large and growing field of American aeronautics. The Center had the feel of a well-endowed University research organization. But NACA people were seldom directly involved in the application of their research by US Industry.
    At graduation, in June 1958, I joined a branch headed by George Low. At an early age, George caught the attention of NACA management, both in Cleveland and NASA headquarters in Washington D.C. He was a very talented and highly