The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘How could it have been done?’
Greenwich man, an engineer on Apollo 11, looks back in awe 50 years later
GREENWICH — Werner Roder heard the words loud and clear 50 years ago: “The Eagle has landed.”
It was Neil Armstrong, sending word back to Earth that American astronauts had successfully landed on the lunar surface in a module that Roder and other engineers at Grumman Aerospace had designed. Roder and his colleagues were too busy checking flow rates and temperature settings to take in the enormity of the moment — 3:17 p.m., July 20, 1969 — when humans first landed on the moon.
“We were so involved with the routine, working to support the mission, we didn’t realize the significance of what was happening,” recalled Roder, a longtime Greenwich resident. After a few minutes, the magnitude of the occasion sunk in. “One of the engineers stood up and said, ‘Do you realize the significance of what happened?’ Then we all jumped up — and said we can’t believe it.”
That sense of incredulity still lingers for Roder, and other observers of that bold flight from the Earth to the moon. Now, as the nation commemorates the Apollo 11 mission, in museum exhibits, documentaries and press coverage, Roder has been looking back on that fateful summer with a sense of awe and wonder. The softspoken engineer and aviator said he still marvels at the audacity of the mission, as well as the primitive nature of the tools and equipment that sent the Americans to the moon and back.
“It was rewarding to see that such a complex project could be accomplished,” he said. “When you look at all the parts that were put together – it was enormous, unending. The calculations, all the details of the parts fitting together, separating and maneuvering — how all this could be accomplished was incredible. And thousands and thousands of pieces of equipment – with no failures.”
In the era before laptops and data storage by the terabyte, when computer technology was still in its infancy, the tools of the trade Roder and his colleagues employed would have been familiar to someone designing valves and tubes in the 1900s. Roder used a slide rule to make calculations, designing and operating the mechanical flow of oxygen and other gases and liquids.
“My thoughts are: How could it have been done with the limited technology available at that time? The engineers did not even use calculators. Looking back, it’s baffling,” Roder said.
But it worked, and the mission was crowned with success when Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to rapturous acclaim.
Roder had a number of things in common with those astronauts, especially an early love of flight.
“Before I bought a car, I bought an airplane. I got my first pilot’s license before I ever drove a car. I was just fascinated by airplanes and flying,” said Roder, a New York City native who studied engineering, math and physics on his path toward the moon mission control room.
Working on the race to the moon that summer, he said, was accompanied by a keen sense of responsibility, knowing that lives were on the line: “Every critical system had to have a backup.”
There were moments of great danger during the age of space exploration, as the engineer can attest. Roder also worked on the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, the flight that almost went catastrophically wrong when an oxygen tank exploded on the second day. The badlydamaged craft was guided to a safe return by resourceful teamwork among astronauts and engineers. “Going to work, I was filled with worry. Extreme anxiety,” Roder recalled.
The engineer, now in his 70s, later turned his love of flying into a successful aviation career, piloting for Pan Am and the American Eagle division of American Airlines. Fifty years later, he says he feels a sense of gratitude — “How lucky I was to be associated with a project like that.”
Though it feels far away, we still live in a world created by the men and women who launched the Apollo rockets, in both the sense of adventure and exploration that they embodied, as well as the technology they developed, said Rick Bria, an amateur astronomer who fell in love with sky watching that summer. He can still remember the feeling of excitement as a fifthgrader in school.
“Everyone in my class wanted to be an astronaut at the time,” said Bria, vice president of the Astronomical Society of Greenwich. “It inspired people to become engineers or computer programmers. To me it was astronomy. I’ve been doing it since then.”
Bria said the rocket science that flowed from the Apollo missions directly and indirectly led to the computing revolution we are living through today. The use of miniaturization and new kinds of artificial laminates have also changed technology in everything from automobile manufacturing to airplane travel, he noted. “All that technology — materials technology, computer technology — it was all pulled from the space race. It’s all around us,” he said.
The moon landing also created a new awareness of Earth, paradoxically, seen from a new perspective. “We better take care of it. It’s not an infinite space,” said Bria, who runs telescopes in town and around the region.
Above all, the astronomer said, the space mission validated and rewarded an ancient human trait — curiosity and willingness to take big risks in pursuit of the unknown.
“It’s inherent in us,” the skywatcher said. “We’re explorers at heart, we’ve got to see what’s beyond.”