dcn@ihuxl.UUCP (Dave Newkirk) (12/14/85)
Early in the S-IV program, a stage enroute from Huntington Beach to Santa Monica for transfer to a barge collided with one of nature's denizens. H.E. Bauer, then a senior S-IV manager with Douglas, easily recalled the novel circumstances. It happened early in the morning, with the loaded transporter creeping at 6.4 kilometers per hour. "At that speed nothing much should happen," Bauer reminisced, "but, incredible as it may sound, we did run right over a very mature and ripe skunk." By a stroke of luck, the stage itself escaped unscathed, but the transporter remained a large, odoriferous problem - "we had a 23 1/2 ft. wide, 46 1/2 ft. long, 22,000 lb. skunk on our hands." With other missions pending for the one-of-a-kind transporter, the Douglas Aircraft Company chemists who devised an effective deodorizer ranked high on the list of unsung heroes of the Saturn program. From "Stages to Saturn - A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles", available from the "Superindendant of Documents", U.S. Gov't Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. Order NASA SP-4206, $12.00. -- Dave Newkirk, ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn