Latest news with #Grumman
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Ed Smylie, Nasa engineer whose quick thinking saved the lives of the Apollo 13 crew
Ed Smylie, who has died aged 95, was an American engineer who led the team at Nasa which saved the imperiled crew of the crippled US moon ship Apollo 13 from suffocating in their own exhaled carbon dioxide. With typical Nasa engineers' disdain for superstition, Apollo 13 was launched from Florida on April 11 1970 at 13:13 hours (Mission Control, Houston time). It planned to make America's third lunar landing, in the undulating highlands at Fra Mauro crater, amid increasing public apathy about the space programme. Two days later, on the evening of April 13, as they were closing a live television broadcast an oxygen tank exploded with a loud bang and disabled their craft. The shaken crew radioed home the legendary understatement usually misquoted as: 'Houston, we have a problem.' The moon landing was abandoned, and the crew of James Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise manually navigated around the Moon on to a course back to Earth. Their primary spacecraft, the command module, was no longer viable, but the lunar lander was available to provide limited power and propulsion. Had it not still been attached the crew would have been doomed. Remaining oxygen supplies were adequate, but a few hours later Smylie and his team suddenly realised that another issue would soon become critical for survival – carbon dioxide. Exhaled in the crew's breath, this gas has to be filtered from the cabin atmosphere by lithium hydroxide canisters. High concentrations cause confusion, reduced brain function, loss of consciousness and eventually death by asphyxiation. There were plenty of square canisters in the now powered-down command module, built by North American Aviation, but they were not compatible with the cylindrical ones in the lander, built by Grumman. The need to swap them over had never been envisaged. Smylie and two colleagues worked through the night to devise a method to make the command module's canister fit the lander's receptacle. First, he asked for a list of miscellaneous items aboard Apollo 13, the only things the astronauts had available with which to cobble together something that might work. When he saw duct tape on the list, Smylie breathed a sigh of relief: 'I felt like we were home free. One thing a southern boy will never say is: 'I don't think duct tape will fix it'.' The final contraption also involved a sock, the flight plan binder, hoses from their space suits and a plastic bag. After testing at Mission Control, assembly instructions were radioed up to the bemused crew. When they switched it on, carbon dioxide levels began dropping immediately. It was the ultimate solution for fitting a square peg into a round hole. In a memorable scene from the 1995 film Apollo 13, a character based on Smylie empties a box of duct tape, plastic bags, hoses and other items on to a table, then holds up the Command Module's square canister and the lander's round one. 'We've got to make this fit into the hole made for this,' he says, then gestures toward the pile of junk, 'using nothing but this.' Smylie was later described by Time magazine as an 'improvisational genius'. Robert Edwin Smylie was born on December 25 1929 to Robert Smylie and Leona, née White, at his grandparents' farm in Mississippi; his father managed an ice-making plant. After service in the US Navy he took bachelors and masters degrees in mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University and later earned a masters in management from MIT. After a period with Douglas Aircraft, he joined Nasa in 1962 as head of life systems, then became head of the environmental control systems branch at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. He rose to chief of crew systems division, his role during the Apollo 13 emergency. He later assumed more senior posts at Nasa headquarters in Washington. For his service to the space programme, particularly his role in saving the Apollo 13 crew, Smylie and his team received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Richard Nixon. Ed Smylie married June Reeves in 1954. They had two daughters and a son but divorced; his second wife, of 41 years, Carolyn Hall, died in 2024. His children survive him along with two stepchildren. Ed Smylie, born December 25 1929, died April 21 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Cat Name Should Northrop Grumman Give Its Fighter If It Wins The Navy's F/A-XX Competition?
Northrop has had a rough go of it with its new fighter projects going back four decades, and many would argue undeservingly so. The YF-23 Black Widow and the F-20 Tiger Shark are still considered 'what could have been' fighters, especially the former. Even after the company merged with Grumman in 1994, the latter had not produced a new fighter since the F-14 Tomcat, which was by then out of production. Now, with the F/A-XX Next Generation Air Dominance Navy fighter contract about to be announced, and just Northrop Grumman and Boeing in the running, the storied aircraft maker that is now better known for its stealth bombers could claw its way back into the fighter business — and it will likely need a new cat name for its flying creation if it does. The Grumman cat monikers date back to the World War II era, with the firm naming its naval fighters after many types of menacing felines. The last of these was Tomcat, of course, but many came before it — Wildcat, Hellcat, Bearcat, Tigercat, and more. So, should Northrop Grumman win the big stakes F/A-XX contract, what cat name should be bestowed upon this new hyper-advanced tactical jet that will likely be the last manned fighter the Navy will ever buy? I did a handful of posts on X regarding this question. I then took commenters' most well-received responses – Shadowcat, Thundercat, Bobcat (as this aircraft will also likely be tailless), and Sabercat – and put them into a poll. After 2,761 responses, here are the results: If Northrop Grumman wins the F/A-XX NGAD naval fighter contract, what cat name should they give it? Below is refined from commenter suggestions from my previous threads on this. An no, I didn't add IIs (Tomcat II, Hellcat II etc. because that sucks). Now vote for the finalists! — Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) March 26, 2025 Alleycat, Blackcat, and others popped up as honorable mentions, as well, but Thundercat is the clear winner, which isn't that surprising. It's a powerful name, but it's also the title of what was a hugely popular cartoon from the 1980s, ThunderCats. The show about space-faring humanoid cats ran from 1985 to 1989 and was then revived twice in the 2010s. There has been a lot of chatter that the show is going to get a giant Hollywood adaptation soon. So there is a lot of pop culture relevance there beyond the cool-sounding name. So, what do you think Northrop Grumman's naval fighter should be named if the company gets the shot to build it? Give us your best feline fighter nickname in the comments below. Contact the author: Tyler@
