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Goodyear's tire-shaped station ahead of its time, gives Akron a place in aerospace design
By Mark J. Price
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Monday, Jul 06, 2009
In the early 1960s, Goodyear Aircraft Corp. designed, financed and built a curious object that could lift the United States over the Soviet Union in a race toward the cosmos.
Proud corporate officials rolled out a three-story prototype for a NASA space station.
The Akron-made structure — described as ''a circular, tubelike affair'' — featured an inflatable fabric ring attached by thick spokes to a solid hub.
In other words, it resembled a giant tire. Or maybe a really big inner tube.
What else did people expect from the Rubber Capital of the World?
Truthfully, the shape wasn't our idea. German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun championed the doughnut design in the early 1950s because its rotation would simulate gravity while orbiting the Earth.
''We at Goodyear Aircraft feel there is an impelling need to place men — especially those in the sciences — in outer space to begin the difficult but intriguing task of unlocking cosmic secrets,'' President Thomas A. Knowles announced in 1962.
If the station happened to look like another Goodyear product, well, so be it.
The 1,800-pound model was 30 feet in diameter, with a metal canister hub 12 feet long and 8 feet in diameter. It provided quarters for three to 10 people, who ''could live and work in a shirt-sleeve environment,'' Knowles said.
Scientists planned to launch the hub on a rocket. When it reached a certain orbit, the compacted ring would inflate automatically and begin to rotate with the use of external jets. Astronauts would then crawl from the hub through a spoke to the outer ring.
The rubberized fabric, woven with textile fibers and metal threads, was said to be leakproof and puncture resistant. In lab tests, scientists had bombarded the fabric with projectiles to simulate meteorites. Just in case, though, astronauts could add a ''quick-setting plastic foam'' to strengthen the structure.
S. Joseph Pipitone, manager of the space systems division at Goodyear Aircraft, assured that the station was ''safer than getting into your car and going out on the highway.''
One of the vessel's key innovations was a power-generating system.
''Self-contained heat and power will be provided by huge expandable solar heat collectors of coated fabrics,'' Pipitone told the Beacon Journal.
''These collectors will support a thin metallic film to collect and concentrate the thermal energy of the sun for the operation of a power plant within the space platform.''
The station's interior contained sleeping quarters, a galley, control post, communications center and equipment for performing scientific tests. Built-in furnishings — bunks, tables, desks and chairs — would be inflatable and made with rubberized fabric and nylon cords.
Astronauts would eat dehydrated foods encased in flexible plastic containers. By adding water, they could enjoy ham and eggs for breakfast, chicken and rice for lunch and beef and gravy for dinner.
Doughnut's debut
Overall, the project cost Goodyear Aircraft about $500,000 — more than $3.5 million in today's money. After two years of research and development, the company unveiled the model in August 1962 in a wind tunnel at NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland.
The ceremony attracted reporters from across the nation, including the Associated Press, United Press International, New York Times and ABC, CBS and NBC television. TV anchors Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and John Cameron Swayze presented reports about the promising technology.
Addressing the audience, Knowles said: ''In substance, what we have here is an early model house in the sky — one in which astronauts and space scientists could live and work in comfort and safety for extended periods of time — and thus develop the familiarity and experience with which to successfully cope with the hazards of the ventures which lie beyond, and also provide an orbital base of operations for such enterprises as our explorations expand ever outward toward the stars.''
He predicted that the United States would put a manned space station in orbit by late 1965. The next logical step was to build a station 100 feet in diameter and weighing 16,000 pounds.
One more thing. It didn't have to be a giant wheel. Scientists could create ''spheres, ellipsoids, paraboloids, cylinders and other bodies of revolution.''
Old ideas, new uses
Alas, the U.S. government had other plans.
A year earlier, President John F. Kennedy had told a joint session of Congress: ''I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.''
Although NASA was interested in Akron's space station, the moon mission took priority.
Instead of feeling deflated, Goodyear Aircraft got with the program.
The company changed its name in 1963 to Goodyear Aerospace to reflect its widening interest in space exploration.
For the Gemini program, it developed a ballute system, an inflatable balloon-parachute combination that slowed the descent of spaceships re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
For the Apollo program, the company designed flotation bags that righted space capsules in the ocean after splashdown.
In 1968, MGM studio released director Stanley Kubrick's epic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on the work of science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. One of the film's dazzling effects was a rotating ship known as Space Station V.
It looked like a giant wheel.
On July 20, 1969, Ohio astronaut Neil Armstrong climbed out of Apollo 11's lunar module and stepped onto the moon's surface: ''That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.''
Apollo 11 astronauts peered through window frames that Goodyear Aerospace had built.
Akron's space station was ahead of its time.
Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send e-mail to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
Get the full article here.
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Posted 10:38 AM, 07/06/2009
If it had worked, it looks stronger than the present space station.
