TPi July 2019

Products & developments

A Superior role in putting man on the Moon 50 years ago, on 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module on the surface of the Moon and took the first historic steps while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command and Service Module. All three landed safely back on Earth four days later. Superior Tube, part of Ametek Specialty Metal Products, played a significant role in the achievement. on which the planning of the Apollo landings depended, Surveyor 1 landed on the Moon on 2 June, 1966, the first US probe to land on an extra-terrestrial body. The Superior tubes are still on the Moon.

Superior Tube was by now an important supplier to many customers responsible for the development and manufacture of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and other aspects of the Apollo programme. Project Apollo was the third USA human spaceflight programme carried out by NASA. The idea of a three-man spacecraft that could travel to, and return from, the Moon was first conceived during the presidency of Dwight D Eisenhower and ran from 1961 to 1972. It followed the earlier one- man Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space, and the two-man Project Gemini, which was designed to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo. Superior Tube supplied tubing for Atlas, the booster rockets that powered both the Mercury missions and later Gemini space programmes, and one Superior Tube advertisement that ran in the 1980s rightfully claimed that almost 200 Atlas engines had been launched and “no flight failures had been attributed to tubing malfunctions”. Superior Tube went on to make several significant contributions to the Apollo programme. The company produced nickel-based Inconel X-750 tubing for the first giant 1.5mn-lb thrust Rocketdyne F-1 engines that powered the Apollo Saturn V launch vehicle. It was the Apollo 11 mission that put man on the Moon, but Superior Tube was also involved in later Apollo missions, most notably Apollo 14, launched on 31 January, 1971. On that mission the Service Module carried a redesigned oxygen tank that incorporated Superior’s Inconel X-750. It is impossible to imagine what the experience of being the first man on the Moon would have been like, but Superior Tube is delighted to have played a part in making it happen. Superior Tube – USA sales.superiortube@ametek.com www.superiortube.com

In every decade since it was founded in 1934, the company has pioneered the use of new tubing materials and the development of innovative tubing technologies to meet the demanding requirements of customers who were themselves often breaking through the scientific and technological barriers of the day. That record was particularly evident during the 1960s when Superior Tube entered the space age. For example, Superior Tube was responsible for the tubing for the ballistic control system thrusters in the X-15, the rocket research aircraft that set new altitude and speed records, reaching in excess of Mach 6 (4,500 mph). Each system consisted of two small 40-lb thrust roll control rocket motors for which approximately 140 feet of tubing was needed – tubing that had to perform reliably both in and out of the Earth’s atmosphere. This move into the development and supply of tubing for rocketry and space projects was, in some respects, a natural progression for Superior Tube. The first rocket project for Superior Tube was the Bell X-1, which broke the sound barrier in 1947. In large part, the company’s increasing involvement in the space age happened because it was already an approved supplier to a number of the key aerospace contractors who were themselves being approached by government agencies to fulfil these new, ground-breaking programmes. The company’s real journey into space began in earnest with the OSO (Orbiting Solar Observatory) programme, which consisted of a series of scientific satellites designed to investigate solar phenomena and to conduct a number of non-solar experiments. OSO 1, launched by NASA in 1962, featured titanium

tubing manufactured by Superior Tube for the satellite’s compressed nitrogen guidance system and for a methane purging system required for the ‘soft X-ray’ experiments. In the same year, Superior contributed to Telstar 1, the world’s first communica- tions satellite, which successfully relayed the first TV pictures, telephone calls and fax images to be sent through space. In 1964, Superior supplied Type 304 stain- less steel tubing for the tiny radiometers in an early weather satellite. From cool- ing tubes for the launch vehicles to com- ponents within the satellites themselves, Superior was a pioneering participant in the earliest satellite technology. 1964 also saw the launch of the Mariner 4 spacecraft. The fourth in a series of deep space probes, Mariner 4 was designed to provide close-up observations of Mars and was equipped with three 1" bright Type 305 stainless steel tubes manufactured by Superior Tube for each of the craft’s closed- circuit TV cameras. These cameras then transmitted back to Earth the first ever fly-by pictures of the Martian surface. As far as the Moon was concerned, it was about a lot more than fly-by. While Neil Armstrong was the first man to stand on the moon, Superior Tube products had already been there. The successful soft- landing Surveyor spacecraft, launched from 1966 to 1968 in preparation for the manned Apollo missions, incorporated Superior’s Weldrawn Type 305 stainless steel as critical parts of the precision electron guns in the Vidicon TV camera tubes. Designed to obtain high- resolution photos of the lunar surface and determine the nature of lunar soil

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TUBE PRODUCTS INTERNATIONAL July 2019

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