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From: dcn@ihuxl.UUCP (Dave Newkirk)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Stages to Saturn #5
Message-ID: <1664@ihuxl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Dec-85 18:42:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxl.1664
Posted: Fri Dec 13 18:42:40 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Dec-85 08:11:48 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 19

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