Pure Helium

 

When an accident occurs in any program that results in loss of life, the work done to prevent recurrence sometimes creates standards  that are almost impossible to meet. Here’s one such experience I had,

 

 

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Pure Helium

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 January 27, 1967, Astronauts Roger Chaffee, Virgil Grissom, and Edward White were killed at Cape Kennedy during a training exercise for the Apollo 1 mission. The crew died as a result of a fire within the spacecraft cabin. I think tragedies like this always seem to touch our lives in ways we never dreamed would happen.

 

 

Astronauts, from the left, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee stand near Cape Kennedy’s Launch Pad 34 during training for Apollo 1 in January 1967. Photo credit: NASA

 

 

Following this accident, the powers that be within the space program got busy and tightened up the specifications for liquid helium and other products provided for use on the space vehicles to the point that it was almost impossible to meet the specifications.

I was working as an Engineer  for Phillips Petroleum Company in Borger, Texas and had just been assigned as plant Engineer for our Greenwood Helium Plant where we produced 99.9999% pure liquid Helium at near absolute zero temperature and transported it in special vacuum insulated trucks to various locations in the United States,

 

Liquid Helium Trailer used to transport the liquid helium to various destinations in USA.

 

 

Someone in our Bartlesville Office signed a contract for Phillips Greenwood Plant to provide the space program liquid helium without understanding the new testing requirements or tightened specifications for the helium. The specs required we build a stainless steel vacuum insulated sample container and catch a sample from each truck load as it was loading and haul it to a lab and have the tests run before the truck left for its destination at Cape Kennedy. The sample container was about 2 feet diameter and 10 feet tall and had to be hauled in a pickup.

Liquid Helium sample container like the one we used to transport our samples to the Bureau of Mines for testing.

One of the new test specs called for less than 1 part per billion condensable hydrocarbon in the liquid helium and no test to this high degree of accuracy had ever been attempted by any lab anywhere. I spend hours on the phone with various laboratory and Bartlesville personnel and The Bureau Of Mines in Amarillo finally agreed to develop and run the test for us. When the first truck was loaded, we hot shotted the sample container to Amarillo and the ran all the required tests and approved the truck for shipment. So the truck headed for Cape Kennedy. I heard later that day that the truck had a leak and all the helium had leaked out on the way down. So we had to start over.

 

 

 

I don’t think we ever made any money off of that contract simply because the terms of the contract with the impossible specifications were not reviewed with the people that have to see that the specifications are met before the contract was signed. This was a very important lesson for me early in my career that helped me many times in future activities with Phillips. Make sure you can meet all the specifications before any contract is signed.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading Pure Helium,
Bill