satellite. From cooling tubes for their launch vehicles
to components 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 one-inch 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.
Of course, as far as the Moon was concerned, it
was about a lot more than fly-by. And 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 on which the planning of the Apollo landings
depended, Surveyor 1 landed on the Moon on June
2, 1966, the first US probe to land on an extra-
terrestrial body – and those Superior tubes are, in
fact, still there 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 program.
Project Apollo was the third United States human
spaceflight program carried out by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (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 famous
booster rockets that powered both the Mercury
missions and later Gemini space programs, and one
Superior Tube advertisement that ran in the 1980s
claimed, rightfully, 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 program. The company
produced nickel-based Inconel X-750 tubing for
the first giant 1.5 million lb thrust Rocketdyne F-1
engines that powered the Apollo Saturn V launch
vehicle. The company also supplied stainless steel
Type 347 tubing for the cryogenic LOX/liquid
hydrogen J-2 engines, five of which lifted the Saturn
V’s second stage while a single one powered the third
stage.
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 January 31, 1971. On that mission the Service
Module carried a re-designed oxygen tank which now
incorporated Superior’s Inconel X-750 – the reason
for this re-design being that the Apollo 13 mission
had been aborted two days into its flight when one of
its two SM oxygen tanks exploded.
Looking back, it is impossible for the rest of us to
imagine what the experience of being the first man
on the Moon must have been like. But Superior Tube
is still delighted to have played a part in making it
happen.
.
TUBE NEWS
June 2019
23