Middletown, Ohio, Boldly Going Where No Town Has Gone Before

By Jessica Heffner, Middletown Journal, Ohio

Jul. 14–Space: Middletown’s new frontier.

Thanks to a $12 million NASA contract, a local facility will be manufacturing spacecraft heat shields for the U.S. government’s newest intergalactic project.

Aeronca Inc., located at 2320 Wedekind Drive in Middletown, will use its honeycomb technology to make the titanium shields for NASA’s Orion shuttle — an Apollo-style rocket meant to replace the current shuttle design used today, said Keith Wyman, the company’s director of sales and marketing.

To make the shields, the company will sandwich the brazed honeycomb alloy between two 16-foot titanium plates and then melt them together. The honeycomb material is already made in Middletown, but the titanium will be imported from Titanium Metals Corp. in Toronto, Ohio, he said.

Previously, shields were made of a stainless steel-type alloy, which is lower priced. However, titanium weighs 54 percent less than stainless, said John Foy, human resources director for Aeronca.

“It was selected mainly for weight, it’s key,” he said. “Every ounce is very important when you are trying to throw something into space.” The tooling for the shields is being designed by NASA’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, in Denver, Colo. Once the design is determined, Aeronca officials said they will know the thickness needed to protect Orion from the extreme temperatures it will face while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

Two test shields will be completed by late 2009, with a follow-on order from NASA for up to 28 more. If the government sticks with the Orion design, it means Middletown will be part of the space program for the foreseeable future, he said.

“The fact that Aeronca was able to procure a contract with NASA is huge news for them and for Middletown,” said Bill Murphy, the city’s economic development director.

It may be one small step for man, but it’s one giant leap for Middletown, he said.

NASA’s new Orion spacecraft program that will replace its current shuttle system may seem like a blast to the past for some.

The Apollo-type rocket design will replace the shuttles used today for space missions, said Neil Woodward, a director in the exploration systems mission directorate at NASA’s headquarters in Washington.

“Although Orion borrows its shape and aerodynamic performance from Apollo, the new capsule’s updated computers, electronics, life support, propulsion and heat protection systems represent a marked improvement over legacy systems,” he said. “We’re pushing the technological edge, but only where it makes sense.” For instance, one of the upgrades to the new capsule includes titanium heat shields. They will protect Orion from the extreme heat as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere as well as the extreme cold it would experience on the dark side of the moon, according to officials from Aeronca, the Middletown company awarded a $12 million contract to manufacture the shields.

Previously, shields were made of a 2-inch thick stainless steel alloy, which is weaker and heavier than titanium.

While current shuttles are adept at carrying large loads to the space station for replacement and repairs, they are not capable of making a trip to the moon and back — a major focus for NASA in the coming decade, said spokesman Grey Hautaluoma.

The Orion is specifically the capsule that can hold four astronauts for a trip to the moon and six for a trip to the space station.

The Ares I rocket will jettison the capsule into space while the more powerful Ares V will carry cargo — such as the Lunar Lander — which the Orion can dock within orbit for use, Hau taluoma said.

The new spacecraft also will include an abort system, a motor system capable of pulling the Orion module free of the Ares I launching rocket in case of an emergency.

“It’s a safety plus over the shuttle. Since the (capsule is) on top of the rocket, you don’t have to worry about the foam coming off the external rocket and dinging the shuttle and damaging it as we saw in the Columbia incident,” he said.

By 2015, NASA officials hope the Orion will be ready for missions to the International Space Station and for trips to the moon by 2020.

NASA officials hope astronauts will be able to build habitats on the moon and learn more about living on a planetary body in preparation for possible trips to Mars, Hautaluoma said.

“There is so much we still don’t know about the moon or what life is like there,” he said. “We need to conquer that first.”

MIDDLETOWN HISTORICALLY HAS NERVES OF STEEL IN SPACE RACE: It took nerves of steel to keep up with the constant demands of the aviation and aerospace market in the 1960s and ’70s, and in Middletown NASA found just such people.

It was a new program called Apollo, in which NASA’s leaders had the crazy idea to rocket astronauts into space to explore the moon. They needed technology that would be capable of protecting the men inside the Apollo crew capsule from the cold, oxygen-free voids of space and prevent it from burning up as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

In enters Aeronca Inc., a development facility that had just completed developing and manufacturing the B-70 plane and were working on Saturn rocket, the nation’s first dedicated space launcher, said Don Allen, 77, of Springboro, a retired Aeronca project engineer.

It was the type of company NASA was looking for to launch its plans for space travel, he said.

“It was very hectic but it was an exciting time for me. We were one the eve of something new, on the tale end of the Saturn project,” he said.

Using the brazed honeycomb alloy Aeronca developed to reduce the sound of jet engines, the company applied it with a high-intensity stainless steel called ph14-8Mo, which was developed by Armco (now AK Steel Corp.), according to a Journal article published July 23, 1995.

The shields were extremely expensive — composed of 98 percent silver — but the 2-inch thickness was able to protect the capsule from the high temperatures of atmosphere re-entry while not cracking from the low temperatures on the dark side of the moon, Allen said.

Despite testings, Allen said he was on edge during the Apollo program’s first launches, include Apollo 7 when the first manned spacecraft orbited the Earth and Apollo 11′s crew landed on the moon.

“I stayed up all night watching the moon shows,” he said.

Plans orbited around Middletown as Aeronca employees helped NASA officials devise a plan to get astronauts safely home during the Apollo 13 crisis.

“They called me into the office and I worked all night. I had phones on both ears talking to people across the United States,” Allen said. “NASA wanted to know the details of each and every component on the module.” But it was a relief to know the technology Allen and others at Aeronca developed in Middletown helped safely bring each of the Apollo crews home, he said.

“It was a multi-team effort from the guy who swept the floors to the engineers,” he said.

So Allen was a bit surprised when at the beginning of 2008 Aeronca and NASA officials wanted to meet with him to discuss the old shield designs for a new capsule project — the Orion.

“I offered what I could. It should work just as well this time,” he said.

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