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AeroAstro Magazine HighlightThe following article appears in the 2008–2009 issue of AeroAstro, the annual report/magazine of the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Celebrating the life of Robert C. Seamans Jr.By Louis Padulo (Editor's note: As part of the “Giant Leaps” celebration of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, AeroAstro hosted a memorial gathering to celebrate the life and accomplishments of Robert C. Seamans Jr., one of the principal architects of the Apollo Program. Seamans, a former professor of aeronautics and astronautics and dean of engineering at MIT passed away in 2008. He also served as deputy and then acting administrator of NASA, president of the National Academy of Engineering, Secretary of the Air Force, and he was the first administrator of the Energy Research and Development Administration, the precursor to today’s Department of Energy.)
At the start of AeroAstro’s memorial for Bob, AeroAstro Department head Ian Waitz said, “More than a year ago we started planning these events and we assumed that Bob Seamans would be an important part of the events, and we expect he would have very much enjoyed being part of the events. And when he passed away, we felt the best way to keep him as a very important part of the event was to join these celebrations with a commemoration of his life.” I always knew that Bob Seamans had a lot of friends. I was proud to be one of them, having worked for Bob at RCA — three years before becoming his son-in-law. I also knew that Bob had a host of professional contacts and quite a few organizations whose “causes” he encouraged and supported. When Bob died last summer, and his wife and five children planned funeral arrangements, my job was to notify friends and contacts of his passing and tell them about the church service on July 2nd. I sat in Bob’s study and, using his lists and directories, emailed all his contacts for whom I could find addresses. Recognizing that many friends might be away for the 4th of July or summer holidays, I mentioned that the family hoped to celebrate Bob Seamans’ extraordinary life and accomplishments along with his professional and civic colleagues on some future occasion. Well, I never got as much email in my life as I did in response to that message. In addition to the outpouring of condolences and the overflow crowd that made it to St. John’s church in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, there quickly developed a queue of institutions and organizations offering to host such a Seamans celebration. The common thread in these invitations was: “We’d like to host the ceremony honoring Bob — he loved and helped us a lot, and we loved him.” Had Bob Seamans still been with us, he would have continued to mentor and support all those organizations he cared for, but he would have really gotten his juices flowing by working with the MIT AeroAstro Department to organize a symposium celebrating the Apollo Program and contemplating “next steps” for the future. One of the principal architects of Apollo, Bob would have been a key speaker and panelist in that symposium and would have enjoyed himself immensely, reminiscing with peers and colleagues and helping chart a course for the next generation of students, faculty and citizens. Thus, when Ed Crawley and Ian Waitz proposed that AeroAstro would honor Bob with a special commemoration ceremony as part of the “Giant Leaps” Symposium, the Seamans family was thrilled to accept. Of all the organizations so dear to Bob, none were dearer than AeroAstro and MIT. As Ed and Ian pointed out, Bob was a student there, met and worked with Doc Draper, became a professor and a Dean of Engineering (a high calling) at MIT, before, between, and after his RCA, NASA, Air Force, ERDA, and National Academy of Engineering appointments. Generously, MIT’s AeroAstro Department offered to not only host the Seamans celebration, but to invite Bob Seamans’ “significant other” organizations to participate and contribute to it as well. Man On behalf of all those organizations and people with whom AeroAstro shared the occasion, Gene Seamans and her family thank Bob’s MIT family for making the ceremony such a memorable celebration of a life well lived. Louis Padulo, President Emeritus of Philadelphia's University City Science Center, was invited by AeroAstro to help organize and MC the Robert Seamans commemoration. Louis earned his Ph.D. (in EE) at Georgia Tech under B.J. Dasher, an MIT contemporary of Bob’s, was an engineering professor at Stanford; served as engineering dean at Boston University while Bob was dean at MIT; and was president of University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is an adjunct professor at Penn State and Princeton where he teaches product design. Following are excerpts of the many accolades, remembrances, and thoughts about Bob Seamans delivered by his friends, family and colleagues at the Seamans Memorial event. Dick Batten, Apollo guidance, navigation, and control director; AeroAstro senior lecturer
Much later, when Bob was a senior lecturer at MIT, he helped me with some freshmen seminars. He would call me up and say, “I’d like to be on your seminar.” And he was so attractive to these young teenagers and he was willing to talk to them well into the early evening. Last winter, while he was in failing health, he drove in on a cold and blustery day to my winter lecture on MIT and Apollo. As he said, it was to keep me honest! The world has lost a giant. And he will always be remembered as such. Charles Vest, MIT president emeritus and National Academy of Engineering president (via video)
Larry Young, MIT AeroAstro Apollo Program Professor
The risky, yet energy efficient way to go involved landing a small craft on the moon while keeping the larger return vehicle in lunar orbit. But this involved the single point failure risk of a botched rendezvous. In his wonderful, informal discussions with our class, and again in his book, Bob relates how he understood the criticality of making the rendezvous in far off lunar orbit, but based upon his experiences with Doc Draper and the gunsight development during the war, which also involved having two objects moving quite fast and meeting exactly at a distance, he was sure the lunar orbit rendezvous could be pulled off. And Bob was crucial in bringing NASA to that decision. George Mueller, CEO of Kistler Aerospace and former Office of Manned Space Flight associate administrator
Edward F. Crawley, Ford Professor of Engineering, AeroAstro Department
He told me of the meeting that he had at the White House when the decision about LOR actually went to the President and in the room were Jack Kennedy, Jerome Weisner, and Bob in the Oval Office. The president looked at Jerry Weisner and said, “Well, Jerry what do you think?” The scientific community was still backing the so-called direct or Von Braun approach in which one capsule would go all the way to the surface of the moon. And Jerry again argued for that approach. And Jack Kennedy turned to Jerry and said, “We should really listen to the people from NASA because they’re the people who are going not have to do this and who knows Jerry, you and I may not be around to see it.” Lesson: Make sure you listen very carefully to the people who have to execute the work before making a decision. When the results of (NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture Study started coming out in 2005, this generation’s version of the LOR debate, Bob was brought in by NASA to be a graybeard and by coincidence he and Aaron Cohen were at the faculty lunch one Wednesday when the report was actually issued. And we hurried back up to my office, downloaded it from on line and found that it looked much like Apollo. Aaron looked at and said, “You know what they’re going to learn from this Bob? Just how hard it is to go to the moon.” And Bob looked at Aaron and said, “And just how lucky we were.” Neil Armstrong, former astronaut and University of Cincinnati aerospace professor
President Kennedy had noticed the remarkable impact (of the first U.S. manned spaceflight) on the public, both here and abroad. And it was confirmation that NASA could be depended upon. And Bob Seamans was dedicated to making the U.S. preeminent in space. He strengthened his organization. He found ways of attracting superior people to join the effort. He worked with the bureau of the budget and the president and the Congress to strengthen the budgets. Bob was genuinely interested in detail, in addition to getting a cockpit check in Mercury from John Glenn and talking with John Hubolt about lunar orbit rendezvous, he actually rode with me in the Gemini orbital docking simulator to understand the details of how it could really work. That engineer in him would not allow him to manage without understanding those details. Sheila Widnall, MIT Institute Professor
After two years (as Air Force secretary), Seamans informed Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird that he wished to extend his tour to complete or initiate several projects. He wanted to place the C-5 contract with Lockheed on a sound basis. He wanted to resolve the F-111 cost and technical difficulties. He wanted to move new programs such as the F-15, the B-1, the AWACS, and the AX and the F-5E to the point where the Air Force could be confident in its policy of “fly before buy.” And he wanted to improve military and civilian personnel policies. However he stated that his willingness to stay with DOD depended on the administration’s determination to terminate US activities in Southeast Asia. President Nixon credited Seamans with keeping the Air Force modernization program cost so very close to projected estimates, and for creating an environment in which people serving in the Air Force believed they could realize their potential. Richard Meserve, Carnegie Institution for Science president
He observed the great opportunities in energy efficiency that were possible, citing the prospect for greatly improved automobile fuel economy, the application of new types of building design, the recycling of industrial heat, and effective use of cellulosic materials. He saw that efficiency measures could reduce consumption very significantly over the following years. He saw the problem as extremely difficult, but solvable. Given our current situation, albeit with the new dimension of climate change, we simply should have listened. Paul Gray, MIT president emeritus
Susan Hockfield, MIT president
Second, he was an enthusiastic and beloved teacher well into his eighties. Yet he deliberately chose not to make teaching his only career because he understood deeply one of the principles that animates MIT right up to today: the transformative power of integrating teaching with front line research. Third, he demonstrated an unswerving commitment to national service at the very highest level and at great personal cost. Punctuating his autobiography are multiple tales of Bob arranging a few rare days off, only to find himself on a sailboat in a foggy Maine harbor with someone rowing alongside to announce that he was needed in Washington. To MIT, to the space program, and to America’s science and technology leadership, Bob Seamans left an incomparable legacy. |