July 18, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 121 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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VERGENNES, VERMONT'S, ROLE IN THE APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 121
(Senate - July 18, 2019)
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[Pages S4942-S4943] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] VERGENNES, VERMONT'S, ROLE IN THE APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this week America celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of a monumental achievement for our country and all of humankind, the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first human beings on the Moon. Like families across America and across the world, our family gathered in front of the television in our living room that Sunday night of July 20, 1969, to watch this history unfold. I was State's attorney then, and we lived in a duplex in Burlington. Our 5-year-old son Kevin asked if he could stay up late to watch, and of course, Marcelle and I agreed. He stretched out on the floor in his PJs. He had nodded off by the time the images from the Moon started to come across, and we roused our little fellow. We knew this was a night we would always remember. The next day, I went to court for an arraignment. Then I met with police officers about several matters, and we all had a hard time concentrating as we excitedly discussed what we had seen the night before. As Neil Armstrong so famously said, his one small step was a giant leap for all of humanity. As he and other astronauts often noted, that leap was made possible not just by his step, but by the small steps of thousands of men and women across America who participated in the space program, including some from the town of Vergennes, VT. Today, 50 years ago, the Apollo 11 mission was hurtling toward the moon, but getting to the Moon is not a matter of just pointing the nose of a craft and igniting the powerful engines. First, the command module had to dock with the lunar expeditionary module, then leave Earth's orbit, then navigate to get into lunar orbit, and then return. Throughout the process, Michael Collins needed to use the craft's engines, known as a burn, to adjust the heading. But with no option to refuel, these burns had to be precise and effective, and any deviation from the planned fuel usage had to be worked into future plans. Otherwise, there would be no return for America's heroes. This is where Vergennes came in. Vermont has a long tradition of building precision tools and machinery, and NASA turned to Simmonds Precision of Vergennes, VT, to ensure that the Apollo 11 crew and Mission Control knew exactly how much fuel they had. The fuel probes and valves had to be as nearly perfect as possible, and they had to perform perfectly in varying levels of microgravity. It was an immense technological challenge, which the engineers and workers in Vergennes met. Fifty years later, the company is still there. Now operating under the name Collins Aerospace, they still make fuel probes, along with other aerospace technology that seems to be able to do the impossible. When you enter the factory, along their wall of history, the Apollo Program commands a special place of pride. It is a reminder of how the small steps taken by Americans everywhere, when working together, can accomplish tremendous leaps. I ask unanimous consent that a recent article about one of the engineers from Vergennes, published by the Burlington Free Press, be printed into the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the Burlington Free Press, July 17, 2019] Vermont Company Played Key Role In Apollo Moon Mission (By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer) A former engineer with Vergennes-based Simmonds Precision describes the company's role in the Apollo space program Something clicked when Dominique St. Pierre heard President John F. Kennedy declare, in 1962, that the U.S. would land men on the moon by the end of the decade. ``It was gutsy,'' St. Pierre, now 74, remembers. JFK's challenge prompted St. Pierre, then an 18-year-old in St. Albans, to hone his engineering skills at Vermont Technical College, sign on with Simmonds Precision in Vergennes in 1965 and help design and build a fuel system for the Apollo moon mission. Three years later, the first-ever astronauts to orbit the moon were measuring their craft's precious propellant with Vermont-made gauges, valves and meters. His collaboration with more than 200 employees at Simmonds yielded a tool that performed flawlessly throughout the Apollo program, St. Pierre said. A thrilling, disruptive American decade Simmonds, subsequently bought by Goodrich and then United Technologies, went on to design and build fuel sensors for Boeing and Airbus, among other customers. St. Pierre stayed with the company until he retired in 2019. But the fast-paced years leading up to the successful moon landing on July 20, 1969--and Apollo 11 crew's safe return-- remain vivid for St. Pierre. The space program offered a welcome, uplifting message for Americans shocked by the Chicago riots of 1968, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in that year, St. Pierre said. `We had a schedule to meet' Engineers at NASA kept the Simmonds crew very busy and focused, he added: ``We worked long, long days. Come hell or high water, we had a schedule to meet.'' St. Pierre remembers the dust-free workplace in Vergennes, bustling with technicians in white smocks and surgical caps. But, despite America's global, cold-war rivalry with the Soviet Union that extended into those countries' space programs, there was little secrecy at Simmonds--beyond the safekeeping of papers that documented test results, St. Pierre said. Excitement built when NASA flew him to Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), where he joined hundreds of other engineers in fitting together thousands of interconnected pieces of a never-before assembled puzzle. ``To this day, 50 years later,'' St. Pierre said, ``it's still viewed as the greatest technological achievement of mankind.'' (At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.) [[Page S4943]] ____________________
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