How Binghamton taught Apollo 11 astronauts to get to the moon
When he's watched video footage from the Apollo missions or listened to audio recordings of the astronauts' conversations, Binghamton University professor emeritus Frank Cardullo listens intently for one phrase.
At some point during the recording, perhaps after completing a complicated on-board procedure, an astronaut will inevitably remark, "Just like the simulator."
In fact, during a one-day transcript from Apollo 11, command module pilot Michael Collins says it three times.
That's a source of pride for Cardullo, a former Link Group engineer who spent years working on the simulators Collins and fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong trained in before actually landing on the moon on July 20, 1969.
"We had the privilege of participating in something that was really outstanding," Cardullo said. "The whole period of time was exciting, to be part of that important mission."
Astronauts had been training for moon flights in Link simulators since 1965. The Apollo project meant more than $100 million in contracts to Southern Tier companies, primarily Link and IBM Corp. in Owego, where the mission's instrument unit computer inside the Saturn V rocket was built.
Fresh out of college, Cardullo started working with Link in 1966 and was immediately involved in the Apollo mission simulators. He designed control algorithms and worked on visual systems.
Piggybacking off Link's strong history of flight simulation, the Apollo program presented a new challenge: How do you simulate an experience no one has had before?
"You could not train pilots to go to the moon by going to the moon," Cardullo said.
Instead, they devised theoretical designs and incrementally developed the spacecraft simulators based on new information from each Apollo mission leading up to Apollo 11's landing on the moon.
Cardullo spent six months working seven days a week at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with astronauts, NASA trainers and engineers to ensure everything on the simulators — there was one for the Command Module and one for the Lunar Module — down to each subsystem was exactly right.
They also had to make sure they could address every possible malfunction.
"The NASA instructor or engineer could fail a system, and that failure had to occur in a realistic manner," Cardullo said, "so the astronauts could practice training in case one of those failures occurred."
Apollo 11's crew would later calculate they spent 2,000 hours in the simulators.
By the time the Apollo 11 mission launched, Cardullo's work on it had been wrapped up for more than a year. He'd logged more overtime hours than he likely ever would again, and he thinks because he'd witnessed those long hours of dress rehearsals, he was probably more confident than the average person that "everything would go OK."
"We who were involved in the final integration made several trips to the moon and back," he said.
When on the night of July 20, 1969, Cardullo watched Armstrong take his first steps out of the safely landed lunar module, he wasn't feeling stress or nerves, "just excitement."
"We were doing something that had never been done before," he said. "The general attitude of my colleagues and I was that this was more than a job. It was a national mission."
Cardullo went on to work on similar missions with Link until 1979, when he became a professor of mechanical engineering at Binghamton University. It's been more than 50 years since he started working on that historic program, one that expanded exploration and launched new technologies.
"It's amazing," he said, "how time has flown."
TechWorks!, on Water Street in Binghamton, will host a 50th anniversary celebration of the moon landing from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday with Apollo-era technology on display at the vintage IBM Computing Center and Link's lunar module simulator. Apollo mission and moon-based exploration films will also be shown from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday at Roberson Museum and Science Center on Front Street in Binghamton.