Heatshield Inventor

By Kerry Young

ﾠIn the late 1950's NACA and the Department of Defense had a problem.ﾠ They could not figure out how to make a heat shield for manned spacecraft or ICBMs.ﾠ The Air Force used heat-sink metals, especially copper and the Navy, on Polaris, used a beryllium heat sink shield.ﾠ The Space Task Group, in March, 1958, were leaning toward the heat sink method.ﾠ The Huntsville, Alabama museum for the tested nose cones all show pointed, refractory types.ﾠ Then Dr. Nininger, a renowned meteoriticist, revealed to NASA's Julian Allen that meteors that land successfully are blunt and pitted.ﾠ Allen claimed this discovery.ﾠ Then an unknown potato peeler inventor, Everett Young, disclosed his patented invention for manned reentry to earth.ﾠ It used a sandwiched cellular construction with permeable substrate, differential ablation and a vacuum gap.ﾠ NASA copied his ideas and used them on Gemini, Apollo, and now Constellation spacecraft heat shields.ﾠ Young's family suffered severely as a result of NASA's disregard for the real heat shield inventor and the job promised him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781681397047

Book preview

7209.jpg

Heatshield Inventor

Kerry Young

Copyright © 2015 Kerry Young

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2015

ISBN 978-1-68139-703-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-68139-704-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

In the Beginning

The Coiled Cord

The Potato Peeler

The Impact of Lofty Ideas

Meanwhile at NASA

Professional Jealousy Strikes

The Deception is Carried Out

Titles, Accolades, and Awards

The Space Race 1957–1958

Organizational Pride Reflects Individual Egos

Heat Sink versus Ablation

The Fundamental Problem

NASA’s Dilemma

Big Joe Shot

The Motivation

Breakthrough Heatshield (1961–1965)

The Results of Depending on an Agreement

Spoolo

A Second Heatshield Patent

The Young Family Matures

The Young Family Disintegrates

The Patent Infringement Trial—San Diego, California

The U.S. Court of Claims

The Court of Claims Verdict

Differential Ablation

Venting

The Next Step

Today

NASA Deception Continues

Epilogue

Foreword

The reader may wonder, if all this is true, why it took so long to come to the consciousness of Americans. I can only say that once the truth is repressed and set aside, it takes an increased moment of inertia, a rising of the wills, to overcome what has been accepted. NASA wanted it squashed into oblivion and it almost was. So why now? With the space shuttle becoming too expensive, we have returned to the simpler, more efficient, ablative heatshield on both the civilian Dragon and NASA Orion space capsules for reentry. Without coming to print the real, true history, an important part of the space race slips away into nonexistence. A major part of the delay was in obtaining a copy of History’s Greatest Epochal Lie, Everett Young’s very graphic, if somewhat disorganized, attempt to set down all that happened to him and his family. In his typical operating fashion, be mailed us copies when it first came out and then called them back, when finances did not allow producing more and he needed to sell the ones he had. Another major delay was in trying to have this book published and a movie made. Unless you have some kind of in with a publisher or movie company, you have to go through an agent and a series of filters that prevent ready publication and production.

What happened here demonstrates a callous disregard of the individual by a government that has already shown this characteristic in other areas. That a mighty and powerful NASA organization can completely override one individual is not remarkable. That the individual can pursue the wrong done to its rightful conclusion is remarkable. It also demonstrates man’s fallen nature in placing professional pride above justice and rightful compensation. The replacement of the honor our founding fathers emphasized in the character of an individual with the me first, take what you need society we have evolved into.

A family was victimized in this tragedy, spanned by a full generation. That the American people will know vital, crucial facts left out of all the history books, on how we successfully won the space race with the Russians. But lost our soul.

Preface

America’s history is ripe with inventors that contributed the nugget of an idea that was then taken, without any, or very little compensation, and carried to financial or practical profitability.

Philo Farnsworth, the farmer who saw lines as he plowed his fields and evolved a TV from this concept. Who patented it (Patent #1,773,980) and then had to combat RCA in patent litigation (he won) in 1934. He had to travel to Europe to market his ideas and died in 1971 with few people recognizing him as the inventor of television.

Or Howard Kerns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, stolen by all the major car manufacturers. He finally reaped court success against Ford, with lawsuits pending against the other manufacturers. With the cost of losing his family and the total disruption of his life.

Or Dr. Nininger, whose expertise in meteoritics led him to the blunt-shape nose cone, copied by NASA’s Allen, who received accolades, awards, and promotion for his thievery. Dr. Nininger got nothing for his revelation to Allen. Described in an excerpt from This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury.

And here, where professional jealousy and possibly fear for their jobs, caused highly educated men to steal numerous ideas and cover over every attempt for someone outside the organization to gain recognition.

If the truth be known, my father Everett’s history, with us, his family, is a lot like a combination of the movies Running on Empty, The Mosquito Coast, and The Pursuit of Happyness. The constant moving to avoid bill collectors and eviction. And the constant drive or enslavement to an idea that has to be let out.

I

In the Beginning

Between the millstone of his discontent

And the netherstone of his environment,

Mere man is ground again to senseless clay,

Or, according to the stuff of which a man is made,

A character of putty, or of hardened jade.

—Iva B. Young, Everett Young’s mother

I was fascinated by the swarm of flies blanketing the front screen door. It was summer and I was familiar with seeing a handful of flies here and there but this was extraordinary. At home, I would get a fly swatter or role up a newspaper and have it out with the flies until they were dead or gone. But this was too much to comprehend. To open the screen door meant to stir the bee-like swarm out of their contentedness. Killing them seemed out of the question and the occupants of the small, one-bedroom house obviously gave up long ago. What they were attracted to is still a mystery. We moved the door slowly or went around back, where the outhouse stood guard and one might have expected such a swarm.

I was nine years old and the small, dilapidated house was Grandma Young’s, my Dad’s (Everett Young) mother, in the little town (if it could be called that) of Bondville, Illinois. Our visit to her was a checkup on my father’s part, as we stayed at our mother’s more affluent parent’s farm in Seymour, Illinois. We annually would travel from Rocky River, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, to Champaign, Illinois, to visit both our parent’s relatives. Mostly, though, out of guilt on our father’s part. He felt guilty, being the youngest of the seven Youngs and last to leave his mom home alone and impoverished.

When we questioned Dad on why his family was so poor, the explanation was, When our Dad died, my brothers gambled away the farm instead of working it. My mother’s parents, on the other hand, owned a lot of farm acreage and were part owners of the only gas station along a big stretch of interstate, in Seymour. Grandpa Leonard Bell had the reputation of being a skinflint, tight with his money. Two of his four children didn’t fare well, the two girls, and he didn’t do much to help them. Our mom and Aunt Jane. More in our case, I found out later, because of my dad’s pride than because Grandpa didn’t offer. We lived in a rental house with secondhand dilapidated furniture. A trip to the grandparents meant modern appliances and furniture, plus all the sights, sounds, smells, and adventure of their farm. And a sense of peacefulness that I have only stumbled upon rarely since.

Grandma Young, it was rumored, was half American Indian, although what tribe or how was never made clear. She was old, gray haired, and stooped over. But had a heart of gold and never said a word of reprimand to us hellions playing with all her belongings. Her musty, dusty, old piano, in particular, was an immediate target. And her cast iron stove, fed with wood or coal. And the water pump, perched over the yellowed, stained, old sink. The whole house was permeated with the sickening old smell elderly people emote without realizing it. Part of it was Grandma’s flowery sweet perfume, which had to be overbearing for her to smell, I guess. And part of it was the contribution of old furniture, old books, old carpeting, and clothing. Of stagnant air seldom moved.

During our last visit, we treated Grandma to a drive-in rendition of Moby Dick after visiting a local A&W Root Beer drive-in. I distinctly remember the root beer because as we drove off to the movie she held up a large, empty root beer mug and asked, What do I do with this? We all laughed. She was always so quiet, unassuming, and patient.

Everett had a deep and abiding love for his mother. He had always intended to make his fortune and then come back for her. To provide for her and make her well off. Within months of returning from this trip, she died though. The last person to visit her and the evidence indicated she was ironing. After the relative left, she must have taken a nap and the iron caught the house on fire. Or at least full of smoke. She had made several trips with a bucket to try to put it out but was finally overcome with smoke. Today’s irons have automatic shutoffs to prevent this type of accident. She probably wouldn’t have had one even if they were available; she was so steeped in poverty.

The loss nearly drove Everett mad. After the return trip for the funeral, he again had to be admitted for psychological treatment. At that time, the treatment amounted to electrical shock therapy as the medical technology and medication proved ineffective in treating his depression and anxieties. I don’t remember much of this time, except that Everett was gone for a while and then he came back.

I also remember little of our earlier life. We, Everett and Doris Young and their two children, Jerry (three) and I, Kerry (about one-year-old), moved to Chicago after Everett graduated from the University of Illinois in 1947. He was an industrial designer and was incredibly gifted at designing lighting fixtures and art and design in general. He worked at Van Esso, I believe he said, a lighting firm.

II

The Coiled Cord

But Everett’s ambition and drive to make it and become somebody for his family and mother caused him to invent