Austin Founder Lions Club

Secrets of Apollo XI

  • 07 Jul 2016
  • 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
  • The High Road, 700 Dawson Rd, Austin TX 78704

Registration

Secrets of Apollo XI

July 7, 2016

Lion Sam Ruiz
introduced by Lion Mac Ragsdale


One of our very own Lion members, Sam Ruiz, was a Quality Engineer Inspector on the Apollo Project from 1962-69 at Johnson Space Center in Houston. He and everyone on the project was catapulted into action on May 25, 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the moon before the end of the decade.

The Apollo program carried the first men beyond the Earth's gravity and around the moon in December 1968 and landed the first men on the moon in Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. The program concluded with Apollo 17 in December 1972 after putting 27 men into lunar orbit and 12 of them on the surface of the moon.

Before the first manned flights on the new and untried Apollo spacecraft,NASA naturally wanted to simulate as much of the space environment as possible. Two huge chambers were built in Houston, capable of simulating the vacuum of space as well as the temperatures and lighting conditions that would be experienced during a space flight. Sam was intimately familiar with the testing and the first-time problems that arose during this phase of the program, and will share details of the process not known to the general public with our club.

His job (and everyone’s) was to qualify both the Command Module and Lunar Lander by the liftoff date of July 16, 1969.

Sam is a native Austinite who graduated from Travis High and joined the Navy from 1958-62 to play baseball. Instead he attended Class A schools and become certified as a Radioman 2nd class Petty Officer. After discharge, Sam was hired by North American Aviation in Downey, California. There, he qualified as a quality engineer and was selected for the Apollo team in 1963. He attended Cerriotos College to take courses required for the program. Due to his qualifications, he was positioned in the control room to monitor all major tests on the Apollo Command Module.


Featured Lunch Menu:
Sweet & Sour Pork
Ice Tea & Coffee
    
Please register by 5 p.m. on Tuesday   

We order meals based on your reservations and must pay for them even if you do not show up. Please keep this in mind if your plans shift and cancel your reservation so we can adjust the headcount.


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