Inventor of Skylab parasol

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33253, 16 June 1973, Page 12

Inventor of Skylab parasol

(By

WALTER SULLIVAN)

For hundreds of years people have been designing parasols—from dainty, paper-covered oriental models to giant beach umbrellas.

But no one, until now, has produced one to pass through a hole eight and one-half inches square in a space station and then open to cover an area 22ft by 24ft. The successful production of such a parasol, whose deployment saved the 2.5-billion Skylab, was largely the achievement of a man with a lifelong passion for tinkering. Jack Albert Kinzler, 53 years old, was one of the champion model aeroplane builders who were recruited in World War II to help build model wind tunnels as part of the nation’s defence programme. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, its ranks depietea by the draft was short on young talent at its main research centre in Langley, Virginia. It began seeking out the winners of state contests in model plane building and Mr Kinzler, then 21 years old, was one of them. His career came naturally to him, for his father was a Pittsburgh photoengraver turned inventor. The elder Mr Kinzler’s schooling never went past fourth grade and his son did not attend college. Five hectic days One of Mr Kinzler’s early jobs with the aeronautics committee was producing the huge wooden propellers used in the wind tunnels to test the performance of aircraft parts. Sometimes metal debris would get loose in the tunnel and the propeller would be transformed to sawdust. During the war, every day was critical in plane part development, and Mr Kinzler soon learned what it was to effect makeshift repairs under pressure. During five hectic days last month, such experience paid off. In his role as chief of the Technical Services Division of the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, Mr Kinzler undertook to design a canopy to cover the wall of the overheated Skylab whose protective cover had been ripped off, exposing it to searing sunlight. Other groups were working on other ideas, but hii

was the winner. The key element of its design was the use of telescoping poles that, after being pushed through a small airlock in the Skylab wall, quickly extended to form arms stretching a canopy over the sun-baked exterior of the craft. Fishing rods Mr Kinzler drove into Houston, bought four telescoping fishing rods and, with his workshop colleagues, built a prototype. For the final design new "fishing poles” 21ft long were built of aluminium tubing. The system was designed so that the tips of the poles, or arms of the parasol, were held back as the central support mast, to which the other ends of the poles were attached, was pushed up through the airlock. As soon as the central mast, screwed together section by section, had been pushed up 21ft, the telescopic units were pulled to full extension. Then, with the entire parasol up through the airlock, the tips were released and swung out in four directions, spreading the canopy. Because the airlock hole was not in the centre of the area to be covered, the canopy had to be affixed to the arms in an offset manner. Such was the last-minute nature of this improvisation that the parasol as finally designed was not flown to Cape Kennedy until the night before the lift-off of the Skylab astronauts. It weighed less than 251 b. For Mr Kinzler the effort had special meaning since Captain Charles Conrad Jr, the mission commander is his lakeside residential area near the space centre in Houston. Sons are friends The Kinzler family consists of Mrs Kinzler. the former Sylvia Richardson; their sons, John Edward, 21, and James Douglas, 15, and their daughter, Nancy Griffith, 17. The sons in both the Kinzler and Conrad families are devotees of a motor-cycle sport known as motocross racing and wear shirts that are inscribed "Precision Boring Service.” This service, run by the senior Mr Kinzler in his garage, is a mark of his total devotion to metal working. A year ago, to support his sons in their hobby, he bought a machine for reboring motor-

cycle cylinders and has done about 100 of them so far. As Captain Conrad and his two companions were preparing to push the parasol up through the wall of their orbiting workshop, Jack Kinzler was in his garage boring a cylinder. He explained that one of his son’s friends needed it for a race that day and he just could not let the lad down. But he hurried back to the space centre in time for the deployment. And a few hours

later he was able to tell a press briefing unabashedly: "I’m very proud of myself and the people who helped us. And we had quite a lot — we had probably 150 or more —who worked around the clock. We worked day and night We lived out of the shops. And there is no other way this could have been done. We had an enormous motivated group of people and that’s about it.—Copyright, 1973. “New York Times” News Service.