WSU alumnus part of half-century of innovation

“Pete Conrad started to chew me out. He told me it wouldn’t work, and he wouldn’t fly with it,” said Frasier, who earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Washington State University in 1959. “He did fly with it, and it worked.”

(Conrad commanded Apollo 12 when it made the second lunar landing in 1969.)

There eventually was a wider appreciation of Frasier’s contribution to manned space flight, including NASA’s Exceptional Service Award.

Frasier, 81, was honored in May with the Alumni Achievement Award from the Washington State University Alumni Association. Frasier and his wife, Gretchen, moved from Massachusetts to Vancouver about seven years ago.

Finding efficiencies

Frasier said his work from 1962 to 1973 at NASA’s manned spacecraft center often was a matter of addition by subtraction. Weight and reliability were key factors in both sections of the Apollo package — the command module and the lunar lander.

As initially designed, the command module was too heavy to fly and didn’t have enough space for everything it was supposed to carry. Frasier found a way to eliminate 10 of the 16 gyroscopes. By adding flight-control function to one computer, he was able to remove another computer as well as a redundant electronics system. It added up to a 200-pound reduction.

When designers hit a wall trying to solve issues with a backup radar system on the command module, Frasier found an alternative. By shifting a couple of on-board functions, they could simply eliminate the radar.

That trimmed about 190 pounds and saved about $30 million in radar costs.

One of Frasier’s contributions involved a major transition in technology. It marked the shift away from analog flying, which the astronauts had used during their military aviation careers. The movement of the pilot’s hand on the stick — transmitted and amplified by mechanical and hydraulic systems — moved his aircraft’s control surfaces.

Frasier proposed adopting the computer-controlled digital system.

“Nobody used digital flight control for things that people flew,” Frasier said. “The astronauts were against it.”

It was used in unmanned intercontinental ballistic missiles, however, so Frasier figured it was a workable concept. The guidance and control team was able to install it in both modules.

The module pilot used two control sticks to tell the computer where he wanted to go; the computer controlled the 16 thrusters that steered and oriented the craft. But don’t sell the astronauts short, Frasier said.

“The computers figured which jets to fire, but astronauts were the critical part of making the landing work. The computer system basically took them down close enough to see the ground,” Frasier said. At that point, the module pilot would land the craft.

“Astronauts had to be there to handle emergencies,” Frasier said. “You can’t program everything in advance; you can’t even anticipate it.”

Late in his NASA career, Frasier spent part of his time with the team designing the space shuttle.

An audacious move

Frasier went to work in 1973 for the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he invented and patented the first digital air brake control system design for railroad trains.

At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Frasier led the congressionally mandated effort by a government and industry group that developed the first highway fuel mileage standards for cars and light trucks.

“Miles per gallon improved from 13 to 27.5 between 1975 and 1985,” he said.

After a stint at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Frasier spent about 20 years as a consultant, helping businesses operate more efficiently, before he retired in 2010.

But it only takes a brief glance on a clear night for Frasier to flash back half a century, when the nation was pondering history’s biggest engineering challenge.

“I look up at the moon and wonder how we had the audacity to get people up there and back,” Frasier said, “when nobody knew how to do it.”