Opening Day, Carnarvon Tracking Station, 25 June 1964 – His job now complete, NASA installation supervising engineer Victor Schwartz watches Hamish Lindsay’s son Craig enjoy the water of Monte Sala’s AWA fountain.
Photo and scan by Hamish Lindsay.
Victor A. Schwartz
Goddard Space Flight Center; Carnarvon Installation
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Opening Day, Carnarvon Tracking Station, 25 June 1964 – His job now complete, NASA installation supervising engineer Victor Schwartz watches Hamish Lindsay’s son Craig enjoy the water of Monte Sala’s AWA fountain. Photo and scan by Hamish Lindsay. |
Vic Schwartz was the NASA installation supervising engineer at Carnarvon Tracking Station. As such, he spent a great deal of time at the station from the very earliest stage of the erection of the T&C Building.
He arrived in Perth a few weeks after Kevyn Westbrook, the WRE Tech in charge of installation, had travelled up to Carnarvon.
He invited Kevyn to come down to Fremantle to join him to oversee the unloading from the transport ship of the heavy equipment which was then taken by road to Carnarvon. In a 2012 interview, Westbrook expressed his appreciation for Schwartz’s support in organising the installation teams.
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Victor Schwartz is leaning on the M&O console at left of frame, while a visiting instructor (?) watches operations at the Agena and Gemini consoles. Photo NASA B-65-138, scanned by Colin Mackellar from Lewis Wainwright’s collection with thanks to the Wainwright family. The same photo appears in this Goddard Space Flight Center feature on Carnarvon’s opening. |
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NASA installation supervising engineer Victor Schwartz on Opening Day, at Monte Sala’s AWA fountain. From Hamish Lindsay’s 8mm foorage. |
PMG Technician seconded to CRO, John Lambie, recalls:
“A very likeable guy at Carnarvon was Vic Schwartz. Vic was a NASA rep. on site during the installation phase at CRO. He went back to the States in 1965.
He had a Polaroid Land camera (gee wiz in 1963) in hand, which he used to take many photos of installation progress and pass them to GSFC.”
On 3rd February 1970, at Goddard Space Flight Center, a number of NASA personnel were awarded the Apollo Snoopy Award by Scientist Astronaut Dr. Karl G. Henize. Victor Schwartz was one of those who received the award. (Others included NASCOM’s Charlie Goodman, and Robert Taylor, both of whom were in Australia to support Apollo 11, and Kevyn Westbrook, now the Supervising Tech at NASCOM’s Deakin Switch in Canberra.)
By 1971, Victor Schwartz was leading the Site Engineering Support Section (code 811.2) in the Manned Flight Engineering Division at the Goddard Space Flight Center.