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A Limestone Co. man who helped build the Saturn 1
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The Saturn 1B Rocket alongside I-65 has had deconstruction begin this week ahead of its anticipated teardown in the next few weeks.
As the Saturn 1-B rocket is disassembled, one man who helped build it mourns the roadside monument.
Glenn Lang started working on the Saturn 1-B with IBM and NASA in 1965 and can still remember the inner workings of the rocket and just how much dedication it took to get it in the air. Some of the piping, he added, is still in the rocket today. Now, with crews taking it down little by little, Lang said it is like taking apart a piece of him.
"Well, if you took my heart out, I wouldn't live, would I? That's just the way I feel about that missile over there," Lang said. "You won't realize this, but I can drive by there, and tears will come to my eyes when I think that's gonna be (gone) - cause that's out there for a reason."
A native of Limestone County, Lang now lives only a few miles from the rocket he helped build. With awards, unique medallions and even pieces of the rocket to show for his work. Lang said taking it down is the worst thing to happen in the space program and nothing could replace the real thing.
"That's what we built; that's what we built to go to the moon," Lang said. "It was the testing that was going on with this to get to the moon. It's a piece of hardware that will never be done again to do what it did."
Lang worked for IBM and with these rockets until 1987 when he retired. So much of his life orbited around this rocket.
"There was some hours put into that if they wanted testing something and something went wrong, work order would be laying on that desk the next morning, and if there was a piece of pipe that had to be pulled out and put back in, I had to do it," Lang said. "And it ain't "you can't do it; you don't wanna do it," it's got to be done that's your job get it done."
Lang says the Saturn 1-B is a piece of history, and it should have been respected like any other artifact before getting to the point it is now.
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