Salute Joseph Hayden: Brilliance, precision and piano wire
Hydrogen fuel leaks and hurricanes have delayed the launch of Artemis 1 — the first stage of NASA’s latest attempts to see mankind return to the lunar surface — but if there is one thing we can learn from the contributions that Joseph Hayden and his family have made to the exploration and understanding of our universe, it’s that making history is not about the obstacles that might stand in your way, but about how they are overcame.
Hayden had very little knowledge of precision machining when he first walked into the small Detroit, Mich.-based shop Speedring in 1959. In fact, he recalled barely having graduated high school before enlisting in the United States Army where he would assist in the US occupation of Germany during World War II and continue to serve in the Korean War. He would quickly learn that a large part of the craft of machining is acknowledging that the correct tools required to complete a project don’t always exist and that more often than not you have to use whatever is at your disposal.
“Back then it was just this little three-building shop, and we didn’t even have air conditioning. But a lot of the parts that we were making could only be tested at 68 degrees, so what we would do is take a bucket of water and put ice in it until it got down to 68 degrees and cool the parts off and test them real fast,” Hayden said.
As is the case with most innovative companies, Speedring was founded inside of a garage, and by the 1960s had done little to grow the size of their facilities. It had instead focused on building a reputation for precision. This, combined with the fact that they were one of the first machine shops to begin to use beryllium, gained the attention of NASA during their development of the Apollo program. With competition in the space race building, Hayden and his coworkers were originally kept in the dark about the nature of the components that they were building — he does remember being required to hide certain projects when guests would visit the shop — but would soon learn that they were creating many of the components for Apollo 11 that were essential for its successful landing on the moon. A mirror that Hayden provided the finishing for was placed onto the lunar surface where it still resides and is used to calculate the moon’s rotation and relative position to Earth.
Speedring, and Hayden, would eventually relocate to Cullman — it is now General Dynamics — but would continue its relationship with NASA. Hayden has played a hands-on role in manufacturing parts for the International Space Station, space shuttles, the Hubble Space Telescope and served as a mentor for those that would go on to create components that would eventually end up on the James Webb Space Telescope which earlier this year provided images from deeper into space than was ever before possible.
His most notable work though began during the 1980s when he said that he was in the back of the Speedring shop “experimenting” with machining quartz. He said that they were aware at the shop that they would be receiving visitors on that day, but after having a conversation with an unassuming young man, he didn’t think very much of it.
“This guy wearing what looked to me like pajamas came up to me and started asking me about what I was doing with the quartz, and I told him — but I didn’t know who he was. He just had this like floppy hair and flip flops on. We kind of thought he might have been the driver or something to tell you the truth,” Hayden said.
Hayden ended up learning that the man was Stanford physicist Dr. Francis Everitt when they were contacted several months later asking if they would be interested and able to manufacture the gyroscopes for the Gravity Probe B project that would be attempting to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity.
“I figured I could do it just as well as anyone else could. So I said ‘Sure, we’ll do it.’,” Hayden said.
To measure the hypothesized geodetic effect (the warping of space and time around a gravitational body) and frame-dragging (the amount a spinning object pulls space and time with it as it rotates) Gravity Probe B required gyroscopes that would not drift any more than one-billionth of a degree each hour that they were spinning — more than 10 million times the tolerable allowance for gyroscopes used in high tech aircrafts and nuclear submarines. Hayden performed the bulk of the machining of these gyroscopes at Speedring, but needed to return to the resourcefulness that he learned in his early days of machining when finishing the gyroscopes at his home shop, Hayden Precision Finishing — yet another notable business that was built inside of a garage.
“The holes that these things needed were five one-millionth of an inch in diameter. There’s very few tools that can even measure down to a millionth of an inch, but I had some at home … so what I did was ended up making a drill bit out of piano wire,” Hayden said.
Mary Hovater — Hayden’s daughter who now serves as the acting deputy manager for the Strategic Management Office within the Office of Strategic Analysis and Communication for NASA — said that this way of thinking is what makes her father one of the best at what he does.
“That’s what a precision machinist does. They create these perfect objects using just whatever they have available to them,” Hovater said.
The end result were pure quartz gyroscopes that were so perfectly spherical that they still hold a world record for the most spherical object ever created — topped only in sphericalness by a neutron star. The gyroscopes even baffled the world’s leading scientists upon their delivery to Sanford university, who were unable to repeat their measurements and needed assistance from Hayden.
“Well, I was kindly nervous,” Hayden said as he recalled approaching the scientists, “I think they just needed somebody without an education to bring them back down and show them how to do it.”
Hovater remembers witnessing her father’s interactions with the academic elite.
“You know the amount of respect that they have for my dad is just amazing,” she said.
Hovater spent her teenage years working alongside her father and mother; Judy Hayden, at Hayden Precision Finishing where she quickly developed a passion for the universe beyond our atmospheric boundaries that followed her into adulthood and her career.
“I was always interested in space,” Hovater said. ” I actually went to UAH the summer after high school, but when I came home for Christmas break I saw an advertisement for Wallace [State Community College] and the drafting department — which had been by favorite in high school after Art — so I went and checked it out. I ended up signing up in their Cooperative Education program with NASA and the rest as they say history.”
Before taking on her current position, Hovater contributed heavily to Artemis 1’s Launch Abort System (LAS). Artemis 1, when launched, will send an un-manned Orion capsule on a journey around the moon that will pave the way for future missions that will bring the first woman and person of color to the lunar surface, and lay the groundwork that will eventually lead to crewed expeditions to Mars. Hovater said that this mission has reignited public interest in the space program.
“I hear people say it seems like we have gone back to the ’60s when looking at the our beautiful rocket. And while it might make you think of the Apollo days, it is far more advanced and has the ability to go much farther than any other rocket built to date. I also hear, ‘We’ve already been to the moon, why go back?’ Just as (the International Space Station) was a wonderful platform for us to learn to live and work in space, we need a plan to learn to live and work on another planet … in this case the moon is the perfect place to do that before we get to Mars. I mean you don’t dive into the deep end of the pool before you take swim lessons in the kiddy pool right? Space exploration isn’t just important for NASA, it’s important for every single American. NASA is their NASA. It’s all of ours. And the more we can learn and advance the better,” Hovater said.
It may very well be that contributions to these future expeditions will also come from within the same lineage that has enabled NASA’s past successes. Hovater’s two sons, James and Hayden Hovater, have also begun to develop interest in the space program. James, who recently graduated from Mississippi State with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, said that spending time working in his grandfather’s shop is where his interest first developed, but that it wasn’t until he became older that he was able to truly appreciate his family’s accomplishments. James is now hoping to use his degree to secure a job working alongside his mother at NASA.
Hovater’s youngest son, Hayden Hovater — the self-described “black sheep” of the family — said that he also remembers working with his family, but said that he remembers the work as “extremely boring and annoying.” Instead of engineering or machining, Hayden Hovater instead used his genetically gifted eye for detail to pursue a degree in graphic design from Savannah College of Art and Design. But as fate would have it, he would also end up using his talents at NASA, where he spent the last several months as an intern designing infographics for several areas including the Space Launch System for Artemis.
Although Joseph Hayden — who will turn 93 this year — retired in 1995, he continued to act as a consultant between Speedring, NASA and Sanford University. He now continues to give lectures to the future generations of machinists at the Cullman Area Technology Academy and Wallace State Community College where he donated several pieces of equipment. Despite all of his achievements, Hayden remained without a college degree until December 2021 when he was presented an honorary associate’s degree in precision machining from WSCC.
“I hope that you all realize that you are in the presence of brilliance and greatness today, and that you aspire to that same greatness,” Wallace State President Dr. Vicki Karolewics said to students in attendance of the ceremony. “After reviewing his career and his biography, it was quite easy to discern that his accomplishments were certainly worthy of an honorary associate degree in precision machining. It is my distinct pleasure to award him this well-deserved degree.”
As for his thoughts on all of the work that he has contributed to NASA throughout his lifetime, Hayden simply said, “I would have been happy to have done it for free if they had asked me to.”