John Ellwood
John Ellwood - Engineering for the Stars
John Ellwood has spent his career helping to solve the massive problems associated with sending rockets, satellites and scientific instruments into space. He has helped create and launch some of the most famous and most useful items ever to be fired from this planet.
And he is one of the most unassuming and modest men you’ll ever meet.
Sitting in his home overlooking Warfleet Creek – which he and his wife Lindsay designed and had built – he reflects on the life he has led grappling with the tough engineering challenges of sending large pieces of hardware into space.
“I’ve been very lucky and had some amazing experiences,” he said. “I graduated a month before the moon landings in 1969 – at that time if you had any interest in science or engineering then Space was a fascinating environment. It seemed like a natural step to work in the industry.”
John was born in Dartmouth in 1948, where his father, Tom, worked at the Britannia Royal Naval College and later became chairman of the local Magistrates bench. John went away to school, but always enjoyed school holidays in Dartmouth, and he developed his love of sailing from his time on the river during summer holidays.
Showing obvious talent, John won a scholarship to Cambridge from the UK Atomic Energy Authority – he went on to gain a PhD in the Structural Engineering of Spacecraft.
In 1974 he received a call that would change his life – inviting him to work for the European Space Agency’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in Holland.
“Initially, I worked on how to get the precision engineered instruments in satellites into space without getting damaged,” he told me. “Launching a rocket is awe inspiring in its power and brutality. If you are within half a mile of a launch it deafens you! I worked on how the vibrations caused by lift off could damage the cargo on a rocket and ways to minimize them. These were the first European satellites sent up and it was a very exciting time.”
John not only helped in the creation of some remarkable satellites when he was in Holland – he also fell in love.
“Lindsay was a teacher at the British School of the Netherlands and, after mutual friends introduced us, we hit it off,” he said. “We were married in Devon in 1980 and had our reception at the Carved Angel in Dartmouth – I’ve always maintained a base here, and have loved coming back after I retired. Both our children love it here and I’m really glad we have Dartmouth as our home.”
During his time in Europe - he spent most of his time in The Netherlands, but he also lived for four years working in Paris – John worked on a roll call of the most important and iconic projects in space.
“I helped create the European part of the Hubble Space Telescope,” he said. “We were responsible for 20 per cent of the telescope and it was incredible to work with NASA so closely – it was a very great challenge but one that I loved.”
John then went on to be in charge of ‘Cluster’ – a project in which four satellites would work in conjunction to measure the effect of the solar winds on our planet.
This was to be his first – and only major - brush with failure during his career. After years of work, he watched the rocket on which the satellites were carried blow up 30 seconds after launch. Bits of the satellites rained down on the swamps around the launch pad in French Guiana. Some still sit in his study.
“It’s a very emotional thing, a launch,” he said. “So much work by so many people has gone towards it and you know the danger that something might go wrong. To see that work blow up was very, very hard for us all.”
Four years later, in 2000, John was again in charge of Cluster 2, which was launched by a Russian Soyuz rocket.
“Working with the Russians was an amazing experience,” he said. “The rocket was essentially the same as the one which had carried Yuri Gagarin into space all those years ago and it was from the same launch pad. It looked like it hadn’t been painted since! The Russian scientists didn’t seem to retire as readily as we do in the west, so I was working with 80-year-old launch engineers who had put Gagarin into space, which was a great honour.
“We had a lot of fun and launched the Cluster 2 Satellites safely, so I have some wonderful memories of that time. I once tried to explain cricket to my hosts through an interpreter at an after dinner speech – goodness knows what the interpreter made of ‘leg before wicket!’”
John’s next challenge in the space arena was to be even more daunting: to follow a comet and put a craft on its surface. The Rosetta Project was launched in 2004 and has already recorded a number of firsts, including the first time a spaceship has used the Earth and Mars to provide the gravitational ‘slingshot’ to reach its target, and the first time a man-made device has been sent so far away from the Sun without an atomic energy source.
“There have been so many engineering and science challenges to overcome with Rosetta,” said John. “To provide the ship with power where it is now, near to Jupiter (which is five times the distance from the Earth as the Earth is from the Sun) we have had to design massive solar arrays to catch the sun’s rays. These produce about 400 watts of power, or the same as a few large light bulbs! We are also attempting to land a small spacecraft on the comet surface, which is an amazing design challenge as we do not really know what the surface is made of that we will be landing on!”
John’s final project was to create a means to deliver supplies to the International Space Station: The ATV – or Automated Transfer Vehicle. The first “Space Bus”, as it was dubbed, was officially named the ‘Jules Verne’ after the visionary ScifI author. As part of the ATV’s launch, John was presented with a first edition of “From the Earth to the Moon” by the author’s great grandson, which then travelled to the space station on the ATV’s inaugural flight.
Now retired, John is still working on Rosetta ahead of its rendezvous with a comet in November 2014.
Despite off-world distractions, John is settling into his retirement in Dartmouth.
“I’ve bought a Squib sailing boat and have been racing at The Regatta,” he said. “I’m involved at the Royal Dart Yacht Club and am now on the Dart Harbour Board. Both my wife and I are enjoying life immensely!”•