Mercury/Apollo program graphite lubricant failure

Forward reference to Friday's lecture. Graphite is a lubricant on Earth (water vapor intercalates between planes) but an abrasive in vacuum; early Mercury shots seized when this was not understood.

When we get together again — I'll be here on Friday, Dr. Bellmore will be here the next two days, I'll be back on Friday from the red-eye, and we can talk about some things again. I will tell you about how graphite is a lubricant on Earth and an abrasive in space. That was a big surprise at the beginning of the Mercury program. Some of the first space shots, things quit turning. They had put them together with graphite as the lubricant. When they got into space, they found that graphite was no longer a lubricant; it was an abrasive. It all has to do with these fundamentals of bonding and contamination that we're talking about.