In an Eerie Space Lab, Soggy Books Are Dried

A cavernous, white-domed chamber used to test space satellites in Huntington Beach was instead filled Saturday with 13,000 books that were frozen after the Los Angeles Central Library fire.

Volunteers, most of them from McDonnell Douglas Astronautic Co., unloaded the boxed, water-damaged books that had been trucked to the firm’s 264-acre compound and hoisted them by huge crane into the space-simulation chamber.

Within two weeks, workers at the space laboratory hope to thaw 20,000 of the 700,000 books damaged by water in the April 29 fire. The books have been kept in cold-storage to prevent mildewing.

Drying out the books is a slow process, said North Selvey, manager of McDonnell Douglas’ propulsion, mechanical and space laboratories, who will direct the work. It will take even longer because the books will remain packed in cardboard boxes to prevent further damage from handling.

Volunteers Pitch In

Wearing gloves and hard hats, about 15 volunteers using forklifts moved the books from trucks into the space lab, where the cartons were lowered to the floor by a towering crane.

The crane normally is used to load satellites and other unmanned space vehicles in and out of the chamber, and to attach the cavern’s 18-ton lid to ensure an air-tight vacuum.

Through pumps that look like gigantic loudspeakers on the chamber’s black walls, air will be sucked out as the temperature of the wet books is monitored. As vapor replaces the water in the books, dry nitrogen will be pumped in until the temperature of the books sinks to just above 32 degrees.

The cardboard boxes were an odd sight in the chamber, which was last used in 1985 for a 75-day continuous test ordered by another aerospace firm on a P-80 Air Force satellite, Selvey said. The satellite has “yet to go up because we’re waiting on the space shuttle,” he said.

Various atmospheric conditions, such as the environment at 500 miles above earth and temperatures as low as 320 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, can be simulated in the chamber.

On Friday, McDonnell Douglas offered to donate its space-simulation chamber and furnish some volunteers to defrost 20,000 books, and the Los Angeles City Council accepted the offer the same day, agreeing to hold the company blameless for any damage to the books.

Space Firm May Bid

Library officials are planning to seek bids for the defrosting procedure of the remaining 680,000 water-damaged books, as well as the cleaning of 600,000 more that sustained smoke damage in the devastating fire. Kelly Hawkes, a spokeswoman for McDonnell Douglas, said Saturday that the firm may bid against other aerospace firms for that job if its vacuum chamber is not scheduled for use in astronautic work.

The weeklong process begun Saturday will help the City of Los Angeles determine whether it is financially feasible to try to dry the books in the boxes.

Charles A. Smith, manager of the chemistry lab at McDonnell Douglas’ major facility for West Coast operations, said he wanted to help a little more personally. So on his day off, he drove from his Fountain Valley home to the Huntington Beach space lab and donned a hard hat.

“Both my wife and I have used the L.A. public library,” Smith said, “and maybe wanted to do a little bit to repay that debt.”