Still, there might be another opportunity knocking. A new program was in the works.
In December 1961, Bob Gilruth had announced a new manned spaceflight program to bridge the gap between Mercury and Apollo—Mercury Mark II, a “two-man Mercury.” A month later, it was renamed Gemini, after the constellation of the twins, Castor and Pollux, appropriate for a two-man capsule. The program was necessary because when Apollo was first announced, no one at NASA knew exactly how the spacecraft would land on the moon or even what kind of spaceship it would be. At the time Kennedy made the man-on-the-moon speech, two main methods, or modes, were under consideration. One was termed Earth-orbit rendezvous (EOR); the other, direct ascent.
If you asked someone in the street how the journey would happen, he’d probably describe a large streamlined rocket with tail fins—not unlike von Braun’s V-2—that would blast off from Earth, fly the 239,000 miles to the moon, and, once it got close enough, turn around and use the rocket’s engine to brake and settle on the surface. The spaceship would return to the Earth in the same manner. That’s how it was done in movies like 1950’s Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M (which used actual stock footage of V-2 rocket launches) and in countless comic books and science fiction stories. But launching a single, self-contained spacecraft carrying enough fuel for liftoff from the moon and the return trip as well as life-support systems, a heat shield, and the many other necessities for such a journey would require a huge booster.
This direct-ascent method was favored early on by the Space Task Group, and von Braun’s rocket team was already designing the massive booster. The four-hundred-foot-tall Nova would cluster eight large engines in its first stage, and with two other stages, it would have a combined twelve million pounds of thrust to boost eighty tons into orbit. There would be other logistical problems—for instance, no one knew a surface that could bear that kind of weight or a pad that could survive the launch of such a behemoth. Nor could this beast be ready by the end of the decade.
The other mode, EOR, was just as complex. A large, spinning space station revolving around Earth would be the world’s first space construction site, and there, a smaller spacecraft would be assembled. Its components would be launched separately from Earth…or maybe the complete spacecraft would be launched by another of the large boosters von Braun’s team was developing, the Saturn V, and its propellants sent separately. No one was sure how it would be done, exactly, especially since any space construction would require—besides extremely large hard hats—techniques of rendezvous and docking that had never been attempted as well as the hazardous transfer of hypergolic liquid fuel, the kind that combusted when combined, from tanks to the spacecraft. And how would all these parts be connected? Screwed, bolted, nailed, clamped, welded, glued, soldered, or some other method? Max Faget was not a fan of EOR: “Every time you’d tell them what was wrong with one way of doing it, they’d tell you, well, they were going to do it the other way,” he remembered later. “As far as I know, those problems never got solved.” He and most of the Space Task Group were behind the direct-ascent mode. Von Braun supported EOR since it would involve his Saturn booster and was similar to plans he had laid out in his Collier’s articles.
Neither of these choices addressed the other end of the voyage—descending to, and then ascending from, the moon’s surface, which was probably solid…but might not be. After all, a respected Cornell scientist named Thomas Gold maintained that the moon’s surface was just a deep layer of dust, into which a spacecraft would disappear. And even if it was solid, how would the crew guide it down to the ground safely, even in one-sixth gravity? For the Nova, the ladder from the rocket would need to be at least as long as a football field; would an astronaut be able to safely clamber up and down that wearing a spacesuit, since even a small puncture in that suit could mean death? The more closely one examined the direct-ascent mode, the more problems one found.
At least these two methods allowed the spaceship’s occupants to return from their journey. One plan, conceived at Lockheed and advocated by Bell Aerospace as late as June 1962, didn’t. Two engineers there—one with the title of head of human factors—claimed that America could beat the Russians to the moon only if an astronaut was sent there on a one-way trip. After all, it was already technically possible to get a man to the moon; getting him back safely to Earth was the issue. After landing in a modified Mercury spacecraft, the astronaut would stay there, with oxygen, food, and supplies, and live in a pressurized hut drop-shipped earlier. More supplies would continue to be delivered. It would probably take at least a year and twenty-two cargo rockets to get a one-man moon base up and running—and several more years before NASA figured out how to bring him back.
There is no evidence that NASA ever actually considered this suggestion.
But there was another option.
John Houbolt wasn’t the first one to come up with the idea of lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR). A self-educated Russian mechanic named Yuri Kondratyuk had suggested it in 1917 and so had an Englishman, Harry E. Ross, in 1948. Houbolt wasn’t even the first engineer at Langley, NASA’s revered research center, to suggest LOR; two others, Clint Brown and Bill Michael, had published a paper on the subject in May 1960 suggesting that a small “bug” with two astronauts leave a “mother ship” orbiting the moon, take them down to the lunar surface, and then return them. A team from Chance Vought Astronautics, a respected name in the aircraft business, also presented the idea of modular spacecraft at Langley around the same time. But this was before President Kennedy’s May 1961 directive, when a lunar landing became a priority, and no one at NASA thought much of LOR—in fact, researchers laughed at the idea.
As a boy in Joliet, Illinois, Houbolt had entered his creations in model-airplane competitions like so many other future NACA engineers. Once he’d even jumped out of a hayloft with an umbrella. He had a pilot’s license, and he had never wanted to be anything but an aeronautical engineer. Houbolt’s job as associate chief of the dynamic-loads division had nothing to do with the manned space program. But he also chaired a committee assigned to study rendezvous as it pertained to space stations. At one meeting in August 1960, the subject of a moon landing came up. He began researching the various approaches that used rendezvous techniques and became fascinated by the concept.
He wasn’t the only one. Bob Gilruth and others at NASA realized early on that orbital operation techniques such as rendezvous and docking would be needed at some point and thus should be developed. Toward that end, the Mercury follow-up program—initially called Mercury Mark II, since it would involve an improved Mercury capsule—began to take shape. Canadian James Chamberlin, the former chief designer of the canceled Arrow fighter jet, was assigned to work on it. The program was sold to Congress on the basis of its capability to intercept, inspect, and repair satellites and to support a space station, still a strong possibility at the time.
By the time Chamberlin’s team got finished with its design plans, the Gemini would be a complete makeover of the Mercury in countless ways. First and foremost, it would be an operational spacecraft with enough power, through larger and more rocket thrusters, for its pilot to fly it in the vacuum and microgravity of space; he could not only alter its attitude through yaw, pitch, and roll but also change direction and speed in all three axes (up/down, forward/backward, and left/right). It would also be a much more easily serviced craft. Almost all its service components, previously crammed into the small Mercury cabin, would now be attached to the craft’s outside or in the detachable adapter-module shroud that looked like nothing so much as a hoop skirt on Mercury’s big sister.
Other researchers at Langley besides Houbolt had been studying rendezvous since 1959; by May 1960, there were eleven separate studies under way on the subject. It was becoming abundantly clear that rendezvous maneuvers would play an important part in any kind of space operations, whether it was LOR, EOR, or direct ascent. Within that cadre of researchers, the prematurely gray, forty-one-year-old Houbolt
became known as “the rendezvous man.” He was brilliant—he had taught the Mercury Seven course on navigation—and at some point in the summer of 1960, after much study of rendezvous as it applied to a lunar landing, he had an epiphany. He realized how much LOR would simplify all the parts of the process up and down the line, from development and testing to manufacturing and flight planning and operations. “I vowed to dedicate myself to the task” of pushing the concept, he said later.
Houbolt was by nature reserved and reticent, but from that moment, he took to advocating for LOR like a Baptist preacher spreading the Gospel. He began converting people, first a few NASA folks and then others, convincing them of its advantages—and the benefits of rendezvous in general—in countless briefings, lectures, presentations, and one-on-one talks. But the initial reaction from the Space Task Group was less than enthusiastic.
Houbolt gave a presentation in December 1960 at NASA’s Washington, DC, headquarters, and most of the Space Task Group’s top managers were there. When he pointed out the weight savings of LOR—a reduction by a factor of 2 to 2.5—the normally soft-spoken Max Faget stood up. “His figures lie,” he said heatedly. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” There was some truth to Faget’s claim—in his early calculations, Houbolt had underestimated the weight required, using an inadequate guidance system and a tiny, unpressurized, and unrealistically light lunar lander, not much more than an open platform and a rocket engine under the seat that “looked very much like a motorcycle,” observed one NASA engineer. Nonetheless, in the gentlemanly world of science, it was a shocking display of vehemence. Von Braun shook his head and said, “No, that’s no good.” After the meeting concluded, Faget stood out in the hallway and told anyone who would listen about the flaws in Houbolt’s claims. Houbolt merely suggested that Faget and others who were skeptical should first take a look at his study.
Arguments as to the most viable lunar-landing mode continued through 1961. For much of that time, LOR was the long shot; most favored was EOR. Many at NASA, Bob Gilruth included, agreed with Faget. Houbolt couldn’t even get the Space Task Group to study his scheme. The year wore on, but Houbolt refused to give up. He continued to give rendezvous talks at NASA headquarters, usually to unreceptive audiences. Some of this was due to politics; von Braun’s team in Huntsville preferred either direct ascent or EOR. The former would require their monster Nova booster, and the latter two or three big Saturns per launch—double the work for them, since LOR would utilize only one Saturn per mission. (And because no one knew what rockets would be needed or wanted after Apollo, that meant double the job security.)
One variation on EOR would employ von Braun’s long-cherished space station idea. Even those at Houbolt’s home, Langley, thought LOR too complex and risky, and Time magazine opined that “at first glance [it] seems like a bizarre product of far-out science fiction.” If a crisis occurred in low Earth orbit during the EOR process, the spacecraft could most likely return home quickly—but what if there was a life-threatening problem near the moon, 239,000 miles away, during LOR? There would be no chance of rescue. The thought of astronaut corpses circling the moon indefinitely kept many people at NASA awake at night. Most at Langley preferred the direct-ascent method.
As various NASA study committees passed on LOR, a frustrated Houbolt decided to make a leap of faith. Risking his job, he went above the heads of his direct superiors and wrote a three-page letter pleading his case to NASA deputy administrator Robert Seamans. On May 25, soon after hearing Kennedy’s moon speech, Seamans appointed another committee to assess the various lunar-landing modes. Houbolt was heartened; surely this group would give LOR proper consideration.
After examining several concepts, the committee’s final rating placed LOR a distant third. The committee members thought it too risky, and even absurd, to send a lone astronaut (the plan at the time) down to the lunar surface in a small module and hope that he could successfully launch and rendezvous with a larger spacecraft orbiting the moon.
One more task force was immediately formed to focus on EOR. Its chair refused to even let Houbolt discuss LOR. At another meeting that included three hundred potential Apollo contractors and several Space Task Group members, Houbolt tried again. Faget and several others told him to forget LOR.
The lunar-orbit-rendezvous method finally gained some traction a month later, during another committee meeting, when direct ascent’s Nova began losing steam as a viable option. Houbolt gave an impressive presentation to the group, then a well-received one to the Space Task Group, and its members started to come around. One of the first was Chamberlin, who spoke positively about LOR to Gilruth. By then he had been tapped by Faget to design the Mercury follow-up craft and was heavily involved in Gemini concepts, and he realized that the necessary rendezvous and docking experience were attainable in the new program.
It still wasn’t enough. In November 1961, Houbolt sent another letter to Seamans—this one a nine-page epic in which he described himself as “a voice in the wilderness.” Seamans’s first reaction was less than sympathetic. “I’m sick of getting mail from this guy,” he remembered thinking. “I thought of picking up the phone and calling Tommy Thompson, Houbolt’s superior at Langley, and telling Tommy to turn him off. Then I thought, ‘But he might be right.’” Instead of upbraiding Houbolt, he took the letter to Brainerd Holmes, who was directing the manned-spaceflight program at the time. Holmes read it and grimaced, but he said he’d give LOR renewed consideration.
He did. The Space Task Group finally began taking the “bug approach” seriously. Eventually, after several more reports and presentations and on closer inspection of the insurmountable difficulties of both direct ascent and EOR, everyone saw that the data provided undeniable evidence: LOR was the most sensible way to land on the moon. Even Faget became convinced, especially since direct ascent’s problems of “eyeballing that thing down to the moon didn’t have a satisfactory answer,” he said later. By early 1962, the Space Task Group threw its weight behind Houbolt’s vision.
The last holdout against LOR was the Marshall Space Flight Center. But on June 7, 1962, at the end of a daylong meeting at Huntsville that included a six-hour session on Marshall’s recommendations for EOR, von Braun shocked everyone, including his Marshall associates, by announcing his support for LOR. After an earlier presentation by Houbolt, von Braun had asked him to send several papers on the mode; those had helped make up his mind. At the meeting, von Braun presented a detailed listing of the deficiencies of the other modes, and the advantages of LOR. He concluded, “We believe this program offers the highest confidence factor of successful accomplishment within this decade.” Afterward, von Braun graciously sent Houbolt a personal copy of his remarks.
On July 11, Jim Webb—who had originally been a supporter of direct ascent—made the announcement: NASA had selected the lunar-orbit-rendezvous method for the job of landing men on the moon. For Houbolt, it was vindication, finally, for what would come to be seen as eminent common sense. As his division chief said to him, “Congratulations, John. They’ve adopted your scheme. I can safely say I’m shaking hands with the man who single-handedly saved the government twenty billion.”
Webb and NASA would still have to defend their selection of LOR to the president. When Webb and Jerome Wiesner, Kennedy’s chief science adviser, openly disagreed about it, the agency was forced to justify its choice in the public arena. In September 1962, during a presidential tour of Huntsville, Kennedy brought up the issue with Wiesner. Von Braun and Webb joined in, and the discussion quickly became a heated argument between Wiesner and Webb. Kennedy eventually sided with Webb, whom he trusted on the subject. The matter was finally settled in November, when NASA announced that Grumman had been selected to manufacture the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft—the lunar excursion module, or LEM. (The name was soon shortened to lunar module, or LM, when excursion was deemed too frivolous-sounding, but it was still pronounced “lem.”)
The LM would be one o
f the three modules, or self-contained units, constituting the spacecraft. The three modules would sit atop the massive three-stage Saturn V rocket that would launch Apollo into space. The conical command module would house the astronauts in a hospitable environment during their journey to and from the moon. It would be connected to the cylindrical service module, which would provide electricity, propulsion, and storage for various consumables. The two segments would operate as a single unit—the command-service module—for the entire trip until the service module was jettisoned just before the final reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. The final piece of the puzzle was the spindly four-legged LM, designed to operate only in the airless vacuum of space and specifically in the moon’s weaker gravity. During liftoff, it was housed directly beneath the service module with its legs folded up. Before the translunar voyage commenced, the command-service module would turn around and dock with it, nose-first. The LM consisted of a descent stage and an ascent stage. When a successful landing was made, the upper ascent stage with its own rocket engine would blast away from the lunar surface and reunite with the command-service module. After its two occupants had scrambled through the docking tunnel, the ascent stage would be discarded.
The Space Task Group was quickly outgrowing its facilities at Langley, Virginia, and a much larger center was needed. After a site-selection committee examined nearly two dozen areas that met all the requirements—moderate weather and proximity to water, a major airport, and a top university, among others—a decision was made. The Space Task Group’s new home, and the place from which each mission would be controlled immediately after its launching, would be Houston, Texas. The Humble Oil Company had donated a thousand acres of land near Clear Lake, twenty-five miles southeast of downtown Houston, to Rice University, which in turn had offered it to NASA. (Humble owned a significant portion of the area surrounding the tract—the nicest part of Clear Lake—and knew they would eventually make millions developing it, hence the roundabout donation.)
Shoot for the Moon Page 14
