Breaking the Chains of Gravity

by Amy Shira Teitel

  What Manhigh didn’t have was a way into space; balloons could only float so high and couldn’t give a capsule the speed it needed to go into orbit. Based in part on the strength of the Manhigh flights, the capsule approach to spaceflight was starting to gain favor over glider-type vehicles because of its simplistic technology. The air force’s Atlas missile program was fast-tracked with the goal of consolidating ongoing developments that might eventually give way to a spaceflight program.

  But the military emphasis in space tied up in the creation of ARPA didn’t sit well with Eisenhower. He had thought long and hard over the best way to manage a space program and ultimately determined that peaceful exploration was paramount and the program should be directed by a civilian agency with no military ties. In the interest of international relations he knew that all purely scientific information about space should be shared openly and freely between nations, something that would be impossible with a military space program or even a science program with a strong military component. Keeping any large technological program a secret risked its being misinterpreted by the Soviet Union as a hidden weapons program, which could in turn see the Soviets develop an advanced secret weapons program of their own. It was imperative to Eisenhower that paranoia not develop into new weapons systems.

  Although the president couldn’t deny the military rationale of exploiting space in the name of national security with intelligence satellites and a military presence, his conviction that space be a peaceful, scientific arena weighed heaviest, and Eisenhower opted to keep a strong separation between the military and scientific exploration of his new region in the name of national morale and American international prestige.

  On March 24, 1958, Eisenhower issued a memorandum to McElroy warning him that if a civilian space agency were to pass through Congress, it would take priority over ARPA. The president formalized this move with a request to Congress on April 2 that it establish a new agency to pull all existing space programs under one civilian umbrella. Recruiting Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson to help pass the changes he thought necessary, the president’s bill began the process of moving through the necessary channels to become law.

  Defining what exactly this new space agency should do fell to James Killian, Eisenhower’s science adviser. Just days after Explorer I reached orbit, the president had appointed Killian to a President’s Science Advisory Board panel tasked with outlining the goals for and management of this new civilian space agency. Under Killian’s guidance the panel considered the programs already in existence throughout the country, and in light of Eisenhower’s partiality to a civilian group determined that the NACA was the best option. This long-standing aeronautical institution was unique in that it didn’t answer to the president but instead reported to a board of directors led by a chairman. And though this board did include military representatives, they and their military goals were tempered by the cadre of scientists that served alongside them.

  This cooperative relationship was echoed in the NACA’s proven track record of working with and bridging the gap between military and civilian clients, an arrangement that typically allowed for shared research to benefit a single program like it was doing with the X-15. It was a way of working that promised to translate nicely to space. But without a new, forward-facing space goal added to its agenda, the NACA would be left duplicating military efforts in building rockets and aircraft. Killian’s panel also saw the value in keeping the best minds in aviation under one organization umbrella as opposed to having them spread throughout the military and industry partners. Retaining the NACA would consolidate the nation’s best minds, focusing them on the problems of spaceflight. The NACA was also a nonmilitary agency, satisfying Eisenhower’s requirement that space be a peaceful undertaking.

  As Killian saw it, the NACA could be easily adapted to incorporate a space program without sacrificing the ongoing research that was continually yielding advances in the still-developing field of aeronautics. From its humble roots with one small site in Langley, Virginia, the NACA had grown to include the Lewis Laboratory in Ohio and the Ames Laboratory and High Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California, all managed by Director Hugh Dryden in Washington. And each of these sites was dealing in some way with the technology that would eventually be applied to spaceflight, from powerful engines to materials able to withstand the searing heat of atmospheric reentery and exotic shapes for manned satellites.

  The NACA’s assets totaled some three hundred million dollars in research equipment and laboratories and nearly one third of its staff of eight thousand men and women were highly skilled engineers. Expanding these research sites to include space was a far simpler prospect than establishing all new sites for similar research. On this point the Bureau of the Budget added its approval. The NACA’s average annual budget of about one hundred million dollars would have to be increased to bring spaceflight to life, but it would be a far cheaper alternative to establishing a wholly new organization with new research sites.

  Expanding the staff and offices would be a challenge, but it would be a small step in the overall goal of developing a space agency. But the difficulties, agreed the members of the President’s Science Advisory Board, could be fairly simply overcome by amending the laws governing the NACA to allow the organization the growth it needed to solve the problems.

  A Government Organization Committee appointed by Killian weighed all options. It decided against handing the space program to the Atomic Energy Commission because of that body’s singular focus on atomic energy in a field where chemical energy would surely be more useful in the short term. The committee finally favored the NACA over ARPA, citing the ultimately limited use of space by the military over scientific exploration.

  The task of defining this new space agency also fell to Killian, which he delegated to an appointed panel of PSAC members chaired by Edward Purcell, a Harvard physicist and Nobel laureate. The Purcell Committee’s conclusions came in the form of an essay called “Introduction to Outer Space,” an essay that so eloquently detailed the rationale behind and technical challenges of spaceflight that Eisenhower read it to the nation during a broadcast from the White House on March 26. Nothing included in the statement was science fiction, the president said; it was a sober and realistic presentation of facts. The first steps would be straightforward scientific exploration, Eisenhower told the nation, studying the physical aspects of unmanned spaceflight going as far as the Moon. From there, the program would expand to send probes to distant planets with the expectation that humans would follow before long. And while there would certainly be a military aspect to the nation’s future in space, the president assured the country that any such activity would not endanger the nation’s security. National standing was the foremost consideration. Practical utility would come as a secondary benefit.

  The new space agency, as imagined by the Purcell Committee, would face significant challenges in constructing and managing what promised to be the greatest technological undertaking yet. It would have to develop and build machines that could work in wholly alien environments without the benefit of a pilot on hand to continually monitor onboard systems, all the while solving the inevitable problems that would crop up. The agency would also have to serve some military needs without sacrificing the needs of the science community—while still reassuring the public its nation’s defense, science, and technology were first in the world.

  Even the military goals in space were facing similarly daunting challenges. Looking around at his colleagues, Killian saw that Sputnik had cast a spell over military officers, causing otherwise rational commanders to wax romantic about space as a realm for exploration and a battlefield in the next war. In both war and peace, staying on the cutting edge in this new realm was both paramount and alluring.

  Though the recommendations from Washington called for restructuring the NACA, by the spring of 1958 it was still a bill waiting to become a law. In the meantime, the military branches pressed forward with
their own spaceflight programs. For the air force, it was certain that if the new civilian agency did come to pass, it would rely on the service for just about everything, much like the NACA had. Taking the X-15 program as a model, the air force assumed the new agency would govern the space program and test the spacecraft but that the service would get the glory of flying the missions and completely lofty goals. The air force thus invited the NACA to undertake a joint study on spaceflight under the assumption that it would be an air force program, one that would be run by the Air Research and Development Command under General Bernhard Schriever. Extensive and ambitious, the air force had its sights firmly set on landing a man on the Moon as the final stage of an incremental program.

  The first phase of the air force’s Man in Space program was a simple, technical demonstration phase called Man in Space Soonest, or MISS, designed to take the initial steps in space and explore the human factors involved. The phase would begin with six robotic flights to test the hardware and flight systems, followed by six animal flights over the course of six months to test the life support system. Pending success on these missions, the first manned flight would launch as early as October 1960. These initial piloted missions would add reentry and recovery to the air force’s knowledge base, the two key mission events that needed to be worked out before sending men on more complicated flights.

  Because the goals of this phase were fairly basic, the spacecraft would be equivalently simple, a high-drag, zero-lift, blunt-nosed cylindrical vehicle eight feet in diameter with a flared bottom with an ablative heat shield on the Earth-facing surface. The pilot would lie on his back on a couch inside a pressurized cabin, though he would still wear a pressure suit for safety. The capsule’s cabin would also house the main guidance and control systems, as well as the secondary power pack and a telemetry and voice communications system that would establish a link between the astronaut and ground crews. In the flared skirt of the spacecraft would be the reaction control jets, the retrorockets for reentry, and the recovery parachutes for a splashdown at sea.

  The whole phase was designed to gain a better understanding of the human side of spaceflight. And because no one could be sure how a man would function in microgravity, these first flights would be almost entirely automated. It was possible that a pilot might be fine, or he might become disoriented and panic, rendering him a hazard to himself. But if the first flights were successful, and if the pilot was found capable of making decisions in space, the air force would give him increased control in subsequent flights, beginning with manual control over his attitude in space and retrofire burn.

  The human factor goals of the MISS fed into the next phase, called Man in Space Sophisticated, or MISSOPH, a phase that was subdivided into three sections. Beginning in March of 1961, MISSOPH I would launch robotic and animal flights in larger spacecraft capable of staying aloft for up to two weeks, which was roughly the projected time for a round-trip mission to the Moon. The spacecraft for this phase would be more or less a larger version of the previous MISS version featuring a new airlock. Building on lessons learned in MISSOPH I, MISSOPH II would take advantage of the larger Super Titan Fluorine booster to put a much larger and more complex vehicle into a highly elliptical orbit reaching as high as forty thousand miles from the Earth. From this altitude, the spacecraft would reenter the atmosphere at a breakneck speed of thirty-five thousand feet per second or about 23,800 miles per hour, which is approximately the same speed as a return from the Moon. Having survived this harsh reentry, the MISSOPH II vehicle would become the prototype for a lunar return vehicle.

  The third stage, MISSOPH III, would bring increased sophistication into the spacecraft. Unlike the earlier vehicles, this one would be specifically designed to give the pilot more control for precision landings. It wasn’t a capsule; this vehicle would feature a flat triangular bottom reminiscent of a boost-glide vehicle. MISSOPH III would also debut the first spacesuit capable of supporting an astronaut leaving his spacecraft to work in the vacuum of space.

  MISSOPH III would live beyond its specific phase, serving as an Earth-orbital vehicle as well as the circumlunar vehicle for lunar missions. But first, unmanned vehicles would scope out this distant world. Lunar Reconnaissance or LUREC was the air force’s unmanned third phase intended to run simultaneously with the MISSOPH phase beginning April 1960. It was also subdivided into stages. LUREC I was devoted to figuring out the details of real-time tracking and communications with a spacecraft a quarter of a million miles away in the vicinity of the Moon. Once the tracking system was in place the LUREC II stage could launch. This stage was devoted to testing the guidance system that would support a flight to the Moon and gather data on the lunar environment in anticipation of a landing. Using an array of scientific instruments, these unmanned vehicles would measure the temperature, radioactivity, and atmospheric density around the Moon, sending back television images to help narrow down safe landing sites. Having gained a better understanding of the lunar environment, LUREC III would be the first to attempt a soft landing on the Moon’s surface. Using rockets to slow its descent and telescoping legs to cushion the impact, this spacecraft would be the first to study the Moon up close, adding seismic and audio data from ground noises to our understanding of our natural satellite.

  The robotic LUREC III flights would be one-way missions, but the manned spacecraft would follow in its wake. Manned Lunar Flight, or LUMAN, was the last phase of this air force program, and it would see a man landed on the Moon and returned safely to the Earth. The first stage, LUMAN I, called for animal flights around the Moon to verify the hardware, computer, and life support systems, a relatively simple mission expected to fly as early as May 1962. LUMAN II would see the same mission launched with men on board in place of animals. LUMAN III would see an unmanned spacecraft landed on the Moon, while LUMAN IV would complete the goal of returning a spacecraft from the lunar surface, ideally early in 1963.

  The manned landing would finally come with LUMAN V. Following the same profile as the two previous stages, an astronaut would pilot this spacecraft to a soft touchdown on the lunar surface. Once there, he would leave the spacecraft through the airlock and, thanks to his special pressure suit, leave the vehicle and explore the alien territory. With this mission, the program’s main objective would be met. The subsequent LUMAN VI and LUMAN VII would see additional landed and orbital missions launched with increasingly sophisticated scientific instruments to better understand the Moon.

  This air force vision for space exploration was certainly grand but not completely out of the realm of possibility. The Man in Space program was projected to cost $1.5 billion from the first unmanned missions through to the LUMAN missions slated to launch by 1965. But strict conditions would have to be met to keep the whole endeavor on schedule and under budget. The projected cost and time frame hinged on the program beginning on July 1, 1958, just months from the time this proposal reached air force headquarters. Success also demanded that all control of the program be given to the air force, which would in turn be free to consolidate whatever resources were needed and collaborate when beneficial.

  An added incentive to pursuing this program, argued the air force, was the spinoff technologies. Improved reconnaissance, communications, and an early warning system for enemy attacks were three capabilities that promised to benefit the U.S. military, and they were all capabilities expected to come from developing the lunar landing program. The Man in Space program, the air force said, would not only restore America’s national prestige, it would have an important psychological impact on the whole world. Landing a man on the Moon would without a doubt raise America back to a technologically dominant position in the eyes of the world.

  However feasible, this lofty air force proposal was eventually scaled back to focus on the first stage, Man in Space Soonest. The first phase was one that could be done quickly and before taking on the challenge of sending a man to the Moon. But there were other similarly simplistic proposals floating around at th
e time to compete with MISS.

  In the wake of the successful Manhigh II flight, the army’s Wernher von Braun had contacted the air force’s David Simons regarding the capsule. The German engineer saw it as the perfect vehicle for spaceflight, sophisticated enough to keep a man alive in orbit but also simple enough that it could be easily modified and launched on a rocket. Von Braun asked Simons whether he would be interested in developing a capsule along the line of Manhigh that could launch into space on a Redstone, turning the gondola and missile into a basic spaceflight system. Simons was on board; the two men saw eye to eye on the idea that capsules were the most effective means to get the first men into orbit. The fruits of this collaboration spawned a proposal von Braun aptly called Man Very High, and it was a program more or less the same as the air force’s own MISS program. A simple manned spacecraft would launch into orbit on a Redstone, gathering data before considering grander goals like a flight to the Moon. The army, too, saw an American military presence on Earth’s natural satellite as inevitable. This proposed joint project between the army and the air force promised fast results since the bulk of the technology already existed.

  But interservice rivalry ultimately trumped any collaboration between von Braun and Simons; the air force and army couldn’t decide who would get credit for the program if it worked. A resolute von Braun adapted his proposal to a purely army version called Project Adam as a reference to the biblical first man. For this program, the army would build its own capsule and launch it on one of von Braun’s modified Redstones. General Medaris and the Army Ballistic Missile Association had begun a campaign to gain control over the nation’s space program not long after successfully putting Explorer I into orbit.