Which way to the moon?
Reginald Turnhill was BBC correspondent at NASA from 1956 onwards. He described the different routes to the Moon and how NASA decided which one it would take:
It was only 18 days after Gagarin became the first human in orbit that President Kennedy announced, in May 1961, that the United States proposed to land a man on the Moon and bring him safely home before the end of that decade. He said that they would do it, not because it was easy, but because it was “hard”!
Too right, thought NASA’s top managers! At that time the youthful National Aeronautics and Space Administration had only vague theories as to how such a landing could be accomplished. Despite the confident 10-year programme which had so impressed me and many others, their scientists and technicians had actually achieved only one 15-minute manned space log; and while Project Apollo had been announced 10 months earlier, its stated aim was merely to fly men around the Moon – “a circumlunar mission” – without landing.
The President’s “deadline” led to some rather desperate planning. Sending men to the Moon was relatively easy; the difficult part was bringing them back again. Two Lockheed engineers proposed that an astronaut should be sent on a one-way trip and left there, with food, oxygen and other supplies being rocketed to him for several years while methods and equipment were devised for bringing him back. This solution was still being advocated in June 1962 by Bell Aerospace engineers, who pointed out that while he was waiting the astronaut could perform valuable scientific work. It would be a hazardous mission, they conceded, but “it would be cheaper, faster, and perhaps the only way to beat Russia.” NASA’s historians say there is no evidence that their administrators ever took such a plan seriously; but they did listen to it, and it is recorded.
NASA had inherited from the US Air Force a general assumption that “direct ascent” was the way to get to the Moon. As explained earlier, the USAF had decided some years before that a manned base on the Moon was desirable for defence reasons, and had been working on a plan for a lunar expedition called Lunex since 1958. They thought they could send three men there and back in a huge three-stage rocket called Nova, providing an initial thrust of 12 million lb – almost twice as big as the projected Saturn 5.
Nova was the largest of a series of rocket designs proposed by Dr Wernher von Braun and his team of German rocket engineers. Von Braun had always supported direct approach as the best way to get men to the Moon. Although rendezvous and docking techniques in Earth or lunar orbit were much discussed, practical tests were a long way off, so no one was sure that they would work. The weakness of direct approach, on the other hand, was that a huge weight – the whole third stage of the rocket – had to be slowed down for the lunar landing, still carrying enough propellant to re-launch part of itself and its crew on the return journey to the Earth.
To lessen the landing weight, a lunar surface rendezvous had been proposed. For that an unmanned tanker vehicle would be sent first – but then the problem was that the manned lander must touch down near enough for the astronauts to transfer the tanker’s fuel. That in turn required that the final landing would have to be controlled by the onboard astronauts. But how would they be able to see the surface from the pointed top of the rocket, with their sloping windows looking skywards? Mirrors, periscopes, TV and even hanging porches were proposed, and a lot of time was wasted on this concept until it was finally agreed that it would not work. It was also felt that developing a rocket as large as Nova would take far too much time.
Assembling rockets and spacecraft in either Earth orbit or lunar orbit were repeatedly proposed as solutions, because this could be done by multiple launches of one or more of seven alternative variations of von Braun’s proposed Saturns. But von Braun himself was still describing any rendezvous proposals as “premature” at meetings in February 1962.
John Houbolt, assistant chief of the Dynamics Load Division at the Langley Research Center, had been arguing the case for LOR, as lunar orbit rendezvous soon became known, quite passionately since 1960. He maintained that if a simple spacecraft could be dropped off to land two astronauts on the Moon and then bring them back to the parent craft waiting in lunar orbit, enormous weight savings would be achieved. It would no longer be necessary to take the heavy Apollo craft, with its heatshield and fuel for the return flight to Earth, down to the lunar surface. Lowering all that weight and lifting it off again consumed many tons of propellant which could all be saved.
But the disadvantages – that such a lightweight ferry could place only a small payload on the Moon, and, worst of all, if its lift-off were less than perfect it would miss its rendezvous with the parent craft and doom the astronauts to a slow death – meant that this option was not seriously considered.
By contrast, a missed rendezvous in Earth orbit would merely mean a failed mission, with the astronauts being brought safely home. So Houbolt’s arguments that LOR was much simpler than EOR, and that his plan meant taking 7000 pounds (3,200 kg) instead of 150,000 pounds (68,000 kg) down to the lunar surface, were at first discounted.
Slowly, however, the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston, led by Brainerd Holmes, who was brought in to head the programme after successfully completing the then RCA’s Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (during which air and defence correspondents like myself had been immensely impressed by his abilities), were won over to LOR. Its over-riding advantage was that only one Saturn 5 rocket would be needed for a complete moonlanding mission instead of two for EOR, and the savings in time and cost were enormous. It soon became clear that it was the only way in which a moonlanding could be accomplished within the decade.
But the Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville stubbornly adhered to its view that EOR was the way to go. Brainerd Holmes decided that von Braun must be won over. A shrewd negotiator, he realised that LOR would mean a substantial loss of work for the rocket centre, so he arranged for his deputy, Joseph Shea, to invite von Braun to Washington to point out to him that, if EOR were chosen, Houston would be overloaded with work. “It just seems natural to Brainerd and me that you guys ought to start getting involved in the lunar base and the roving vehicle, and some of the other spacecraft stuff.”
NASA’s historians say that Wernher, who was known to have wanted for a long time to get into spacecraft design and not be confined to launch rockets, “kind of tucked that in the back of his mind and went to Huntsville”.
Two months later came the conversion. At an all-day conference in June, when a final decision was desperately overdue, all the presentations by von Braun’s lieutenants still favoured EOR. Their German leader sat listening and making notes for six hours. Then he got up and made a 15-minute speech which shocked his staff but finally settled the issue. “Our general conclusion,” he said, “is that all four modes [under discussion for reaching the Moon] are technically feasible and could be implemented with enough time and money.” He then listed what he called “Marshall’s preferences”: 1) lunar orbit rendezvous; 2) Earth orbit rendezvous, using the refuelling technique; 3) direct flight with a Saturn 5, using a lightweight spacecraft and high energy propellants; and 4) direct flight with a Nova or Saturn C8 rocket.
His staff listened open-mouthed while von Braun said he readily admitted that when first exposed to the LOR proposal they were “a bit sceptical”, but so was the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston. It had taken quite a while to substantiate the feasibility of the method and finally endorse it. So it could be concluded that the issue of “invented here” or “not invented here” did not apply to either of the centers; both had actually embraced a scheme suggested by a third source!
Shea’s headquarters staff then costed the four contending modes of approach to the Moon, and reached the satisfying conclusion that LOR would cost almost $1.5 billion less than either EOR or direct flight – $9.5 billion versus $10.6 billion. On 11 July 1962 the media was told at a news conference that the NASA centers were unanimously of the opinion that a moonlanding was to be ac
complished by means of a lunar orbit rendezvous. Not for the first time, nor the last, the abrupt change of policy came as a shock to space correspondents like myself. In this case we had been subjected to innumerable briefings stressing the hazards of such an approach. But Brainerd Holmes told the American Rocket Society a few days later: “Essentially we have now ‘lifted off’ and are on our way.” Events proved that he was right.
The Soviets planned to use the Earth orbit rendezvous technique to assemble a larger spacecraft. This would then take their cosmonauts to the moon.
Project Mercury
John Glenn personified the relationship between the development of jet aircraft and the exploration of outer space. Born on 18 July 1921 in New Concord, Ohio, he grew up during the Depression and in April 1941 joined a civilian pilot training scheme while he was at college.
In June 1941 he gained his private pilot’s licence. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army Air Corps. He began training and was commissioned into the US Marine Corps in 1943, serving in a Marine fighter squadron. He flew 59 combat missions in the Pacific, air to ground strikes in F4U Corsairs.
His next posting was testing combat aircraft for Grumman. By the end of the war he had been promoted to captain and was offered a regular commission which he accepted. He joined a US mission to the Nationalist Chinese, in support of the Marshall peace initiative, flying reconnaissance patrols. By 1948 Glenn was serving as an instructor in an advanced training unit based at Corpus Christi, Texas, flying jets, the Lockheed P80 Shooting Star. He was sent to Korea in October 1952 where he flew F9 Panthers on close support missions. In 1953 he was attached to the USAF, flying fighter interceptors, the F-86. In the final days of the war he shot down three Chinese MIG jet fighters.
Posted to the Naval Air Test Centre (NATC) at Patuxent River, Maryland, he graduated as a test pilot in July 1954 and was transferred to the fighter design branch of the Naval Aeronautics Department. In 1957 he personally broke the existing supersonic transcontinental speed record, flying 2,445 miles from coast to coast of the United States. His flight involved air-to-air refuelling three times and broke the record by 21 minutes.
Early in 1958 Glenn voluntered for part-time work on an experimental programme based at the NACA research centre at Langley. When NASA was formed from NACA, Glenn was well placed to learn that he fitted the profile for manned space flight. His age, weight, height, education and experience were suitable although he had to lose 30 lb. On 17 December 1958 NASA announced the name of the project: Mercury.
NASA was looking for test pilots on active duty, preferably with combat experience and clean records. Glenn reported for tests at the Lovelace Clinic, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Glenn:
Lovelace was a diagnostic hospital specializing in aerospace medicine. It had been founded by Dr W. Randolph Lovelace II, a prominent space scientist and chairman of the NASA life sciences committee, who had conducted high-altitude and pressure suit experimental work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The clinic was private, but there was a strong military flavor to its administration, which was directed by Dr A.H. Schwichtenberg, a retired Air Force general. The doctors, led by Lovelace, were a hard-nosed group, or so it seemed to those of us they were poking, probing, and evaluating.
For over a week they made every kind of measurement and did every kind of test on the human body, inside and out, that medical science knew of or could imagine. Nobody really knew what that body would go through in space, so Lovelace and his team tried everything. They drew blood, took urine and stool samples, scraped our throats, measured the contents of our stomachs, gave us barium enemas, and submerged us in water tanks to record our total body volume. They shone lights into our eyes, ears, noses, and everywhere else. They measured our heart and pulse rates, blood pressure, brain waves, and muscular reactions to electric current. Their examination of the lower bowel was the most uncomfortable procedure I had ever experienced, a sigmoidal probe with a device those of us who were tested nicknamed the “Steel Eel.” Wires and tubes dangled from us like tentacles from jellyfish. Nobody wanted to tell us what some of the stranger tests were for.
Doctors are the natural enemies of pilots. Pilots like to fly; and doctors frequently turn up reasons why they can’t. I didn’t find the tests as humiliating or infuriating as some of the other candidates did. Pete Conrad was so incensed by having to rush through the hospital’s public hallways “in distress” that he told General Schwichtenberg he wasn’t giving himself any more enemas – and deposited his enema bag on the general’s desk for emphasis. He didn’t get chosen for the space program until later. But I thought the tests, obnoxious as they were, were fascinating for the most part. It was all in the interests of science, and going into space was going to be one of the greatest scientific adventures of all time.
After eight days at Lovelace, one candidate washed out for medical reasons and the rest of us, again in small groups, received orders sending us to Wright-Patterson and the Wright Air Development Center’s Aeromedical Laboratories. We traveled separately, as we had to Lovelace, to preserve secrecy.
The tests at Wright-Patterson were more familiar. They subjected us to the kinds of stresses test pilots could be expected to endure, heightening some of them in an attempt to simulate the thin reaches of space. Again, the doctors were guessing. They injected cold water into our ears as a way to create a condition called nystagmus, in which you can’t keep your eyes focused on one spot, then measured how long it took us to recover. They measured body fat content and rated our body types as endomorphic, ectomorphic, or mesomorphic. They inserted a rectal thermometer; sat us in heat chambers, ran the temperature to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and clocked the rise in our body temperature and heart rate. We walked on treadmills, stepped repeatedly on and off a twenty-inch step, and rode stationary bicycles. We blew into tubes that measured lung capacity and held our breath as long as we could. We plunged our feet into buckets of ice water while the doctors took blood pressure and pulse measurements. We sat strapped into chairs that shook us like rag dolls. We were assaulted with sound of shifting amplitudes and frequencies that made our flight suits quiver and produced sensations in our bones. We endured blinking strobe lights at frequencies designed to irritate the nervous system. We entered an altitude chamber that simulated sixty-five thousand feet of altitude, with only partial pressure suits and oxygen. We lay on a table that tilted like a slow-motion carnival ride. We pushed buttons and pulled levers in response to flashing lights to test our reaction times. We sat in an anechoic isolation chamber to see how we might endure the vast blackness and silence of space. All the while sensors plastered on our heads and bodies recorded our reactions.
The isolation chamber was simply a dark soundproof room. A technician led me in, seated me at a desk, and turned out the lights when he left. I had no idea if I would be there for fifteen minutes or fifteen hours. I knew the easiest way to make the time pass would be to put my head down and go to sleep. But I suspected that the doctors wanted mental alertness. I opened the desk drawer after a while and found a writing tablet. I had a pencil in my pocket. “Will attempt to keep record of the run,” I wrote on the first page.
By the time the door opened Glenn had scrawled 18 pages. Glenn:
I had moved on to summarizing my thoughts on the isolation experience when the door opened after three hours and the lights came on.
I had been back in Washington two weeks when the phone rang at my desk at BuAer. I answered it and heard Charles Doulan say, “Major Glenn, you’ve been through all the tests. Are you still interested in the program?”
“Yes, I am. Very much,” I said, and held my breath. “Well, congratulations. You’ve made it.”
I don’t remember my response. I know I felt a swell of pride – that I couldn’t help – but I also felt humble at being a small part of a program that was so full of scientific talent and of such importance to the nation.
Hanging up the phone, I was struck by the fact that the call ha
d come on the day it did. It was April 6, my wedding anniversary. Annie and I had been married sixteen years, and that night we had planned to go to dinner at Evans Farm Inn in McLean and a play in downtown Washington in celebration. There was no greater celebration than sharing the news with her. I told her I had no idea where all this would lead, but wherever it was, we were in it together.
The Mercury Astronauts met for the first time at Langley Air Force Base on April 8, 1959. We were seven pilots, three from the Air Force, three from the Navy, and one from the Marines, but none of us were in uniform, and at that time we were still anonymous. I had just received a routine promotion from major to lieutenant colonel, but as astronauts, we all ranked equally. We wore suits, the uniform of our new service, as we milled about with NASA officials and discreetly tried to check out the other men who had been chosen for this new assignment.
Robert Gilruth was the head of NASA’s Space Task Group, which included Project Mercury. Bob had a fringe of thinning white hair and prominent black eyehrows, which gave him a look of Buddha-like wisdom. He was an old-line aerodynamics investigator with a quiet, congenial manner and he stepped to a podium in the room where we had gathered to brief us on how NASA planned to tie us into the project.
“You’re not just short-term hired guns,” he said. “NASA wants the benefit of your experience as test pilots and engineers. Project Mercury is a team, and you’re part of it. This isn’t the military, where direction comes from the top down. We want your direct input. Any problem you have with design, or anything we’re doing, you let me know.
“But let me warn you. Project Mercury isn’t a continuation of anything. Nobody’s ever gone into space before. It’s completely new; it’s untried, there are many uncertainties ahead. If for any reason whatsoever you decide it’s not for you, you can go back to your respective service with no questions asked.”
The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster Page 6
